Hello Spring

Winter on the Open Prairie - A sea of sienna.

Winter came and went on the ranch.  I have to say, that after last year's nightmare of a winter, this one was a breeze.  We had our cold snaps, but they didn't last.  We had snow, but it was never a lot, and it didn't stay around long.  (I think I spent more time on the tractor moving alpaca manure than moving snow.)We had ice and fog as thick as a down blanket. We had a lot of wind, which made the cold even colder. But here we are, March 1st. 

Oh, I'm sure it's going to still snow, but again, it won't last.  The sun is high.  Even the thick ice on the 1800 acre lake below us is gone.  Only the thin ice that forms each night on the still water greets each morning, but is gone by noon.

The flocks migrating snow geese fill the skies like a cloud of smoke when disturbed from the lake or when coming in to roost on the water at night, and when leaving by the thousands each morning.  The sound is alien, but joyous.

I've been busy on the ranch this winter doing all the little things that don't need to be done outside.  Things that you can manage inside as to not waste a lovely day outdoors. My shop on etsy.com, GnomeGnomeOnTheRange, is up and running.  It has some antiques, some weaving, lovely pillowcases, and soon will have wonderful gardening aprons and what I call Orphan Barrel Dresses for Toddlers, and of course, an array of alpaca yarns.  Which are going fast, so don't wait too long to get yours.  For my spinning and fiber art friends, I also have bags of cleaned and washed alpaca fleece.

I gutted and remodeled another bathroom. Yes, the ugly urine yellow one on the lower level has been brought into the 21st century and is now a lovely shade of stormy sea blue, and the floor is cherry.

We decided to add another 10 trees to the orchard and the irrigation that goes along with them.  The trees are all heritage grafts, to include one from a certified Johnny Appleseed (Chapman) tree.  How cool is that?  The trees should be here at the end of the month.

I built a small animal chute, which will hopefully help with alpaca toenail spa day. (Now, I just need to catch a victim, em ...volunteer.)

I built a second Top Bar Hive.  This one went much faster than the first, due mostly to the fact that I'd done it before.  It has a few changes from lessons learned last time around and is painted a lovely glowing blue shade of Hydrangea/Lilac/Wisteria.

I earned my State Teaching Certification, which required me to take a modern Human Resources College course to update. It was an 8 week course that I took as a full time job, and finished it in 10 days- 24 essays and papers.  I thought my brain was going to explode and my fingers were going to fall off.

I earned my State Food Handler's permit so that I can now sell baked goods at my friend's floral shop along with the honey and eggs.

I earned my CHP certification, and was awarded this year's Swiss and Royal Canadian Mounted Certifications.

I created a custom Tartan design for the Ranch and it was accepted into the Scottish Register. (I'll share it when the official paperwork gets here.)  I'll be getting it warped onto the loom this week and hopefully have the sash done for my DAR convention at the end of March.  OH....

I was accepted into DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution, and have continued to do research to add to my long list of patriot ancestors.  It is time consuming, but fascinating.  I had a fellow etsy.com artist design me a custom wardrobe and it is gorgeous.  LOL.  On a day you feel like a giantess, I suggest you put on a 18th century bumroll, and all 3 petticoats and jacket, and see how slimming your 21st century clothes make you feel.  Although I am perfectly comfortable in my period costumes and wish I could wear them all day long, all the time like my fellow online blogger Thea ,but it's just not practical here.  She's an inspiration.

My friend Kelsey, had her re-Grand Opening of her new shop in Stromsburg, Spindle Shuttle and Needle.  In celebration of that event, I made her a large 4 foot square Dala horse of her very own for outside the shop.  Shops all over downtown have them in support of the town being the Swede Capital of the State.

We've been playing with making our own Farmer's cheese and we're hooked.  We especially like plain with cinnamon and honey, but garlic-onion-black pepper is our hands down favorite.

I've taken to grinding my own wheat in a KtichenAid Grain mill which turned out to be total garbage.  I had to grind it 6 times to get it to the quality of flour and it almost killed my machine, and I have a professional machine! 
I switched to the NutriMill Plus Mill which takes all of 2 minutes to grind two weeks worth of fine flour from high quality red wheat berries. Those I order from Minnesota, and have come up with a delicious 100% whole wheat sandwich bread.  I've been making it once a week. 
It freezes well and makes a great toast, which is high on my 'must' list for a bread.



I found an enormous, antique, bread dough trough that was brought here by homesteaders in the 1880s.  I scrubbed it down, dried it, and rewaxed it.  It is now ready for use, but I almost don't dare.  I might break it in this week or next.  She's almost too pretty to use.

The seeds for this year are on order.  The sweet potatoes are in jars on the window sill sprouting starts for me.

The chickens and alpacas are doing their best to entertain us all while they themselves are going stir crazy.

Twill Place Mats fresh off the loom.

So here's to the last day of a productive Winter, and to a busy Spring!

Mittens, Mittens, Who's Got The Mittens?

Otherwise known as "The Winter That Refuses To Die."

It's the third of March, and we are still deep in winter.  We shouldn't be. We SHOULD be in the forties, with pop up days in the 50s and 60s.  Of late our highs have been in the teens, with wind chills in the negative teens and 20s.

Isn't this mug adorable?!  It reminds
me of those S'Mores Christmas
ornaments.  What looks like a
coaster isn't, it's part of the mug.  It IS
a "chocolate square and graham cracker".

And SNOW.  Oh mercy, SNOW!  We normally manage, on average, about 25 inches of snow over the winter.  We are creeping up on 55 inches.  When the snow comes, it's not messing around.  We've been gifted with howling winds, ice, and 8 to 10 inches of snow at a go.  The drifting has been ridiculous, and necessitates Doc taking the snowblower to the yard and cutting paths from the plowed driveway to the chicken house and the barn through 2 foot drifts, so that we can more easily haul water, and walk.

The alpacas and chicken are being real sporting about the matter.  The alpacas can't read, so they don't know what month it is.  They are a tad annoyed that I have closed the gate to the drift laden pasture.  It's not that they could get out of the pasture.  The problem was they were finding ways from the corral INTO the pasture and then couldn't remember where the pass was to get back INTO the corral.  This forced me into my ranch bunny suit, to chase down giant furry rabbits, while my own movements were limited to something that looked like Frankenstein's revenge.  So confinement to the barn and corral it is.  They stood and looked at for a time. I'm quite sure they were discussing, between each other, what on earth this new construct was.  Sterling, of course, had to spend some time licking it.

The chickens, while they cannot read, know it is supposed to be Spring.  They can tell by the ever increasing number of hours of daylight they are exposed to.  This increases their need to lay eggs.  So while the sun isn't warming us, or them, they are popping out eggs right on schedule.  Even Mirida is finally laying.  The cold is hard on all of them.  But with the walls keeping them from the wind and warm meals twice a day, they'll be fine.

Freya was all ready for her photo shoot, when Princess pulled a photo-bomb.
I love the annoyed look on Freya.

As for the ranch, projects are at a standstill due to the weather.  The bees are on order and will be in at the end of April.  The guest bathroom remodel in the house is finally finished, but the ceiling in the lower level still needs repaired.  Much beyond that even the seed starting is at a standstill.   Every nook and every cranny has been cleaned and sorted, organized and purged.  Spring weather needs to come soon as I (and all my friends) have run out of things to clean and sort.

So that leaves me with writing and knitting.

Not only are three books in various stages of production and disarray, but now there is a forth in the mix.

As for the knitting, it's been going gang busters.  All manner of shawls, hats, and scarves have been managed since Christmas. 
For Valentines Day I made Doc a Tardis decorative scarf.
Then I got it in my head to make a pair of mittens for myself.  Everything on the market has too long of a space for the fingers and are too wide.  OR they do fit, but are dainty useless decorative things.

I found an easy pattern on Ravelry.com, but even with sticking to the pattern and the gauge they were giant floppy things.  The basics of the pattern were sound, but the sizing was off.  As I knit Portuguese style, purling is ridiculously fast, so the pattern also had to be re-written for that account.

Then I change the thickness of the yarn and it needed re-written for that account.

I eventually got it to where I wanted it and went to work.  I recently found out that I can now use some of the new, modern super washed wool yarns.  Not all of them, so it's still trial and error, but it's a start.  The pair was still a little too large. This led me to decide to Thrum them with an alpaca and silk lining.  I used a rug hooking needle to insert the afterthought thrums in each mitten.  They are magnificently warm, but smell to high heaven of wet dog.  I'm not sure I'll be wearing them.

The second pair was a super bulky yarn, so again the pattern needed tweaked.  The yarn is soft and wonderful, but had some weak spots in it that needed trimmed out. There was very little twist in places, and was little more than weak top/roving.  That was annoying.  This pair came out exactly the right size.  The yarn, however, has a tendency to loose strands of hair like bits. I am hoping this will stop with multiple wearings as little white hairs float around the car, get stuck to your nose, and generally attach themselves to pretty much everything.

The latest blast from the polar region had me knitting a third pair.  These are a thinner yarn, and I certainly wouldn't wear them in the deep cold, but to take the edge off, they're perfect.  The size is perfect, and the pair only took about 5 hours.  I like the yarn, even if the colorway didn't match through the ball.  One is a deep dark blue, the other a dirty medium blue.

I honestly cannot look at more yarn or my needles any more.  They've been put away for now.  Come ON SPRING!

Next is a temperature scarf.  I have all the yarns set up and ready for a spate of boredom later!

Just Another Bee In Our Bonnet

With an orchard you need bees.  Last year, our early season fruit trees went into bloom due to a few weeks of warm weather that came far too early.  So early, in fact, that the pollinators weren't awake yet.  They were still tucked snugly in their little beds, hats on, sawing logs.  The blooms came and went, and with them the future fruit that would have been born of them.

The mid-season blossoms were sparse due to a late cold spell, which I'm sure was mother nature's revenge for those early weeks of warmth.

I only have two late season trees, and they tried so hard to set blooms, but just didn't quite get there.

So what is normally a field of white and pink blossoms abuzz with flies and bees doing their busy work, swimming through air sickeningly sweet with perfume was silent.

While I cannot control the effects of the weather on the fruit trees, or when the bees decide to pry themselves out of bed, I can increase the number of bees on the property.

We are a registered state pollinator habitat and are on the DriftWatch and BeeCheck registry.  We let as much native grasses and flowers grow on the property as we can and I have many areas where I have planted additional areas of flowering plants.

So after a great deal of research and decided that we would start by adding just one hive.  I have a friend about 8 miles away who has traditional square box hives for honey.  She grows fabulous flowers for the farmer's market, and she had a rough weather year too.

We decided we liked the eccentric look of the top bar hive.  I actually began looking at them sometime last winter, but after seeing the price tag, and then being saddled with the barn project, I put the hive on such a back burner, I forgot about it.  At the beginning of January, my renewal for the DriftWatch program popped up in my email.  Suddenly, the beehive elbowed its way back into not only my memory, but forced it's way to the front of the project line.  How long could building one take?  Besides, I could work on the hive in the workshop when I got sick of working on the bathroom remodel in the house.

A quick Google search for Top Bar Hive Plans brought me to the site of The Barefoot Beekeeper  .
He, in very plain English, explains not only beekeeping, but how the hives work.  While his plans online are quite easy to follow, I did decide to go ahead and order his books to have on hand for reference.  There a great resource for beekeeping for dummies.  Because honestly, I have NO idea on what I'm doing with bees.

He discusses three main methods for keeping bees.
*Keeping bees just to have bees.  Completely let them be and just give them a place to live.
*Being a mid-range keeper.  Give the bees a place to live.  Give them minimum maintenance, and take only the honey the bees won't themselves need for over wintering.
*Having bees for honey.  These bees work hard, hives are heavily maintained and checked, and honey is harvested and bees have food given to them to overwinter.

We decided to go with being mid-range keepers.  We'll care for them, but not hover.  Their main job is pollinating and any honey we get is just a bonus.

marking out the sliding boards

So on to the build!

The instructions are quite good and the build went quite well.  Like all projects I thought it would be a quick 2 or 3 hours.  Turns out those are football hours, but they were easy hours, not at all confusing or difficult.  The full instructions are online, so I won't go through them here.  I'll just post the photos and comments.

These pieces are critical.  They must match, and are
what the angles of the sides are based on.  Building
around them makes the sliding boards fit like a glove.

I painted all the pieces before cutting.  This is much easier than
painting all those little corners.  

The top boards are color coded for easy
selection.  Sliders are yellow, feeders are blue, wax starts are blue with a red dot, and
wood starts are plain blue.

The roof was far more complicated.  The instructions basically said, wing it.  Make the roof however you want, out of whatever you want.  LOL!  So it took me forever.  I really tried to keep to the scraps of lumber I had in the shop and then make it happen. It had to be high enough to allow for ventilation, and it had to fit snugly over the base frame, but not too tightly, but not enough to let in intruders.  It's trickier than it sounds.

The floor was also tricky.  It can be solid, it can be micro mesh less than 1/8 of an inch square (not found in US, but you can use gutter screening, or what I opted for, an ECO-floor.  An ECO-floor most closely resembles the litter floor of a tree stump or rotted log.  The tiny mesh floor is covered in small twigs and shavings.  It allows for the natural friends of the bees to move in and take care of dead bees and mites.  This requires an add on to the bottom the hive that has to custom designed.  It is made so that it is removable to be checked and cleaned.  It is filled in it's entirety, so that the litter comes to the bottom of the slider boards.  The litter is so thick that it is insulating and a barrier for those that would also like to move into the hive.

The ECO-floor frame shown here upside down.

The feeding station for sweet water for food drought season.

the new porch

Here she is all finished.  I also added a barn quilt square called Bee Hive.  End cap vents, which have screening on the inside
to inhibit other bees, wasps, and hornets.  We also added heavy duty handles on each side so we can carry it from location to location if needed.  I also removed the red porch and replaced it with a 3 inch wide, composite porch that is cut at an angle so when it is mounted to the side of the hive it is horizontal.  There are black rubber stoppers for entry holes not currently in use.  The paint color name escapes me, but it is Tiffany Box Blue.

The bees themselves will be ordered next week from Valhalla Bee Farm, they carry both Italian and Carniolan bee boxes, as well as a well stocked room of beekeeping supplies. (There is nothing more glamorous than a full beekeeping getup.)  While the Italians make more honey, the Carniolans are a "friendlier" bee.  Since our goal isn't honey production, we plan on getting the Carniolans.

So that's the buzz at the Ranch this week.