http://www.johncall.com/blog Woodcarving, gardening, beekeeping and country living. Sun, 18 Apr 2010 19:29:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It's been a while since I've blogged about our gardening. Thought I'd give a quick update. First, we all had salad for lunch today. The salad is up enough now to eat and the radishes are doing great. Here's an example of our nice, fresh salad. Plus, our burgers came ... http://www.johncall.com/blog/farming-update-041810/ If you are a fan of British humour (notice the u!) then you are probably familiar with Monty Python. Monty Python was a very creative comedy group that performed many skits back in the day. One of my favorite would be some non-sensical piece that would be immediately followed by ... http://www.johncall.com/blog/woodcarving-article-cottonwood-bark/ [ad#468_cl_orange] It's the end of the first year for my asparagus bed and time to prepare it for winter. This first year I did not harvest any of the shoots and let them all grow into tall ferns. The first order of business is to let the asparagus grow until the ... http://www.johncall.com/blog/asparagus-preparing-the-bed-for-winter/ It's hard to believe how things change in a week. The asparagus is growing like crazy. Some stalks grew 8 inches in 7 days. Almost all of it has broken the ground by now. These stalks will keep growing and open up into some something like a fern. This first ... http://www.johncall.com/blog/farming-update-051009/ Got home today and had to work with the bees. I had not been able to check them for a week. My new hive needed fed and my old hive needed sugar dusted. Mandi decided to pull up a chair so we could chat while I was working. Right after ... http://www.johncall.com/blog/bee-swarm-050509/ Thought I'd supply a little farming update. Lot's of good things going on this week. First off, we have a new addition around here. Moses the cat. He is the family cat but Abi got to pick him out and name him. We hope he becomes a heroic mouser. That's the ... http://www.johncall.com/blog/farming-update-050309/ Here's a little farming update for those of you keeping score at home. The first photo is of two fresh eggs. They were still warm when I picked them up.With only three chickens we get 2-3 eggs per day. Soon we'll have 10-12 chickens and they should all be laying ... http://www.johncall.com/blog/farming-update-042509/ [ad#125_bees_orange] Not really an inspection today as much as a feeding and a quick glance. My strong hive is a survivor from last year. They are doing very well. I didn't treat them for mites very well last year because of lack of experience and they still came through very well. ... http://www.johncall.com/blog/inspection-042509/ We have been adding to our food production as time, space, and money allow. We have been interested in apple trees but had not pursued it. On the property there is an area that is almost 1/2 an acre of pine beetle destruction. Pine trees laying everywhere and in some ... http://www.johncall.com/blog/creating-an-orchard/ [ad#125_bees_orange] Learned a hard lesson today. I came across a solid food recipe for wintering bees and decided to use it in my hives. Everything looked like it should go pretty well but it definitely did not. The recipe I was using called for using 1 cup of corn syrup ... http://www.johncall.com/blog/inspection-010409/