high hopes gardens is a living experiment. Can a creative, hard-working family make a living working with nature? Join us on the journey from idea to practice as we revive an Iowa Farmstead.
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room!
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The latest round of apple-peeling was assigned to the girls and they approached it 2008 style.
They dragged out an extension cord, a clock radio that has an IPod docking station and an IPod player to help pass the time. I much prefer the IPod in the docking station to the earbuds, even if that means I can hear music that I might not have picked. Got to keep the help happy, productive, and talking to each other!
Both the young ladies in our family celebrated birthdays this week. Emma’s choice of a party is encapsulated below.
Good friends, a fire in the chimenia, a tent to sleep in all together, and a long night of fire watching and talking. A bonus was the new mini-horse cart that the girls got for their birthday, along with the harness tack. They had fun pulling each other around, to heck with the horse!
We’ve been blessed with an abundance of berries, so much so, that we are able to send them to Des Moines Farmer’s Market and fetch $4.00 half-pint. A friend has a stand and stops by Friday night with whatever we have and brings it to his stand on Saturday morning.
Here’s one stop’s berry delivery.
Today was honey extraction day.
Martin, GJ, and Linda donned their beekeeper’s suits and robbed the honey. Here Martin helps smoke out the bees before GJ takes off a super.
A beautiful frame full of honey.
The newest addition to the honey extraction process is an electric uncapping knife - it worked spendidly removing the wax tops from the frames.
Emma shows off an uncapped frame, ready for the extractor.
We use a manual extractor, just put in four frames and turn the hand crank, wait for it to stop spinning, flip the frames around and repeat the spin.
Martin’s job is to run the honey gate at the bottom of the extractor to filter the honey through a couple of filters. It’s always a hot job as the room should be 85-95 degrees to allow the honey to flow more freely through the extraction process.
Today was the first day of school for Emma and Martin.
If you ask me, August 18, is too early to go back to school, especially with a school that has some buildings that are not air conditioned and we’ve been let out in August in the past for “heat days.”
We’ve lucked out lately as the weather has turned normal and dry..
The last few days have been off the charts as far as uncomfortable weather is concerned.
Here’s a screen capture from the Weather Underground showing the conditions on Sunday afternoon - the temperature is not unusual, but the 0 mph wind with a 81 degree dewpoint is off the charts. I tried to look up the highest all-time dewpoint in Iowa as I can not remember it ever over 80 before. I didn’t find the Iowa record, but I did find the highest dewpoint in 102 years in Minnesota was 81. I’m assuming it wouldn’t be much different in Iowa because southern Minnesota is practically Iowa as far as landscape and crops.
Here’s the chart that lists human comfort and dewpoints:
Dew Point Human Perception
>75°F Extremely uncomfortable, oppressive
70 - 74°F Very humid, quite uncomfortable
65 - 69°F Somewhat uncomfortable for most people at upper edge
60 - 64°F OK for most, but all perceive the humidity at upper edge
55 - 59°F Comfortable
50 - 54°F Very comfortable
<49°F A bit dry for some
Many people wonder why the Midwest can be more humid than the coasts and tropics - how exactly does warm, moist gulf air increase in moisture after traveling 1,000 miles? The answer is corn. At this time of year, corn transpires enormous quantities of water through its leaves. Even in the weather forecaster discussion, the evapotranspiration of corn is factored into the weather forecast during the height of evapotranspiration season.
I’ve been working in the basement the last few days, adding insulation to the sill plates and under the floor below an unheated basement room.
As part of the Costa Rican exchange, after our visit to Costa Rica agricultural sites this past February, the Ticos are now visiting Iowa and it is our turn to reciprocate for the warm welcome we received.
The stage is set for dinner and dancing - it turned out to be a perfect July evening - in the 70’s with a dry north breeze.
Here’s the group that is visting Iowa. Four of the members of the group we met in Costa Rica, the others are new to us.
Here “Lonna and the Pretty Good Band” start the evening off right after a dinner of iowa sweet corn, watermelon, hot dogs, rice and beans, and strawberry, apple, and cherry crisps and cobblers from fruit from the farm.
Lonna, the caller, started us out easy in a circle dance. Despite the language barrier for some dancers, they would quickly catch on the the steps and as music and dancing are a universal language, there was much laughter and levity.
Whoo! The circle comes together!
Annie, our neighborhood piano tuner and musician arranged the band for us.
Lonna did the calling for the dancers.
Swing your partner.
Heel to toe and ’round again. Emma kicks off her shoes and enjoys a dance.
Martin was very popular with the ladies and danced every dance in good form.
As the band played into the evening, the shadows fell as the music went on.
For those of you with Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer, you can click the icon above to see 15 seconds of the dancing with Ticos, complete with music!
The last few years we’ve been sending a crew of four for an overnight and two long days away from the cabin. This year it was the moms and younger girls who set out. It seems more to the way of the wilderness to go with a smaller party, rather than dragging 9 people on one outing.
Canoes all packed, ready to embark on the trip.
The portage is where the young girls show their mettle - here Kate is carrying the Duluth Pack from one lake to the next over a trail. This was the first year that Emma carried the canoe by herself on a portage as well!
Trip leaders extraordinaire Linda and Lori congratulate themselves on raising girls to the helpful portage age.
Emma readies the bear tree rock - ready to heave it over a high branch to store the food pack high off the ground and away from hungry black bears.
Once camp is set, it’s time to relax and take in some sunshine and solitude.
Morning comes early sleeping on the ground, but having other grounds along perks up the morning.
The channel between Lake Two and Lake Three (there are evidently so many lakes, they grew tired of naming them, or ran out of names).
A morning paddle break and consulting the maps for progress on the journey back to the cabin.
A new canoe this year for Kate and Lori to paddle - along with our black Bell - they were dubbed salt and pepper on the trip, even though ours is named “leech.”
Linda at the helm, maneuvering the canoe back home.
Swimming is by far one of the highlights of the trip for the kids.
By the boathouse is a dock that is high off the water and most excellent for jumping into the lake both backwards…
and frontwards…
and with a goofy look on your face. The kids enjoy hours jumping into the water here.
I dragged Emma away from the lake long enough for a tortuous bike ride over the boulders, loose rock, and gravel of an old logging road that leads right from the cabin. We biked miles and never came to the end.
Some of the hills were very steep and Emma and I both took turns losing our grip on the trail near the bottom of steep hills that curved at the bottom. We both came up uninjured.
The wild strawberries weren’t quite as large as the ones back home, but sure tasted good back deep in the woods on the bike ride.
Yesterday was a big travel day - 10 hours in the van to Kawishiwi Lodge only a few miles south of Canada, literally at the end of the road near Ely, MN. We like the place as it is the only resort that sits on a BWCA Wilderness lake and therefore are no motorboats, jet skis, or even air traffic over the area. The kids can swim in the lake and canoe without worrying about propellers or wakes.
Everyone thought the minivan is as sporty as it can look with the black canoe up on top.
Emma is eager with anticipation as she helps unload the canoe from the top of the van.
Here’s home for most of the week.
Cabin 10 has been our home the past few years since the kids grew up and it was harder to share a cabin with another family.
Linda unpacks the food inside the cabin. Most of the lumber is cut and sawn right at the resort at the resort’s own sawmill.
Since Aunti Julie was here this weekend, we went to the Des Moines Art Fair.
Here Martin is amazed by a contraption that moves balls around a series of loops, falls, twists and turns.
You might recognize this guy from the July 21st Wind Turbine Dedication - one week at high hopes gardens, the next at the art fair!
The neices and nephew with auntie!
Linda seldom sees something that strikes her fancy - this artist, Mark Orr, had a series of ravens bearing keys in their mouths and Linda could not resist! Here she is with the artist.
Here is the raven on its new perch in the living room near the front door. One of the symbolisms of the raven and the key is the opening of doors and the welcoming of positive change into our lives.
The loss of our local chicken locker threw us for a loop this year. Instead of driving 20 minutes away and taking the chickens with us when we left, the closest other locker is an hour and 20 minutes away and we needed to take two trips, once to drop them off, then another to pick them up the next day.
The chicken raising business is perhaps the riskiest and least profitable enterprise we do. Feed went up 25%, butchering cost doubled, and we used $70 in gas just to drop off and pick up the chickens at the locker. I dropped them off on Wednesday and because of the longer trip to locker than usual and heat while we were waiting in line to start, we started losing chickens waiting in line. I think we lost seven of the largest ones as they are most prone to overheat. Another person waiting with us had the same problem, but we were able to move about 50 of her chickens from her horse trailer to the empty box of the pickup.
The next episode was when Linda picked them up the next day - a storm had moved through the town before Linda arrived and power was out at the locker. The locker owner understandably did not want to open the locker doors with the power off, because he wanted to keep as much cold in the locker while the power was off. So more waiting while waiting for power to be restored.
We dropped about half the frozen chickens off with customers and kept the rest as a 50-50 mix between frozen and fresh for ourselves. So this morning Linda and Emma worked on cutting up the chickens in meal-sized portions for quick winter meals.
We’ve been debating doing on-farm butchering, and the cost associated with the locker, the gas to drive there and the eight hours of time driving and waiting at the locker (not counting waiting for power to be restored) push us to think about that direction.
It’s finally strawberry season, albeit a week or so late.
This is the daily haul - we’re almost getting tired of eating them - I think the rain has been berry, berry, good to the strawberries. We’re getting this much every day.
Emma got a break from basement pumping for three days (it finally stopped late last night) and went to Ames for Iowa State Women’s basketball camp.
Here’s Emma with some teammates from her school and head coach Bill Fennelly - one of the most beloved and successful coaches in the country - Bill’s got a .707 winning percentage, his team drew more fans last year than the University of Iowa MEN’s team and has made the post-season 11 of his 13 years at ISU. A new athletic director came in a few years ago and fired the men’s basketball coach, fired the football coach, and gave Coach a lifetime contract!
Here’s Emma with one of her position coaches for the week - Toccara Ross, one of the post players for ISU. Her other coach was Nicky Weiben. Does Emma look happy!
Emma is tall, but next to 6′ 4″ Jocelyn Anderson, she has some growing to do! Emma had a great time and looks forward to a exhibiting a whole new bag of tricks next season.
