Robb has been including a fair amount of beets in the CSA boxes, so I have been saving them up to make one big dish instead of using them up individually. After a lifetime of turning up her nose at beets (it isn’t hard to do when your parents only serve gross canned grocery store beets), Kristin ate some pickled beets while she was on the road. She really liked them, so I decided to do a quick pickled version. She liked these as well…

Baby beets work great for this recipe.

1 – Remove the tops from the beets. You can use the beet tops in juices, soups or stocks if you want. I haven’t gotten that far with them yet.

2 – Wash the beets and boil for 20 to 30 minutes or until they are tender.

3 – Rinse with cold water and hand peel the skins. The skins will come right off just using your fingers.

4 – Mix up a marinade consisting of a pinch of finely crushed garlic, a pinch of dried oregano, a pinch of dried basil, one tablespoon of oil, one tablespoon of honey, 1/2 teaspoon of dried mustard (if you have it) and 1/4 cup of fruit scrap vinegar of whatever vinegar you happen to have.

5 – Slice the beets and add them to the marinade.

6 – Let the beets marinate for an hour, stirring occasionally.

7 – Enjoy the beets as a side or add to a salad of local lettuces, goat feta and radishes…

Yesterday I went to pickup Kristin from her two week tour with Bellafea, and I stopped by the land to check on how the cover crops were coming along. The clover is sprouting up pretty nice, but doesn’t yet have true leaves.

The spring oats are way behind the clover. I managed to find a few just sprouting and a few sprouted and rooting.

Plenty of plants and trees are in bloom at the farm including a huge swath of daffodils.

The apple trees were flowering and bringing in loads of pollinators including some wasps and swallowtails.

And speaking of pollinators, I stood and watched honey bees flying to a hive that I thought was dead just a few weeks ago, little bullets heading towards me from the fields. I managed to find a close place where they were foraging.

From bee school, I know that these girls are at least 22 days old and half their lives are over. The one in the bottom picture is probably older than that as her wings are a bit tattered. They will literally work themselves to death and will most likely die in flight to or from the hive.

Saturday morning was the first session of the beekeeping class that I signed up for last month. There were over a hundred people in the class, which is a very good sign of the current interest in beekeeping. At the end of the class (in eight weeks) there will be an opportunity to take a written and practical test to become a Certified Beekeeper.

According to the North Carolina State Beekeepers Association master beekeeper webpage, there are 3,500 individuals in the master beekeeper program of which seventy five are Master Beekeepers and twelve are Master Craftsman Beekeepers. The rest are Certified Beekeepers, the entry level.

The instructor outlined three basic rules for beekeeping -

1. Never go into the hive without a reason.
2. Never go into a hive without seeing either the queen or eggs. Seeing eggs means that you had a queen at least 72 hours prior to opening the hive.
3. There are a hundred ways to lose a queen.

The instructor also outlined some basic expectations for the beginning beekeeper. Based on what he said, I should have reasonable expectations about hive success and failure. I should expect to lose a hive at some point, but I should also expect to learn from it. I should not expect honey the first year, and I should not expect hands on help from an experienced beekeeper.

Some more highlights from the first class -

1. From 1984 to 2004, 50% of the genetic alleles (options) in the honeybee have been lost.
2. The state of North Carolina is considering passing a law preempting municipal banning of beekeeping within town limits. This law would help in promoting backyard hobby beekeeping.
3. Every human being is allergic to bee stings, and there is no rhyme or reason to the severity of the sting at any given time.
4. Bees cannot navigate very well when it is overcast.

If you want to follow along at home, our text book is Beekeeping for Dummies. Read chapters two and four.

This past weekend Kristin, Noel and I went up to the land for a bit, visiting our beloved Wolfden. Sunday we had breakfast at the General Store Cafe in Pittsboro then dropped Kristin off in Carrboro. She is going on tour with Bellafea for two weeks.

Noel and I then headed to the land to put down some cover crops. This will be the first step we have taken to get the farm started.

I bought two hundred pounds of organic spring oats from Seven Springs Farm and fifty pounds of yellow sweet clover from Welter Seed & Honey.

The rate for each was fifteen pounds of clover per acre and forty eight pounds of oats per acre. To figure out our acreage, I looked for a cheap measuring device.

I picked up a walking measuring tape for cheap off The eBay. The three of us each guessed how big the front strip of land was. Noel said four, Kristin said three and I said two and half. When Noel and I got done walking it out and doing the calculations, we ended up with one and a half acres. We were all way off, and I found out that an acre is a lot of dirt.

From the marker by the bag to the road at the top of the picture is one and a third acre.

We decided to put down every seed that we brought on every piece of bare land we could find. Hopefully in a couple weeks there will be some good growth on the ground, and we can start to choke the weeds out. A good start and a productive day…