Nature is awesome!

While Ryan and I were enjoying some of our new homemade goat cheese, we saw a colony of bees swarm in our big oak tree out front. Since Ryan is without the use of his left arm, we have a bee guy in our back pocket. He's going to get them down for us, and we essentially get a free colony of bees. :)

It was amazing to see how quickly the swarm was assembled into a thick ball of bees. It took a matter of minutes. And they are absolutely silent. No buzzing whatsoever. Hopefully, they aren't our bees swarming, but our bee guy is pretty positive they aren't. I'm keeping my fingers crossed there's an active hive when we check our hive shortly.

Busy as a Bee

I guess the old saying is true.  Our bees have been very busy.  Very, very busy.  These pictures were taken a couple days ago.  We will have had our colony for 4 weeks on Saturday.

The day we brought them home.  There are 9 to 15 thousand bees in there.

Honeycomb they are building in the hive.  There are 6 or 7 combs total after 3 weeks.

Individual honeycomb

Hybridizing Iris

I pollinated my first iris today. It's a lot easier than I thought. So, in two years I will see the fruit of my minimal labor. That's how long it takes new iris to bloom from seed. :/ If they are unique, I can submit them to the American Iris Society as a new variety of iris. Very cool stuff!

Natural Aphid Repellent

Any good businessperson knows you must protect your investment. So, it's understandable when I was upset to find that aphids destroyed several of my emerging iris blooms last Spring. What good are iris plants if they don't bloom, and you can't take pictures to categorize for your future iris business? They aren't. I'd be damned if I let it happen again. I was beyond relieved when I found an all natural aphid repellent that actually works on Pinterest. I am  giddy to find something, anything useful from the site that doesn't include chuckling at Ryan Gosling "Hey Girl" memes or yummy vegetarian recipes.    I've tried the bags of ladybugs you buy at your local nursery, but those girls (and boys) never stick around long enough to rid me of the problem. This simple recipe only includes 4 ingredients, which you probably already have in your kitchen. Onion, garlic, cayenne pepper, and water. That's it. Simple, right? And making this concoction is just as easy.

Place one (any type- purple, yellow, or white) peeled onion into a blender, along with 2 garlic cloves, 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and 3 cups of water. Blend until smooth. Unfortunately, I no longer own a working blender, so I used my food processor instead. Due to the capacity of my food processor, I was only able to blend half of the recipe at a time. This way was a little more time consuming, but it still worked. Hopefully, you are more fortunate than I am, and own a blender. After it is blended smooth, leave this nice cocktail out overnight.

The next morning, strain the mixture (a basket style coffee filter works great) to remove any onion or garlic pieces into another container, and pour into a spray bottle. Voila! An all natural aphid repellent! Generously spray your plants affected or not with this mixture to rid your garden of nasty aphids. Store any unused portion in the fridge for up to a week.

I sprayed this on one of my iris that had a bunch on the emerging blooms before we left to pick up our bees, and when we returned, the aphids were dead and gone.  I will douse the rest of my rhizomes shortly to combat the yucky pests.  Now, if only it worked on gophers. :/

 Happy gardening and Earth Day! :)

Bzzzz!

We are adding another phase to our ever-growing homestead tomorrow. We are driving to Dixon to pick up our colony of bees! I'm excited and a little freaked out at the same time! I'm allergic to bees, so I don't know how I feel about 15,000 bees in such close proximity to my home. Yup. I put 3 zeros behind that 15. O.o Our garden will be awesome, though, with all the pollinating the bees will do. And I admit, I'm looking forward to the beeswax for my homemade lip balms I make and sell. Selling the honey at the farmer's market will be great, too. Okay. I guess they won't be so bad after all. Just as long as I don't have to go near the hive, right?

So the adventure begins...

If you told me nearly 9 years ago when I married my husband, Ryan, I would be living a Farmer Jane's life, I would have laughed.  In your face. Hard.  Something, like, soda probably would have come out my nose.  We were living in a one bedroom apartment in a booming little town east of Sacramento.  We had our little garden that consisted of strawberries, peppers, and tomatoes on our balcony, but it is nothing compared to what we have now.  It's taken us a little over 7 1/2 years to slowly move northeast to the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in Northern California.  We bought our house (now our homestead) in March of 2011, and have been transforming it into the farm you see today.  We are about 20 minutes away from the birthplace of the California gold rush in 1848.  Yup, that's how far we are from sprawling suburbia. :) On clear nights, we see stars, not street lights. 

9 years ago, I had never milked anything in my life.  Today, I milked our newly acquired mini-Nubian goat, Lizzy. Twice.  I got 8 eggs today from our flock of free-range chickens.  9 years ago, I couldn't even make scrambled eggs.  I'm considering heading to Hobby Lobby tomorrow to start making my own soap.  9 years ago, I should have own stock in Bath & Body Works. The list goes on and on.  It's amazing to see the transformation this Farmer Jane was undergone in the last 9 years. 

Though, tomorrow is a new day...