Bee-Call
In which Farmer Sam is called upon to remove a bees' nest from the walls of a house...
Driving home Monday evening after a bee-call, windows down, hair flying, I felt like one hellova badass lady-farmer. It’s been a busy week here on the farm and I am plenty sore from the work, but I’ve gotten a lot done and I feel really good about that. I invite you now to get yourself a cuppa and join me on the farm for the latest update!
Welcome to the latest Updates From the Farm! If you are new here, I invite you to check out my About page to learn what this is, who I am and why I am doing this. Or just dive right in! At “Runamuk Acres” you’ll find the recantings of one lady-farmer and tree-hugging activist from the western mountains of Maine. #foodieswanted
The Raised Bed Project
Since I bought the farm 6 years ago, the “Raised Bed Project” has been on my wish list. For one reason or another I couldn’t seem to make it happen…until now. This year I finally made raised beds and cold-frames a priority at Runamuk, using a portion of my tax return to buy the lumber back in early March.
While I may be a highly skilled gardener and something of a kitchen-witch, my carpentry skills are still in development. Construction projects tend to be a struggle involving many stops and starts, mistakes and fumbling of tools and materials. It involves overcoming the intimidation of the project itself, wrangling fears─like the fear of the skilsaw or having to climb a ladder, etc.
Yet, as difficult as these projects can be, I quite enjoy building things. Taking a project from research and design, to completion and deployment is highly satisfying. Maybe more so because of the struggle it comes with.
But it’s like I always tell my son…we can’t get better at doing something if we don’t do the thing.
Besides…if I don’t build it, who will?
Were there mistakes along the way? Did I have to reach out to my ex-boyfriend for advice on how to ensure I was using the skilsaw safely? Yes and yes.
It was worth every bit of stress and hassle, though─and immensely gratifying when I set the first 2 of my new raised beds in place on the garden.
To save on the expense of the yards of soil needed to fill the raised beds, they’ll serve as compost-bins this summer. By frequently turning and watering the materials inside the beds, I can speed the decomposition process along. With an excess of bedding material from the sheep-shed, I’ll add more to the compost piles as I go, building up the “soil” over time.
With any luck I’ll be able to plant into them this fall!
Sourdough Sundays
Did you know you can keep your sourdough-dough in the refrigerator for up to a week?
Committed to making as much of our food from scratch as I can manage, I’ve been experimenting with sourdough bread lately. I’ve made yeast breads for nearly 20 years, but sourdough is new to me. Testing different flavors and techniques is fun─and delicious!
Working sourdough into my busy schedule, however, has been a little trickier. Figuring out the timing of it all has required some trial and error.
Recently, I came across an Insta-reel by a sourdough baker who explained how she makes her loaves on Sunday and then refrigerates them to bake off later in the week. She said you could keep uncooked sourdough loaves in the refrigerator for up to a week.
Last week I gave it a try, leaving a loaf of rosemary-parmesean sourdough in the fridge until Thursday.
The house had been cold on Sunday, when I assembled my sourdough, and this particular loaf was small and pitiful looking. I wasn’t sure it would turn out, but when I took the banneton out of the refrigerator on Thursday, it had expanded nicely and I got an impressive rise in the oven.
Using this method─of assembling my sourdough on Sundays (my 1 day of rest and self-care) and baking it later─actually works really well for me. I typically do 2 loaves: a sweet loaf and a savory. The sweet loaf I’ll bake off next-day, on Monday, so that BraeTek can have toast with his eggs for breakfasts that week. While the savory I’ll bake on Wednesday or Thursday to pair with a nice dinner meal.
How important is scratch-cooking to you? And why?
Shearing Day
A big event on any sheep-farm, last Sunday was Shearing Day at Runamuk Acres.
For this, I brought BraeTek back early from his father’s to help. We’re fortunate, too, to have farm-friends who’ve made it their own personal commitment to be here these last few years. Kristin and her son, Chandler, came to lend a hand.
The skill of an experienced shearer is one of the few services I am happy to pay for. Their prowess with the animals takes the chaos out of a situation that's stressful for both animal and farmer. It’s worth every penny to have Edie Nickels come, and I’ve hired her these last 4 years to shear for me.
Bee-Call
It’s been a while since I’ve been on a Bee-Call, but it still happens from time to time. Having built my business on bees before I bought the farm, the local community know me as the resident “bee-girl”. Folks reach out to me for swarms and bee-removal when the bees pose a threat to their families. 3 out of 4 times, though, what people think are bees, ends up being wasps and I groaned when the plea for help came in.
Wasps are no fun to remove, even for an experienced beekeeper. Regardless, I went and was pleasantly surprised to find that they were indeed honeybees flying in and out of the backside of this old house over in Embden.
Inside the house, you could hear the humming of the colony in one of the walls. It was really cool, actually, to put your ear to the wall and listen to the thrumming hive activity. But then, I find bees fascinating anyway, lol.
After nearly 15 years working with bees, I no longer fear them and rarely feel the need to don much in the way of protective clothing. I am calm when I work with them and so they are calm, too. No longer a trembling mess in front of a hive of tens of thousands of stinging insects, I work slowly and methodically, so as to avoid pinching or squishing anyone─thus avoiding their painful retribution.
I’ve learned so much about the nature of honeybees that I can judge by the tone of their buzzing when they are aggravated or stressed, or calm and content. I know from experience what activities I can do in the hive without pissing them off, and I know that anytime you have to take the hive apart, cut into the brood-nest or─in this case─dismantle it, the bees are going to become enraged.
And rightly so! You’d be hella-pissed too─if someone ripped your home apart, exposing your babies to the elements and potential injury or death!
So I suited up in my white coveralls, tracked down my beekeeper’s gloves and secured a veil over my head before cutting into the wall with a sawsall.
The house had sat abandoned the last few years and it was apparent that the bees had made themselves very comfortable indeed. I removed the dry-wall one square a time, uncovering the honeycombs these bees had built. Fervently searching the combs as I removed them chunk by chunk, I hoped against hope to find the queen. With the queen, there exists the potential to relocate the colony to the farm. Without her, the colony is forfeit.
The honeycombs I set aside for the home-owners, who watched with interest as I worked. I encouraged these folks to taste it (I had already sampled it, of course.) and to make use of the free honey. In this part of the world, honey is less widely used, so I promote it when I can. I myself did not grow up eating honey; it wasn’t until I began keeping bees that I developed a taste for it. Now I always tell people to try it on their pancakes.
Sadly, I wasn’t able to locate the queen and I had to use a shop-vac to remove the inhabitants of the wall.
When the job was done, I left there feeling like a badass, along with a reminder of just how captivating bees are to me. It whetted a thirst I hadn't realized I was craving. After my last remaining colony died during the winter, this is the first season in 14 years that I have no beehives to tend. Free bees would have been a blessing indeed!
New on the Runamuk Substack
Now Available on Spotify!
Followers who enjoy listening to posts read-aloud to them can now find “Story-Time With Farmer Sam” on Spotify (title subject to change-suggestions welcome). Click this link to be redirected to Runamuk on Spotify and follow us there!
Resource Room
Since coming to Substack, I’ve given up posting to the Runamuk website. To make the archives there (10 years worth of posts following my journey to farm ownership!) easily accessible to Substack-followers, I’ve created this virtual Resource Room for you!
It’ll be an on-going project and I’ll add more materials as we go. On the bookcase you’ll find a handful of my best works from the Runamuk blog, while the photos on the walls link directly to various pages at runamukacres.com for easy navigation.
On Blackstone Mountain
When you go to my Substack home-page, you’ll also find a new tab for On Blackstone Mountain (working title), my work-in-progress novel. That will be coming to you soon─one chapter at a time!
NOTE: Initially, I thought to make that work available only to paid subscribers. After much research─I’ve decided to be brave and publish those chapters openly─only paywalling the spicier bits.
New Incentives for Paid Subscribers & Founding Members!
Working to add value to this Substack and to lives of my readers, I’ve come up with some new incentives for paid subscribers and founding members.
For paid subscribers: Take advantage of a 30-minute “Shop-Talk” session with yours truly via phone or video-call. Pick my brain about any topic, or just enjoy a chat with your friendly neighborhood farmer. Also, a 10% discount on all services provided by the farm! This includes: farmstays, campsite rentals, farmstand purchases, insect-hotels, and future products yet to come. See details here.
Founding Members: Receive an exclusive opportunity to Adopt-a-Sheep (symbolically, of course), a 1-hour Shop-Talk, 20% off on all farm-products and services, and get yourself a bigger gift from Runamuk come Christmas! See full details.
Thank You!
In the 4 months since I began writing at Substack, I’ve gained 330 subscribers, 12 of whom have committed to paid membership, and 556 followers. Less concerned with numbers, I’ve focused on personal and professional growth, connecting with new readers and spreading Runamuk’s good message. That message seems to have resonated with a good many people and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you for following along.
It is not an easy path I’ve chosen, but I know to the very depths of my soul that this is my purpose on Earth. I am meant to grow food─for humans─and for wildlife. Feeding my community is what I live for, and that community includes the soil, water, fauna and flora, as well as the people.
Even so small an action as becoming a free subscriber inspires me to keep going. Imagine what I can do if more people joined the cause to become paid supporters─or even founding members! Please consider joining today to support wildlife conservation at the ground level.
Much love to you and yours, my friends!
Your friendly neighborhood farmer,
Sam
Thank you for following along with the story of this lady-farmer! It is truly a privilege to live this life serving my family and community, and protecting wildlife through agricultural conservation. Check back soon for more updates from the farm, and be sure to follow @RunamukAcres on Instagram or Facebook!
I'm a huge fan of beekeeping but I've not yet got involved practical really enjoyed hearing your expertise on the same. What's the importance of raised beds?
You sure have been busy!