Oh my! Can you believe that it has been an entire year since my last blog post? What should I write about? How could I even begin to remember all that has happened over the last year? I will do my best...Let’s go! Last year around this time, we were harvesting whatever was left in our garden that had been taken over by weeds. Fast forward to this year and not much has changed. We decided to till the garden in May of this year and brought in several pounds of mulch to surround everything that we planted. In the entrance to the garden, we decided to put down cardboard and cover it with mulch to see how much that would control the weeds. This worked great and I have a feeling that next year, we will be stock piling all of those Amazon boxes that somehow show up at our door throughout the year and will try to cover a larger area for weed control. We try to use natural methods to limit the exposure of chemicals not only to the ground but to our bees as well. Overall, I think that due to the dry weather and our lack of effort in the garden, we had more weeds this year than in 2020. It is like a scavenger hunt trying to locate a random squash or pumpkin in the garden. We were able to harvest some tomatoes, peppers, green beans, pumpkin, (one) kohlrabi, spaghetti squash and acorn squash but we did not have luck with sweet corn, lettuce, cantaloupe or watermelon. As of right now, it is safe to say, we are not the best gardeners. Nonetheless, we will keep going, trying new ways and will eventually figure out what works. This time last year, the bees were really doing great and we had two hives that were excellent honey producers while the other two were a little slower at producing. This was my first winter with the bees and we came out on the other side having lost half of our hives. Because of this, I decided to install two packages of bees in the spring, which were shipped to us from Georgia. I’ll admit, it was fun to get a call from the post office telling me that my bees were there and to please come and pick them up! So blessed to live in a small town. Those bees really thrived and I was able to split another hive as well. This summer we have been managing five hives. Honey harvest seems to have been a little slower this year but we also tried a new honey super kit that is specific to ross round honey comb production. This was a great success. It takes a little extra work for the bees to draw out brand new comb and fill with honey but it is something special that we get to offer to you for those that enjoy honey comb. Soon, I will start to prepare the bees for winter. They are taking sugar water so quickly that it is hard to keep up. The bees will use this sugar water to draw out new comb, and store for winter feeding. I often get some interesting looks from the checkout counter when I come through the line with 30+ pounds of sugar. A sure sign of a beekeeper. We continue to donate $1 per jar of honey sold to charity. This has been such a rewarding thing for us to be able to do and it is something that we will continue to do going forward. As for the chickens, they did great throughout the winter and we even added three to the flock in the spring from some friends that were ready to get rid of them. The chickens free range every day and have been eating very well with all of the grasshoppers and other bugs around their area. I imagine that they will begin to slow down on egg laying soon as the weather gets cooler and the chickens are another year older. The barn cats are doing great. We are down to two and they spend a lot of time lounging around in our garage, chasing mice and running from our little dogs that think they are big and bad. Not much else is new at Simple Ridge. We are beginning to prepare for a new adventure and I will fill you in on that in the next blog. Let’s just hope it doesn’t take another year to put out another blog. We hope everyone has been healthy and we continue to appreciate your support of our little adventure of “city folks” becoming small time farmers. It has been interesting to say the least but life is too short to sit around wondering. Go make it happen!
