Red Fire Farm

[magid]

I'm wishing there were a farm share pick up today, like Wednesdays ought to have, so instead I offer photos from a visit to the farm back in June (June 18, to be precise).

The share includes some pick-your-own things, and the Boston folk can pick lots at once, since we're unlikely to make it out to Granby all that often. Happily, theora offered to drive us (in a Prius; they take some getting used to, even as a passenger!). Once we got there, we picked peas. Eight pints of peas, to be precise.

This is a view of most of the farm buildings over the pea fields. There's a garage on the far left; that's a neighbor across the street.



Then we walked back to the strawberry fields (*pauses for ob Beatles moment*), which are back towards the trees, after the bend in the road.



We each picked ten quarts of strawberries. They're little ones, not the huge sort found in the supermarket, so it took a while. We picked and picked and picked, happy to breathe strawberry-scented air.



Once the work was done, we looked at the non-plant denizens of the farm.

Just past the strawberry fields were the beehives (live ones, as the sign so helpfully points out). Something about the prevalence of pink amused me.



In the shed by the pea fields, there were a few goats. One was a tired kid, napping on the windowsill.



The others were more alert.



And there were chickens! All sorts of different varieties. I'm wondering when I can order an egg share... (also, what kind of chicken that one at the top of the ramp is).



I liked how the black one was shadowing the white one.

Comments

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Wow, the beehives are stacked really close together. Or is that just a trick of the camera angle?

My parents had hives, but lost them to CCD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder) a few years ago. (Boy, do I miss getting honey in, literally, gallon spring-water bottles, several of them, in early September. The comb, I could do without: never liked the wax in my molars.) I didn't take much part in caring for them, having moved out by then, but had the impression that the hives themselves generate quite a bit of heat and need good air flow around them, both for cooling and for evaporation of water off the honey, so it doesn't end up fermenting or fungusing. So the photo kind of surprised me.

[magid.livejournal.com]

They looked close together from where I was, but I don't know if that was a distance + angle = false impression situation. Or whether that was a temporary configuration. There wasn't anyone around I could ask...

The previous summer I got a big jug of honey there (I think it wasn't theirs; they have some other local products at the farm stand in the barn), and I'm still using it!

That's such a shame about your parents' hives. Do they want to get new ones? (CCD is why I am always happy to see the bees around. A bee-free world would be a very sad place indeed.)

Side note: I have friends whose minhag is to use honey on their challah year round, and for Rosh Hashana, they use honeycomb, to distinguish. I don't love the wax, but if it's a small enough proportion, it's ok.

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

No; they were pretty distraught --the bees were pets, in a sort of weird way-- when they found the hives, one weak, the others dead and gone and fungusy. That was before CCD was something you read about in the papers, too.

Now they feel they don't have time, and my brother, who did much of the heavy lifting, has moved out of their house. Once the kids are old enough not to need the yard (and to have sense to stay away from the hives) I'd like to keep a hive or two myself --I know a little about how to handle them, and also the arguments to make when the city tries to tap me for zoning (and in any case, are bees really worse than BC students?)-- I really do miss the honey, and the world needs more bees. (I keep trying to get Gideon to direct his little endangered species club at school--Shai's the founder, I think-- away from the charismatic megafauna and into bees and the poor white-nosed bats. The world will be a lot better off without polar bears than it will be without bees. But does he listen? No! Lemurs are cute.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I can imagine that would be distressing. (And how do you dispose of a hive? I mean, I can't picture wrapping it up and leaving it for the trash collectors...)

That would be excellent if you could keep bees! (I know I've heard about a group of beekeepers around, btw.) And I agree, bees don't get no respect when there's lemurs and polar bears... (I admit to having fond polar bear memories, from going to what was then the Worcester Science Center.)

[lucretia-borgia.livejournal.com]

Oh, they've still got the boxes, frames, etc. You get over it, then you scrape everything down, wash them out, leave 'em to dry, and put 'em in shed.

As to the bees, wax, and contaminated honey: I think they dug a hole and buried them.

And yeah, there're a lot of beekeepers around, but none in Brighton that I'm aware of. At least, I haven't seen anyone's hives. Norfolk Aggie used to have a course, and it generally had a wait-list, but I think I could skip the course, it's not like you can't get a queen and starter bees without a certificate or anything.

PS

[magid.livejournal.com]

A possible solution to CCD.

[neorock.livejournal.com]

on my birthday :)

[magid.livejournal.com]

Hey, happy birthday! belated...