Short answer…who cares? I don’t know about keeping up with anyone else, but I do know that things are progressing nicely out at “Ye Old Farm”.  Sadly, I have no pictures currently available of the progress, but I will write a follow up post to bring what I say here into perspective.

The garden, oh, that garden.  It is sad to see that there could have been several reasons that a third (ish) of the seeds we planted are not growing.  It could have been the torrential rain we got the day after we planted.  It could have been the deer that have been making tracks through the garden.  It could have been birds eating up the seeds.  At any rate, there are still things growing.  Pro tip, create a map of your garden so you remember what you planted and where you planted it.  It is really difficult running through that huge garden and trying to figure out what is weed and what is food. The radishes, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, onions, and mixed greens are growing nicely.  We have a bunch of tomato plants that are getting really big in the pots our friends planted them in, so I need to get some cages and transplant them into the ground.  The melons have sprouted in their mounds and are starting to show signs of life.  All in all, a good start to our first big garden.

The bees continue to feverishly work.  I added the second deep ten frame box and within 18 days, it was full.  I have now added two short honey supers on top to get the bees making honey for me (I won’t take any if they don’t make enough this year).  I tried to put the queen excluder on, but the bees wouldn’t migrate into the honey supers with it in place, so I took it out.  The bees have now had access to the supers for about three or four days.  They haven’t started drawing out comb yet, but they should have something happening within the next week.  I also put a couple of leftover candy canes on top of the frames of the top most super to entice the bees to come up there.  Evidently, they love peppermint and it is really good for them.  They have almost eaten the two canes I put in there, so hopefully my devious plan to manipulate them into doing my bidding has succeeded.

I have received the forge I purchased some time ago.  I plan to play around with it until I get the hang of metal casting and forging, then start to make some cool stuff with it.  It seems sturdy, but I had to have a friend pick up some refractory material (the concrete like substance that you line the forge/foundry with) so I can finish building the heating chamber, since the kit I got doesn’t come with it.  I am pretty excited and have several bags of aluminum cans to melt as my first project.  I went to Goodwill and picked up some muffin tins to create ingots with, too.  It’s going to be probably a week or so before I get to putting the whole thing together and building up the refractory.  I’ll let you all know once I get it going and post some pictures of the process.

Michelle and I have also been watching a documentary series on healthy food and sustainable living.  In one of the episodes, the guy went into detail about how bread today is of little or no nutritional value because the flour is heavily milled and stripped of all the nutritious parts of the wheat.  That process pretty much makes it act like sugar once you eat it (all calories, no nutrition).  Additionally, he said that since we don’t have to use fermentation to leaven the bread anymore (now we just use packaged yeast which is way faster), we miss out on the nutrients that are unlocked when the bread ferments.  With this in mind, we have decided to try milling our own wheat and making bread the old fashioned way.  Eventually, I would like to build a wood fired oven behind the house so we can use that to cook stuff.  I like to be as off the grid as possible and having a way to cook my food if the power goes out is very important to me.  Additionally, who doesn’t love the taste of wood fired bread (and pizza)?

The homestead continues to evolve and I am enjoying every minute of it.  I hope you are all enjoying reading about it.  I keep encouraging Michelle to write on this blog so we can all get the female perspective on this great adventure.  Feel free to help me encourage her!