Solace at Cripple Creek

Each of the past two winters has seen me planning to get a few mushroom logs started — oysters, chicken polypores, whatever. Enough for me to have a reliable source of choice edible mushrooms instead of relying on the weather and the local decaying trees to fill my stomach with sweet or meaty fungi. And each spring I decide that I need to maintain a certain level of simplicity and that I don’t want to take on too much at one time and find myself more overwhelmed than I am normally.

I know, how much time can mushroom logs take? Drill the holes, insert the spawn, water the logs, and wait. But then I remember that I’ve been meaning to plant some root vegetable seeds for the past two weeks now. Maybe next year, I think.

So imagine my pleasant surprise when I returned from the family reunion to find a fungus growing on my own leg, which at times seems to be shaped somewhat like a small log (there’s no gym in Cripple Creek). I tried using a vinegar compress on my leg — it stung a little bit — but now have moved up to the big gun, an over-the-counter fungicide that seems to be less effective than the vinegar treatment. This has me wondering, does anyone out there have a home remedy for ringworm? I’ll try almost anything.

Don't eat this one.

Well, the summer solstice is past and we are in the thick of summer. We ate the last of the wild greens (in the form of poke sallet and lamb’s quarters lasagna) earlier this month, although we’ll still find some greens here and there. Nate introduced us to the use of just a pinch of nutmeg in cooked greens, and it was delicious. And now we have berries: juneberries, cherries (although the season is just past now), and raspberries. Next month we’ll have blackberries.

We forgot our baskets, but we had our hats - and filled them with raspberies.

The rabbits are feeling “frisky” with the longer days, and the chickens are laying lots of eggs and begging to be let out of the coop well before we usually get out of bed (and we’re early risers). And we’re playing in the creek with crawdads and salamanders and spraying each other with water cannons.

So by now most of you have figured out that the brain tick was, in fact, an engorged tick that most likely fell off our dog. I would just like to point out that everything before the line “here is where the story gets weird” is entirely true. The rest is true in some alternate reality, I’m sure. And who’s to say that a tick can’t affect a person’s brain?

brain tick (safely ensconced in jar) hiking with Tretan

Tretan was the first one of us to notice the tick. He then spent the rest of the day with it — hiking with it, talking to it, wanting it to sleep (in its jar) next to him. And then he started with the face when we suggested a different ending for the tick’s day. I think it got to his brain.

Ahh.. Springtime in southwest Virginia. The garden. The bees. Cripple Creek Day.

We’ve planted most of our garden — the peas are coming along, the greens are bountiful, and everything else is growing. The wild and tamed June berries (aka service berry, aka sarvis) are ripe and on the menu.

The bees are making honey. We’ll harvest our first super of honey this week. Our Langstroth hive was starting some queen cups last week, but we gave them some room and the potential swarm cells weren’t there this week (the queen had not yet laid eggs in them). And we had a successful beekeeping workday in Wytheville with the Mountain Empire Beekeepers Association, with 89 people attending and getting into the bees.

What if I held a workshop and nobody came?

And Cripple Creek Day was a rockin’ good time. Fun parade, lots of good music (both bluegrass bands played their versions of Goin’ Up Cripple Creek), and cooling down in Francis Mill Creek (which flows into Cripple Creek here in town). All the children, and some of the adults, enjoyed looking for crawdads and salamanders.

cool place on a hot day

Warning: technical discussion about bees. For more fun involving brain ticks, Joe Biden-isms, and Cooch with his modest Virtus, check back later.

We were all about bees yesterday. After last year’s multi-swarm summer (see here, here,  here, and here for details), we are now faithful about getting into the bees every week during the prime swarm season (late April — June). We plan to frequently check our established hive into July and August. So far, so good!

Our established Langstroth hive is humming along, the queen is laying eggs, and the gals are starting to put nectar in the honey super. No sign of any swarm cells, and they have plenty of room in there. We’ve been using drone traps and powdered sugar this spring to control the varroa mite population. It seems that lots of people out there want to see what a drone trap is, so I finally took some pictures of what we use. All we do is cut the bottom three-fourths (or more) of foundation out of a frame. Then we set it in the hive. (Note: mark the top of the frame for easy recognition when you’re in the hive next time.) Here’s a drone trap before it goes into the hive:

ok, so we cut out more than 3/4 of the foundation

Here’s a drone trap after it’s been in the hive. Notice that most of the cells are capped. You can tell they’re drone brood cells because they’re larger than worker cells, due to the extreme largeness and manliness of the drones, which are bigger than workers.

big bulging cells for big burly drones

The reason for drone traps: Varroa mites prefer to lay eggs in drone cells — the life cycle of a larval / pupal drone matches very well with the life cycle of young varroa mites. Modern foundation has imprinted cells that are worker-sized (actually, perhaps a little too big), but small for drones. The thought is that this causes the workers to create more worker cells and the queen lays more fertilized (worker) eggs. When left to their own devices, workers will make more drone cells (according to current thoughts). For whatever reason, allowing the workers to build their own comb in one or two frames results in a frame of drone brood. The queen senses the drone cells and lays unfertilized (drone) eggs. The varroa mites sense the drone larvae and lay their eggs in the cells, too. The worker bees cap the drone cells, which now may have 1 to 6 young varroa that will suck the hemolymph from the growing bee larva / pupa. BUT…removing the frame of capped drone brood removes that generation of varroa form the hive. What, you may ask, do we do with the frame of drone brood? Chickens. We cut the bottom of the comb out (the part with the capped brood) and give it to them. They love pecking out the young drone brood, which contains lots of protein. That’s why bears love beehives — lots of young bees to eat.

Our two new top bar hives seem to be doing well. We love these hives so far (I know, it’s only been three or four weeks). The bees are drawing out comb from the top bars, and the comb is beautiful. Here’s a picture:

new comb in a top bar hive (see the queen?)

The [unmarked] queen’s on the left side. If you look closely, you may be able to see eggs in some of the cells. Again, these hives are so cool. We’ll have to post more about them, and how the bees make this shape comb, later. And finally, our bee yard:

Langstroth, top bar, top bar

Now, back to a little more irreverence.

Finally, it’s time to post about our new rabbitry.  We had been keeping the rabbits in a section of our out-building, by the chicken coop.  We had cut a big window into the wall to let in more light and air, but we still felt like they deserved something more snazzy.  Well, snazzy days are here.  Our new rabbitry is a wide open structure — just a roof to keep out the rain, and shade to keep out the direct sunlight.  Rabbits don’t get cold.  They’ve got great fur, and the only real danger to them is heat.  So open is good.

The building is mostly constructed of black locust from our hill.  I did use dimensional lumber for the roof, just so I’d have a flat surface for the metal roofing to attach to.  We’ve got a short awning on the front, and we’ve got shade-cloth on the south and west sides.  We’ve also got hop plants (Cascades and Brewer’s Gold if you must know) planted along the south and west sides.  Eventually we’re hoping to have those sides pretty well covered with vines.  We also intend to fill some more sticks into the network at some point, but with the vines in place we may not need to.  Anyway, we think it’s pretty special, and the rabbits seem to approve (in their understated rabbit-y way).  Here it is:

Q: What's brown and sticky? A: Our new rabbitry!

So yesterday Tretan came into the house and said, “Daddy, I got you some presents.  Come see!”  Lately he’s been bringing me presents.  Mainly wild edibles like dandelions, violets, plantain, mint, etc.  Awesome stuff that makes me love him more.  So he led me out to the back deck and opened up a box.  Inside I saw assorted change that he had obviously scavenged from the floor of our filthy van.  I said, “Oh boy!  Money!  I love money!”  which was neither entirely true nor entirely false.  He said, “Yeah, and this.”  At which point I noticed that he was toying with something that looked sort of like a snail shell about the size of the last joint of my pinky finger.  So I said, “What is that, is it a shell?”  Which it wasn’t.  So I looked closer and saw several small lines on one side.  Then I saw that those small lines were waving — Dear God!!! This thing was alive, and it was the hugest, greenest tick ever!  It looked like if you poked it with your finger, it would explode.  If it was only swelled to a quarter of its current size, the legs would still be laughably small compared to the abdomen.  In short, even for a hardened, ice-veined pragmatist like myself, it was revolting.  So I asked, “Where in the world did you get this?”  To which he replied, “Here on the deck.”

So here is where the story gets weird.  You see, I had a terrible headache the previous night — tunnel vision, loss of hearing in one ear, I could hear the Earth breathing through the soles of my feet. I attributed it to blocked sinuses, since I hadn’t been able to breathe through my nose at all.  Nevertheless, I got myself up as usual yesterday and went about my morning business.  Yoga, caring for our animals, communing with nature, etc.  While I was on the back deck filling our wild bird feeder with organic, shade-grown sunflower seed, I decided to try the old farmer’s hankie (where you clear a nostril by holding the other nostril shut and exhaling forcefully through the offending nostril).  I tried twice with no results except my left ear popping, but on the third try, I felt a massive blockage blow out, and suddenly my head felt light, and I felt like I was smelling movie theater popcorn.  Not possible, but it’s what I smelled.  I didn’t think any more about it, and went about my day, happy to be free of the headache.  Until Tretan gave me the Big Green Tick.  Then I got a terrible suspicion, which grew into a terrible certainty, which led to a trip to the emergency center at the Virginia Tech Department of Pathological Entomology.

In short, I now know that the Big Green Tick was actually a Tanzanian cephaloacarian — a Brain Tick!  It wasn’t full of blood, it was full of spinal fluid and, potentially, some gray matter.  They assure me that I shouldn’t notice any long term effects, as the amount of brain that a brain tick eats is, comparatively, quite small.  But still.  Come on.  It’s my brain, and I didn’t really want any of it eaten.  Incidentally, there’s also a pinkie-diameter hole in my right ear drum, which they literally covered with blue painter’s tape.  They think it ate its way out during the night but that I must have been laying on my right side, so it retreated back into my brain case and started the long journey through my sinuses.  Anyway, they say the hole should self-heal in 3-4 months.  Let’s hope.  In the meantime, we’ve decided to start wearing nose-plugs and ear-plugs whenever we hike, which may be never again.  On the bright side, they tell me that, while their numbers are on the increase, Brain Ticks are still quite rare.  In fact, the chances of my being parasitized by this Brain Tick are actually much lower even than the chances of winning the lottery!  So that’s kind of cool, huh?  Here’s a picture of me holding my present from my son (and a little bit of my brain) in my hand:

It would have been bad enough to find this on our dog!

For an update on the brain tick, see our June 5 post.

One of the first poems I remember memorizing was this one (I only inserted part of it, for various reasons):

American Names (Stephen Vincent Benét)

I guess that new things happen every week, but for some reason my attention focused on a couple of events this week.

1. The wild asparagus is up! Or maybe I should say escaped asparagus — these plants are the descendants of garden asparagus. We have several patches of wild asparagus in the area, but unfortunately only one is within walking distance AND on public land. I may take a short drive and stalk some asparagus patches.

All Hail Euell Gibbons!

2) It’s tick season. We found our first tick of the year on my head Thursday evening. Merriment ensued. Tretan wanted to keep the tick in a jar as a pet, but he made his desire known too late. I asked him how we would feed his pet tick, and he suggested that we catch a mouse to put in the tick’s jar when the tick was hungry. That made me smile, but I think I’ll need to tell him about deer ticks, mice, and Lyme disease — and about dog ticks and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. (Don’t worry, Mom, I’m fine.)

This one was a dog tick.

In general, spring is humming right along. The robins, chickadees, and starlings are nesting around our house and the swallows are checking out one of the bird houses we set up. The juneberries and currants are blooming, and the hops are sprouting. Life is good.

By “vacation,” we mean not working for money. So we played some — in Roanoke and Marion — and worked for ourselves. Around the homestead, we almost completed the new rabbitry (we’ll update when it’s finished), moved a bunch of rocks to make a low stone wall by a sitting area in the yard, prepared the asparagus bed, and planted hops (Cascade and Brewer’s Gold), Solomon’s seal, and a redbud. The boys had time to play with their friends / neighbors Katie and Macey. Tretan proved he is still the best chicken-catcher in the family.

Over the weekend we went to our brother’s / nephew’s place in North Carolina and tanned deer hides with Natalie from Wild Abundance. What a great experience. We had fun together, made great food, and worked hides together. I know that some people may think I’m crazy, eccentric, etc, but there’s something to be said for being able to do for yourself and using what’s available to you. (Looks like I’ll need to do a post on our yarn-spinning friend soon.)

For those who are interested, the process starts with a fresh deer skin, perhaps from a roadkill, hunting trip, or butcher. Flesh the hide and soak it in water for a few days (Natalie did this for us). Start by graining the hides, using a tool like a retired planer blade to scrape off the hair and grain. It’s nice to have an apron for this part.

scraping the hide

We repeatedly soaked the hides in an egg yolk mixture (could have been brains, but that’s another story), wrung them out, and opened them up. The next day we beat them senseless to be sure they became soft as they dried. This resulted in some hand cramps and minor muscle soreness, but no blisters. It involved stretching the hides, cabling the hides (basically, stretching a hide and abrading the membrane side), hitting them against things, and cabling them some more. And voila, a soft, dry deer hide. Finally, we smoked the hides. No, not like that.

smoke it like this

Preparation for smoking involved attaching two or three hides together and to a skirt at the bottom and suspending this blind tube over a smoky fire. (If you want a more general picture,send us an email.) You may notice that one of the hides had a hole that needed to be plugged to keep the smoke in. After a few hours over the fire we had the finished products:

man skirt

And the boys got their Easter egg hunt. Followed by Tretan stripping naked and climbing a holly tree. I love my boys.