SPRING...ahead!

So yesterday, I wove the tales of a Springtime one year ago. Like ancient religons of old, a year bygone was the benchmark of moving forward, of measuring progress, and tallying things yet to be done. AND Today, I promised a few BIG NEWS UPDATES....

In true Virgo fashion, the idea of recording things in an orderly fashion is the only way in which I can move forward and, like those ancient customs, I can appreciate how far I've come. And apparently, it's still going at breakneck speed!

I had initially envisioned slowly taking you on my meandering journey through last year; painting languid stories about coppery summer and blustery fall. Regaling you with stories of working at an urban farm, of a never-ending Halloween festival, of getting ready for winter, of harvesting honey.

But, there are so MANY insanely wonderful things happening ALL. AT. ONCE (within the past week, actually!), that I'm afraid I'll have to abandon my jaunt down memory lane at the moment, for fear that I won't be able to keep track of everything happening at the present time.

So forgive me folks, as I detour into the current state of events:

Firstly--you may remember my little romantic post about Valentine's Day between me and the sweetheart..

Well....*ahem*  I DO have a VERY SPECIAL RING TO SHOW YOU:

It's a lovely white gold engraved piece with sweet amethyst stone center!

I am so happy I could cry!

Or, apparently, mug for the camera! Can you tell I'm having a bit too much fun showing off this precious new treasure?

No idea when the wedding's happening, I'm afraid. Not that it necessarily matters; we've been two entwined elderly trees, our branches and roots encircling one another for SEVEN years. While I would love a marriage before we're to be ushered down the aisle using canes or rolled in wheelchairs, our current problem is both a lack of proper funds and also a lack of time.

Yes, I know, it sounds flippant to say that one is too busy to actually get married, but if you saw the crazy projects I am about to embark on, you'll quickly see what I mean.  And I do aim to tell you that bit of news in a moment..but NEXT:

Apparently the bee-charming that I do has got me into some sort of "trouble"; I am featured in a new documentary about the importance of bees, and colony collapse disorder, called "Queen of The Sun"!

To say I am excited and honored cannot begin to express how thoroughly happy I am to be associated with this film. Tag Siegel, who also created "The Truth about Farmer Jon" is a sensitive visionary and he has made a film any beekeeper would be proud of.  You can see what I am talking about in the Trailer (AND you can see ME in the trailer at the 2:07 mark, with the bee swarm!).

And more beekeeping mayhem is on the horizon, by the way. If you don't know, when I'm not performing, dollmaking, working with animals, beekeeping, and NOT sleeping, I also run a radio show and a website about farming (see, I told you, no sleeping whatsoever happens! Just more projects).  One of my writers, the amazing and equally diverse Maggie Howe, herbalist and wool spinner extraordinaire of Prairieland Herbs invited me to come and teach an ORGANIC BEEKEEPING class at her farm in IOWA. From there, after several inquiries on both of our parts, it has snowballed into teaching two separate classes throughout IOWA, along with a cooking class, selling all my woodware and art at their monthly art festival, and even going wayyyy back to my roots by teaching a Middle Eastern Dance class!

Which seemed like my original goals when I started this blog...the whole idea of the horse drawn carriage was to go through the hills, meadows, and metropolises of this amazing, odd,  heartbreaking, and fascinating country known as The United States, to meet people, and to teach them all of those strange, odd, twisted, enchanged skills I had picked up, many of them old fashioned skills.

Yes, I was doing just that in Iowa, except there would be airfare involved. But it's a start. And it's an inspiration, because if I could make that sort of fun magic happen, I could do this in a horse drawn cart. What had happened was I let ole fear win this battle. Like so many of us, I started doubting, and started getting afraid of taking risks.  Which is funny, because MUCH of my life has been so unconventional up until THIS POINT, and it hasn't been a bad journey so far.

Note: I didn't say it was a journey filled with security, tons of money, or free of a few meltdowns--but that's the thing with risk, you have to be willing to face the consequences, bravely, because sometimes risk is NOT easy, or glamorous, or rewarding. If you can fearlessly stand by your own convictions, even if it's tough, for years, or it goes heinously wrong, then you can achieve many things.  Note, again: there is a difference between risk and sheer foolishness. If you smartly risk something, you must research what you need to be PREPARED to take the risk, and be willing to smartly maneuver around it. Foolishness is jumping headlong simply because a thing looks attractive, with no idea of the pros, cons, or work required to do that thing...

SO--having said that, I HAVE YET ANOTHER BIG ANNOUNCEMENT tomorrow---mwahahaha (can you tell I like keeping people in suspense?)

The Birds and The Bees....

 There is a memory I have, of Spring a year ago. That was such a busy time,  I utterly missed posting much of it here. But I feel the need to do so, in order to move forward with exciting news that seems to suddenly be snowballing down this peculiar path I'm taking.

The Spring of a year ago saw me doing probably more city urban farming than I dared to imagine. Mind you, what I DID manage to do might be considered a walk in the park by some serious standards, but nevertheless--when you are used to working on acreage, or even a yard (as was afforded by my parents' home, in Florida), then the challenge of doing similar things in a teeny-tiny space immediately becomes apparent.

Anyhow, what follows is a(n enlightening, if amusing) rundown of the whirlwind of Springtime activities. I call it the Spring of The Birds and The Bees, and you shall soon see why....

Bees: I needn't tell you that I deal with stinging insects, at this point, right?  If you don't know, I'm a third generation keeper, and last year was our second year of keeping four hives in the middle of the city. Which simply meant that there were four rogue boxes of extremely intelligent creatures to keep up with! As I anticipated (but which our neighbors did not!) there were swarms happening throughout much of April! 

Contrary to popular belief, swarms are not mobs of angry bees who cascade out of their hives to attack people. Instead, swarms occur when the queen has done TOO good of a job, and has created so many workers that there are TOO many bees, and the hive becomes crowded. So the old queen signals the workers to raise up a new queen, and then the old queen flies off, followed by a goodly amount of the hive, looking for a new home(the other half of the hive continues to live there, raising up the new queen). 

This is an opportune time for keepers to collect these swarms, and then place them in a new, empty box, which they will except. Of course, this is if one is clever enough to catch them!  In our case, this meant finding bees on the branches of tall trees, and having to create QUITE the scene by climbing ladders, walls, or other strange schemes, wearing white suits that most likely appeared like covert military lab scientist get-ups, and then traipsing through NEW YORK CITY donned in such outlandish apparel!  We were probably either popular or madly shunned, but we DID get TWO swarms this way! Alas, I wish I had some photographic or video evidence, but I couldn't convince one by-stander to get close enough to our bee activity to record any of it, but here is a picture of one of swarms:

In the meantime, there was little more to be done than general inspections and problem solving. At one point, we ordered NEW queens to replace our old queens. They came in a box like this:

You really CAN get anything in the mail!

I also had the fun and wonderful opportunity to teach a radio beekeeping class from my radio show and farm site.  And there was harvesting in the fall, but that was such an intricate story as to deserve another post (or blog!) altogether!
As of now, all seems well, and I am looking forward to more beekeeping adventures...

BIRDS: Probably a sure sign on any farm is the arrival of chicks. On a small urban homestead, I'm not so sure. The story of my chick keeping is one I will never forget--and it is it's own complete story full of it's own lessons (not unlike a modern day fable).
One of my teacher friends alerted me last March that her teacher friend had made the mistake that so many teachers do, by trying to teach her class about...umm...I think it was either chick hatching or caring for animals, but the irony here is that she ordered chicks and an incubator, and hatched three chicks before realizing that she had no place to put them once that "project" was complete.

Long story short, this sucker-for-animals ended up meeting said teacher and promptly whisking away three fluff-balls to her apartment and postage-stamp-size backyard. But what should have been a happily ever after, one egg a day sort of ending never did quite materialize...

Firstly, it was quite evident that one of the fluff-balls was a rooster.

As you can see, the guy on the LEFT is a bit TALLER than the other two.

Since the teacher told me that the peeps were all of the same breed, I couldn't use that excuse to say I had a different, larger breed of chick amongst the trio. Since roosters are regulated in New York City, I knew I would have to find a guy a decent home eventually. Other problems: we never did get a chicken hut together and sadly, we wouldn't need one. We had the tykes in a heavy metal crate with a makeshift top for shade. We kept them outside on a tall garden table during night, when it was cool, and then dragged them inside when it got hot.  This arrangement worked out for roughly a week, but then....

Somewhere on day number 8, I remember waking up at the crack of dawn and meandering to our kitchen fridge for a something to drink. From the kitchen we have a windowed door that looks back onto the patio, where the chicken cage can easily be seen. As I went to the fridge, I noticed that I had no clear view of a cage. Disconcerted, I walked right to the door, and only then did I see that the cage had been toppled over, and NO chicks were in sight. Panicked, I ran straight out, calling for the birds. I had no idea what could have happened. The birds were clearly too small and week to have toppled the cage themselves. I doubted it could be stray cats in our neighborhood, as we had dogs in the backyards adjacent both to the right and left of us, which scared cats and, again, they would not be strong enough to topple such a heavy cage.

These thoughts ran through my head as I righted the cage, but sheer terror struck once I did this, since I noticed two prominent drops of blood on the tile, once I lifted the cage. Immediately, I ran down one level, to the basement patio, calling for  the chicks. There, underneath a patio table, both the littlest and the largest chicks stood. They looked a bit disoriented, but not worse for wear. I immediately scooped the largest up and placed him in the cage. I went back down to the littlest, who actually took a few small steps to avoid me, but once I had him in my arms, I was horrified to discover he was bleeding from his LEFT wing and that  HALF OF IT WAS ACTUALLY RIPPED OFF AT THE ELBOW. The poor thing had acted normal that whole time, I couldn't believe it had looked so "normal" given it's situation!

At times like these, I'm glad I have vet tech training (and supplies in the house!) Immediately I had my Sweetheart help me, and we poured peroxide on the open wound (amazingly, the break had been clean, no bone was sticking out!), then put bacitracin and antibacterial spray on it, then wrapped it in gauze and bandaging. We then placed him inside, near his brother, but in a separate pen, so he could recuperate without being harassed by the older chick. Would you believe the little fellow IMMEDIATELY started to eat and drink the minute I put him in his box, as if nothing happened?

Amazingly, the chicks recovered well from the incident! Yes, the little broken winged tyke DID live! However, I am sad to say we never DID find the middle chick, although I searched high and low through the garden. And the culprit of this? Would you believe we have RACOONS, here in the city? And I found that we have them IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. We were told that they most likely did it, and, indeed, they are strong and wiley enough to push over a cage, and their MO is to carry off their prey and eat it elsewhere (which explains why we neither found the remains of the baby bird's wing, or any bones or feathers save the two drops of blood I found).

Regardless of this, the two birds grew, and eventually ended up at the farm of a kindly old farmer who wanted a rooster to guard his hens (his old rooster had died recently); in fact the large chick INDEED did turn out to be a rooster, and had started to crow..so finding the farmer in the nick of time was a god-send, and he agreed to take our fiestly little injured bird as well. By the way, we never did know if they little booger was either a boy or a girl, as he (or she) had displayed both male and female behaviors, and had not started to crow yet when they were shipped about an hour upstate to a gorgeous farm! I sort of miss those rascals....

Babies on the patio, eating and drinking...

So that was my chicken experience! I suppose I'll wait until I am in a place that is far kinder to male poultry, and where one keep more secure livestock housing!

Other news was more ho-hum: there was tomato gardening, eating and canning, bread making, jam making, and art creating. I did manage to document these in my BID for a Show Contest (and you can see the birds and the bees up close and personal)......but those tales must be left for a later date, as much MORE IMPORTANT NEWS ABOUNDS TOMORROW! So stay tuned!

HEARTworks....

Hello Friends!

            Forgive me for my disappearing act! It's funny, no matter how I try to narrate my funny life story, the LIFE part of it seems to get the best of me at every turn! These past few weeks have continued being quite the tempest of activity! I wanted to thank those of you who are following this humble little caravan of mine, for your patience.

Winter still holds us in thrall, though there are sweet and sunny days around our parts. Right now, most of my busy-ness comes from the balancing--or perhaps juggling--act that comes from the bill paying world and the creative muses. I am happy to say that I have managed to fit art into the tiny, free crevices of time that I have, but then it becomes SO difficult to find the time to write about it!

At the moment, life turns to Spring, with hopeful glimpses of grasses, sun, and fauna, but even tomorrow, they call for snow and rain, so it's a bit precarious, this Spring business.

While I prep for Spring, I did want you to glimpse at this past year's Valentine's Day Celebration. Every year the Sweetheart and I try to do something creative, unique and HEARTspun, and it's always surprising to see what whitty things have come out of our little "challenge."

This year, I decided to create a sort of "trail of breadcrumbs" and dared to do it while my Sweetheart was asleep! The "crumbs" here were a festive mix of cut-paper hearts and glittery confetti, which were hand-strewn by me, down the hall to create a trail of sorts...

 ....these then lead to arrows, marked with instructions....

Here I am, barefoot, making my way through the glittery path, to the kitchen (note: I was pretty bold, photographing my "dirty work" before my sweety awoke for his surprise! This was all done in the dead of night!)

 

Here is the arrow with the instructions, which led you through to the kitchen table.....

And another arrow PINNED to the kitchen tablecloth itself, which focused on my computer. What was on the computer? A video I made of myself saying sweet nothings to my Sweetie. Of course, I won't replay it here as it is rather private, but you get the idea!


And what did my Sweetie make for me? Well, I was rather disappointed at first because he hid in the back workroom for the whole day, then abashedly said he could *NOT* give me my gift on time!

So, I decided to keep myself occupied by making some ~*romantic*~beeswax candles from our beeswax!

Melted beeswax...

It was rather messy, but fun...and a great diversion!

The very next day, he DID give me my gift, and I could see WHY he was delayed, he hand-painted and inked this BEAUTIFUL picture, based on the style of Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss"!

Instead of the lovely dame and gent, my Sweets put HIMSELF and ME into the picture! He spent many hours on it and I was QUITE happy with it!

And so, yet another HEART felt Valentine's has passed. What did YOU do for St. Valentine's Day?