Blog - Page 29 of 40 - Five Feline Farm

How Do You Do All That?

One of the most frequently asked questions about the Farm is “how do you have the time to do all this?” It’s a question we even ask ourselves sometimes. There are only two of us working this hobby farm. No employees, no volunteers, no interns. There are some things that we do contract, but those are the big things like installing a generator or building a garage. The day-to-day is all us.

There is always something to be done. Build garden beds. Plant those gardens. Inspect the beehives. Prepare for the 18th Street Farmer’s Market. Document what we do on the blog and Facebook. Not to mention the regular everyday chores that keep a household running.

And of course cater to the every whim of the felines.

We tend to be self-reliant and try to figure out a way to do for ourselves whenever possible. That includes lots of hard physical labor, repurposing, creating and constant improvements to the Farm.

Back to the question at hand. How do we have time to do all this?

Everyone has the same 24 hours a day. It is all in how you choose to spend your 24 hours. It is important to us to build this hobby farm into a viable business, so we make decisions about our time accordingly.

Sometimes it comes down to planning. What thing can be accomplished in the 15 minutes before signing on to the computer for work? It only takes a minute to pour leftover apple cider into a jar and cover it with cheesecloth to make vinegar. Maybe 30 seconds more to add a bit of mother from a previous batch.

We try to break down projects into manageable tasks. Preparing for new package bees requires location preparation, hive box building, setting up the new hive and preparing a starter batch of two gallons of syrup per hive. All of that happens before the bees actually arrive. These steps have been in progress for over two months with each step wedged in whenever time allows.

Lists are key. When life gets busy there is typically a to-do list on the kitchen counter. Either of us who has a spare moment will check the list and take care of a task that will fit into that moment. This keeps us focused and gives a sense of achievement when we can scratch through the final task on a list.

So it really is a matter of choices, planning and hard work. We look for efficiencies to maximize our time and effort, but there is no shortcut to doing a job well.

Thank you for following our blog and your interest in Five Feline Farm. We’re always up to something, so keep an eye on our Facebook page for up to the minute action.

Hobby Farm Transformation

It’s been just over eight years now living on this slice of the country we call Five Feline Farm. At first it was just the “farm”, a tongue-in-cheek expression of this postage stamp sized property in the midst of large acre farms. Now it is becoming much more than that. Slowly, with the requisite blood, sweat and not a few tears, it is transforming into a hobby farm. A place to host the next phase of life.

But the transformation goes beyond the land. In this process of making something new, we are being transformed.

Beekeeping has changed our perspective on many things. We are trying to be better consumers and more aware of good practice in land management. Our focus is more basic than sustainability, settling into the more practical mantra: “if it’s good for the bees, it’s good for us”.

Then there are things that we have learned intuitively or by observation. Yes, these are things that can be read in books and maybe everybody knows it. There is something about the experience that anchors the lesson.

Things like the moon rising an hour later each night, until finally it rises unseen in the daylight. Birds begin their nesting just as the fur bearing animals, like our cats, start shedding their winter coat. Cat fur surely makes a comfortable place to lay an egg. Noticing that the Juncos leave just before the hummingbirds return for the summer.

Through these experiences comes a deep soul satisfaction. A oneness with the land and nature that just feels right.

It is right to take care of the land that will provide food for us and wildlife. Right to reduce or eliminate chemicals used on property we control. Smart to reduce the need for artificial amendments by moving to a no till garden with careful crop rotation and green manure.

It is a lot of work to reconstruct this once forgotten land. Our passion for what it can become makes it less work-like.

Five Feline Farm is already growing beyond our wildest dreams. Follow us on Facebook. Signup to get blog posts delivered to your email inbox.

You never know what may happen next.

Foraging For Food in Winter

Oh, the longing to forage some fresh food. Perhaps something from the garden. Maybe the woods or the herb bed.

But it is February and our ancestors chose to settle in Central Illinois. Foraging in mid-winter is restricted by snow, low temperatures and a season of rest.

But we still want to eat fresh foods.

Local foods.

Whole food.

Food that has not been treated with chemicals or grown from some frankinseed that Grandma wouldn’t recognize. Food that is not processed from some combination of ingredients with five syllable names.

Forage In The Freezer

The freezer is full of seasoned tomato sauce, carrots, peppers, onions, garlic bulbils and chive blossoms.

Forage In The Pantry

The pantry holds rows of tomato juice, pickles, jellies, jams, pie fillings, hot pepper sauce and relishes. A basement grow station is providing fresh lettuce, basil and cilantro.

The vegetable part of our diet is now primarily home grown. Then there is the meat issue. We made a conscious decision not to grow, harvest or butcher our own meat, but have no desire to embrace vegetarianism.

Forage Down The Road

Winter foraging also includes checking out local sources for meat and staples. Somewhat like a scavenger hunt but delicious rewards.

Since this kitchen produces a significant quantity of baked goods, flour is a very important staple. We are now sourcing this locally from Hodgson Mill in Effingham, IL. Their grain is purchased as locally as possible, much of it is organic and all flour is milled in Effingham. Thirty miles down the road definitely qualifies as local.

Beef, pork and chicken are the next foods we are looking for locally. But we want more than just local. Pastured, free-range, no hormones and allowed to naturally graze are important features.

Each of these decisions brings us closer to a more healthful way of eating. That is the goal.

Are you making any changes in your approach to food? Post a reply and let us know what you are doing.

While you are thinking about food, check out Hodgson Mill.

And, if you haven’t already downloaded your free copy of The Wisdom of the Bees, it only takes an email address. Just visit our website: Five Feline Farm

Three Fabulous Reasons to Keep Honeybees

There are some very good reasons to host honeybees on your property. Then there are some FABULOUS reasons. Read on to find out why Five Feline Farm started in the honeybee business.

Honey of course. There is only one way to get real honey. From honeybees.

Whether you want honey just for personal use or to sell surplus, the only place to get honey is from honeybees.The worker bees spend the majority of their short lives gathering nectar and pollen from flowers. The nectar is returned to the hive, passed off to a sister bee and mixed with enzymes. This enriched nectar is placed in a cell, combined with the deposits of many other worker bees then fanned to dehydrate into honey. Once the honey has reached the perfect moisture content, the cell is capped off and the process begins again in the next cell. Naturally this doesn’t happen one cell at a time but hundreds of cells at a time by tens of thousands of bees.

2. Pollination. As the bees move from flower to flower they transfer pollen.

This is almost a side effect of the nectar gathering process. Honeybees have sticky hairs on their bodies that capture pollen granules when they visit flowers. As they move to the next flower and land, a bit of pollen falls off and pollinates that flower. Some crops such as almonds are totally dependent on the honeybee for pollination.

Although some of the pollen collection is accidental, there is also some intentional pollen harvesting. Pollen is a protein. It is mixed with honey and enzymes to create the “bee bread” fed to young larvae.

Here on the Farm, we have noticed improved production in the gardens after adding colonies of honeybees.

3. Fun. Honeybees are fascinating to watch.

We placed a bench just a few yards from the hives and off to the side. This creates an excellent place to sit in the evening to watch the bees come in with the fruits of their labor. Close observation reveals varying hues of pollen in the little pollen baskets on the worker’s back legs.

Trying to watch a single bee come out of the hive, take off from the entrance, circle once or twice and head out to the current nectar flow is amazing. I rarely use that word because it is so overused, but sometimes there is simply no other way to describe something. This is one of those times.

Do you agree with these FABULOUS reasons? Do you want to start keeping honeybees? If you do, start here to learn about some of the parts of the hive.