Maché is one of the most cold hardy salad greens one can grow. They didn’t get planted this year, but that didn’t stop them from coming up anyway, since some of the plants in the above photo (taken late January 2018) went to seed.
Maché flowering in the hoophouse, and getting ready to reseed itself.Young maché plantsMaché in the salad bowl. (Taken on November 23, 2017, this was probably one of our first maché harvests, and everything else in the salad was also from our hoophouse garden.)
The main reason the maché didn’t get planted this year was because we were all too busy trying to keep the rodents away from some of the earlier winter crops that had been planted. Here’s a look at a few of the more intentionally planted crops in the hoophouse right now:
MizunaEscaroleMibunaTokyo bekanaA romaine type lettuce variety called ‘winter density’Mibuna
It has finally started to look like winter around here, giving me a chance to practice my ice and snow photography. Quickly dropping temperatures seem to be necessary for some of the tiny ice crystals I look for and the conditions haven’t been right for seeing them until recently.
Frost crystal on an icy puddle in the fieldFrost crystal on an icy puddle in the fieldIce patterns on the creekFrost crystal on an icy puddle in the fieldIce along the edge of the creekFrost crystals on an icy puddle in the field
For a couple years now, I’ve been taking pictures of the sunlight reflecting off of the snow, but none of them have had the colors I notice in the snow while taking the pictures… after a bit of experimenting I noticed that the colors only show up when the snow is out of focus, so I intentionally blurred a few pictures to test it…
Out of focus snow
An out of focus picture with specks of color didn’t seem like a particularly good end to that line of experiments, though, so here’s what I came up with:
Water horehound and sparkling snowWater horehound and sparkling snowWater horehound and sparkling snowWater horehound and sparkling snow
As I went out to close up the chicken coops this evening after they should have all been on their roosts, I was briefly startled to see one of the hens still out, and looking at me like she needed help. Then I remembered; the inner door to that coop had been closed earlier, and I’d forgotten to open it so they could get inside. Sure enough, there were the other two chickens that slept in that coop, at the top of the ladder in front of the closed door. One of them, the bantam (miniature) rooster, hopped down and came over to me as I came into their enclosure, so when I opened the door, only Little Wing saw it open and went in. The other two were still just looking at me, seemingly looking for help. I was just considering picking them up and putting them into the coop when I heard Little Wing calling them from inside.
Little Wing (darker hen) and Chezabu (the hen that greeted me first in this story)
Chickens have a specific sound they make to call each other, but it is usually used to call others to some sort of tasty morsel or food. It is used mostly by roosters to call the hens to a treat he’s found, or by mother hens teaching their chicks how to find food. Sometimes roosters also use it when they think they’ve found a good spot to lay an egg and want to let the hens know (and there’s another more specific sound they use for that as well).
The bantam rooster
After Little Wing called them, the other two found their way in fairly quickly.
My honey bees flying in late November after an early cold spell.
When it gets too cold for the honey bees to leave their hives it can be much harder to tell how the colony is doing. The hives look pretty lifeless on a cold winter day. There may be some dead bees scattered at the entrance. This is actually a good sign, especially if they are recently dead and as long as there aren’t too many of them. It means there are still live bees inside, and they’re cleaning out the dead. If there’s a warm day and the bees can leave the hive, they’ll clean off the entrance board of their hive and fly the dead bees away from it.
A dead bee dropped off into the snow by another member of her colony.
Another sign to look for when there’s snow on the ground is little flecks of yellow in the snow: bee poop. Bees do not poop inside their hive unless they are sick or it stays very cold for a really long time and they just can’t get out.
Bee poop on the snow
The snow also seems to melt a little faster right on the entrance board when the bees are doing well. Other than that, you can’t tell much unless you get a really warm day and are able to take a peek inside, or at least see bees flying around the entrance. But for most of the winter, the bees will be hidden inside their hive, clustered together around the queen, vibrating their flight muscles to generate heat, and eating the honey they stored away during the summer. And then, at some point, usually around mid February here (if not even earlier), the queen will start laying eggs and the bees will have to raise the temperature inside the cluster (to above 90˚F) because the larvae need it extra warm to survive.
Hi everyone, I have been having technical difficulties with my site recently and been unable to log in but I think I may have finally gotten it fixed! (I was even having technical difficulties with the tech support!) So, if you have been wondering why I haven’t been posting lately, or responding to comments, this is why. I should be able to get another post done soon, though, as I was halfway through writing one when problems started.
In the meantime, I also added another twenty photos to my shop site, since I was still able to access that because it is not directly connected with this site.
