Birthday Happenings

My birthday started out very uneventful, just another day. Which is fine, it really is just another day. But after work I met up with Amber in Salem to pick blueberries. She told me about this program which coordinates unwanted fruit trees with pickers and food banks. You sign up for a harvest that you are interested in, and half of what you pick is donated to a food bank. The rest is yours to keep for free. Good deal eh?
Tuesday ate soo many blueberries.

Every time I saw her she was shoving handfuls into her mouth. Luckily I don't think she got sick...


Aaron came after he got off work late and showed us all how it was done with the two handed "milking" method. He had an unfair advantage, he used to work at Blueberry Meadows in Corvallis when he was a kid. His personal record was 126 pounds in one day. When he was 12.


The blueberries boxed up and ready to go on a truck to a food bank. We picked 15 pounds together, so a little over 7 pounds donated. All of the people there that day donated a total of 1055 pounds.


Afterward we stopped by Amber's place - her yard looks great by the way, for some Los Baez Mexican food and a little bit of hang out time. More on the awesome gift she got me in a future post.
Tonight was my birthday dinner with Aaron. I requested that we go to Gathering Together Farm in Philomath. They grow most if not all of the food and get their meat locally. It was so delicious! We started out with a salad of mixed greens with blueberries, goat cheese and almonds. It was amazing how different each green tasted and how each bite was a new experience.


I ordered the flat iron steak. It melted in my mouth. They gave me a steak knife, but it cut with a fork. It was on a bed of smashed potatoes and surrounded by chard and beets.


Aaron ordered the duck breast with a marionberry sauce. Also delicious. Served with polenta and chard.


For dessert we ordered this marionberry clafloutis. It was mediocre compared to everything else.


Creme brulee with cherries. Absolute heaven.



In this picture Aaron has just told me "We should have brought a child cheater." Megan may be the only one that gets that. Aaron grew up calling spatulas child cheaters and did not realize that this is not what the rest of the world calls them until about 4 years ago.


More celebrations to continue this week, and most importantly, full speed ahead on coop construction. Goal is to be done by this weekend, but I think that may be too optimistic.

29

This past year has been a bit unusual for me. I usually take at least one big trip during the year, plus a few small ones. Being in school and unemployed kept me close to home, and we gave more focus into putting down roots. I am so thankful to be done with school and able to do what I please this summer! Here are some things I did over the last year in no particular order:

I never blogged about this trip because I got too behind on everything else, but Aaron and I drove down to California in March. While passing Eugene on I-5 we realized we had never been south of Eugene with each other before - so weird! We have both been down to California multiple times while together, but never with each other. This was taken in San Simeon, one of my favorite places.


I found a little time to batik. I need to get going on this again! So many ideas in my head!

I made many, many Christmas cookies.


I tried my hand at embroidery and loved it. I wish this tooth cowboy were on darker fabric.


Made Thanksgiving dinner from scratch with Aaron.


Brewed beer.


Found time for hikes here and there.


Grew my first winter garden.


Sold my first car.


Harvested our own apples and made lots of applesauce!


Visited the coast once or twice.


So glad Aaron was not successful in killing himself on his motorcycle.


Flew down to Sacramento with some classmates for a board review course.


Learned how to truffle hunt and to love the intricacies of truffle aroma.


Graduated from dental hygiene school!


Became a beekeeper!


I am really excited for what this next year will bring - I think this is the year we come into our own, get "real" jobs and work towards bigger goals. I have a fun birthday week planned, with more updates coming.

Linn County Fair, da Vinci Days, OSU Research Farm

Last weekend we went to the Linn County Fair and walked around for a bit. I had no idea what the latest fashion for sheep was, apparently it's speed suits!


I'll be honest, pigs kind of freak me out. Especially when they are this huge.


Saturday we headed over to the OSU Research Farm, they were having an open house. They had 4 or 5 stations with people at each stop to explain what kind of research they were doing. I didn't get a picture of the honey bee station, but we got to sit and pick a very smart bee expert's brain for a while. They had their hives surrounded in black mesh, so you could watch him open the hive up without suiting up.
Over 11 types of cherries to sample!


They are experimenting with growing cherries in tunnels, you can read more about it here. Annie is our neighbor, and we definitely got a few bags of these delicious cherries from her.


They also have this blueberry genebank - with over 100 varieties of blueberries. We were allowed to walk through and sample these too. Although most of them were very, very small.



Some photos from da Vinci Days on Saturday:

Behind!

I need to do a full garden update because we are beginning to harvest more and more.




We've been eating more meals like this.


Progress on the chicken coop...I'm anxious to get it DONE. But,


This is what Aaron's hands look like currently. He woke up Friday night with his hands covered in hives. We haven't really slept since because he is itching so badly. He's coming off a major round of poison oak, with the second round just starting up again. I think we will be calling the doctor at 7:30 tomorrow morning. We have no idea what's up with the hive hands, but he is miserable and I think he's going to need to go on prednisone again. Ugh.


Peoria Gardens has a major sale every July, so I went and stocked up on flowers and more vegetables! $30 for 3 flats worth. I'll try to get a picture of our porch soon. I think I spent close to 3 hours potting up plants. The vegetables are a bit behind for a normal year, but for this year, they are pretty close to everything that's been out for the last month.

Hopefully more updates soon, I've gotten so behind!

Longest Bee Post Ever - Our First Swarm!

So we got a call from our neighbor the other night that there was a swarm in Albany, and we should go grab it. We had a friend staying with us, so we quickly made dinner and drove over to their house. I was reading to Aaron from the bee book as we drove, so he would know what to do. He was nervous about his first swarm capture.


As chance would have it, a beekeeper named Chuck just happened to be driving by right as Aaron was going in to get it. Chuck got right in there, no protection and scooped the swarm into the nuc. Aaron was thrilled to be off the hook!

Within minutes the bees stuck their butts out to expose their Nasonav glands (wiki has a good picture of the actual gland). The pheromone released by this gland guides the other bees in. Scout bees had been out looking for a new home for the swarm, so they were coming in the whole hour that we stood around talking.


Finally we smoked the last of them in. But then we kept on talking, and after 15 minutes, 12 more bees came and were trying frantically to get in the closed door. I guess I whined enough, because Chuck was kind enough to open the little door and let them in. How horrible to come back from working hard for your sisters only to find out you had been abandoned!


Next thing I know, we are climbing up on Chuck's roof to check out his hives down the street.



This swarm was small, and on its own would not make it through the winter. The reason we captured this swarm was to combine it with our smaller hive that hasn't been doing well.
We took our new bees home, and set their nuc on top of the hive that they would be combined with and left them for 2 days until we had time to work with them. Unfortunately it was super hot this week, and they didn't have a lot of ventilation in that little box, so they spent a lot of time "out on the porch".


Side note - our other hive (black queen) is doing awesome. We will get extra honey from them, but we may need to supplement the smaller hive this year with it.


So here is how you combine two hives...You can't just put them together or there will be war. We were told to kill the weaker queen before we put them together. The thought of killing our golden queen made me feel sick. Besides, how are we really to know which queen is better? So I did some research and found that you can let the queens duke it out - and hope they don't both die in the process. We never saw the new queen when we moved them over, so it will be interesting to see who is in there next weekend. Anyway, you put a sheet of newspaper between the supers that has tiny holes punched in it. In theory this allows the bees to smell each other for a while before they "meet".


Another side note, bees like to make these silly bee bridges for some reason.


After we placed the newspaper and the super on top of the old hive, we opened up the nuc. The black box is a feeder. Aaron transferred the frames into the new Western.


And then poured in the rest.


They were using their Nasonov glands before we even had the top on.


He filled the top feeder and put the lid back on.


The next night we walked out to check on them, and it was apparent there was indeed a war going on. Amongst the bits of newspaper they chewed up and spit out the front door were tons of dead and dying bees. You can see them warring in the background.


We felt horrible - look at all those dead bees! By this morning there were 10 more dead bees on the doorstep, but they seem to have figured it all out by now. No more fighting, and Aaron drove down to Glory Bee today, they told him it's normal to lose 60 or so bees in the process. I'd say we are right about on track. I'm just glad they didn't annihilate each other! I don't know what happened with the new queen though - I'm worried they older hive may have killed her.


This reminds me of the Corvallis Police Department - ever seen 4 cop cars and 2 ambulances for 1 drunk college student? Apparently it takes 8 bees to remove one enemy!


I'll keep you posted on the outcome of this combining!