Our Frog Pond with beaver lodge - on the bank

For more Wordlessness click here.

For more about beavers, their habitat, and the revelation that they can build lodges on pond banks click here.

Garden ornaments

Garden ornaments were everywhere at the New England Grows trade show in Boston this past weekend. Concrete and ceramic Buddhas, saints, rabbits, wooden trellises and rain chains . These containers reminded me of the hypertufa workshop that the Bridge of Flowers will be scheduling in April. I want to make a garden trough for alpines. Or succulents.

Miniature conifers

As I wandered around I saw this display of miniature and dwarf conifers – suitable for Fairy Houses. I only know about the Fairy Houses that children make out of bark, pebbles, moss and other natural bits and pieces but I doubt that they are in the market for miniature plants.

Fairy Garden landscape

I didn’t have to go far before I found this booth selling small items to outfit a fairy landscape and house.

Fairy Garden

It became clear to me that adults want fairy houses and fairy gardens as much as young children. We all want magic; some of us find it in the hidden places of our gardens – even if they are not  as well furnished as these. What kinds of ornaments do you have in your garden?

Mead is an ancient drink, essentially a wine made with honey instead of grapes. The great Norse hero Beowulf drank mead and feasted in a great mead hall 1500 years ago. Somewhere along the line mead fell out of favor as a popular drink, even in Scandinavia, but three young Greenfield men, Garth Shaneyfelt, Will Savitri, and Sam Dibble are brewing a mead they are calling Green River Ambrosia.

The first batch of Green River Ambrosia went on sale in the spring of 2008 and rapidly sold out, as have all subsequent batches. Currently the newly renovated meadery that shares space with Katalyst Kombucha at the Franklin County Community Development Center (FCCDC) brews mead, cyzer a hard cider fermented with honey instead of sugar, and an alcoholic ginger beer. As a participant and sponsor of this year’s Winter Fare events, they are brewing a special local Ginger Libation that uses ginger from Old Friends Farm in Amherst, Clarkdale cider, and Chang Farm schizandra berry juice. I am warning you right now, this is a very limited run. I tested it and it is delicious.

Will Savitri is the founder of Katalyst Kombucha, a fermented tea drink.

Sam Dibble who previously worked at Real Pickles which makes naturally fermented pickles, has worked as the brewer for Katalyst Kombucha for several years as brewer. “I’m Scandinavian, so of course, I know about mead halls. I’m also a beekeeper and I’ve been inspired by Dan Conlon of Warm Colors Apiary.”

When the FCCDC held a big event to show off the First National Bank building several years ago, Garth Shaneyfelt, who had recently moved to Greenfield, met Dibble and Savitri. Their mutual interests in bees, honey, and fermented drinks led them to mead, and the founding of Green River Ambrosia.

Since the equipment for making kombucha could also be used for brewing mead they were in business almost immediately. Getting the necessary state and federal permits and licenses took about six months, and their first 300 gallon batch of mead went on the market in 2008. Most of their honey comes from Warm Colors Apiary in South Deerfield, although Shaneyfelt said they have some hives of their own, and are now working with other small beekeepers. Over the last couple of years they have joined with Clarkdale Fruit Farm and Pine Hill Farm to make cyzer. Last year their cyzer won a gold medal at the International Mazur Cup competition in Boulder, Colorado.

Shaneyfelt explained “We are bringing a wine making mentality to our brewing, a vintage concept.”

“Every year the honey is different, depending on the weather and how that effects the honeyflow, “ Dibble added.

Traditional mead is made with only honey, water and yeast. It has an alcohol content similar to wine, between 12 and 13 percent.

Dibble said, “Honey adds flavor and complexity to our cyzer. The flavor of the apples is still there. Honey compliments the apples and balances the acidity. A wonderful interplay of flavor.”

Mead and cyzer take between six and nine months to finish the fermenting process and be ready to drink. Their ginger beer, called Ginger Libation and technically a wine since it contains no grain or malt, takes less time to ferment making it a useful quicker turn-around product. Shaneyfelt explained that before prohibition all ginger beer was alcoholic. Prohibition changed all that and now Green River Ambrosia may be the only brewery making alcoholic ginger beer in the U.S.

Shaneyfelt is the CFO which means he keeps the books, but all three make the point that this is a worker-owned company. They all do everything. “Brewer is just a fancy name for bottle washer.” Shaneyfelt said. “Cleanliness is essential when you are working with yeast in order to get the flavors you want.”

The meadery space at Katalyst Kombucha at the CDC was recently renovated. The walls, ceiling and floor are made of food-grade material and all are washable.  The equipment is the even higher dairy-grade stainless steel.

The business is growing steadily, enough so that two more worker-owners have been added to the crew, Brendan Burns who brought the recipe for ginger beer, and Sandy Pearson.

All five are committed to supporting local farms and beekeepers. Their motto is Think Global. Drink Local!

The various brews are available locally at Ryan and Casey and the Shelburne Wine Merchant as well as eateries like Hope and Olive and the People’s Pint.

As a former beekeeper myself, and a champion of bees and all the pollinators that are vital to our food supply, I was fascinated to learn about these new local drinks that are increasing the market our local farmers have access to. I give a cheer for every new agricultural and libation enterprise, don’t you?

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Winter Fare events begins on Saturday, February 4 with the Winter Farmers Market at the Second Congregational Church on Court Square. For full information about events logon to www.winterfare.org. The final events on Sunday, February 12 will be the Fifth Annual Cabin Fever Seed Swap at Green Fields Market meeting room from 12:30 – 4:30 pm. Bring seeds if you have them. They can be commercial seeds left over from last year or seeds you saved yourself. If you don’t have seeds, come anyway. There’s lots to learn, and extra seeds to take away.  At 5 pm Conway is having a Local Food Pot Luck Supper at the Conway Town Hall. For more information call Mary McClintock (413) 522-5932.

Between the Rows  January 28, 2012

Honeybees photo courtesy of beneficialbugs.org

What sweeter way to begin the Winter Fare activities that with a honey brunch at Green Fields Market.

Sweet Honey and the Brunch!
Sunday, February 5 between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., Green Fields Market, Main St., Greenfield

Green Fields Market will feature local honey in a variety of dishes for this special brunch.   While you enjoy brunch, Shelburne’s Piti Theatre Company will be buzzing with information about their new production about bees (and the challenges they’re facing) To Bee or Not to Bee. Piti is launching a “10% For the Bees” Campaign in collaboration with Greening Greenfield and High Mowing Seeds, encouraging the replanting of 10% of business and home-owner lawns with bee- friendly habitat. The co-op will donate a percentage of brunch sales to the production which will premiere at the company’s SYRUP: One Sweet Performing Arts Festival, March 17th in Memorial Hall, Shelburne Falls. Support the production at www.indiegogo.com/bee or learn more at www.ptco.org/bee.

Then put this interesting movie on your Winter Fare calendar.

Film Showing: “King Corn”

Wednesday, February 8, 7 p.m., Sunderland Public Library, School St., Sunderland

King Corn is a documentary about two friends and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation: corn. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, Ian and Curt plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most productive, most subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat — and how we farm. (Duration: 90 minutes). Free. For information, contact Aaron Falbel at (413) 665-2642 or visit  www.sunderlandpubliclibrary.org.

Dan Conlon who I wrote about here told me that corn syrup is just as bad for bees as it is for humans. Beekeepers routinely feed sugar syrup to bees during the winter and very early spring if they see that honey supplies in the hive are low.  Cane sugar is pure sucrose, and the nectar that honeybees gather is principally sucrose so bees process it just as they do nectar.

Corn syrup, as we all know, is cheaper than sugar which is why it is used in so many of our processed foods and soft drinks. High fructose corn syrup is also cheap for those large bee companies to use, but the bees do not find it as delicious as sucrose. Aside from their taste preferences, corn syrup is a problem for bees because it crystallizes in the hive and becomes so hard that the bees cannot eat it.

Fortunately we have beekeepers in our area who give us great honey like Warm Colors Apiary,  and the Shelburne Honey Company located at Apex Orchards. Pretty sweet.

For more (almost) Wordlessness this Wednesday click here.

Winter Farmers Market January 7, 2012

The Second Winter Farmers Market will be held on Saturday, February 4 from 10 am – 1 pm at  the Second Congregational Church on Court Square in Greenfield. I attended last month and stocked up on beets, turnips, pears, apples, squash and Real Pickles sauerkraut. It is exciting that so much local food is available to us in midwinter. And even more exciting to know that plans are in place to give us even more local food all year long.

The February Farmers Market is the beginning of Winter Fare Week, a celebration of local food with many events planned. In addition to buying produce on February 4 shoppers will have an opportunity to attend a number of workshops.

Daniel Botkin of Laughing Dog Farm, a ‘seedy madman’ will inspire you as he shows off his favorite “open-pollinated” heirloom tomato (and other!) seeds that have inspired a decade of great gardening at Laughing Dog Farm. Dan will review the significance of “heirloom genetics” as well basic seed botany and seed saving/preserving protocols, including which ones need only to be gathered, cleaned and dried, (the “easy” ones…) and which seeds need more elaborate “isolation” and/or hand-pollination schemes. Seeds for sale and free!

Mark Lattanzi will show you how to can the delicious abundance of the summer and fall garden. Think about putting up your own local food this year.

Rachel Scherer will present Get Sauced. Did you know that condiments like “Sriracha” and “Tabasco” start with lacto-fermented chilis? That lacto-fermented fruit and vegetable chutneys are the culinary origins of ketchup and relish? This workshop will cover the basics of making lacto-fermented condiments at home, and the details of how to go from the general process to a custom recipe.

Annie Sullivan-Chin with Catherine Bryars will talk about the many benefits of composting and how to make it feasible in your home. Conversation topics include soil science fundamentals, how to get/build buckets and bins, troubleshooting a lazy compost pile, and a special show-and-tell about worm composting. Participants are encouraged to bring questions and experiences to share.

In addition to the workshops there will be a Local Food Barter Fair. How does it work? Anyone who has home-made food items items to barter will gather at 12:15 p.m. with their goods and take part in informal trading.  A great chance to meet your home-growing neighbors, practice the art of bartering, and bring home delicious food and goods without exchanging money.  Open to gardeners, gleaners, foragers, canners, dryers… even professional farmers!

I’ll be telling you about more great events coming  up the week of February 5-12.  Friends and Food. What a combo.

Gray Dog's Farm, Huntington

Gray Dog’s Farm is just one of the farms that is participating in the market. Other participants include Clarkdale Fruit Farm, Red Fire Farm that is moving to Montague, and

Cottage Ornee

The view from my bedroom window on January 27, 2012.

White Birch and Green Conifers

Ice is heavy.

Iced branches

And to think I was planning to collect forsythia branches to force today.

Yellow Birch

View from the Welcoming Platform. I have photographed this tree in every season and every weather. It is always beautiful.

Snowy stream 1-25-12

Temperatures hover at 32 degrees and the stream keeps flowing.

Gloriosa 'Rothschildiana' courtesy of Brent and Beck's Bulbs

The last planting season of the year is late fall when gardeners are racing to get in all the crocus, daffodil, scilla, snowdrop and tulip bulbs in the ground so they can look forward to an early spring full of color. But fall is not the only bulb planting season. There is a whole array of bulbs that need to be planted in the spring to bloom gloriously and often exotically in the summer.

Many summer blooming bulbs are native to tropical places that have a long hot growing season. Many will be happy in a container, while others are more commonly grown in the ground, but for the most part they are not winter hardy in our climate and cannot overwinter outside.

I have just ordered a Gloriosa ‘Rothschildiana’ from Brent and Becky’s Bulbs. Sometimes called a climbing lily, this unusual lily will grow to a height of about six feet and its tendrils need some kind of trellis or support to latch on to. The crimson flower itself has strongly reflexed slim petals, curving back from a green center with long graceful ‘eyelash’ pistils and stamens. Some gardeners have described this vining plant as looking as if it is covered with butterflies when it is in bloom mid to late summer.

Rothschildiana can be grown in a container or in well drained soil. It needs full sun, and since it is a tropical plant it is wise to place it where it will not only get bright sunlight, but where heat will collect and it will be protected from wind. The vital thing to remember with any container planting is that it must be kept watered, probably every single day, and they must get regular fertilization, often every other week with a half strength solution.

Crocosmia, also known as montbretia or sword lily grows from corms that are native to South Africa. Lucifer is the variety most seen in our area because it is hardy to zone 5 or minus 10 degrees. However, in zone 5 it should be heavily mulched for the winter. Lucifer is a dramatic plant with its strappy, iris-like foliage, and brilliant scarlet flowers on two to three foot arching stems. They are not only stunning in the garden, they work well as cut flowers and have a long life in a vase. New corms may take two years to bloom, but a large clump is a magnificent sight. It is a plant that gets lots of attention on the Bridge of Flowers.

Crocosmia 'Lucifer'

Crocosmia and the Gloriosa lily are both pest resistant. Rodents will not turn these bulbs and corms into lunch.

I love Oriental lilies with their recurved petals, but all lilies are beautiful. Gaining in popularity are what some are calling pot lilies, compact plants that do well in a container. B&D Lilies offer several of these smaller lilies including After Eight, a fragrant garnet-red lily with white banding that resembles some of the Stargazer lilies. It only grows to about 18 inches tall. B&D recommends at least a gallon potting soil for each bulb and warns that potting soils with fertilizer included must be avoided. Too much nitrogen will not help lilies and can hinder blooming. They also recommend using a rose fertilizer during the growing season, which is to say a fertilizer that has more phosphorous than nitrogen or potassium.

Rodolpha is pure white lily, similar to the magnificent Casa Blanca, but it will only grow to two feet, so it will be happy in a container, or in the front of a garden border.

Lilies love the sun, but they are hardy to zone 4 so they have no trouble coming through our winters. Even here in Heath.

Caladium 'White Queen' courtesy of Brent and Becky's Bulbs

Of course not all bulbs or corms or tubers produce beautiful flowers. Caladiums are big showy foliage plants that like the shade. Caladium foliage is prized because of its unusual colors and patterns. Moonlight is nearly white, lighting up a shady spot. White Queen is equally pale but vividly veined in red. Candididum Sr. has white leaves but the veins are green. Some foliage is wine red with dark green margins, some is green splotched with red. Not many plants can boast of foliage that comes in a full range of white, green, red and pink. A selection of cultivars will be available at local garden centers in the spring, but catalogs like Brent and Becky’s Bulbs will give a larger selection of bulbs that you can start early indoors.

I was interested that although caladiums like cool shade, they need warm soil to begin growing. Gardeners are advised to start them indoors in small pots that can be kept on a heat mat.

Caladiums do well in containers by themselves, or in a mixed planting with other annuals or perennials. They are also useful in cut flower arrangements, their handsome foliage showing off blooms to best advantage.

There are other familiar summer blooming bulbs and tubers. The Swan Island Dahlias catalog give a hint of the size and variety of dahlias. There are dwarf plants and small blossoms and large plants that will need staking to support stems that carry many blossoms. Dahlias are wonderful because the more they are cut for bouquets, the more they will bloom. Sun and well drained soil are the main requirements. Like lilies, dahlias do not like fertilizer with a lot of nitrogen.

Summer blooming bulbs can add color to your sunny garden and to your shade garden. The only difficulty is making choices among the hundreds of cultivars available.

Between the Rows  January 21, 2012

Sky on January 24, 2012 9 am

Winter skies over the End of the Road.  For more  Skywatching click here.

Free Range Chicken Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful Chicken-Friendly Yard

Yesterday I heard a discussion about the environmental and economic situation on the radio. One speaker laughed and said we’ll all be stocking up on gold and backyard chickens. I don’t have any gold, but I do have backyard chickens. As do many of my rural neighbors. However, I know that gardeners who live in town on small lots are also setting up backyard flocks. The town ordinances allow up to ten chickens. No roosters!

If you don’t already lust after your own flock of pretty egg layers, a browse through the beautiful pages of Free Range Chicken Gardens by Jessi Bloom with seductive photos by Kate Baldwin and published by Timber Press will send you off to find the Murray McMurray Hatchery catalog.

To further seduce potential chicken farmers, Timber Press will giveaway the Free Range Chicken Gardens to one lucky person who will also win a complete chicken garden start-up kit, including:

• $50 gift card for chicken feed or supplies from McMurray Hatchery
• One chicken coop plan from The Garden Coop (a $20 value)
• 1 lb. of organic chicken forage blend and seeds for chicken-friendly plants from Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply (a $20 value)
• A copy of Free-Range Chicken Gardens, of course.

All you have to do is go to the Timber Press website and sign up for this great prize.

I haven’t had a chance to read the whole book, which is dense with information about chicken house design, predators, keeping your garden safe from the chickens and beautiful photographs of charming gardens and all kinds of elegant chickens, but I wanted to give you plenty of time to enter your name before the February 17.

Just think what it means to have your own small chicken flock. Delicious eggs with marigold yellow yolks. And wonderful manure for the garden. Feed yourself and feed your soil.