Teri J Pieper

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A New Border Collie Puppy

My friend Lynne got a new border collie last month! How sweet is that? Everyone thinks Bree is just the cutest little girl they ever saw. No doubt, she will be an agility champion someday. She already wants to do what her big brother, Trip, does in the ring.

Bree sits

Bree looks up to Lynne!

Bree reflecting Lynne

Bree trying to chase down Luna with her bone

Bree trying to figure out how to get her bone from Luna

Bree with her bone

Bree has Luna’s tennis ball while Trip watches

Trip with Luna’s tennis ball

Sweet Bree

Honey Harvest

September 3, 2013 – 3:17 pm
Posted in beekeeping
Tagged beekeeping, Honey harvest, Methow Valley, photos
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Continuing on with the ‘abundance’ theme, Ken harvested his honey this past Labor Day weekend. After two seasons of beekeeping we were anxious to see what we would get. We knew it was not a lot but after last year when some other bees robbed all of our honey we felt like any that we could harvest would be a bonus.

Ken had ‘supers’ on top of the bee hives. These supers hold frames where the bees store honey after they have filled the main box and that is the honey that we get. The honey in the main box is for the bees – to get them through the long winter months. Ken took the super and all the frames that had honey in them over to Dave S’s house. Dave is a long-time Methow Valley beekeeper who has mentored many a new beekeeper and he said we could use his honey house and equipment to harvest our honey. The honey house is actually a greenhouse or hot house and it was HOT. This makes the honey flow easier and faster.

The first step is to cut wax caps off of the honey so it can get out. To do that you use a hot, electric knife. The caps fall into a screen and any honey there drips into a sink and then into a five gallon bucket. Buckets are important. The frames hang over that sink til they go into the extractor.

The extractor is an 80 year old machine that works very efficiently. Dave said he can still get parts for it and of course, there are no expensive electronic components to fail without notice. What a refreshing idea. I miss machinery like that. It spins the frames and using centrifugal force, pulls the honey out into the big barrel where it drips in to another bucket! It took all night for the honey to drain so Ken picked it up yesterday and we put it into jars. All told we got about 1 3/4 gallons. Not enough for a whole year for us but enough to get us started and have us looking forward to future years when, hopefully the hives will be stronger and make more honey.

Dave’s bees

Capped honey in the frame

The hot knife for opening the wax caps

Dave demonstrates how to use the hot knife

Ken gives it a try

Like that?

Like that.

Our honey begins to drip into the sink

And now you do this

The inside of the extractor

The extractor with frames in it

Still dripping

The wax caps. From this I got one muffin cup of wax I can use for encaustic projects.

Dave explains how the extractor works.

Spinning around

It’s a good thing

Round and round

Our honey starts to flow out of the extractor

Pouring out of the bucket

First jar

Overlooking the valley where it originated.

Dave said this is ‘premium’ honey because it is so very light

Abundance

August 26, 2013 – 5:42 pm
Posted in garden
Tagged basil, farmers market, food photos, nectarines, pesto
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This is the season of abundance. Gardens, farms and orchards are in full swing harvest mode. The farmers’ markets overflow with fresh produce and happy customers. Neighbors sneak to your doorstep in the wee hours of the morning leaving deposits of zucchini and other summer squash that has overtaken their garden. Or if you are lucky they bring fresh tomatoes, peppers and other delightful harvests. My neighbors called to say they had recently harvested bushels of basil and there was still more and did I want any. Well yeah. Last week was busy with other abundance here at home since Ken had had a successful early season hunt and brought home an elk to fill our freezer. When we were finally finished and he left on a work trip, I made it down to the neighbors’ house for basil. Three batches of pesto later, I felt very satisfied to add more food to our freezer!

I bought a box of nectarines at the Twisp Farmers’ Market. They will be made into jam or dried.

Lots to choose from

Many kinds of peppers

Fresh fruit!

A sink full of basil

And a sprig of rosemary

Garlic from my garden

Walnuts and cheese

Basil is dried and ready to use

My trusty OLD Cuisinart food processor. This machine is probably 30 years old or close to it. Is there anything made so well anymore?

I spooned the first two batches onto parchment paper to be frozen and then stored in bags.

The last batch got an addition of lemon zest and juice as suggested by one recipe

Covered with olive oil to be stored in the frig.

Such a pretty shade of green – it even matches my counter stools

Summit Lake

August 24, 2013 – 2:00 pm
Posted in road trip
Tagged campfire cooking, kayak, road trip, Summit Lake photos, Western Toads
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Summit Lake has a small provincial park with a campground. When we arrived it appeared to be full and we were considering going on up the road towards Nakusp, unsure if we’d find anything better and available. We enquired with the park host who said the young folks putting up the toadlet fence were leaving that afternoon and we ought to check with them. Sure enough, they’d mostly finished with the fence and had most of their gear packed so we moved in before they were all the way moved out. It was a double spot and we shared it with some nice folks from Castlegar. We also met some other nice folks from Kamloops and an unplanned party went well into the evening one night! We really liked their dog and they were pretty nice too. By this time we must have been missing our dog, back home at Rover’s Ranch.

Summit Lake is a lovely lake for paddling and fishing. I saw numerous canoes and kayaks – more than I’ve seen in one place in a long time. Common Loons must have nested there this year. I saw an adult with an almost grown youngster. Ken enjoyed the fishing – catching some very large rainbow trout that we enjoyed, cooked over the fire.

The toadlet fence is designed to keep the toads out of the campground and also to funnel them to a highway crossing. They are born in the lake and spend their life there as tadpoles til they metamorphose into western toads and then they need to go to the mountains. In order to get there they have to cross the highway and it’s a dangerous gamble for the tiny creatures. We were told that in the past, so many toads were squished on the highway that it needed to be sanded. That’s a lot of tiny toads. Unfortunately all the toadlets don’t understand that they are supposed to come out of the water on the other side of the fence. We saw numerous ones on the road to the boat launch who did find the fence and some were able to squeeze through the tiny holes. Western toads, like many amphibians, are having a hard time these days. Summit Lake is considered a stronghold for them.

That’s it. The last post from the vacation. It was a fun road trip and we will probably re-visit that area again someday.

Summit Lake

Very healthy devil’s club. This is a wet climate to promote such growth.

Dinner cooking on the campfire

Ken demonstrates proper use of cooking utensils including a shovel and pliers

Hold it like that

Dinner is served!

Toadlet fence along the road to the boat launch

Toadlet fence

Tiny toadlet thinking I can do it, I can get over this thing.

How do they know where to go?

I told you they were tiny

The dark dots are toads

We were there at the start of their season

Learning to crawl before hopping

Last paddle, the last morning of the vacation.

Idaho Peak

August 24, 2013 – 6:32 am
Posted in hike
Tagged British Columbia, Idaho Peak photos, Selkirk Mountains, wildflowers
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From Sandon, we drove the long, narrow, bumpety bump road to the trailhead for Idaho Peak. This road system is a result of silver mining and logging in the region. I did not find the elevation at the trailhead; the peak itself is 7480 feet and the trail to it is about a mile. Much of it is a gentle grade with a steep section to get you to the mountaintop. The wildflowers were prolific and quite beautiful. The BC Rockies stretch out in all directions. They are incredibly tall and steep and the valleys below all seem to have long deep lakes, reminiscent of coastal fjords.