The grounds continue to be a work in progress, so here is a brief report of what has been put in place so far.
Beehives
We’ve been chronicling this year in beekeeping on videos in previous posts (here and here). Right now we have two Langstroth hives (the big square ones) and three nucleus colonies (the small rectangular ones). Each one holds a colony of bees. Next week we’ll be building three types of hives and those colonies in the nucs will be moved into these new digs. We’ll document the building of the hives and installation of the bees here on the blog soon. We’ll also have these types of hives for sale, so stay tuned for that.
Potatoes
The potatoes are doing well but are not yet photogenic. I chitted and planted the potatoes, which you can see in a recent video, about two weeks ago. I’ve dug down and checked on a few of them, and while they are growing, they haven’t yet reached the surface.
Peas
Next to the potatoes are rows of peas with pea brush, which is small branches pushed into the ground to give the peas something to grow up onto instead of purchasing or making a formal trellis.
Downed Spruce
We took down a 70-ft spruce tree that was dying. I am currently finishing a video showing that process and how I am splitting the trunk up into timbers for use in building our chicken coop later this summer.
Raised Beds
The newest addition to the grounds will be a series of large raised beds. We’re holding a basic carpentry workshop this weekend, and part of the process will be building the walls for these beds. We’ll have pictures after the weekend.
Elsewhere
We also have a few areas where we haven’t gotten to clearing the brush to make way for the vegetable garden. A growing pile of brush will be ready for burning before too long; the ashes of which can be turned back into the garden. Slowly but surely the grounds are turning from an overgrown jungle to patches of tended garden.