H. G. Wells

"Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative." - H. G. Wells

Full pond

Following the driest July since we've been here, we had the wettest August. We've been rained in for several days, and last night we had a 2.5" hard rain. The sound of the river (1.5 miles away) and all the arroyos running was deafening.

This morning, when we went to assess the damage, we found the pond full. The last time this happened, it broke the dam, so, as you can imagine, we were a little nervous. But everything was fine. The overflow worked great, even given the volume of water it must have had to handle. In fact the "pig pond" even filled up (it is filled from the overflow of the big one).

Here's a few photos of the ponds, empty and full to see the scale.

Big Pond

Empty

Full

Pig Pond

Empty

Full

Overflow

We have actually done a little work to the overflow. We used a water level to measure the height of the dam against the overflow, and decided it would be safer to dig it down a couple of feet. It probably would have been OK, but we're still glad we did it!

The post Full pond appeared first on VelaCreations.

Full pond

Wallace Stevens

"Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake." - Wallace Stevens

Arthur C. Clarke

"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean." - Arthur C. Clarke

Weed-eating

The vast majority of our year here is dry, and the land is generally brown. However, once the rains start in June/July, the whole vista undergoes an amazing change. Everything gets green and our property seems to explode with growth. And somehow it always takes us by surprise, year after year.

Each day, we cut weeds for the rabbits, poultry, and pigs, but that doesn't even make a dent. We try and keep on top of the weeding, but we always get behind. So this weekend, we started attacking the weeds with a vengeance. We cut a bunch with a scythe, and all around the paths and road with a weed-eater. It'll take a while to get through it all, but little by little we'll get there.

Some of the weeds are left in place to nourish the soil, some we compost to use in the garden, and then the rest we dry, or chip and turn into silage, for the animals to eat during winter. The amount of biomass that is produced is staggering. In a way, we wish it was like this year-round, but on the other hand, that sounds like a lot of work!

The post Weed-eating appeared first on VelaCreations.

Weed-eating

Walter Gilbert

"We are embedded in a biological world and related to the organisms around us." - Walter Gilbert

Dark Honey

A few years ago, we made a top bar bee hive out of half a 55 gallon barrel, which we called the "Honey Cow". We caught a swarm to inhabit it and the hive is now rocking and rolling. There are an enormous amount of bees, and the barrel is almost completely full of both brood and honey.

This weekend, we decided to rob some honey. We didn't take much, only 8 lb of strained honey. We figure we can always take some more in a month or so if we need to. For us, every drop we get is a bonus, as we do absolutely nothing for the bees (we don't feed them or even check on them that often).

The honey is dark and beautiful, a lot of which is due to oak blossoms. It's said that dark oak honey like this is even better for you than most honey (like we needed an excuse to eat more of it!). You can see the difference in color between ours and store bought stuff from the photo.

The post Dark Honey appeared first on VelaCreations.

Dark Honey