April 21, 2020
It was very strange celebrating Holy Week and Easter without actually going to church. One tradition we have, is at church on Holy Thursday, we remember when Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with his apostles. After Mass, we visit 7 other Catholic churches in the area as we read the scripture stories of the 7 things that happened to Jesus after he was arrested in the garden. Since we couldn’t visit the inside of the churches, we decided to pray from the parking lots. We sent out a note to some friends and were pleasantly surprised to be joined by a caravan of vehicles (we all stayed in our own vehicles). It was a beautiful experience.
We participated in the online Easter services from our Bishop – Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. While it was different, it was still beautiful and comforting to celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection, the pinnacle of our faith.
We spent a little more time organizing the garage. Katie and Joshua built shelves, not only to make space to bring a bed down for Joshua’s apartment, but to also make a place for the boxes of stuff we still have in our storage unit.
We got to bottle the beer! It spent 2 weeks fermenting in a carboy and has developed a wonderful flavor. We transferred the beer into bottles. They will have to sit for another 4 weeks before we can sample them. They’re drinkable after 2 weeks, but by 4 weeks, they’ll be excellent! We think that will coincide with the lifting of the Stay at Home order for COVID-19. We’re gonna have a party!!!
The ground was FINALLY dry enough to install our new septic system. We contracted for this job back in February, but the weather made us wait. We weren’t really anxious about all the waiting since we are not using the plumbing in the house. Boy, did they make a mess. Our yard looked like a playground for MOUS – Moles Of Unusual Size! By the time they finished, everything looked great – although we have no grass. We even got free gravel for our driveway from the left overs.
All the previous work on the bee equipment paid off. John was able to successfully split 8 of the 10 hives he manages, so now we have 18 hives! Bees automatically want to reproduce and they do this by swarming. As beekeepers, we split them before they swarm so we can manage all the bees. But, it is not always that straight forward. While John was working on a hive, the one next to him decided to swarm anyway! The bees clustered on a tree branch for a few days and then left. Even though we had bait boxes out, we didn’t catch the swarm. Hopefully they found our friend’s box!
The baby chicks outgrew their brooder. We had them in a 24”x30” box that is now way too small. So Katie created a beautiful “feature” in our small studio apartment! We now have a 5’ kiddie pool that she turned into a brooder in the middle of our room! Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to get chicks so early! John has scavenged around the farm to find things the previous owner left, including his old sheep stall, and has started to build a chicken coop. We have another month to finish it since the chicks can’t really go out until they are 6 weeks old.
Back to the house- John and Joshua, while removing the tile in the kitchen, discovered the wood planks under the tile were almost completely destroyed by termites in years past. We ended up removing a lot more of the kitchen floor than anticipated. Then Joshua turned his attention to the bathroom floor. He was able to get out quite a bit of his “college at home” stress by going “Lumberjack” and chopping his way through the floor. We discovered that many of the floor joists also had termite damage that will need to be addressed. We hired an engineer to draw up plans to replace the floor supports, the entire kitchen/bathroom wall, and converting the ceiling to a vaulted ceiling.
We learned that our Stay at Home order due to COVID-19 will last at least 2 more weeks. We’ve got lots of work to accomplish in that time, but we’re still not daunted.
On another note, we still have tulips blooming around the front yard. Between those blooms and the surprise perennials from the previous owner, our front yard is coming alive with color!
Undaunted Farming 