Weekly Update: 6.7.25
What would it be like to live in a world where it is always June?
L.M. Montgomery
I've always loved June. It is both the maturity of spring and summer's first blush. Wildflowers bloom, pollinators buzz and flutter, and the abundant green is fresh and bright. And yet, this year, I barely noticed its arrival and I focused each day on what needed to be done. This lifestyle is always full to bursting, but add on a layer of family health issues and task deadlines, and things can become stressful.
In particular, my thoughts were on our dad's neck surgery. It wasn't supposed to be a big deal -- just removing some defective hardware that was no longer necessary. Still, I love my dad, and it's hard not to worry. And with that, I wanted badly for him to have a better place to recuperate than our wall tent. I've loved tent living, but it's not the best situation for someone recovering from surgery. It gets stifling hot during the day, and walking out to the bathroom in the rain can be treacherous. So, over the last weeks, we've focused on getting my folks' little corner done and our indoor bathroom completed. Because of the season, we've been balancing side quests that were time sensitive -- beekeeping, gardening, puppy care, and a little home brewing. This week, almost everything came to a head -- but with God's help, we managed to get everything done.
On Saturday, we made a supply trip to Menards in Springfield. We wanted our dad's help picking up lumber for our kitchen storage. I was especially thankful to have my brother Jeremiah along to help with all of the heavy lifting. It was quite a task, and we decided on the fly to opt for different materials than we planned to purchase. I think the end result will be gorgeous, though.
That night, we finally made time to move our honey bee swarms. We had found them in our traps from last year a couple weeks ago, and we had been meaning to move them ever since. It's an intense job, requiring climbing a ladder about 12-feet up in a tree to lift the swarm boxes down. That evening, we prepped the hives -- removing ants that had found their way in. We filled some feeders with sugar water, and prepped some beetle traps.
I was so thankful to have both of my brothers' help moving the swarms. Jeremiah did the climbing while Levi hauled and held the ladder. Levi's daughter Eilley-Mae came along as well. She is taking beekeeping in 4H and was excited to help. Chloe, her sister, is also in beekeeping 4H -- but we didn't have enough beekeeping suits for her to join us.
The swarm boxes ended up being incredibly heavy. Jeremiah could barely climb down the ladder holding them. Each has space for six Layens frames -- which are nearly twice the size of more common Langstroth frames. It turned out that both swarm boxes were nearly full, with the bees filling up almost all of the frames. The bees themselves lined the sides of the boxes. Unlike the swarms we moved last year, these bees were not docile. Despite us smoking the area and it being dark outside, the bees began flying around, landing on us, and trying to sting. We had Eilley-Mae step away from the area while we worked. We managed to get the frames moved -- albeit rather haphazardly -- into the hives. Jeremiah had borrowed a slightly small beekeeping suit, which was a mistake. The skin of the back of his neck was close enough to the mesh that he was stung repeatedly -- about 30 times. A couple got inside Levi's suit and stung him several times, as well. I was lucky, and despite the bees landing all over me, only one made it inside. Disturbingly, it crawled around my face before eventually climbing into my hair. It didn't sting me until I tried to get it out. We all took some Benadryl, and we rubbed baking soda all over Jeremiah. We learned an important lesson that night about waiting too long to move swarms. They get too heavy to hardly deal with. Also, a properly fitting bee suit is a must.
On Sunday, we planned to bottle our cider and beer. The cider had fermented for two weeks, and the beer for four. Both brews were supposed to be done fermenting much sooner, but their airlocks were so bubbly, we had been afraid to try it. If you bottle beer or cider to soon, the bottles can explode. After doing some research, we decided to use our hydrometer to make sure the gravity levels were steady a couple days prior to bottling. We purchased a wine thief to make it easier to take samples of the brews.
The first thing Grace and I did was wash and sanitize over 100 bottles. Most were new, while a few were used. Our sister-in-law Erin helped remove old labels and scrub the used bottles before we rewashed and sanitized them.
I prepped the carbonating agents for both brews while we waited for things to soak in sanitizer. We used corn sugar for the red Irish ale -- which came with the kit. For the cider, we opted to use honey. Both sugars were mixed with water and boiled ahead of time. Then we placed the respective syrups in the bottling bucket before siphoning began.
When it was time to move the beer to the bottling bucket, we moved to our storm shelter, where the beer was fermenting. This time of year, the temperature down there hovers in the 60s -- the perfect temperature for our brews. We siphoned the beer in the shelter because moving the carboys (the glass bottles used to hold the ale) would cause the sediment to mix in -- something you don't want. Our dad helped us, as he has brewed several batched of beer over the years.
The bottling was easy. I used the bottle filler to fill each bottle, and Grace capped them. Erin and eventually Bonnie-Jean joined the process, wiping down bottles and cleaning up spills. Once the bottles were capped, we moved them back to the storm shelter where the newly added sugar will cause fermentation to start back up a little -- just enough to carbonate the brews.
We all sampled the cider and ale while we were bottling, and though they weren't carbonated yet, we were impressed. I can't wait to taste the final results in a couple weeks.
Unfortunately, Sunday was unusually busy -- we didn't get started until evening. Bottling at night was quite an experience, involving hauling heavy buckets around in the dark, using flash lights, and working by rather dim light in the bunkhouse. We all joked that we felt a little like bootleggers. We come by it naturally after all -- it's part of how our great-great-grandpa Thomas Roland Mills and his sons provided for their families during prohibition. Grandpa Mills was a self-taught midwife and veterinarian in the hills of Conway County, Arkansas, but family legend says that people came from miles around to buy his sorghum molasses and moonshine. He needed the money, too -- being the father of 12 children with his wife and (rumor has it) several others with local women.
Early in the week, we said goodbye to two of Bonnie-Jean's puppies. A couple from Iowa drove down to pick up "Whopper" on Saturday. Then, on Monday, "Oreo" went to be with his new family.
It was bitter-sweet letting the puppies go. We'll miss them, but we know they were ready to bond with their own forever families. Another family is planning to pick up "Reese" tomorrow. We've been advertising the rest of the litter online and in area newspapers, so I doubt it will be long before they all move on.
All the rain has been making gardening rather difficult. Since our last update, we've only managed to get one row of corn planted and one bed of green beans in. All the wet has led to some fungus issues on the squash and melons. It's also made keeping organic pesticides on the plants difficult -- an issue since ants seem to be eating both the okra and the melons. We hope this next week is better, as we have some sunflowers and winter squash ready to be moved out into the garden soon.
Between all the other projects, we managed to finish my folks' tiny bunkhouse space. My dad and I added most of the trim over the weekend. I especially enjoyed his help with the windows and door, as those were firsts for me. Grace helped me finish the trim, and Jeremiah hung up my dad's TV -- a gift Jeremiah gave him last Father's Day. We also did some much needed cleaning around the rest of the house, dusting and organizing. Bonnie-Jean scrubbed the floors, making house slippers and bare feet more welcome.
We also finished our full bathroom. Our dad installed our new vanity light. Our outlet box ended up off-center, so we had to choose a more forgiving light model than the one we originally installed. Levi and I reinstalled the painted bathroom door. Levi plumbed the shower, and Grace added the final caulking around the bathtub. On Tuesday, I put up our shower curtain and installed some towel hooks. I took the first indoor-shower that evening. It was surreal, standing under water flowing through pipes I helped install, in a bathtub I helped purchase, over a floor I helped lay, above joists and blocking I helped cut. Having a fully-functional indoor bathroom makes the bunkhouse feel so much more completed, even though we still have a couple rooms to finish.
On Wednesday, I spent the night with my folks and brother Jeremiah in Springfield. Our dad had his surgery at 5:30 am on Thursday, and we wanted to be sure we would be there on time. We've been preparing for this event for months, and then in a matter of hours, it was finally behind us. The surgery went well, and by early afternoon, we got to bring our dad home. We celebrated with Krispie Kreme donuts for a late brunch and Papa Murphy's pizza for dinner. That evening, I sat with my folks while we streamed episodes of Homestead Rescue. We all felt rather traumatized, but at the same time, so thankful to be home safely all together.
We spent yesterday recouperating mentally and catching up on tasks we'd let slide during all of the chaos. Today is our brother Levi's birthday, and we plan to take a little time off to celebrate. When we aren't celebrating, I have a lot of planning and resesarch to do as we prepare for our upcoming tasks. The garden needs a lot of work. We discovered fungus on our apple trees we need to figure out. The beehives need a couple more frames added, and we still haven't hung up our Langstroth swarm trap. We have some grape vines arriving from Stark Brothers sometime in the next couple weeks. And of course, we need to finish our bunkhouse and take down our wall tent. It feels like the dawning of a new season on our homestead, and I can't wait to get started.
