Solace at Cripple Creek

Big things are afoot at Solace.  Actually, big things are always afoot at Solace, so this is nothing unusual.  And it is also not necessarily the case that big things are being done at Solace.  Just that big things are either in progress or coming down the pipeline (it’s a big, slow pipeline — more akin to a filter, perhaps, than what one normally associates with the word pipeline), and therefore I consider them “afoot.”  So I guess I’m just saying that we’ve got ideas, and some of them have begun the glacially-slow process of attaining a physical form.  For example, we got a cool trellis built for the tomatoes this weekend.  We also got the chicken coop and the rabbitry cleaned out.  And we butchered the last two of our pullets that are not intended to become laying hens.  Tomorrow the rest will leave their portable chicken yard and join the Big League hens on the hill.

Two of our three batches of baby rabbits are less than two weeks away from butchering age, and both of those mothers were re-bred on Friday.  The third batch of babies is almost five weeks old, so three weeks from butchering age.  Rabbit, along with venison and some chicken, will become our main source of meat, so we’ve got to keep the babies coming.  Did you know that rabbits are the most efficient meat-production animal to raise?  I did!

Our bees are good/bad.  The black hive (black skep hive painted on front), which used to be our marginal hive, is doing very well considering that it’s been a terrible year for beekeepers around here.  Too much rain keeping the bees from flying, washing nectar and pollen out of the flowers, knocking flowers out of trees.  Makes for unproductive and cranky bees, and also for lots of swarming.  I think that all the beekeepers I know had at least half of their hives swarm this Spring.  Back to my point though — the black hive is ready for us to pull a medium super’s worth of honey off it.  Our first time robbing the bees!  We are very excited to finally get our own honey.  Assuming 10 full frames of honey, we’ll get in the neighborhood of 3.5 gallons from it. (!!)  I know Cathy wrote about the two times our Red hive swarmed, but she didn’t write about the THIRD time.  Yes, the THIRD time.  One week after the second time, when we were wondering why they would have left us twice, they left us again.  Again, straight up to the top of the maple tree where we couldn’t get at them, then hang around for 24 hours before taking off into the National Forest.  This time we saw them going and Cathy tried to follow them.  No luck.  When they have a destination in mind and are headed there, you just can’t keep up on foot.  She did good until she got into the trees and underbrush, then lost them immediately.  The hive is still functioning though, and we may write more on that another time.

I did build a pair of outdoor tables to go on the back deck.  I didn’t want a plain picnic-style table — I wanted something prettier, with a little more snazz factor and a lot more flexibility of use, so I designed a pair of tables and benches.  One is five feet long and one is three feet long.  They are the same width, so they can be put end-to-end to make a single eight foot table, or we can just use the five foot table for normal meals and keep the three foot table in the sitting area.  It’s all made of untreated pine, joined using real, hand-cut woodworking joints (like pinned mortise-and-tenons), and is finished with Australian Timber Oil.  I’m very happy with the results, and I’ll attach some pictures here, and add them to the woodworking gallery as well.

tables separated -- will seat 6-8 + 4 separately

tables pushed together -- will easily seat 8 - 10

detail of joinery