Getting our Hands Dirty

Thank God, I’m a Country Boy. Oh, yes, a few more days of great springtime weather on Our Little Farm.




Today, we got a lot accomplished in the garden. Lynne was busy in the morning with the cultivator and chewed up the grasses and weeds growing between the rows. We prepared more terrain for planting and got busy getting dirt under our fingernails.



We planted the second batch of our Ambrosia sweet corn. We planted six more rows in this batch which will ripen up one month after our first batch. We will plant the third and final planting in about three weeks.



We planted a row of crookneck(yellow) squash, a row of spaghetti squash, a row or zucchini, two rows of okra, a row of mustard greens, a row of turnip greens, a row of eggplant, a row of beets and two rows of carrots. We also transplanted 9 more Celebrity tomato plants.



As you can see we have been busy in the garden. Stay tuned for more updates from Our Little Farm.

Living on Mother's Time

Since retiring to the farm and living the simple life, I have not found it necessary to wear a wrist watch. It’s really amazing how much stress is related to being tied to a rigid timetable. My timetable today is virtually stress free.

The only timetable I have today is Mother Nature’s timetable. Springtime is a marvelous time in the country, but also the busiest time of the year. Keeping up with Mother Nature’s timetable can be a challenge during early spring. Learning to adapt to this schedule is fun and exciting. Then you have to factor in rain days. Learning to fertilize right before a rain day, allows the rain to work the fertilizer into the soil. Timing on planting can also be beneficial if done right before a good rain. Seed needs plenty of moisture to germinate properly. If I time my plantings based on projected rain, I tend to use much less water to get the seed germinated.



Mother Nature also dictates my schedule for the day. Watering and planting is done early in the day to get maximum benefit of the cooler air. As the crops begin to ripen, we will harvest the produce in the cooler early morning hours to retain the moisture in the garden goodies.

Other light duty chores are done as the temperature heats up. The heat of the mid day sun allows me to go indoors and take a break. Well, I say break but there is always something to do during the heat of the day.


  I like sitting near the beehives on a clear hot day and watch the bees coming and going from the hives.  Seeing them moving in and out of the hives lets me  know they are busy gathering nectar and doing well.
As the sun hangs low in the late afternoon sky, it’s time to hit the garden again to check water, pull some weeds, and take care of other garden tasks.



I love not being chained to a calendar or schedule. I enjoy living a daily schedule controlled by Mother Nature. Would I ever change this to go back to a rigid schedule of going back in to the work force? I don’t think so. Life is good on our little farm.

Things are popping up everywhere

The photo above shows our potato crop as of today, 2 May 2010.  We planted these potatoes from seed potatoes on the 20th of March.  We mounded them for the final time and will wait until harvest time.  We also planted one extra row of Kennebec potatoes today.  These will be harvested after these plants flower.  These will be new potatoes, fresh from the garden.

Besides planting another row of potatoes, we had another busy day in the garden.  Of course, we did some weed control, but we also did some more planting.

One of the lessons we learned from last year was the need to stagger our plantings so that everything did not come in at once.  We planted two more rows of cucumbers for pickling.  If you have never had Lynne's Dill Pickles, you just don't know what you are missing.  These are so tart they about water your eyes and pucker your lips. And yes, I had one o her pickles from last year with lunch today.

Next we moved on to the Heritage Old Fashioned brown beans--3 more rows.  Planted 2 more rows of spinach.  We plan on adding more garden fresh salads to our daily menus.

Transplanted 9 Celebrity tomato plants.  It will be a couple of more weeks before we can transplant the Early Girls and Romas.

For those of you following this blog and are wanting to begin in vegetable gardening, we highly recommend you pick up some gardening books.  Our favorite veggie book is " The Vegetable Gardener's Bible".  We refer to this book on a daily basis.  I have provided the link for this book below.

Again, please feel free to ask questions or leave comments.

A Day with the Bees

 A day with the bees is always a great day. On Saturday, 1 May 2010, the Blount County Beekeeper’s Association conducted their annual Field Day. For those of you who have no clue what a beekeeper’s field day is, I’ll go ahead and break it down for you.


The annual field day is the third step in training for new beekeepers. The first step was a two day “short course” designed to give an overview and orientation to beekeeping. The second step is a wooden ware class to get hands on training on how to build the hive boxes (bodies and supers) as well as assembling frames and installing the wax foundation.

The third step is where we get hands on experience in working with the hives and the bees. We had several veteran beekeepers who dedicated their time to teach us all about the bees and hives. A bunch of us new beekeepers got the opportunity to open a variety of different hives and see these marvelous creatures in action.

After listening to some great guest speakers and reading all about bees, it was great to get into the hives and apply these lessons to learning firsthand how they work their magic.

We opened a nucleus (nuc) hive. A nuc is a brand new hive beginning with a new queen and typically only has five frames of wax foundation. A normal hive body will have either 9 or 10 frames.

We opened established hived and hives that already had the honey supers placed on them. We even opened a hive that was created from a collected swarm.

We learned queen identification and how to tell if the queen is actively lying. This is done by examining the frames and looking very close for new eggs and larvae. We learned how to identify capped brood which is the final stage in the 21-day development of a new worker bee. We learned how to spot the difference between a worker bee cell and a drone cell.

We witnessed bees entering the hives loaded with pollen and how they pack the honey into the cells for storage. We saw how the bees draw out the honeycomb buy creating wax for egg development and honey storage. We also saw examples of new queen cells being developed by a colony of bees.



This type of hands on training was extremely beneficial for all of us new beekeepers. My learning beginner training continues for the next two years with by bee mentor, Dale. I am learning so much about bees and their importance in our food supply.



Anyone who may be interested in getting started in beekeeping can certainly ask me all the questions you desire. My first advised is to find a local beekeeping association and attend your first meeting. Get to know some of the local beekeepers in your area. If you do not have a local association or know of any beekeepers, look around in some of your local markets. Many beekeepers will sell their local honey. You may even see signs that say “local honey for sale”. Contact them and let them you are interested in beekeeping.



I will also recommend our beekeeper’s association to anyone in our area of East Tennessee. Here a link to the Association’s website. http://blountbees.wordpress.com/

Stay tuned for additional updates about our beekeeping experiences.