Well folks, we are now officially on the tail end of winter. As a funny turn of events here in Oregon, we got a weird snow storm this morning which dumped about four inches of snow onto the farm. It likely won’t have any effect on anything I have going so far, but usually we don’t get any cold weather past February.  If you were already starting your move into Spring time mode, you may need to adapt to whatever mother nature has thrown at you…even if it’s a curve ball.

By this point in the winter, your hives should have gotten their second treatment for mites using whichever method you have chosen. Just keep in mind that some treatments are temperature dependent, so make sure that the treatment you used is appropriate for your current climate. I got the monthly newsletter from the local beekeepers association and according to the data they collected, the mortality rate of hives this year in my area was near 50%.  Keep that in mind if you lost your hive(s) and are feeling a little down about it. You should also be checking the bees’ food stores (i.e. honey supply), weather permitting, as we start moving out of the winter. The closer we get to spring, the more the queen will start ramping up brood production and the faster they will start going through whatever honey they have left. You may find yourself needing to supplement that food supply with some bee fondant to ensure the bees don’t starve before they can go out and forage, so keep an eye on that. We have been busily setting up our new hardware so we are ready to put our five hives into action once Bee Weekend hits at GloryBee. The only thing we have left to do is put the actual boxes together and paint them. We have gotten a little lazy the last couple weeks as the weather has been rather dreary and Michelle has been busily attending to dress appointments for the wedding. At any rate, there is still plenty of time to prepare for the spring since we started getting ready so early.

Speaking of getting an early start, some of you gardeners out there should be starting to get your seedlings going this month. Some of the things you may want to plant will do best to start sometime this month (go to garden.org to see location specific strategies) and some that are overdue to be started from seeds indoors. For us here in Oregon, there are several veggis to plant outside this month: beets, carrots, chard, lettuce, peas, potatoes, radish, and spinach to name a few. You may also want to start prepping for any soil additions you may want to make to your garden before you plant. I know last year with our late start to the game (after buying the farm) we had a hard time scheduling a truck to deliver some nutrient rich soil to till into the field, because they were all busy. It doesn’t hurt anything to get it on the schedule ahead of time, provided the company you go with will schedule out a few weeks or months. There is also time to shop around for the best deal. Many companies have a variety of options when it comes to soil and soil additives (I’m talking about natural things like manure and compost, not chemicals). Those companies also have minimum amounts you can buy with free delivery, some who charge delivery no matter what, and some that only have one thing they sell. It is best to look around and do some research to find out exactly what you want to use and where will be the best price to get it. If you want a breakdown of what I have found for the Salem, Oregon area, hit me with a comment and I will update the article with a little bit of information as well as what I am going to use this year, since I didn’t get a big enough head start on composting to have enough for the three quarter acre garden. As for the blacksmithing shop, we are hard at work with a couple of projects.

I have been furiously working on my sword/machete and have gotten most of it done. I need to finish up the guard, make the pommel, and finish sanding/finishing the handle. It is coming together real nice when I put the pieces all together. Waterboard and I got a real snug fit when we made the guard out of an old chainsaw bar that my dad brought over. I’m really looking forward to finishing that particular project…mostly because I want to head out into the woods and pretend all the blackberry bushes are raging marauders with only me and my trusty steel standing between them and my helpless family. If you never tried it, you should. I have had many a good workout as a kid doing the same thing with Scotch Broom and a machete (thanks Dad). We have also been working on forge welding the pieces of steel together for the Damascus billet for my dad’s frow/froe that we are making. We have run into some issues on that front, though. The amount of metal that we are attempting to fuse together to make the pattern welded steel is proving difficult. I have surmised that it is due to us not having enough heat in the forge to get a solid weld with zero delamination. I have been working on a few solutions to this problem: add a jet to the current forge (only one currently), paint the current forge with ITC-100 (a reflective forge paint), build a new better three jet forge, and/or build a coal forge for forge welding since they can actually get hot enough to “burn” the metal. All of those take money and a significant time investment which I have been procrastinating on, so that project has not had much progress recently. I’ll get back to it soon, though. The next project that we have been working on is creating more tools. Hammers and axes are always good things to know how to make. Oddly enough, the hardest part about those two things is making the handle eye for it. If you think about it a little bit, the handle eye is the most precise part of making a handled tool. It has to be nearly directly centered, needs to be fairly precise in its dimensions if you want it to fit a standard handle, is a piece of metal with significant mass that has to be drilled through, and has to be somewhat hourglass shaped from top to bottom (i.e. the sides must come in slightly about half way from top to bottom of the hole). These are not easy things to overcome if you don’t already have the knowledge and tools to make those things happen. Of course, you can always just buy the tools to make the other tools, but what kind of blacksmith would I be if I did that?! Nope. We’re going old school, self-sufficient, and full of badassery. The last of the, sort of, blacksmithing projects I have been working on is developing a line of blacksmith-centric clothing.  While not really a “blacksmithing” project, I’m pretty excited about it.  There are some logos and catchphrases that I have been developing, as well as looking into some sturdy clothing to put them on (no one likes those paper thin t-shirts).  I used to have this stocking cap that I completely loved. Previously, I had been unable to find the base cap with nothing on it, but I have found it at last.  I plan to have my blacksmithing line include that hat.  I think you will all love it too (even if you don’t buy one). Worst case scenario, I get to start wearing my favorite hat of all time, again. Last on the list of things to do, for this article anyway, is wedding preparations.

Michelle has been going to dress appointments over the last several weeks. The dresses are now bought, colors picked, and girls getting excited. We have all of the projects I mentioned last time that need to be completed, but I can’t start on them until the weather clears up a bit. No one likes going out and making a mess of nice greenery just because you decided to work in the rain. I think there will be enough decent weather to get all of the stuff I need done completed in the spring, especially since my good friends/family will be there to help me. In the meantime, we continue to nail down details on things like song choices, wedding traditions that we will/will not be doing, and other things that don’t cost money and don’t need to have a lot of time dumped into them. For instance, I personally feel like shoving cake into your wife’s face directly after telling her you will love her forever is seriously disrespectful and I refuse to do it. Seems like a simple detail, but if your woman has some kind of weird cake-smashing-in-the-face fetish it could present a problem if you don’t do it. It’s best to be up front about all the details and avoid some last minute catastrophe and/or hurt feelings.

At any rate, you can see that things are starting to bustle with activity here on the farm. The whirlwind continues. I know you are all probably looking forward to better weather and some good farming fun, but we can only do what we always do when we are waiting…continue being awesome.