Swing set-the beginning

We’ve been talking about building the girls a new swings set for a couple of years now.  Their old one finally got too dangerous for them to play on.  This summer we started the first phase of the construction.  The work is in-progress and will probably be a work in-progress for a few years.  Like the rest of our construction projects, it will move slowly and be ever-expanding.  We never follow a set of plans, so there is never a true sense of “completion.”  Click on the image below to view the progress.

We have big ideas for the swing set.  After finishing off the tower with a railing and a roof.  We’re going to enclose the bottom portion and make it into a play house-there’s a lot of head space under a 7-foot platform-and build some planter’s around it.  We’re thinking of using cordwood construction techniques so the play house has a “fairy-like” design.  Perhaps we’ll even incorporate a “living roof.”

Next year we’ll build a bridge over to the woods behind it.  We’ve selected the perfect tree for a tree house.  The swings will hang under the bridge.  Every thing will be built extra big-well, because my husband and I want to play on it, too.

Blackberry wine

This is our second attempt at making homemade wine.  We tried to make some about eight years ago when I was in graduate school.  My husband and I disagreed about the level of cleanliness one needed to maintain.  After throwing away 5 gallons of dry strawberry-rhubarb wine and 5 gallons of peach wine, I proved him wrong.  This time, I am calling the shots-we’re doing things my way (hopefully, it will be the right way).

Our land gives us tons of blackberries each year and the harvest has become more fruitful with the pollination assistance provided by our honeybees.  My goal is to pick 36 pounds of berries so I can make two 6-gallon batches of wine.  I would have achieved this by now, except my girls love to eat blackberries (and they are so picky-they only eat the biggest ones).  I only have 2.5 pounds to pick-should only take an hour.

Last weekend I went to the local wine and beer making supply shop.  We started our first batch last Saturday.  Click the picture below for details and progress so far.

What’s next?  The girls swing set.  We’ve gotten a great start and it’s looking pretty good-especially when you consider that we decided not to follow plans and to make it up as we went along.

Gear, Girls, and Music

We spent an extended weekend at the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival in Trumansburg, NY and weeks preparing for the event.  I attended the festival a few times while I was an undergraduate studying chemistry (over 12 years ago!!).  Now that we have a family, we spend a lot of time in the kid’s tent and it is even more fun than before.  We had the girls for one day and one night, which was enough for them this year.  Next year, we’ll have them for two nights because they didn’t want to leave.  Click the picture below to view the story.

Our eldest daughter experienced an epic event while in the dance tent.  The singer of her favorite song (Jeb Puryear from Donna the Buffalo, “Positive Friction”) smiled and waved to her while he was on stage.  Now, she wants to be a guitar player/singer/dancer when she grows up.  We’re considering lessons for a Christmas present.  Our little one, now prefers YouTube videos of their live shows over nursery rhymes or Barney clips-and I am not complaining one bit!

What’s next?  Maybe, making blackberry wine

or building a new swing set for the girls.

Just a few updates-Beekeeping, Car Port

Once again we are caught trying to balance too many projects and I am finding myself in the middle of too many unfinished things.  Aside from our projects, we have a ridiculous amount of general maintance-firewood, lawn care, weeding…  The only high point is that our lawn tractor has been in the shop for the past few weeks, so we have an excuse not to mow our lawn.  Unfortunately, we won’t be able to mow for a couple more weeks and will have to devote an entire weekend to catch up on lawn care.

Beekeeping: I decided to get myself a full body beekeeping suit for myself, so I can help take care of the hives-dispite my fear of bees.  We also got one for our girls-my daughters are fascinated with our hives.  A couple of weeks ago, I got to open the hives to give them new pollen patties and fill their sugar syrup jars.  Click the picture below to hear the story.

Their sugar syrup jars have fallen victim to a midnight scavenger.  We’d find the jars removed from the feeder, sometimes yards away from the hives in the woods and empty.  We clamped the jars down using super large C-clamps. No luck.  We purchased a video camera with an infrared sensor to try to catch the culprit in the act.  Here’s a still photograph from the 30 second video-I think it’s a raccoon.  My husband is only 80% convinced that it’s a raccoon-there’s a part of him that thinks it’s our dog (ridiculous, our dog is brown).

Car port: The transformation of our car port from junk collection area to an organized place to store yard tools and potting equipment is well underway.  Click on the image below for the story.

What’s my secret weapon to getting things done around here?  My dad-handy man and amerature wood worker (and yes, he does like to play with children’s toys).

Our ever expanding deck-finally finished

We started working on our deck three years ago and we finished it last weekend. With our house and property built into the side of a hill, we have little flat space for the family to enjoy. And with over 600 sq. ft. of decking our girls have enough room to ride their bicycles, tricycles, and scooters.  Enjoy the story of our deck. Click on the picutre below.

What’s next?  Revamping our car port-what is now a sheltered place to store stuff before we figure out where to put it will become an organized, open air, garden shed.

Children’s Garden-95% complete

We decided to plant a garden for our daughters around the “mother-in-law’s house” that’s on our property.  It was the first dwelling.  The original homeowners, a NYC detective and his wife, used the little cabin to get away on the weekends.  They eventually built the main house and retired here.  The inside of the cabin is pretty rough and needs serious updating; eventually we’ll fix it up and turn it into a playhouse for our girls.  But, this season we established the garden on the outside.

We started working on the garden in the middle of April after the snow finally melted and last week marked the 95% complete point-which means I get to start something new.  We tried to use as much from the land as possible by transplanting wildflowers, relocating perennials, and going on “rock hunts” to get stones for the walkways.  But, I couldn’t resist buying a few plants and a ridiculous amount of seed packets.  The kids loved working on their garden and persevered through black fly season and the pine pollen, which at times looked like a yellow cloud blowing across the landscape.  This garden provided us with a venue for teaching them about flower anatomy, the life-cycle of plants, and how to properly handle frogs and worms.  The last 5% is simply additional transplanting as the garden fills-in and more perinnals make their appearance this summer.

Click on the image below for a tour of the garden (Don’t laugh too hard! This was my first attempt using Illustrator).

What’s next?  Finishing the deck, a three-year project will finally come to a close.

Beekeeping-introducing the new colony

This is our second season and third attempt in raising honey bees.  Obviously, we don’t know much about bees, so I wouldn’t take down any technical notes from us.  But, we keep trying.  Our first set skipped town half way through the summer-we have no idea what happened.  Our bee keeping mentor, who’s rather successful, caught us two swarms towards the end of July.  Whether they would make it through the winter was questionable.  A swarm in July.  Let it fly-that’s one of those beekeeping sayings.  And we should have.  They didn’t have enough honey to make it through the winter and it never warmed up enough for them to feed from the sugar-water feeder outside the hive.  Our beekeeping mentor lost all 34 hives, which all apparently suffered from the same phenomenon that’s affecting so many bee colonies around the country.

Last week “we” introduced two new colonies to our hives.  I say, “we,” because I am terrified of bees and this is why:

 

There’s my husband working with the hives, shaking his hands because he’s getting stung.  He’s crazy.  This is where John and I stay, across the pond-smart dog.

The bees come in the small crates pictured in the upper left-hand corner, with the queen in her palace shown below.  The worker bees chew through a plug in the chamber made of sugar to free her.  By the time she’s out, they’ve accepted her as the new queen. Note: this picture was taken by my brother-in-law when we got our first set of bees.  My husband got started this time before I could take a few preliminary pictures.

So, far all looks good.  The bees are actively flying in and out of the hive and we’ve even seen a few enjoying the dandelions in the yard.