Naming of the Farm

Finally!! Sunday, October 11th 2015 - early morning, we finally all agreed on the name of the farm with help from Jim, a family friend.

Welcome to HEARTWOOD FARM

Heartwood Farm - in the heart of an 800 acre pine forest, heart wood pine flooring throughout the house, a farm designed around the heart of relationships - connections existing and developing on multiple levels.  WOW!   A momentous day for us all!  We also have to thank Rebecca & Josh.  They are currently building a house made of sandbags on top of a mountain.  They shared the idea of designing a life around a central concept.  And from that idea, we were able to design the name of the farm around the main reason Zac & Rachel bought a farm and changed their lives - So thank you to all those relationships that helped us arrive at our naming day!

Moving on... lots of exciting new things.  

First, with Jim's help, we built a rocket stove out of the clay of the farm!!  a type of efficient wood-burning stove.  We mixed the clay with water that was setup on a large plastic sheet.  Then we all took turns jumping on the mixture to blend the clay and water.  Then...we took handfulls of clay to form the unique chamber.  As you can see, it is shaped like a shoe. Wood is gravity fed into a "J-shaped" combustion chamber, from where the hot gases enter vertical secondary combustion chamber creating an extremely high temperature.  

Next....Building a tree house

Alyce and Zac working it!  Sometimes it is hard to watch them balancing on precarious ladders

Now for the bounty of what is left in the garden as the cold weather arrives...

Biggest sweet potatoes I have ever seen

I made sweet potato fries that night sprinkled with the sage from the garden.  Later in the week, Zac made several sweet potato pies!  

Which bring us to our first fire in the wood stove.

Fall has arrive with sweet potato pies, wood burning stoves and beautiful colors.

Heartwood Farm Pond

I have been surprised by the number of couples, Zac & Rachel's age, that we have met making the tough decision to change their lives to a more sustainable, meaningful experience.  They have left behind the known, for the unknown of something different.  They share stories of physical and emotional challenges - from the land, from their extended families, and from financial security.  They are designing new lives around authentic relationship.  I am so glad to be a part of this journey....

That's me that smells like pig poop - Welcome back to the farm

I just returned from three weeks in Kodiak, Alaska.  My first thought, after hugging all the people, was to check on the bees and the pigs.  The bees were still alive - and that was a good thing.  The pigs were enormously fat and much larger than when I had left.  That means their dirty noses went above my bog boots when they came to search for food from me.  All was good.

I then went on a walk with the grandkids to check out the stream down the road.  The tall grass had been laid down by the recent rain and we were able to walk down to the stream bed.  I started smelling this poop and the kids assured me it was "beaver poop" which, by the way, was very big! (so they told me) Wow, I thought, it smells vaguely familiar!  Then we walked home.  Boy those beavers were up to something, because that beaver poop smell followed us down the road.

When I got to the house and started to take off my boots, I realized that the pigs' noses had covered my boots with dirt (mixed with poop) and there was the familiar smell I had recognized!  I told Rachel the funny story about the 'beaver poop' and her response was - "welcome home!"

I have no pictures this blog because we were in Kodiak Alaska for 3 weeks visiting our daughters.  But it was easier to leave that beautiful place knowing we were returning to a beautiful place.  The leaves are just now beginning to turn yellow around the area and the cool air has moved in.

Now a bee FYI...don't feed bees outside their hive! 

So I thought I was being clever.  During the fall, if your hive does not have enough honey to feed it during the winter, you have to feed your bees sugar water to help stimulate them to pull out more wax to fill with honey.  I had bought top feeders that fit on top of the box that you fill with sugar water.  I tried it 2 times and realized that I was leaving for Alaska and I couldn't ask anyone to fill them up.  I found this article that you fill a bowl with grass and the sugar water and set it off from the hive.  This way my son could periodically refill the bowl to feed the bees much easier. 

When I returned home and saw they were still alive, I decided that I had found a much easier way to feed the bees then the top feeder.  I was a clever girl...until this morning.

Before the sun rose, I went to feed the pigs and my hive was already awake and all the bees were hanging down and covering the entrance.  There were angry bees flying all over the place.  The bees don't usually come out of the hive until the sun comes up, so this was very unusual - and scary!  I don't know enough to be sure, but it struck me that robbing was going on because the bees were protecting their entrance rather than swarming out.  I had mentioned the method I had found to feed the bees to the beekeeper I work with the day before.  He made an interesting comment which stayed in the corner of my brain tickling it with a little worry because I didn't understand what he meant.  He asked if my hives were being robbed - no, at the time they were not.  But this morning, what he said came barreling down to the forefront and I UNDERSTOOD that I had created a robbing state by advertising to the area that there was free sugar water right by my hives!!  And so the bees from everywhere came to partake, then followed my bees to their hive and a big fight began... Super Bummer!  Live and learn - yet again..

So it is good to be back to the smells, the views, the animals, the routines...and the people!  As I finish writing this, I can still hear my bees from inside my house!!!