Garlic Scapes aka This Has Nothing To Do With Writing

As you may have observed if you care to pay attention to any of my online blathering, I do a strange assortment of things. First and foremost I am a children's book writer. That is what I always want to be doing. I work and volunteer at the library so I can be around books. But it's good to do something else. Something not book-centric. At least that's what my husband likes to tell me.

So what do I do? I ran a Cafe & Gallery this winter. We serve food. We sell art. We hold concerts. It's fun. We're only open for special events right now though because the man and I are busy with our main venture--organic garlic. Yup, we're growing garlic. Lots of it.

Garlic has a long growing cycle. We planted the bulbs last fall. No, it's not time for harvest yet, but it is time to cut scapes. Scapes, incase you don't know, are the long curled flower that grow out of the top of the garlic plant.

They're pretty, and tasty! I make a lot of pesto with them, and I just put a bunch of fresh curly scapes straight onto pizza and they were super good. Oh! And beer battered scapes! I'll have to make some of those soon too. Anyhow, we have lots of scapes. So many that I looked up how to ship them (it's easy!) and we're going to start selling this year instead of next like we planned. So..if you're interested, I have scapes for sale. $3.50/pound. Shipping in the US is between $5.35 and $11.35 depending on order size. You can email me for more info or to order them.

You wanna know something weird though? I found a tube of glitter in the garlic field the other day. Seriously. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. One perfectly sealed, sparkly tube of white glitter. It's good to know that my family is completely safe from vampires.

Swarm Capturing is Fun!

So, we were driving back from feeding our bees at our farm in town. Enjoying that we had an actual day off. The first in ages! We've closed the restaurant for a while. No one had soccer practice. It was sunny and warm and lovely.

Unfortunately, my husband has a really good eye...for swarms of bees. And when he sees one, he can't just pass it up. I pointed out that the swarm was in a really tall tree. Yes, of course we could get a ladder. But the branches were really skinny. It was more like a giant bush. It had danger written all over it. Alas, he has no fear.

So, we got permission from the tree owner. We borrowed a ladder, some rope, a saw, and some pruning shears from a friend who said, "heck no!" he wasn't going to come watch.

I held the ladder. It was leaned against a few rather spindly branches and the man without fear climbed up. He tied a rope around the branch with the swarm on it. Just about that time a couple of guys showed up who thought that seeing a swarm like that was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I didn't bother to mention that we captured five of our own swarms last year. I mean, the guys were super excited. Plus now we had helpers! While my boys looked on from the comfort of the car, I held the ladder, the new helpers pulled the branch down with the rope, and the man cut the branch.

Of course at this point, one might think we had a plan. One of the guys asked just that as the branch fell and we were showered with bees. I shouted to my boys to close the car door. Twice. (They seem to take after their dad in the fear department.) Our manly helper men ran around flailing and shooing bees off themselves. My husband sat in the tree, bees swirling all around him while I held onto the ladder with all my might because he had gotten so far out on that skinny branch it looked like it was about to snap. Bees rained down on me like angry black and yellow hailstones.

I had to laugh. I mean, I can't honestly say that I wasn't a little bit afraid. It would be silly not to be when there are 30,000 or so bees that could sting if they really wanted to. But they didn't. Bees usually only sting when they have a hive to protect or when they get squished. I actually felt pretty dang calm. I must be getting used to this beekeeping thing a little bit.

I had taken some photos to show you, but as luck would have it, my phone died today. Just imagine a big buzzing ball dripping from a branch. If you do want to see a photo of a swarm, google images has lots.

And yes, I do have a couple of bee stories swirling about here somewhere. Now that it's bee season I might just have to pick them up again.

Pruning

My husband and I have a small cherry and apple orchard down in the valley that we're managing. The other day I learned how to prune. I don't think I did a very good job. It was so hard!

There were so many branches. Which ones to cut? Which would create the best shaped tree that will ultimately bring forth the fruit in the best way possible? "Try to imagine the sun coming in and where it will hit when the leaves have all come in on the tree," my husband told me. But it was hard to see in my mind what the end result would be. There are no leaves, no fruit. Just bare branches. A lot of them.

So I trimmed. Here and there. I stood back and looked, trimmed some more. Just a little at a time. I didn't really have a plan. I think there is a lot more that needs to get cut back on the poor tree that I was pruning.

All that cutting made me realize how much easier it is for me to cut pieces out of my manuscripts than it is for me to cut live pieces from a tree. That seems weird because cutting a manuscript can be really hard. I think that perhaps cutting gets easier the longer you write. At least it has for me. I know when I write that not everything is going to work. And I never seem to have a fully formed plan when I sit down to write. I know that I just have to get it down on paper first. I do have some stories that carry over into years, but they have just been sitting, not growing. Maybe that's why they are easier to cut than a tree. I don't know. But I do know the pruning will make the trees better. They'll produce higher quality fruit. Of course, the cutting needs to be done correctly. So I'm going to have to practice.

One thing I have learned with my writing is that sometimes you can cut practically the entire story and take off in a completely new and unexpected direction and the story comes out even better than it was before. You can rethink your characters, change up your storyline, and by golly, take out those weak lines. You just might be surprised what you come up with. You'll never know until you make that cut! And, of course, you can keep a back up of the previous version in case the cutting doesn't work. I wish I could do that with trees!

Do you do a lot of cutting on your manuscripts? Do you find it hard? Do you have any tree pruning tips? Let me know!

Things that take time...

Sometime last fall, my husband and I decided that we should start doing some farming, so we planted some garlic...

The garlic is growing well so far.

Then we got some alpacas. They are happy out in their pasture.

Next we decided we should keep some bees. We had to have them down in town for a while because it was so cold and snowy up here on the mountain for so long, but they're home now. It's nice to sit and listen to the buzz of the bees.

Then we got three lambs. They were so tiny they could ride in the back of the car.

We plowed up some field. The whole family got in on it. Don't worry, the tractor goes like two miles an hour.

We even managed to get a herd of goats--sorry, they wouldn't pose for me.

So now we've got wheat planted.

And oats.

The lambs are getting big....

So there is a lot going on around here while we wait for things to grow. (I didn't even get a photo of my garden!) But I'm patient--I'm a writer after all. Plus I have lots of new inspirations all around. I just need to wander outside and sit in the grass. I hope that you take the time to find some summer inspiration too. I'd love to hear about what you find!

Beekeeping!

This winter my family decided that we wanted to keep bees. The world needs bees and they are disappearing at alarming rates due to pesticides and such. It's really quite scary to think about a world without bees. I don't even want to think about it, really. But I read about it because we started the project like we start most projects--by checking out lots of books and reading up!

We studied and ordered supplies and built hives from some blueprints that we found. The kids painted the hives and helped put together the honey frames. They were especially excited. Then we waited for the spring shipment of bees to arrive from California. It was a long wait, especially for the excited people in the family.

Another beekeeper in our area picked up the bees and drove them five hours to meet us. We met at the park and exchanged packages. The thing is, they'd already stopped and set their bees up, and a few had "gotten away" and were clinging onto the outside of the boxes. We had to drive eight long miles with them inside our car. We were a little worried, but needn't have been. The bees were totally mellow. They just wanted to stick together, and I have to admit, I felt kind of sad for the few that got left behind at the park. They no longer had a hive. My poor little pets!

The bees came in this box. There are about 3,000 of them in there I'm told. I'm not going to count though.

We set up the hives at an orchard in the valley since it's still so cold and flowerless up on our mountain. I find it amazing that the hives can be so close together yet the bees will only go to their own hive. Should be fun bringing the hives home in a month or so when it warms up. They're already reproducing. That means over 6,000 bees in the car. Eep!

It was a little bit scary when the cage was opened up. That's a whole lot of bees!

The queen is kept separate in a little teeny cage. She has to be removed first. Check out the man, no gloves or anything. Before the queen's cage can be placed in the hive a little cork has to be taken out and be replaced with a marshmallow so the bees can eat it and release the queen. With the first queen the cork was really tight and accidentally went inside the cage. It could have crushed the queen, but she escaped--onto my husbands hand!  Amazingly, he removed the cork from the cage, got the queen back into the dinky hole (without being stung) and stuffed the marshmallow in. I still can scarcely believe that fantastic feat!

The rest did not want to come out of the cage, silly bees! They actually had to be shaken and they plopped out in big clumps. We didn't even use smoke to calm them. I think they were tired out from their trip!

While the bees settled down into their hives my husband actually scooped some clumps of stragglers off the ground with his bare hand and put them on their hive. Why? He didn't want them to get left behind. And he's brave--very, very brave. After about fifteen minutes the bees had burrowed down into the frames so we put the lids on, filled their feeders with sugar water, and talked about how the workers look so different from the drones and how amazing it was that no one got stung and how long it would take before they would make honey; cool beekeeping stuff like that.

If you didn't notice, I'm not in any of the pictures. Like I said, I'm the helper and, well, there just wasn't much to help with. I guess pictures are helpful and hey, I was working! I mean, there's got to be a picture book story in here somewhere.



This was our favorite book that we found on beekeeping.