Christine H. Lee

Category: Bees

The best time of year to visit my urban farm

April 10, 2022 /
olive and blue eggs from the backyard chickens

It’s April in Berkeley. We have a head start on most of the country when it comes to Spring. (Don’t resent us too much—our summers never get hot enough to reliably produce tomatoes or peppers, and watermelon is impossible. One time I tried to grow watermelon, and I harvested ONE. It was about 3 inches in diameter. It was not SUPPOSED to be 3 inches in diameter. It did not taste good, either). The magnolias finished blooming last month. The snow peas are finishing up production. The lettuce threatens to bolt. And the tomatoes have just gone into the ground. 

I spent this winter replenishing the soil in the garden and started two more hugelkultur beds. For months, the garden looked unpicturesque: mostly brown dirt and piles of compost. But this month, things have taken a turn and the garden has become—green and lush. This is the time of year I wish I could do tours of the urban farm. I hate it when I give tours in late Fall or Winter when everything is either overgrown or browning or worse, barren. It’s like being photographed five minutes after you’ve woken up, hair unbrushed with sleep still in your eyes. 

So for prosperity, I thought I’d give a video tour of my urban farm, as it is. 

The first clip is the patio area, which is where I keep my janky greenhouse and plant starts. This is also where the berry garden resides; when my daughter was (more) wee, she loved putting things in her mouth. She also loved picking berries. So I planted a berry garden for her. There are blueberries, raspberries, black raspberries, tayberries, blackberries, and more surrounding this patio.

The second clip focuses on the “woodland area” of the farm, just off the patio. Here is where I’ve planted begonias, yerba buena, and yerba mate, as well as elderberries. 

This is all en route to the main part of the garden, which resides on a hillside that sheds to a creek. The first part of the main part is the flower and fruit tree area. The soil here is still mostly clay, which is why there aren’t many vegetables planted here. I’m working on remediating the soil in this fruit tree area. (The soil doesn’t seem to bother the trees, which produce tons of fruit each year—the pluerry particularly).

Then we hit the main vegetable area, which is looking great these days. I just put the tomato starts in the ground. The Florida weave is up, too. (Out of all the ways to trellis tomatoes, I prefer this method most—although the downside is that I can’t hop between rows after it’s in). There’s also asparagus and other vegetables like beans and cucumbers and squash. 

I took another clip of the vegetable area from the other direction. There’s jeolla do mustard and a glimpse of the hugelkultur bed below. You can hear Brad the Rooster crowing away in this clip. 

And since Brad the Rooster is calling, we’re going straight towards him where the chicken coops reside. Here you can see Brad the Rooster with the fully grown Black Copper Maran and Black Ameraucana hens. Also, his very very abused daughter, a cross between him (Black Copper Maran) and a Black Ameraucana hen—produces olive eggs. And yes, it’s kind of gross, but she is his “favorite.” And apparently, in chicken land, this is acceptable? 

In a separate coop are the gold sex-link and Silver Lace Wyandotte pullets, otherwise known as “teenage hens.” They’re having a good old time these days outdoors and discovering dust bathing, which if humans practiced it, would be the opposite of clean. In Chicken World, however, this is how they keep clean and practice hygiene. 

From the chicken coop area, we start again in the tomato area—and you get a glimpse of glass that fell out of a window! (Yes, I swept and vacuumed that up with a wet-dry vac right after this video). We head towards the beehives. It’s a little busy with the bees these days; I split a hive to get a backup queen and keep mites under control (by giving the bees a brood break), so there are five hives total. Forgive the mess. I need to dispose of those old deep hive boxes. (I don’t use deep boxes anymore—they’re too heavy for me—a full box of brood and/or honey can weigh over 50 pounds!).

And finally, a look at the farm from the bottom of the hill by the tiny house. You can see where the beehives and hugelkultur bed are in relation to the rest of the garden. The entire farm is south facing, albeit surrounded by oak trees, which are protected by Berkeley ordinances, so there are very few “full sun” spots—it’s mostly partial side.

So there you have it. My urban farm. It’s not particularly huge. There are more impressive urban farms out there. But this is where I get solace these days. I go out into the garden first thing every day to do my “chores,” which are unlike most chores, a pleasure to execute. There’s still a lot to do, like cut back vines—which reminds me, the passionfruit vines need better trellising up there. See how the “chores” never end?

But these days, when I think of the one joy I do each day to give myself peace and joy and hope, it’s to plant. While harvesting can be fun, it’s not where I derive the most satisfaction—it’s the planting and cultivating that gratify me most. 

What do you do each day to give yourself joy and self-care?

The day I discovered my bees died and never letting that happen again

December 25, 2021 /

Wintertime is generally a time of rest for me as an urban farmer. It’s when I let the garden go wild and fallow so it can replenish itself. The chickens lay a lot less when daylight hours wane; my morning chores become the singular task of feeding them. The beehives, too, are closed for the winter, because air temperatures are too low to safely do inspections. Bees keep their hives at ninety-five degrees to protect their brood (which they lay year-round in California), and even when they don’t have brood (in colder climes), you do not want to chill them.

But there are years when wintertime requires vigilance. It’s time to help the soil replenish when I’ve planted crops known to be particularly hungry, like corn. That is when I spend a portion of the winter rotating compost into the beds or when I build a hugelkultur bed. And this past drought year, the bees suffered due to lack of forage. They never built up the honey reserves to get them through the winter, even though I did not harvest any honey in consideration of their stores.

I knew that I would have to feed my hives all winter.

A few years ago, one of my hives starved. It was a hive placed on Sonoma Mountain in a rural area that was not easy to access on a regular basis. I didn’t do the last check before wintertime, and by the time I visited, the temperatures were so low that I couldn’t inspect. I also didn’t have my infrared camera then, so I couldn’t do a cursory check to see a heat map that would indicate where the bees were in relation to their honey. In the springtime, I approached the hive. From a distance, I saw no bees at the entrance. I knew it would be bad news.

When I opened up the hive, there was stillness and silence. All the bees were dead. I inspected thoroughly, trying to diagnose cause of death, with the intention of learning from my mistakes. There was dead brood. There was empty comb around the immediate circumference of the brood; they’d eaten that honey. A pile of dead bees lay on the bottom screen. At the perimeter of the hive there was capped honey.

In the differential diagnosis of a dead colony, we always consider varroa mites and disease, a common cause of what is called colony collapse disorder. But there was no mite guano in the comb. There were too many dead bees on the bottom board within the hive. The mite count had been low, too.

It became clear that the bees starved. Which hurt my heart.

They had, in the coldness, eaten the honey in the immediate perimeter of the brood. But the rest of the honey was too far away for them to eat without chilling the colony. You see, bees spend the winter clustering together. They detach their wings and buzz their bodies to create heat. They take turns being at the edges of the cluster and rotating to the center. It is paramount that they keep the hive warm and will not break the cluster to eat or forage. If the hive is distressed, the cluster becomes smaller. And as it becomes smaller, it becomes harder to keep warm and there are fewer foragers to collect any nectar. And if the honey within the hive is far away, they cannot reach it as a result.

It is important to keep plenty of honey stores for the winter but also to position them close to where they will cluster. It is important, too, I learned, to confirm this before cold weather. And it is important, if they do not have enough honey stores (about a box of frames for a colony that has two boxes of brood), to ensure that they have food throughout the winter and that it is accessible to them. If there isn’t enough honey, you have to feed them sugar water (in areas where it will not freeze), fondant (in areas where temperatures are freezing), or winter pollen patty.

Never again would I allow a hive to starve. And never again would I keep a hive where I couldn’t access it on a regular basis.

In my backyard, I have four hives of varying robustness this winter. Two of my hives, which I’ve named Minas Tirith and Blue Nun, have two boxes of brood and an additional empty box on top, partially full with honey. The other two are tiny; Edoras and Fangorn are one box of brood, with just a couple frames of honey. On dry days, the bees fly out to forage. But as the weather gets colder, fewer bees are able to do so.

On dry days, I go out in a bee suit (the bees are especially cranky and defensive on cold days), and open up the lids. I place winter pollen patties (which unlike summer pollen patties have less protein (which encourages brood rearing) and more sugar (for quick sustenance)) on the top frames as quickly as I can before I close the hive.

I’m preoccupied this winter by the health of my bees. Of not letting them starve. Of seeing them through the winter. This is bee management, intervention to help the colonies.

It has been a hard year for so many. The climate is changing. The icebergs are melting. But my bees will be okay.

My friends, too, have fed me through the years. Have seen me through hard seasons. But so long as we have each other and take care of each other, we will be okay.

I am trying hard to believe this.

East Egg: Or How I Became a Husband

October 10, 2018 /

(The new virgin queen of East Egg, August 2018)

 

I picked up my first hive late in the evening. East Egg came from a Randy Oliver nucleus, or mini-colony, bred for both mite resistance and gentle disposition. I’d put my order in months earlier, the day that Trump was elected, an act I didn’t realize then as defiance. That I’d support matriarchy in any way I could, including a colony of bees.

What I wanted then was solace. I also wanted distraction. I wanted to fulfill a lifelong goal of keeping bees. I’d always wanted bees, but my ex husband had been resistant. But he was gone–he’d left me, and with that went any excuses I had for not allowing myself the space to which I deserved.

Even then, it took me a couple years to do the research, take the classes, and order the bees so I could be well prepared to husband a hive.

The word “husband,” first recorded around the year 1000, originally meant “male head of household,” whether married, single, or widowed. “Husband” didn’t mean a married man until the year 1290. In that same year, the word “husbandry” came into being as a noun for “management of a household and its resources.” In the 1300s, the word “husbandman” came to mean a farmer or tiller of the soil–so the word “husbandry” expanded to mean farming and agriculture in general.

So here I was, for the first time in my life, husbanding. Husbanding myself. Husbanding the household. And husbanding chickens and now bees.

I was no longer a wife. And I no longer wanted to be a wife ever again.

I was going to be a husband.

The box of bees was sealed shut when I picked it up. It buzzed. It was full of life. Heavy. We carried it carefully–CAREFULLY–into the car, and drove it carefully–CAREFULLY–home. And we placed it on a hive stand. We unsealed it. We walked away.

The next morning, I couldn’t help but peek in. I lifted the cover off the box. There they were–five frames of bees, surrounded by an additional five empty frames that the bees would fill with more brood (baby bees), honey, and pollen in the coming weeks and months. I named it East Egg. It grew. It produced honey. It kept mite counts below 6 throughout the year, without any intervention or treatment. It was so strong going into the winter later that year, that it emerged this Spring with a catastrophic mite count of 46–it had robbed a bunch of hives and brought home mites.

I treated it with an organic treatment. And the mite counts dropped again. I cherished its magnificent queen. Took pictures of her whenever I spotted her. Sometimes the bees stung me–and while I suffered from large localized reactions, I didn’t really much care. I loved what that hive meant to me, and I kept at beekeeping. I was a husband.

I was helping bees grow and prosper. I was learning about the different roles of the female workers–how they start as nurse bees, move to cleaning the hive and caring for the queen, then move to guarding the hive, until the final phase of foraging. How tidy–that the last stage of work took them out of the hive, where most of them would end up dying.

The few males–the drones–I ignored. They didn’t sting. They were there to serve the purpose of passing the genetics of the hive on. Nothing more. Every time I talked about bees or opened up the hive, any worry I had–dissipated.

When the apple trees blossom around the Spring equinox–bees are prime to swarm. Swarming is a way of reproducing, as half the hive leaves with the queen to a new home. The remaining bees raise their own queen from the eggs left behind. But in the city, you don’t want to do this. To be more exact, your neighbors would not appreciate you doing this.

And also–why let your bees swarm when you can create an artificial swarm (a split) and make sure to give them a good home?

I split East Egg. In other words, I took a few frames out of East Egg (two frames of capped brood, one frame of eggs, one frame of honey, and the rest empty frames) and put them into a new box, and thus a new hive. This split had bees and eggs and capped larvae–and no queen.

Without a queen, the worker bees made a queen from the eggs. East Egg now had an offspring of sorts, and the queen of East Egg, a daughter. She was a rare ebony colored queen. I named the new hive split Bree, and she went to live in Sonoma County.

But then–tragedy. East Egg started to dwindle. It had been a very very healthy and large colony until May. Five boxes tall! A full box of honey going into Summer.

 

But somehow, East Egg never capped the honey. I was so busy with other hives and a rare vacation to Hawaii, that I neglected to go down into the deep box to double check brood–even after I didn’t spot any eggs in the second box.

Something happened to the queen right after the split. I know this now, because I made a chart of the hives I managed this year, according to their growth. You see, East Egg started taking a dive after I made Bree in April. But I didn’t notice.

I saw the queen, but didn’t notice anything wrong–and because she was alive, I figured all was okay. Here she is, on May 27, post-split.

Doesn’t she look okay? Right?  Look closer. There’s a mite on her shoulder.  I remember making a note to check her again the next time I opened up the hive.

By now, she’s stopped laying–reading my notes now, I know.

 

 

You see, bees normally supersede a failing queen. I often call my bee colonies “The Borg,” because they work as a cohesive unit. The queen is beholden to the workers, and the workers are beholden to the queen. The worker bees build a queen cup if they sense something wrong. They raise their own queen. And the queen usually lets that happen, knowing her own demise. But not this queen. She tore apart every queen cup.

She didn’t let them make another queen–and so I thought all was okay. But in June (June 16 to be exact), I took a closer look. There she is, the queen. Looking injured–see her peeling thorax?

 

In the end, I had to kill the queen, when I saw how injured she was. It was awful. Later, someone asked if I’d preserved her–dunked her in some alcohol. And if I ever have to kill another queen bee, I’ll do that. But no. I stepped on her in an inglorious end.

Out of loss and setback comes opportunity.

So I decided to use this as an opportunity to purchase a Randy Oliver queen.

I bought a Randy Oliver queen. Placed her in the hive where the candy plug would be eaten away in a few days. The candy plug never got eaten away by the workers. Strange. I called my mentor, and she said to go ahead and remove the candy plug. I did. And the bees? They killed her.

I had no idea at the time, but the hive had laying workers. At the time, I thought the queen was newly injured just a week or so earlier. I thought the queen had only recently stopped laying eggs. (A queen can lay about 1500 eggs/day). But in hindsight, she had stopped laying in May.

Laying worker is when a hive goes queen-less for long enough (3 weeks or longer), the worker bees themselves start laying eggs. They do this, because they do not smell queen pheromone, and they do not smell egg pheromone.

The eggs laying workers lay are unfertilized, so they are haploid, and become drones. In a sense, this is the way a dying hive still sends off its genetics into the world. The brood pattern is uneven and spotty, unlike when a queen lays–she lays in a solid swath of eggs.

And so for the next 6 weeks, I put in a frame of eggs from another hive, hoping that the smell of fresh eggs would suppress the laying worker situation.

 

East Egg persisted. I inserted frame after frame of eggs from Tangerine Hive each week. I think I put in a total of 8 frames of eggs over six weeks. (Tangerine Hive, meanwhile, had a gorgeous queen that was a laying machine).

It persisted. Like, nose above water, persisted. It got invaded by wax moths. I took frames and put them in the freezer to kill the larvae, and substituted clean frames.

We kept going. All I wanted to do was to keep this hive alive through the winter.  It was important to me. I was a husband. I was husbanding. I was helping matriarchy survive.

By 6 weeks, East Egg was assaulted by robbing bees. Strong hives will rob other hives. They will send great numbers of bees to a vulnerable hive and rob it of its honey. And oftentimes, the robbing bees will kill the bees inside the hive. I imagine East Egg did this last winter to other hives.

There was a cloud of bees above East Egg–I wondered if it was some sort of odd swarm. I didn’t think of robbing, because I’m pretty diligent about keeping a robbing screen (it keeps outsider bees from going in the hive, while allowing the home bees to go in and out freely) on my hives. Out of curiosity, I rushed outside in a bee suit. Despite the robbing screen, the hive got robbed out through a tiny notch in the inner hive cover. I hadn’t even considered that notch. It was a tiny notch.

And there, on the ground, was a small pile of bees. Inside that pile: a new queen.

East Egg had managed to make a new queen–had managed to break laying worker. As a beekeeper, I learned that persistence can pay off. That laying worker might take 6 weeks to suppress. That an additional hive is of great help. That bees need community. That a notched inner hive in Berkeley is a dangerous thing.

As a beekeeper–or husband of bees, I’m trying to unravel this mystery. I refrained from talking about East Egg all season, because I felt I had let down those bees. I felt I had been a bad husband. But in the end, I never left them. And they never left me. They fought until the end. And so did I.

The top picture–is a picture of the virgin queen. She’s tinier than a mated queen. She was the last one standing, because the female workers protected her, clustered around her. I’m standing too, because of all the women in my life.

We do what we can with what we have.

July 4, 2018 /

The sky is filled with smoke. Sepia. Golden. Pink. Somewhere behind the haze is a view of San Francisco, which normally on clear days, you can see with great clarity–sometimes you can even see the grid pattern of the windows on the downtown office buildings.

But not this weekend.

This sky is also raining ash. Everything is covered in these fine flakes–the garden, the leaves on the trees, and cars.

The smoke is not from a happy cause. It comes from the fires in Yolo and Napa County, ushered here by a northerly wind. Somewhere in this dust are ancient trees and dead deer and squirrels and burnt cars and dreams.

The sky reminds me of my own trauma, my LA childhood in the early 1980s. LA air quality has much improved since then–I visited recently and was amazed at the clear skies. But the sky of my LA childhood was a dirty pink, a peach-brown, like the healing welt of a second degree burn. I grew up with smog alerts–and despite them, we played outside. By the end of the day, our lungs hurt with each sharp inhale.

My lungs hurt when I think of LA and my childhood. I can’t help but think the pain had everything to do with Los Angeles, because I have no painful memories in New York City–and the actors in my life never changed. It was always me, my mom, my dad, my brother, and I.

My friend moved to LA. It brings her energy and hope. She loves it there. I am supportive of this change–and of her happiness in Los Angeles, even though LA does not bring me the same. One person’s jail is another’s freedom.

We do what we can to survive. We will run away. We will find sanctuary. We will be frantic with pain trying to find safety. We will be restless. We will finally find shelter. Or maybe not.

Speaking of smoke: beekeepers use smoke on bee hives when inspecting. The smoke masks alarm pheromones that would otherwise cause bees to become defensive and…sting the intruder.

I try not to use smoke if I can, especially on my less aggressive hives like East Egg. It freaks the bees out a bit. I rarely use smoke on East Egg.

East Egg was my first hive. Its queen was my beloved queen. She kept her mites down near zero all year last year. She was huge and amber.

A few weeks ago, East Egg’s queen was injured.

So I had to replace her. Which I did. Which is another story.

But because she was not healthy and because she was not laying, and because every time the hive, suspecting her injured state, would build a queen cell with the intention of superseding her, and because she kept ripping the cells down and killing whatever queen potential lay inside, the hive went awhile without brood (aka “bee babies”).

The population dwindled. I am waiting for it to replenish with this new queen, which I placed in the hive about a week ago. You can see that tiny plastic cage. She is inside it, waiting for the bees to get used to her before she is released safely.

East Egg is dwindling. Almost ailing, save for the fact that a new queen is in place.

It is tiny. And it makes me worry. It has so many resources half-finished–honey frames yet to be capped, for instance. There are not enough bees to finish that task. The bees are doing what they can to survive.

I move things around between the two of my hives here in Berkeley. One is a resource for the other. Tangerine Hive gets the uncapped honey frames. There are many bees in Tangerine and they will get the job done.

If the queen of East Egg does not thrive, then I will put a frame of eggs from Tangerine into East Egg, and the worker bees there will convert one of the eggs into a queen.

We do what we can with what we have.

 

 

Bees Please

June 11, 2018 /

I have always wanted bees. To become a beekeeper.

But there is a difference between intentionality and becoming the thing you want to become.

Pascal introduced framework in the study of decision-making, coming up with the theory of expected value: When faced with a choice between uncertain alternatives, you should determine the positive or negative values of every possible outcome, along with each outcome’s probability, and then make your choice. Or in short–figure out best case scenario and worst case scenario, and see with which you’d rather live.

Another theory is loss aversion, or the discovery that winning $100 is only about half as appealing as losing $100 is unappealing. (The reason I don’t gamble). This theory illustrates that the relationship between value and losses/gains aren’t always equal; losses are a bigger deterrent than gains. 

I’d wanted bees for years–I can’t even count how many. Only that in 3rd grade, we were each assigned to pick a creature and do a report on that animal or insect. I chose honeybees. And the more I learned, the more interested I became in these diligent creatures. I wanted to learn more. I wanted to watch them work. I wanted to smell the honey and wax firsthand.

My desire to become a beekeeper has been a low level but steady desire, like french fries–I can live without them, but I’ll also never turn a french fry down.

But I didn’t get bees. I was married to a husband who was averse to bees and beekeeping. He had bee venom allergies. And he wanted nothing to do with any sort of farming or husbandry. The risk of putting strain on our marriage and relationship outweighed any unknown, positive outcome from beekeeping. Basically, I wanted to stay married. I made many decisions based on not wanting to lose something. Not wanting to lose my marriage.

And so I refrained. The loss deterred any unknown gains. The worst case scenario outweighed the best case scenario.

It didn’t matter. The worst case scenario still came to fruition. I lost anyway.

When he left the marriage, a tipping point emerged for so many decision points in my life. No longer did I have to consider his aversions. I wanted to turn every single failure and setback into an opportunity and this was one way to turn a failed marriage into opportunity. And furthermore, I wanted to create more space for myself in creating a new life as a single woman and single mother. I wanted matriarchy to combat the shit that would be coming down the pipe. It was time. I was ready. I wanted bees. I didn’t even want the honey so much as a living colony whose behavior I could observe and nurture. I wanted an example of an effective matriarchy.

Continue reading

Hobbiton Farm

February 19, 2018 /

I have a farm. (I feel like Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen: “I had a farm in Africa,” sans empire and imperialism).

I was reluctant to call what I had, a farm. I had chickens and bees and several vegetable areas–but somehow, it did not feel like enough. Likewise in the early days of writing, I couldn’t bring myself to say I was a writer. But with all identities, the pendulum shifts at a certain point; with writing, I gained confidence, I gained some achievements, and I formed a community, which helped me make the transition to calling myself a writer.

Someone once told me that identity is composed of three things:

  1. Legal identity
  2. Social identity
  3. and most important: Self identity

At some point, Hobbiton Farm became a farm not just in name but in function. Over the winter, I began ripping out ornamental plants with the intention of replacing them with edible plantings. I chopped down some nameless, non-fruiting trees and built a hugelkultur bed in their place (and using the wood therefrom). I’ll be experimenting with hugelkultur and planting vegetables in that bed at some point.

I got some frustrating news mid-winter, so what can you do when you feel helpless and exasperated? You learn to use a chainsaw and tear down a twenty-year-old trumpet vine, of course. Over the course of a few days, that vine came down. I sawed and hacked away at it. I was covered in tree detritus everyday. I chopped that thing down bit by bit, and then I dragged the pieces away one by one, too.

And I added the vines and branches and leaves to the–yes, the hugelkultur bed.

By week’s end, the wall was rid of vine. The trellis was rid of vine. It was ready for a peach tree. And it was ready for grapes.

My daughter was dismayed when she saw I’d cut down the trumpet vine. But has been consoled by the peach tree and grapes. (And yes, it was exciting getting bare root fruit trees delivered in the mail–such is my life that this is what excites me).

In the past year, I made new farming connections. From them, I learned about no-till practices. And also Korean Natural Farming practices. We geeked out on farming information. On gardening. On plants. On horticulture. I started making lactic acid bacteria. I’ll tell you more about that in subsequent posts. Along with bees–the bees the bees the bees!

But mostly, I’ve been out in the garden every single day. This winter, I became a farmer.

I’ve been obsessed with amending the soil. Last year, I could tell the soil needed help–plants would top out at a certain point in certain places in the garden. And that I’d have to lay down new foundation.

I learned about sheet mulching. Thank goodness the Amazon boxes have finally come in handy–the cardboard boxes are the first layer when you do sheet mulching (which I like to call “lasagna gardening). Which then you top with compost and leaves and what have you. This method chokes out the weeds below. It builds new soil. It is a no-till method, whereby you don’t disturb the earth (and micorizzhae and earthworms and what have you) below. It replicates what happens in nature: earth, then the leaves that follow upon it.

It’s been therapeutic for me to hang out with my bees and chickens and experiment with soil amendment and learning about new gardening practices. Maybe it’s the Vitamin D from sunlight. Maybe it’s touching the earth. Maybe it’s the adrenalin from sweating. Maybe it’s witnessing the matriarchy of the bees (and the matriarchy of the chickens). But it makes me feel better. It makes me feel comfortable in my own skin. I just want to share it with you, in hopes that it enlightens and maybe makes you feel better, too. Or know that the world is still somehow working, even though the world feels like it’s going sideways.

So I’ve expanded. My goal is to turn the entire yard into an edible landscape. Whatever is on it, I think, must serve a purpose. I’m making space.

I feel helpless a lot–and it’s not a feeling I like to carry around with me. Farming makes me feel less helpless. There’s always something to do. The farm is self-sustaining. It is about having purpose. In that sense, I’ve always been a farmer.

I’ve believed in productivity my entire life. It happens when you’re a child of immigrants. I was raised to be aware of where I put my energy, and what the harvest might look like. This is the place.

As a woman, I wasn’t raised to hold tools. As a woman, many of the tools sold at the store are too big for my hands. But this winter, I learned to use a chainsaw. I used big-ass drills to help build a trellis. I bought cattle fencing and fence posts, so I can build a squash arch. It feels good. A tool belt might be next. Do they come in women’s sizes, I wonder?

(picture of the garden, Summer 2017)

Chickens and Bees

May 9, 2017 /

I’ve been meaning to write about my burgeoning urban farm (I’d say homestead, but I’m just not there yet–though it’s my ultimate goal to have one). The other night, I picked up a nuc of bees, and I figure it’s now time to share a little with you.

I’ve wanted bees since I was 8 years old and did my animal research report on bees. What little I learned then, nurtured a growing love and interest for bees. Where my friends had bee fear, I had none. I loved their diligence and found their worker hierarchy endlessly interesting. My uncle on my mom’s side was a chicken farmer and chicken veterinarian. I remember seeing his farm of chickens and being intimidated by the raw number of cheeping chicks and squawking hens. But I was struck and interested, once again–they had entered my psyche and my world and were no longer a foreign thing but a farm animal to be grown and nurtured.

Then I visited my friend Novella Carpenter’s urban farm about ten years ago–and that made me want to undertake an urban farm and get some chickens.

My husband-at-the-time was firmly opposed. He wanted a strictly ornamental, well-manicured garden. And he wasn’t too hot about livestock, let alone the two tomato plants I did have that ended up attracting rats, to his great dismay. So those plans were on hold indefinitely. Until they were not. Continue reading

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