I found this enormous bullfrog sitting stock still in the middle of the road. I picked it up and it stayed limp in my hands all the way home. It even started to fall asleep. It only woke up when a car passed--and struggled for a moment.
I took these pictures and then let it go in the river.
We sell our squash at all stages of development; when they are tiny and still have the flower attached we sell them as calabacitas (which translates from Spanish to 'little squash'), when they are still small but the flower has dropped off we sell them as baby squash, then as toddler, then as adult. As the squash gets bigger it gets less tender, the seeds inside get larger, leaving less of the flesh; thus the larger the squash is, the lower the price. When the squash gets very large it is not as tasty.
Here are some of the squash varieties we have in our fields: clockwise from the upper right corner: Sunburst, G-star, Starship, Goldrush yellow zucchini, Black Raven green zucchini, and yellow crookneck.
An example of a calabacita: a baby Starship with the flower still attached.
Unlike many of the most common flowers where the male and female reproductive parts exist in the same blossom, squash plants produce two different types of flowers: the male and the female. The female flowers have pistils in the center and produce squash at their base. The male flowers have stamens in the center. Bees visit both types of squash flowers and when they fly from a male blossom on one plant to a female blossom on another plant, the pollen from the stamen of the male flower pollinates the pistil of the female blossom.
We harvest both the male and female flowers; the female flowers come with baby squash attached (these are the calabacitas). The male flowers are just "squash blossoms". The stamens of different squash varieties generally all look about the same but the pistils look different depending upon the variety of the squash. The pictures below are examples of the differences between pistils:
We use examination gloves to protect the delicate calabacitas.
At the Madrona market on Friday we sold male squash blossoms. The customers were very excited about the squash blossoms and many volunteered how they were planning to prepare them; many were going to batter them up and fry them, which can be done with bread crumbs, cracker crumbs or a flower and egg mixture; of these some were planning to stuff them first: with goat cheese, mozzarella, beans and rice or nut butters; others like them raw on salads.
I have never had stuffed, battered and fried squash blossoms but it sounds delicious! Of the ways I have tried the blossoms prepared, my favorite have been in a salad with balsamic vinegar and in a quesadilla; the squash blossom quesadilla I got on the street in Puebla, Mexico and it was one of the best meals I had on that trip.
The soup guy, Jerry, came to cook lunch for us last Wednesday. Here he is with his kitchen helper, Jenna, and their creation: a cauliflower, caramelized onion, cabbage, radish flower and red leaf lettuce salad.
Jenna, Dan and Amanda enjoy the lunch of cauliflower salad, farrow salad with kalamata olives, heirloom tomato soup, and roast chicken.
At the boys' table they eagerly reach for the hot sauce, which is hidden from view.
Today was my day to make lunch; I harvested purple and dino kale, garlic, fennel, green onions, a head of lettuce, two of our first cucumbers and squash flowers for a delectable salad. I also picked strawberries and raspberries to combine with the peaches, which we traded for at market, to make a fruit salad for desert.
Kale salad tip: kale salad is best made when the weather is cold, for the kale will be sweeter. Kale is too tough to break down readily in our stomachs without some type of preparation; so for salads you make what is called a 'massaged kale salad'. You rip the kale into bite sized pieces and then pour vinegar or lemon juice, or both, onto the kale (I prefer to use a mixture of vinegars, when available, and I think rice vinegar works especially well with kale). Then massage this into the kale with clean hands. The acidic liquid breaks down the kale, cooking it chemically to a certain extent; thus making the kale easier to chew and digest.
I supplied the hats on Monday to protect us as we weeded the bed of salad mix. There will be more salad mix ready for market very soon!
In the middle of our farm we have a magical forest of bizarre, tall purple trees that look like some type of palm.
Showing off our beautiful display!
A crazed vendor scares the customers away from our lovely carrots.
We also sell pastured, boneless human head.
The bee guy came today to take care of the three hives that he maintains here on Michaele's property. These are mostly Italian bees, with a few Russian bees mixed in. The Russian bees came from neighboring beehives as he originally had purely Italian bees. The Russian and Italian bees can interbreed and live happily as a family in one hive.
The Hive
The hive is comprised of two parts: the body of the hive, which are the large boxes underneath, and the honey supers, which are the shorter boxes on top. The bottom boxes are where the queen lays her eggs and where the bees store honey for themselves. The top boxes are where the bees store honey that the bee-keeper harvests. Today the bee guy was removing the full frames of honey from the supers and replacing these with empty frames ready to be filled.
Removing a super.
Removing a honey-filled frame covered in bees. The bees are more aggressive this time of year because this is the time of year that bears come to raid hives. The bees think the bee guy is a bear and they try to sting him a lot. To remove the bees from the frame the bee guy shakes it and then nudges the remaining bees off with his fingers.
This is an empty frame. The honeycomb you see here is a plastic base that is given to the bees to build off of. The bees will extend off of this base with wax, thereby creating an even honeycomb that is easier for the beekeeper to process than honeycombs build without a base, which are generally quite uneven.
This is a frame that is filled with honey. After the bees make the honeycomb from wax they fill the cells with nectar. Then they flap their wings hard to make the water evaporate from the nectar, thus creating honey. When the honey is ready they cap off the cells with more wax, creating the equivalent of canned honey, which they will open and consume in the winter time.
The Honey Extractor
Honey Extracting
The honey-filled frame is placed into the honey extractor's tub. Then the tub spins around really fast. The honey flies out due to centrifugal force and falls to the bottom of the tub, then flows out through the tap.
The honey extraction is very messy and must be done in an air-tight room. Bees are attracted to honey "like heroin", according to the bee guy. If you do it in a non-air-tight room the bees will kill themselves trying to fly in through tiny holes. If you do it outside the whole area will be covered in bees.
The Nucleus Hive
There was a swarm of bees from one of the hives the other day; this happened because that hive got over crowded. The swarm was going to establish a new hive elsewhere. Michaele called the bee man when this happened. He came and took some more bees out of that hive and put them into a nucleus-hive: a small brown box.
I found this lovely little bee-keepers rhyme on Wikipedia:
A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of bees in July isn't worth a fly.
The reason for this is that bees that swarm in spring or early summer relieve overcrowding in hives and create another hive, therefore creating even more honey. They will have all season to stock up on nectar and turn it into honey for eating in the winter. But the bees that swarm in late summer or fall will not have all season. They may not have enough time to stock up and might not survive the winter. This is why they aren't "worth a fly" to bee-keepers.
The Birth of a Queen
This box is lacking a queen; sensing this the bees begin feeding some larvae royal jelly, a special protein-rich substance that they secrete from gland on their heads. These specially-fed larvae will develop into queen bees. In the above photo the lumps of wax that look like peanuts are where the queen larvae are growing. When the first one hatches out it will go around and kill all the other queen larva.
The African Honey Bee
This process is key to why the aggressive African honey bee is so problematic here. Unlike the European varieties, which have been bred for centuries to be docile, the African honey bee is very aggressive. Additionally, when a new African honey bee queen larva is growing it will hatch one or two days before Italian or Russian larva; therefore, whenever there are African honey bee queen larva in the hive, it is this queen that will survive. This is why the African honey bee has taken over other varieties and is so difficult to get rid of in many parts of the states. But it does not whether cold winters well and thus is not a problem in this area.
Drones
In the photo above, the larger bees are the drones; these are the male bees. Their only purpose is to mate with the queen. The worker bees are all female. The drones can comprise up to 10% of the hive but there are usually much fewer in artificial hives. Only 10-20 drones are needed to mate with the queen; otherwise they are useless and use up space and food. They also require larger cells to grow as larva. Beekeepers provide frames for their bees with the base framework for only small cells, thus fewer drone eggs are laid (the queen bee automatically lays drone eggs in larger cells and worker eggs in smaller cells). The workers find places to make some larger cells for drone eggs, but there are many fewer than in natural hives.
Reproduction
The queen bee has one mating flight in her life. During this flight she mates with 10-20 drones. She stores their sperm in a special organ in her abdomen that keeps it alive her whole life as she lays eggs every day, all day.
Sources:
The beekeeper guy (most of the information)
Swarming (honey bee). Wikipedia
Sorry there aren't more close-ups but I didn't want to get stung!
Kate shows off the just washed potatoes
On the plate; delicious with ketchup!
Ready to be chopped up for lunch!
Boy do Dan and Amanda look excited about processing carrots!
This one is for you, Sarah, cause it looks like a dancer.
Dancing carrot in action
Amanda finds the carrot lovers!
