This post is our first participation in the Renegade Farmer Farmhouse Festival Fridays. Click on over to find more Friday farming posts!

As February begins, we’re officially entering the new beekeeping season, our second season (or first full one depending on how you look at it!)  All of the experts we consulted with last year as we were getting started said more or less the same thing – the first summer should be really easy and successful, then you close up the box for the winter and hope the bees are still there in February!  How scary….after the work and expense of getting into beekeeping, they could all be gone in a few short months for any number of reasons.

The two easiest ways to lose your hive during this time are from starvation (they didn’t make or you didn’t leave them enough honey to get through the winter) and varroa mites.  Varroa mites attach themselves to honeybees and literally suck the life from them – like microscopic vampires.  The biggest problem is that mite populations spike at the same time honeybee populations decline each year (late summer / early fall) so the colony is just not strong enough to combat the massive onslaught of mites.  Sure enough, we went from seeing only a few mites on our bottom board to a significant increase between August and October.  We treated with Apiguard, a thymol based gel that the bees carry around the hive while cleaning that helps to control the mites and it appears to have been successful since there are still bees flying in and out of the hive.

We’ve done nothing more with the hive since October since the bees seal up all the cracks and close the lid with propolis to keep their home as warm and dry as possible through the winter.  We’ve had such a mild winter that every time we’ve inspected the hive from the outside, we’ve seen plenty of bees flying, and some returning with pollen – which is a great sign!  Pollen is the protein source for the honeybee diet (they get their carbs from the honey) so if they still have plenty of stored honey and are foraging for pollen, we don’t need to supplement them with sugar water or pollen patties for the time being.

Once the winter solstice has passed, the colony begins preparing for the next season by preparing brood nests and by February, new baby bees are beginning to replace their older sisters that have sustained the colony all winter.  Here in California, the timing is perfect as I’ve just read in the past few days that the almond trees have begun to bloom – and they need bees to be pollinated!  If the blooms in our immediate area really get going, we could even need to put a honey super on this month (another box of honey comb for the bees to store honey in).  If windy and rainy weather comes back for extended periods of time in the spring though, we will have to start feeding them extra as they will deplete their winter stores – especially with their larger populations – and they won’t be able to forage.

So we’re about to crack the lid of the hive signifying the end of winter (for the bees) and the start of a new season.  We hope to actually harvest some honey this year and are discussing adding another hive to the farm.  We also think that we feel comfortable enough to catch a swarm (well, Dennis feels comfortable enough) so we may have as many as three hives by summertime….stay tuned.

For all of you wannabe beekeepers out there, I’m happy to report that our first year has so far been a success and I would encourage you to jump in!  Now is the time to reserve a package of bees for delivery in the next few months.  Sign up for beekeeping classes, read every book you can get your hands on and find yourself a mentor.  Our local association, the Sacramento Area Beekeepers Association, assigned one to us and he has been only a phone call or email away when we’ve been standing over the hive worrying over something.

So here’s to February – and the new bee season!

One of the most frustrating interesting parts of this project has been that we’ve had to learn everything as we go.  As much as we read, asked and studied lavender before getting our first plant in the ground, we come upon new questions every day and have to decide how we are going to answer them.  Some days, I’m in awe of the internet and wonder how anybody could have possibly figured anything out before it existed.  Other days, I can’t stand how many answers there are to one simple question and wish I just had one book from the library with only one answer to my question.  And so it has been when it comes to my research on lavender propagation.

The reality is, we can’t continue buying large quantities of lavender plants going forward – not only is it not economical, but we now have the ability to grow “free” plants (more on that whole free thing later…) to fill in for plants that didn’t make it through the first year, increase our overall planting acreage or have them to sell to all of you lavender lovers out there (there are a lot of you, right??)  And so I’ve begun doing research on how to best propagate lavender.

I actually took a few cuttings from a plant in my backyard in the fall, dipped them in rooting hormone and put them in a windowsill sized seed starting tray along with some coleus cuttings just to see what would happen.  What happened is that I have three healthy little coleus plants and no lavender.  To be fair, the windowsill isn’t especially sunny and the cat knocked the tray out of the window and into the kitchen sink almost daily for weeks so I’m more surprised that the coleus lived than that the lavender died.  So it’s clear I needed to be a little more prepared and professional in my approach.

After hours of reading, watching videos and researching online, I think I’m more confused now than when I started.  To say there is a wide variety of opinions on the subject would be an understatement.  Most everyone agrees on how to get started: Pick a healthy plant and take softwood cuttings, remove the bottom few leaves, dip the cutting in rooting hormone and place in a well draining planting mix.

AND THEN WHAT?!?!

Seriously, 95% of the information available stops there!!  How can this be everything I need to know?  I know enough to know that’s not all there is, but why can I not find any more information than that??

Another day of research later, I stumbled upon a great publication from Washington State University Extension’s Small Farms Team that was much more detailed.  Furthermore, it was from a credible source (more than I can say for much of what I read) so I feel a bit better about the reliability of their information.  This is the first place I found a mention that the propagation trays need heat applied to the bottom of the trays at 72 degrees and that it will take 3-5 weeks for the cuttings to root.  So thank you WSU Extension, for some clear, concise, and complete answers.

However, I still have questions, but the all-knowing internet can’t seem to agree on the answers so I’m really hoping some of you plant geeks experts have some insight for me.  If not, I’m going to wing it and hope for the best.  So here goes:

1.  In regards to water, I’m supposed to mist, but not too much.  And keep the soil moist, but not too moist or it will cause root rot.  Should I do both?  Water and mist? Cover with a lid to create humidity? At what point do lavender cuttings become lavender plants that don’t like their feet to be wet?

2. What about light? I will be keeping the plants on a rack in the garage and have grow lights, but much of the advice I’m finding is to keep them out of a sunny location.  Do I put them on a heat mat AND turn the grow lights on?  The garage isn’t particularly bright so it seems like I would need some light, but I don’t want to fry the poor little guys!

Now, remember how I mentioned “free” plants earlier? That’s how everyone seems to attempt to convert you to the ways of propagation.

“Why buy plants at the nursery when you can grow free ones at home?!?!”

Keep in mind, we are doing this on a bigger scale than you might do at home.  YOU can put a handful of cuttings in a recycled 2 liter container in your windowsill and have plenty of plants much more affordably than buying seedlings at the nursery.  But what about when you want 500 new lavender plants?  My windowsills don’t have enough real estate for that.

We spent half a day visiting five (yes, five) different stores last weekend collecting everything we need to make a rolling propagation rack with grow lights.  My husband had insisted on finding a rack with wheels – mostly because he’s convinced I’m trying to take over his garage with plants and wants to make sure he can push them out of his way if necessary – but as it turns out, this was a brilliant idea.  When we need to start hardening off the plants, we can roll the whole rack outside and then back in rather than carry flat after flat out to sit on the picnic table each day.  Eventually, this whole setup will be moved to the farm, but until we have a new barn, the garage will have to work.

I’m now pricing seedling heat mats, comparing a ridiculously huge variety of seed starting trays and am intrigued by this cool gadget called the Seed Blocker that would eliminate the need for pots (maybe not practical for us).  Let’s just say this whole setup will cost a few hundred dollars in order to grow our free plants.  On the other hand, we only need to buy it all once and it will last a number of years so we have many more “free” plants to look forward to in future years.

At this point, my plan is to do a small flat of cuttings in the next week or so and experiment with light, heat and moisture to see what seems to work best.  If I’m feeling confident by mid-March, I’ll try some larger scale propagation in the hopes to have plants ready to go in the ground by the end of May.  I’d love to hear about your propagation experiences – what worked and what didn’t and I promise to report back on our progress soon!

Just before Christmas, in an effort to create as many handmade gifts as possible, I stumbled across a recipe for hard lotion bars and made a batch for friends, family and coworkers.  Everyone loved them and my mom even said that it was the only thing she had ever tried that completely healed her dry, cracked feet.  As the friends I gave them to started showing them to their friends, I started getting requests for more and people asking where they could buy them.

Before I could spend too much time thinking about it, I got a request from an online magazine, The Violet, who was working on a story about brunch parties and wanted a cute little favor to put at each place setting and was hoping I could give them some lotion bars!  Of course, they needed six bars in less than a week in some kind of cute packaging that would work for a photo shoot.  After my plans A & B for packaging didn’t work out, this is what I ended up with (which I actually like better than my original plan!)

If you want to see the entire story, head on over to The Violet and check out Bringing Back Brunch on pages 45-48.

Once I knew this story would be online, it seemed like a good idea to go ahead and start an Etsy shop.  If you’re not familiar with Etsy, it’s an online resource for handmade and vintage items.  Artisans open their own “shop” online to sell their products.  At the moment, I just have the hard lotion bars in the shop, but in the next two weeks, I will also have chapstick, honey lip balm and the hard lotion in roll up stick form.

So, if you were wondering to yourself how you could get your hands on a Lavender Hard Lotion Bar of your own (you were wondering that, right??), visit The Lamm Farm on Etsy to snap one up!

With all of the reflections and resolutions that happen this time of year, it seems like an appropriate time to reflect on our first full year that we’ve been working on this venture.  It was summer of 2010 when the idea was hatched and agreed upon and we started by dismantling the old barn last fall.  2011 has been full of learning and doing, of starts and stops, of victories and defeats.  So far, our first beehive has been a big success, the resurrection of the kitchen garden went well, (although the deer did find their way in towards the end of the summer), and we were thrilled to locate and purchase our new barn.  Getting the lavender in the ground has probably been the most challenging task this year.  Here’s how it all panned out:

1. We prepped the field.  Last fall, we selected the field we thought was best suited to plant our “test field” of lavender.  It was about a third of an acre, in full sun on a slight slope (good for drainage) and visible from the house.  We had the soil tested to determine what kind of amendments we needed, dragged the compost out of the old barn, spread it around the field and added agricultural lime to increase the pH of the soil.

2.  We ordered our lavender.  In February, we placed our order to be specially grown for us, due to arrive in early May – nearly 1,000 plants in total.  And then it began to rain….and rain…and rain.  Our plants were not growing as fast as anticipated due to the dreary conditions and the delivery date was pushed back multiple times.  This was just as well since we still had field prep to do – tilling under the weeds that had grown over the winter, laying weed cloth and installing irrigation.

During this time, we started to panic – after all of our measuring and figuring, we had ordered way too many plants for our plot of land.  What were we going to do? Cancel some of the order? (no, it was being grown for us) Sell the plants? (no, we don’t have the appropriate licenses yet) Add them to the landscaping around the house? (no, way too many plants for that) So, we made a quick decision and added another field.  This one on a significant slope behind the old barn.  No compost….no lime….we just crossed our fingers.

3.  The lavender arrived.  We received our plants the week of Memorial Day and about 300 of them were held back because they STILL weren’t ready.  And nearly 100 of them that were shipped did not survive shipping – we were disappointed to say the least.  However, our friends and family chipped in and got the 600 good plants into the ground in one day.  The 100 replacement plants arrived a few weeks later and those were planted right away.  By the time the other 300 were ready to go, it was too hot to ship so we decided to delay shipping until fall.

4. The plants had a successful summer – and so did the weeds.  Our biggest disappointment of the year was with the weed cloth.  Hundreds of dollars and multiple weekends to get it down and within weeks it started deteriorating.  By the end of the summer, it just fell apart in our hands.  The weeds had grown like crazy in our “improved” field and were threatening to choke out the plants.  We spent the month of October pulling up what was left of the weed cloth and weeding the entire field….and we were bitter about it.  We still don’t have a solution for the weeds – we either need to mulch the rows or purchase heavier weed cloth to try again.

5.  We never received the rest of our lavender.  By fall, we were ready to receive the remainder of our plants so they would have the winter to settle in and grow, but there were ongoing issues with the plants which caused us concern and we ultimately cancelled the remaining order.  We were very disappointed and scrambled to find a local supplier, but 300 plants is too big of an order at the end of a season for most nurseries to fill on short notice.  We hope to experiment with propagating this spring so that we can fill in the gaps in the fields.

All in all, we’ve had a successful year – on top of full time jobs and a major family commitment during much of the summer and fall, we found the time to get this farm living and breathing again.  There is much to do in the coming year, but with the amazing support of our family and friends, we feel confident that by the end of 2012, we will have a farm ready to be a part of the agri-tourism network in Placer County.

Our deepest thanks to each and every one of you who have offered words of encouragement, helped with research and offered your own physical labor to The Lamm Farm this year.  May you find health and happiness in 2012!

I went a little crazy making gifts for the holidays this year.  What’s worse is that I only decided that I was going to make everything about six weeks ago so on top of work parties, family parties, and the typical holiday chaos, I was sewing and crafting in every spare moment.  Next year, I will definitely start sooner.

Now that the tinsel has settled though, I thought I would share a few of my projects that were big hits with family and friends.  Of course, I picked projects that included lavender wherever possible.  One of the simplest projects I made were hard lotion bars.  I’ve seen these at the beekeeping store over the past year and thought they were a great idea – all natural products in a solid bar form that softens when held in your warm hands.  It can also be used on chapped lips, cracked heels or rough elbows.

I looked online for recipes and there are quite a few out there – some simpler than others – but I settled on this one from KindaCrunchyKate – and followed it to a T.  Beeswax, cocoa butter, shea butter, jojoba oil, coconut oil and olive oil are melted in a double boiler, with lavender essential oil added at the end.  I poured the mixture into a variety of molds – from cute beehive shaped ones to basic muffin tins, let cool for only a few minutes and popped them out into metal tins for gift giving.

The bars have a delicious scent – a little bit cocoa, a little bit lavender – and work perfectly!  I’ve put one on my nightstand in a small dish to put on my hands and lips before bed each night and the rest of them went out as gifts to my coworkers, family and friends.  For the gifts, I even found these printable labels from A Sonoma Garden.

I will definitely be making more of these in the future – hopefully from Lamm Farm beeswax and lavender next winter!

If you couldn’t join us in May (where we took the picture above of our hardworking volunteers) or just need another planting fix – now is your chance!  There were 200 plants that were too small to survive shipping in the spring that will be arriving at the farm next week.  In addition, the plants that went into the ground Memorial Day weekend now need fall pruning to help shape the plant for future years.  If you’d like to help, we’d love to have you!  We’ll provide snacks, lunch and tools – you just need to bring yourself in clothes you don’t mind getting dirty and a lawn chair!  Here are the details:

When: Saturday, October 8th starting at 9am

Where: The Lamm Farm – 2700 Gage Lane, Lincoln

If you’ve got lavender of your own, here’s short video from Lavender at Stonegate (where we bought our plants from) on how to prune during the first three years to ensure a healthy, happy plant.

Please let us know if you plan to join us – hope to see you in the lavender fields!