Our package bees arrived last night after a long and harrowing trip from sunny Chico, California, to the cool weather of Minnesota. Â Their arrival was delayed a day after they were temporarily stranded in Wyoming due to a snow storm. Â Our bee supplier, who lives only about 15 minutes fromContinue Reading
Prior to building our smokehouse last year, Jesse used a home-made barrel smoker and an electric smoker to do all of his food smoking.  These styles of smokers limited him to hot-smoking, which is a process that actually cooks the meat slowly while smoking it by keeping temperatures above 150 degrees F. Cold-Smoking Cold-smoking is an entirely differentContinue Reading
I came across an article entitled “It’s Sow Easy” in my Northern Gardener magazine last winter about sowing seeds outdoors in winter.  Because I’m always looking for inexpensive ways to increase my perennial collection, I thought I would give this method a try.  The theory is to turn recyclables into mini-greenhousesContinue Reading
It was our understanding as beginning beekeepers that it was possible to winter our hive here in Minnesota so long as we took steps to help them through the harsh season. The first task was to provide the bees with sugar syrup (since we harvested most of their honey) for them toContinue Reading
After our first summer as beekeepers, we were fortunate enough to enjoy a moderately successful honey harvest. Jesse collected the full frames from the hive and we brought them into the house to start the messy process of extracting the honey from the comb. Using an electric uncapping knife, weContinue Reading
This old round-top barn on the property was one of the primary features of the old farmstead that we fell in love with. We had all kinds of fantasies about how we would use the barn: for horses, a sports area in the hayloft for the kids, a workshop… AfterContinue Reading
We have tried to grow pumpkins for the past several years and have always failed miserably.  Our first attempt consisted of digging up an area out in our field to plant a pumpkin patch.  The heavy clay soil was unfortunately not very amenable to pumpkin-growing.  Frustrated, we moved the pumpkin patch next to the barn.Continue Reading
Winters in Minnesota get cold. Really cold. On January 2nd, we woke up to temperatures of -30 degrees F. We have 11 laying hens that we do our best to keep somewhat comfortable during these frigid winter months. One of the strategies that we use is to bank snow upContinue Reading