Five Apple Farm
All spring and summer and early fall of 2013 Larrapin Garden has been without a home. We knew we were going to move for many months so as the time approached I didn’t put in a spring garden, mostly for lack of time but also lack of heart with the weight of leaving another place I loved so much. Eight years before we had made the difficult decision to leave our home in the South Toe Valley of the Black Mountain range of North Carolina due to an intractable neighbor situation. If all our things are going on a truck, we reasoned, wouldn’t it be a good chance to spend time closer to parents in Arkansas? So we rambled off to the Arkansas Ozarks for a life season. It turned out to be one of my favorite life seasons so far.
Home has a way of calling you back though. Even though we were each born in other states, the highest mountains of Southern Appalachia had drawn us both like a magnet. After I spent a summer as a farm intern in the South Toe Valley of the Black Mountain Range I knew I had found home and planned to be in that place forever. Sometimes when you fall in love, you know you are signing on for life. So at first, the sojourn to the Ozarks felt like a disorienting twist in the life I had imagined. Once there however, I discovered the most delightful community of friends and farmers I’d ever known. I learned more about all things garden and farm than ever before working with stony soil of my land and the challenging Ozark climate. There were a couple of severe droughts, a grasshopper plague, a killer heat-dome summer and a negative 18 winter that tested my mettle and proved that Ozarkers have a toughness that I probably don’t! But it built up some resilience I didn’t have before. Summers could be brutal. But how I loved that sunlight every other season! I love the time I spent there with the land and with the people. There is amazing energy in Fayetteville, Arkansas and I found there dear friends I’ll keep for life.
Then life shuffles things around again and the call of home is strong. We finally made the decision to return to the Blue Ridge and look for a home somewhere within four counties in Western North Carolina or maybe even Southwest Virginia. I packed a new roll of prayer flags I’d received as a gift and my seedling-cup maker as talismans to help remind me that at the end of all the dreaded leaving and moving, there would be need for both at some new homeplace and new garden site. The moving was harder even than I remembered and the leaving the hardest of all.
We settled in a funky rent house with a great view for the long search for an affordable little farm. That search was often depressing. There was right house-wrong land. Level or gently sloping land with southern exposure is very hard to find here and considered quite dear. Then there was right land-totally wrong house. And of course a lot of right land + right house but totally wrong price!
Then there’s that moment when you step out of the car with the real estate agent and your breath catches to see it. It took Mendy and I only a few minutes of walking around to realize we’d found what we were looking for: a sturdy brick rancher on five acres of mixed open field and forest, south facing. All good, even before counting the lovely little creek, the old apple orchard, chesnut and walnut trees, and the full-gravy bonus of a tiny old guesthouse for visiting friends and family. Pure joy followed by several grueling weeks of post-housing-crash bank loan process. My filing cabinet has never been thoroughly interrogated and tortured. I had set up a card table to find and sort all the obscure documents the bank requested. But finally, buyers, sellers, bankers and lawyers sat around a table and we signed over and over and over and happily.
We have a home back home. Really back home – the new place is only about a mile as the crow flies from the home we left eight years ago in the South Toe Valley of the Black Mountain Range of these old, old Appalachian mountains. We have named the new homeplace Five Apple Farm in honor of the little orchard as well as my lifelong connection to apple trees. With my tree planting habits there will likely be many more apple trees in the future..but the name feels perfect.
Thank you for stopping by this blog and I hope you’ll visit often and see what happens from the simple start of putting a shovel into the soil of former back lawn and envisioning a garden there — as well as a landscape surrounding it that is larrapin to the birds, butterflies, bees and wildlife and gardeners alike. We’ve been here since mid-October and it’s been a slow start to nesting, but we are starting that process now. Welcome to the new Larrapin Garden, beginning all over again.
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Sowing seeds of a future garden?
One thing you learn about fall gardening is if you are going to have greens like these through the winter, you should have started them in mid-August. If you did, you will thank yourself all winter. Your chickens will thank you too—as this Buckeye back at the old Larrapin Garden did.
Larrapin Garden has been in transition this year as we moved back home to North Carolina. This required getting a rental house and that has not been good for gardening as I am loathe to plant in a place I’ll only be a few months, even though my wiser inside-voice says to plant wherever you are, no matter how long you think you will be there. So here are some used deli containers I’m going to use to start some fall seeds.
I’d like to say I’ve overcome my dislike of rentals, but that would not be true. Instead, we have found and fallen in love with a home and the magical five acres around it in the high mountains above Burnsville, NC. If all the stars align and the fates allow, we hope to close on our new home this coming Friday, the day before my birthday.
Needless to say we’ve been asking everyone we know for good energy, thoughts and prayers that all will go as we hope. As a kind of ‘act of faith’ I’m starting seeds for some fall greens in a garden I hope to begin very soon.
This required getting out the big seed-stash box. Unlike most of my belongings that are still packed, I knew exactly where this box was.
So that’s lettuce on the left and my own “Larrapin Kale” on the right. I’ll use these little trays to start the seeds till they are about a half inch tall, then will pot up into newspaper cups. And if I get really really lucky, later this fall there will be some lovely raised beds in this pretty spot by the stream, the possible, hopeful future home of Larrapin Garden. I’ll keep you posted!
—A Larrapin Garden…on the cusp of new home in the Blue Ridge of North Carolina. Leigh’s posts on this blog may be boom or bust depending on the season, but if you subscribe here you’ll get one weekly email—usually on Wednesdays—to let you know what’s new. You are also invited to get garden related miscellany and recipes at the brand new Facebook page or on Twitter.
Read MorePutting the Bees to Bed
The weather report said it would be the last sunny, wind-free day in the mid sixties for at least a couple of weeks. As we headed into December, actual winter or at least what passes for it these days, was about to begin. One beehive still needed to be sized down a bit, consolidated into fewer boxes so the colony would be better able to keep the space warm through whatever cold nights and windy days we might have. I’d arranged the other hives a month ago, but West hive had been crazily overflowing with bees. I couldn’t imagine making their quarters any tighter, so I’d waited till they thinned out a bit for the season.
Bees “cluster” in the winter, form a pulsing ball of thousands of bees with the queen safely sheltered in the center. The bees vibrate their bodies to create heat. As the outermost layer of bees tire and get cold, they rotate toward the center, and their warmed-up sisters take their turn in the outermost layer. Fueled by the store of honey they worked all summer to stash, this process goes on constantly anytime temps in the hive fall much below 50F. At the center of that pulsing cluster, the queen basks in cozy 95 degree bee-generated warmth.
I put plenty of wood chips in the smoker because in the fall and winter the bees are at their most defensive. That honey stash is life or death for the whole colony and they are hellbent on protecting it even if the beekeeper is not interested in taking any honey. You can’t be too careful, the bees would say. I suited up more carefully than usual, put on the thicker dishwashing gloves rather than the thin ‘nurse’ gloves I usually use. Doublechecked my jeans tucked into my boots for bee-sized openings.
In Spring and Summer the typical lifespan of a honeybee is six weeks. But the winter bees are born for a special job and live for months in a near-nonstop vibrating process of working to keep the colony alive. You can put your ear to the hive in winter to hear and feel a low steady vibration. Over the winter these determined workers die off steadily but with full honors. On warmer days the workers muscle up funeral duty and haul the fallen to the doorstep and..toss them off. Honor sure, but duty to keep the hive clean comes first.
I began to take apart the top boxes of the hive. The most difficult part was pulling out frames of empty comb and combining frames with honey into fewer boxes. The bees glue the whole hive together with propolis, a tarry glue they make that is the honeybee equivalent of duct tape. Propolis is also sold as an antimicrobial medicinal at health-food stores. The bees use it to make their home strong, windproof and highly unlikely to come apart. In summer it’s gooey and sticky and just makes a mess. In the cooler temps, it is as hard and strong as caulk and every frame had to be pried loose with great effort. All while trying not to make the jarring, banging or jerking movements that piss bees off and sometimes crush bees which REALLY pisses off the bees. I didn’t venture into the lower boxes where most of the bees were gathered, for obvious reasons. (Photos below courtesy of my friend Marianne, from back in May.)
Winter is a critical time for a colony of honeybees. Survival depends on many only-ifs. The colony will make it through winter only if there are enough bees to create a cluster large enough to both maintain heat all winter and to have enough workers remaining to nurse their replacements to adulthood in the Spring. That’s only if the queen survives to lay the eggs to create those replacement troops. And only if they have enough food to fuel this 24/7 process. The colony is also at highter risk for the some diseases brought on by close quarters, and other illnesses brought on by the parasitic mites that have been one major factor in the decline of honeybee populations.
As I worked through the upper boxes of the hive I saw West Hive didn’t have as much honey stored as I’d hoped, but being a first year hive coming out of a drought year, that’s not too surprising. Most new hives will require supplemental feeding at first. I’ll use thick sugar-water mixed with nutritional oils to try to get them through till Spring. Sugar is better than the corn syrup used by some beekeepers but still not nearly as good as honey. Even if I could afford to buy honey to feed this colony, the risk of transmitting diseases from another bee yard would not be worth it. Hopefully as I have more hives, I can store extra frames of real honey from established hives to gift to new hives their first winter.
West Hive was gentle with me after all. They allowed me to get the boxes ready for winter while only giving me a loud buzzy warning to do it fast and don’t mess with the lower boxes. I agree. Putting the bees to bed for winter feels both warm and worrisome. I’ll keep an eye on them during mild winter days to see if they are venturing out and make sure they still have enough food. I’m cheering them to stay tough and make it through till Springtime brings the flowers and sunshine back. Till then, stay warm and safe, sweet sisters.
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First Frost at Larrapin. And Basil.
The mound of basil spread on a magenta towel on top of the washing-machine is starting to wilt. Last night leaves stood up from the stems, crisp and fleshy at the same time, like a cat’s ear. This morning it is a soft, pungent pile. I pick up the bundle and turn the whole thing over, fluffing the leaves apart. A cloud of verdant scent rises as if summer exhaled. My hands now carry the spicy odor, even typing this later, sharp and earthy at the same time. The leaves need to lose a little more water to the room air before I put them in the herb dehydrator. Otherwise it will take days to dry completely—as it must be to get crumbled and funneled into the bottle labeled Basil.
October 7th, last night, was first frost. Just more odd timing in a year filled with weather oddities here in the Ozarks. Halloween has been a more common frost date in the seven winters I’ve lived here. But this is the year no winter to amount to anything ever came in late 2011. I kept thinking the cold would catch us off-guard the following spring. But it never bothered. The figs that usually freeze to the ground and must regrow from there had green buds high on living branches in early April. Peach blossoms so often nipped by late frosts were untouched and lit up the branches like pink birthday candles. Those same branches would be stressed by severe drought a few short months later. The new queen of weather is bipolar compared to the more reliable ruler she overthrew. A coup d’état by carbon apparently.
The winter we missed last year acts in a hurry to catch up. At least for a night. The surprise low of 27 predicted only reached 32 at our house, set on a slope in the “sun bowl” as we call it. But 32 is more than enough to brown or blacken basil. So last night had me once again gardening by headlamp. I located and cut the huge basil plants I’d put in late that had not flowered yet. This means peak flavor. Today I will pluck the leaves off the stems and arrange them like puzzle pieces on the racks of the dehydrator. Then set the thermostat only at 95 so the most scent and color will be retained. Though it will take them two or three days at least to get fully dry this way, it’s the only way to keep the full flavor. I want the taste of this basil to be strong enough to cut through a winter day. I want the scent sharp as a green blade, smelling as if it were plucked right from the perfumed hands of Summer herself.
—A Larrapin Garden, where the basket of basil picture shown at the top was—full disclosure—actually the September batch I used to make a winter’s worth of pesto. I *love* basil so I grow a lot, as you can see and read. It takes at least half as much as you see in the picture, after drying and milling, to fill a full-sized container for the spice cabinet. Lotta summer in that little bottle! Like Larrapin Blog? Please subscribe to get blog posts in one weekly email. You can also get bonus links, giveaways and recipes by “liking” the Facebook page or following on Twitter. Thanks! Leigh
Read MoreArkansas Drought Continues…
When I look at the vegetable garden in this photo, it doesn’t seem like we’re in a severe drought. Walk out there and clouds of grasshoppers (who thrive in parched conditions) fly away like those horrid flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz. I try to walk in a direction that sends them into the chicken pasture, to the delight of the hens as they scramble to catch them with moderate success. Mendy prefers to catch them with a minnow net and using them to fish for catfish with great success. In the garden, the wonderful t-tape irrigation system seems to be keeping most things going. We’ve even had a bumper crop of tomatoes this week and already the freezer is filling up with tomato sauce for winter.
But any drive out in the countryside these days—like the one I took in Madison County this week—will show the drought very clearly. The fields that have tall grass are pure gold at a time the fields are usually still green. With the lone oaks in all that golden grass it looks just like parts of California I once visited, not Arkansas in midsummer. Many fields have been grazed down completely (and probably finished off by grasshoppers) and the farmers are having to feed cattle hay already. In midsummer. That’s not good.
This map puts Northwest Arkansas in the best portions of the state, and Fayetteville and eastward seemed to get some rain this week. But Larrapin Garden is on the Oklahoma side of town and not a drop has fallen. I think we’ve had one good rain of about an inch here back in May, and a couple of days with a less-than-half-inch shower that didn’t even wet the dust under the trees. I have a feeling this particular microclimate, a rocky high plateau, is a deeper shade of orange than most of NWA. And if this is merely “severe,” I really hope I don’t have to see “extreme” or “exceptional.”
Drought is obvious stress to the land, trees and wildlife. Less obvious maybe, but it’s a wearing stress on people who love the land, trees and wildlife. I’ve been feeling a lot of that lately. I’ve been reading about the projected climate for our region in the upcoming years, and frankly, the news isn’t good: more heat, droughts more frequent, and when it does rain, more heavy rainfall events more associated with flooding rather than those long slow soaking rains that get deep into the ground. The projections sound a lot like what I’m reading so often in the paper now. This week it was drought in the midsection of the country, flooding in Houston, or was it Florida..no that was last week.
It’s sobering, to say the least. Then I started reading Bill McKibben’s latest book Eaarth—trying to really educate myself on the changes I’m seeing in the land —and well, the first half of the book can certainly make a person wish to be much, much less sober. As in, eat, drink and be merry because… well, you know. I’m pushing on through, because he says that creating hopelessness and apathy is exactly what he’s trying NOT to do. No Bill, the depressingly well-documented facts you quote will do that on their own! As in current facts, not future projections. Still, I really want to get to the ‘what to do’ portion of the book —which sounds akin to the Transition Town movement — and past the current climate-facts portion. Yikes.
Meanwhile, I’m spending time studying on techniques for resiliency for the land and gardens here at Larrapin, mostly found in permaculture books and websites. The small applications of permaculture I’ve tried here at Larrapin have been quite convincing. On a grander scale, this set of before/after photos of these permaculture techniques in action in climates far more inhospitable than ours is grounds for realistic inspiration in my opinion. I’m particularly amazed at the size of some of these successful projects…the kind of news I only wish I could get via mainstream news instead of still-obscure Australian internet sites.
So it seems the challenge of climate change for me is this: how to stay grounded in both gratitude and reality. As usual, I’m finding lessons—both somber and hopeful—on both in the garden.
Thanks for stopping by Larrapin Garden. If you are reading via email, please check out the website for recent posts on garden spiders, how “nurse” gloves are handy in beekeeping, how to cool off with a stock tank, and hints for keeping wildlife and trees alive in dry summer heat.
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