Lou's Musings

Hi Honey, I'm Home

Well, we've done it--invested in more hives. There is a really neat store in Sebastopol named "BEEKIND" that sells beekeeping supplies and gives workshops. Owner Katia (pronounced Kasha) was extremely helpful to this neophyte, steering me around the plethora of hardware choices all the while filling my cranium with insights and dreams of a sweet future. There's no motivator like a deadline, so I ordered 4 colonies of Italian bees to arrive April 14. In contrast with our daughter Francesca's low-tech approach these will be housed in conventional hives "supers" with prefabricated frames and preformed combs. KISS.

We have already learned that honey is a poignant reflection of our organic management and terroir. Francesca's hive produced a small harvest last year that tasted just like buckwheat pancakes. It happened to be sited across Pina Creek from our summer seeding of a buckwheat and cowpea covercrop. To an old hand I suppose this would be yawningly predictable. To me it was damned exciting!

Enraptored

We have become parents of 5 baby chicks. Barn owl chicks, that is. It happened so fast we hardly felt a thing. One Farm Market Saturday, when Zucchini sales were slow, we found ourselves drawn to a circle of shoppers watching some demonstration. Healdsburg is too tame for sword swallowers and snake charmers; but on second look we found ourselves charmed by a volunteer for the Santa Rosa Bird Rescue Center with their mascot "Jazz", a Great Horned Owl tethered to her glove . In the course of talking we offered our place as a site to raise and release fledgling raptors.

New Hives

I am totally impressed and somewhat trumped by the energy and inventiveness of youth. Though interested in bee keeping for some time, even joining the Sonoma County Beekeepers Assn, I have procrastinated and been stymied by the seeming enormity of the task and steep learning curve. Well, daughter Francesca comes home from world travels, announces that she's going to a bee workshop, following week is sawing and hammering in the workshop. Not long after buzzing packages arrive at the local post office, and voila, we have honey bees on the property in home-made hives.

Since then, Francesca has captured a wild swarm and is earning a local reputation as the bee girl of upper Dry Creek. So far its one Italian colony, one Russian, and the outlaws. Dad isn't allowed to touch without proper guidance yet. Hah, just wait till I bring in goats!