The British Invasion and Avian Discrimination: Swallowing Problems in the Valley…

This time of the year when we were kids it seems like we’d always come across some baby bird that had tumbled from its nest and was foundering in the grass or weeds. Even then we were keen to the rule (long since disproved) that if you tried to return the chick to the nest, its mother would reject it because of the foreign odor on the nestling. The little thing was most certainly doomed unless Mother Nature’s little helpers came to its rescue, took it “under their wings,” assumed the role of surrogate parents. We’d spring into action; scavenge a cardboard box for a nest; clean rags for nesting material and warmth; and—the key to the rescue—nourishment; if a thing eats, it’s bound to live. For lack of crucial parental gruel—regurgitated insects, worms, grain—we would substitute what worked for human infants: dry baby cereal moistened with milk. In those days our pantry always included this staple; in our large family it seemed there was always an infant about. (And for the sake of nostalgia, we non-infants in the household might serve our own selves a bowl—heavily sugared, of course.) We would load the mushy substance into a medicine dropper and proceed to “inject” (or “drown”) the hapless fledgling with pabulum. With the exception of five magpie chicks we unwittingly adopted, all of which proved to be feathered alimentary canals, the morning after our youthful intensive care we would without fail awake to find a pitiful little corpse stiffened in its rag nest. Then the brief funeral and on with the day….

There is something satisfying about reaching out to a wild thing, connecting with it in some way. Perhaps it has something to do with a sense of kinship, or desire, to affirm our place in the natural world. Without spending an hour on a psychiatrist’s couch, that’s my amateur explanation of why I was determined to have a pair of tree swallows nest in a nest box I built especially for them. Years ago we had a pair of tree swallows nest in a birdhouse gourd I had grown in the garden the summer before. Shortly after I hung the gourd on the grape arbor, the swallows moved in and began the nesting process. As the summer progressed, we would spend some time each evening watching them come and go: nesting material first, then the male feeding the female while she sat the eggs, both sharing foraging flights for bugs to feed the hatchlings, finally the miniature heads bobbing about the entrance impatiently awaiting their next feeding. The foraging continued into the twilight of the evening, the parents working in tandem, each in turn swooping off into the dusk and returning to deposit its latest catch of mosquitoes and gnats into the clamoring mouths.

The chicks never fledged. They grew bolder by the day and then, as I feared, the inevitable happened. One of the chicks toppled from the gourd. I found the struggling bird on the ground beneath and unwittingly returned it to the nest. Two days later I noticed the feeding activity had ceased; only the female returned to the nest that day, peered inside and flew off. The next day I noticed flies flitting in and out of the gourd and went to investigate. I found the chicks dead, their swollen little bodies crawling with mites. Was I responsible for their tragic demise? Had the mites infested the fallen chick and by restoring it to the nest I had infected its siblings? Were the parents in some way responsible? Did the gourd’s proximity to the vine’s foliage contribute to their deaths? I never did discover the cause. Later that day the female, prompted by her maternal instinct--or hope-- returned one last time, perched on the nest’s entrance, and peered inside. Finding nothing stirring, she flew off. We never saw her again that summer and felt a twinge of sadness whenever we glanced at the abandoned gourd. For a while our evenings were not quite the same. Tree swallows have only one brood a season; we knew the pair wouldn’t return to the gourd  for a second settin.’

During the winter I consulted references books on nest boxes for cavity nesting birds, especially tree swallows. The source I chose specified the following:

Interior floor size—5”x 5”

Height of box—10-12”

Entrance hole diameter—1 1/2”

Mounting height of box—10-12’ from the ground

A photo of a nest box showed the entrance hole at least two-thirds up the face of the nest. This got me to thinking about the gourd failure: perhaps the cavity was too shallow, allowing the overeager chicks to tumble out before they were ready to fledge. A deeper cavity would prevent such premature adventures. Using rough cedar fence rails for lumber, I followed the above specs and constructed the nest. The roof I hinged so I could access the cavity for cleaning. The sloping top had an inch and a half overhang for rain protection and shade. I installed two brass hooks to latch the roof to the nest. Before I cut the nest box entrance, I consulted authorities on the hole’s diameter. Everyone I talked to said an inch and a half diameter would allow larger birds access, especially English sparrows. They recommended I reduce the hole to one inch and make it oblong instead of circular. I cut a round hole one inch in diameter in the face of the box and left it at that.

On a sunny spring day usually mid-April the tree swallows arrive on the place and immediately examine the premises for potential nesting sites. A day or so later after their first visit I climbed a ladder to the peak of our storage shed (at a height a half dozen feet higher than the specs required) and installed the new cedar nest box just under the eaves. Hardly two hours later the swallows did a fly-by, kicking the tires, so to speak. The male swooped up, landed on the box, peered in two or three times, and departed. Every three or four hours they’d return and repeat their inspection.

A couple days later the male attempted to enter the nest box (the male apparently must give an “all clear” before his mate crosses the threshold herself). Head inside but no further. Time and again he’d struggle to gain entrance but could go no further than his shoulders. For its size a tree swallow is a broad shouldered little bird. I determined the entrance must be too small, took the box down and enlarged the hole. This time I tried to give it an oblong shape. Up the ladder again. Hardly had my feet touched ground when Mr. flew to the nest, looked in a time or two, teetered on the lip of the hole and disappeared inside. Success at last, or so I thought.

“Bully,” as the British say, and so right they are: the English sparrow is just that, a backyard bully, a dowdy thug that is as aggressive and tenacious as a pit bull. Its nesting instinct is more powerful than the Octomom’s (three to five broods a year!). When the Brit takes a liking to a nesting site, it will have it or else, mercilessly harass any other tenant, and drive it from the premises. A few years back we installed a stylish high rise bird condominium, hoping to attract a respectable clientele, birds with both class and color. By the end of the summer the “Engs,” (our family’s pejorative for this avian pest) had trashed the condo, turned it into a Dickensian tenement.  To discourage their presence on the property, I boarded up the entrance holes. Today Sparrow Heights stands like an abandoned tenement row after the Watts’ neighborhood riots.

Yes, I enlarged the entrance…and the modification did not go unnoticed by the Engs. A pair started their bullying ways almost immediately, perching on the shed roof or carport, even settling on top of the occupied nest box, insinuating themselves on the swallow tenants. The Engs work in tandem…like Bonny and Clyde without Tommy guns. For a few days the swallow male defended the nest box with the help of his mate. In the evening both would fly away to roost elsewhere during the night. Early in the morning they would return and defend their stake in the nest box. The Engs would bide their time, making periodic incursions in the swallows’ space, just waiting, waiting…. One evening not a half hour after the swallows left for night, the sparrows moved in. Come morning the swallows found their nest occupied. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and the Engs now ruled the roost. I would take my air rifle and rattle a bb off the nest, chase them out and away. Even though the bullies had left the premises, for some reason the swallows were reluctant to reclaim the nest box. They would hover around the entrance, briefly land on the face of the nest, but refused to enter the box. If I had errands to run or indoor chores to do, the Engs would return and commandeer the nest box again. The swallows would leave for the night but would return and perch on our t.v. antennae, waiting for who knows what to happen. This scenario repeated for two or three days. I began to fear that the swallows would give up and nest somewhere else. Not only had the sparrows hauled in nesting material, but I suspected they had left a “scent fence,” a territorial odor that kept the swallows at bay. Up the ladder again. Down with the box. I soaked it in a bucket of rainwater for a day, let the box dry and air out for a week, back up the ladder, rehung it again. 

Now I know you’re probably thinking I had plenty more pressing things to attend to and you’d be right, but this man was NOT about to be bullied by a pair of frumpy Engs. For the next three weeks I was up and down the ladder at least two more times. But for bit of luck and poor aim resulting in sparrowcide, who knows how long I would have had to arbitrate the nest box issue. Unfortunately the male Eng got in the way of an errant bb and that was that. The swallow pair moved in immediately; they didn’t even bother to attend the funeral. The rest of the nesting cycle seemed routine; however, one of the chicks fledged too soon. I found it dead in the weeds nearby. As far as I know the remaining hatchling fledged successfully the very next day. Their nesting ordeal finished for the season, the pair left in the company of the youngster, and the nest box was abandoned.

As if I hadn’t spent considerable time with my swallowing problem already, I kept a journal of the swallow/Eng ordeal, keeping a daily account of both species’ behaviors. When the swallows came back this spring, I consulted last year’s experience and found it was “pete and repeat” this season with the sparrows. Up and down the ladder; rinsing out the nestbox. The second time I rehung the box, I thought my efforts would pay off. The swallows took over their nest, but four days later as soon as they flew off to their nightly roosting site, a pair of Engs moved in, carrying nesting material with them. “Ok, you little buggers, go for it,” I said. “You can do your dirty work for a week and then down comes your home and all its contents.” Five days later I climbed the ladder again. When I lifted the roof of the box, I found a complete nest and four eggs. No wonder the countryside is overrun with the tenacious little fluff devils. I dumped the contents, eggs and all, over the fence and submerged the purged nest box in the rain barrel once more. In the meantime the tree swallows remained ever hopeful, faithfully returning to the t.v. antenna each morning, periodically fluttering around their nesting site as if expecting the box to pop out of the side of the shed for them. A week later…up the ladder again.

At this point the pair are at home in the box as if nothing had happened. Currently they have chicks to feed and are foraging for bugs (a single swallow can consume two hundred or so insects in a single day) to feed their young. Both parents are hard at work: as soon as one arrives at the nest, the other spurts out and takes its turn. Back and forth they fly from dawn to twilight.

What I have learned from my swallowing experience is apparently the one-brood species has a certain window of time for nest building. During this period they instinctively know it’s do or die if they want to raise a family that season. Once this “zero hour” is reached, they will defend their nesting site aggressively, doing battle with Engs, starlings, or any other bird that enters their space. My last year’s journal has been helpful with the timeline:

May 15-17—Female began carrying in nesting material.

May 18—Nest building continues…

May 20—Noticed mating activity…

May 22—More mating activity. Female is spending more time in the nest? Eggs, perhaps?

June 1—The female is brooding; the male feeds her periodically…

June 16—Chicks have hatched. Both parents are foraging for bugs and feeding their babies…

June 25—Miniature heads appear in the nest entrance…

June 29—Two heads always at the door, one larger than the other, the larger is just poised to fledge…

July 1—The chicks have apparently fledged. No sign of them anywhere. The male visited the nest twice, checked inside, and flew off. Probably won’t see anymore swallow activity at the nest until next season. I hope both chicks fledged and are soaring in the Valley with their parents.

There you have the swallow season in an “eggshell,” and this one has been almost a mirror image of last’s. But I’m a wiser person now. Next year I’ll wait until mid-May to struggle up the ladder: hopefully, only one round trip this time. The rungs seem to get farther apart each year, the height more dizzying. After all, I’m not the fledgling I used to be.

The Ballad of the Supine Cyclist…

Feet in the air,

Feet in the air,

Pedalin’ up a storm

With my feet in the air.

Lying on my backside…

It’s not polite to stare,

Cruisin’ down the road

With my feet in the air.

Sure, I’m horizontal…

Don’t much really care,

Pedalin’ on my back

With my knees in the air.

Ridin’ down the fog line,

Feet whirlin’ away.

If and when I get there,

Cannot really say.

Feet pointin’ skyward,

Backside at the road,

Wibble, wobble, side-to-side,

Distributing the load.

Cars flyin’ by me,

Miss me by a hair.

Just pedalin’ like a fool

With my feet in the air…

A Stone for the Ages: From the Archives…

“…the wildflowers bloomed and the winters fell…”

By now the trip is familiar—seventeen of the last eighteen years if memory serves—winding up McNeill Canyon to the wheat fields on the Waterville Plateau. Some are fallow, some flush with sprouted winter wheat. Off the blacktop, dust funneling away behind the truck as I head north along the “Primitive Roads,” between plowed and seeded wheat fields and the basalt scablands on the northern fringe of the Waterville Plateau. On both sides of the road, some near, some distant, huge haystack rocks (“erratics,” geologists call them), dot the landscape.

“Bear left,” I remind myself as I come to one dusty intersection after another. I need to head west now. Gently slide the sharp corner by the Grigg place (a “hundred year-old farm” the sign reads) and head north again. A mile down the road next to an old homestead I slow to a stop and step out into a cool, breezy late May morning. The old cabin’s roof has succumbed to the weight of many winters, is near collapse; the structure is about to implode. Doors and windows just gaping holes through which I can see bare lathe and plaster walls. The same debris litters the floor in heaps. From somewhere within a sound startles me. I stop, listen…nothing. I continue, cautiously weaving my way through waist high grasses, stepping over snares of barbed wire, the remnants of an old gate, to an ancient lilac bush.

A white lilac, this old pioneer, is in full bloom now. Not the case in seasons past: either a late bloom or past bloom. This spring the bush (actually more a small tree) blossoms profusely and the morning breeze has loosed the heady fragrance around me. Though I’m on a tight schedule, have driven nonstop for over three hours, I take time to breathe deeply, savor the gift of lilac, for the gift comes only once a year. And next year is a long way distant, and even then, who knows…. Out with the jackknife and I cut four nice, blossom-laden branches, return to the truck and place them gently in the ice chest in the company of a bouquet of iris. One more turn to the west and I can see the canopy of pines below the ridge of the plateau: my destination where since 1994, excepting one year, I’ve performed this annual rite.

The pines always whisper there. The breeze sweeps up valley from the river, sets them to talking. Sometimes a gust of wind: the pines explode with sound, a gentle roar, subsides and they whisper again.… You might hear the keening of a red-tailed hawk mounting the currents above the plateau. In spring the drumming of a blue grouse to his lady… a flicker hammering out a grub from a dead pine below…a jay might yammer back at a rook croaking overhead…but mostly it’s the never silent pines that murmur, theirs a lullaby for the eternities. Shovel and rake in hand I make my way down slope through the bunchgrass and sage to the familiar stone….

Twelve years ago when I was about to rest on my laurels after thirty-one years of coexisting peacefully with high school sophomores, it used to irritate me each time I was asked (which was often): “What are you going to do when you retire?”… as if something was expected of me now I was about to inherit what the paycheck/nine-to-five demographic considered one whole lot of free time. For them, I guess, I was their retirement by proxy, and when I’d reply: “Oh, there’s always plenty to keep me busy around the place,” you could almost see the disappointment play across their faces. No plans to scale Everest or hike Nepal and the Himalayas? Sail solo around the world, perhaps? No intentions to rent an artist’s loft in Paris, set up an easel by a sidewalk bistro and render Parisian scenes in water color? Golf at least, right? (I’d sooner bungee jump, skydive, wrestle a ‘gator, or swim with the sharks, but I never told them that.) No, retirement was a time to keep one’s personal promises, promises the nine-to-five, five day work week until now had made extremely inconvenient to fulfill--if not impossible. And since these pledges were personal, they were nobody’s business….

Packwood Memorial Cemetery perches on a narrow bench off Central Ferry Canyon Road in northwest Douglas County. You could find it easily on a contour map of the area; it would be the wider space set between narrow lines above and below it east off the upper Central Ferry Canyon Road. This December, eighteen years ago, we carried Dad to this place and now Packwood has him for eternity. For seven years his grave was marked by only a small metal nameplate, courtesy of the local funeral home, and now seven years later the cheap copper plating had worn off. Dad deserved better than that from his family, and so I promised…. Thus, in January of 2001, my first full year of retirement, I began to make good that promise.

Dad loved the ridge above where he now lies. A deer hunter and outdoorsman, he spent many hunting seasons scouring the Packwood pines for deer (“This looks ‘deery,’” Dad always said). We thought about the geography of the area, wanted something natural for Dad’s monument. The granite and marble markers in the cemetery seemed oddly out of place in the geography of the area. The dominant petrology of the Waterville Plateau is basalt from some ancient volcanic lava spill that oozed across hundreds of miles of Eastern Washington. The northern fringe of this flow ended in northwest Douglas County; basalt scablands and “rimrocks” compose the  steep hillside above Packwood. A monument of basalt seemed appropriate for the setting. (Other families thought the same: at least two plain basalt slabs from the hillside mark where their loved ones lie.)

 

 

 

 

 

Just down the road a mile here in the Valley was a business that sold stone of all sorts: flagstone, pavers, boulders for “big” landscapes…rocks of all types and compositions. A convenient place to begin the search. I needed to include family in the decision, so I called my brothers Tim and Kevin. We met at the stone place and checked out their inventory. After stumbling around, over and through one rock pile after another, we found what we were looking for: blocks of columnar basalt from the Columbia Basin. The stones were huge, some weighing tons, so immediately we were confronted by a transport problem. The brothers and I discussed the feasibility of freighting such a monolith to a pioneer cemetery one hundred eighty miles away across one mountain pass to its final resting place. We chose the smallest block of basalt in the stone yard, one that was slightly longer than its height but even that chunk scaled out at slightly more than a ton. Then we had an idea that would lighten up the stone by half. Most columnar basalt is hexagonal. Halving the stone would result in a three-sided monument, one side to serve as the top, the opposite side as the base, and the sliced third—the largest surface area—would be a perfect inscription surface for Dad’s epitaph…and lighter now by half. We asked the owners if the stone could be halved and were told yes; however, they did not have the machinery for the job on site and would have to haul the rock to Seattle. We made the decision to go ahead with the project.The stone was forklifted aboard a pallet, weighed, set aside with a “sold” tag on it, and we left the yard.

Thus began a long and frustrating ordeal. Because I was closest to the work site, it made sense for me to be the one to oversee the project. My brothers, besides, had a business to run.  Then there was the fact I was the eldest sibling, the one with a “whole lot of free time” on my hands, remember. It was my promise after all and I swore to honor it.

The project needed a timeline. It was mid-January when we purchased the stone. All members of the family were contacted and the installation date set: July seventh, the Independence Day holiday weekend. Ours is a large family and the Fourth of July is one of the few times of the year we could manage to get together. My youngest sister and family were making the trip west from Omaha and planned to participate. Mid-January to July seventh, nearly seven months…plenty of time to prepare Dad’s monument. Or so I thought….

Every two or three weeks I would drive the mile to the stone yard, check on the progress. Time after time I would pull in the driveway only to find our “project” hunkering in the same place as before. Into the office and politely, “No progress yet?”only to be told “We’ve been busy lately but we’ll get on it soon.” Soon? I reminded them again that July seventh the family would be together for the installation. They’d smile and nod as if July 7 was a millennium away.

February and March went by. The stone hadn’t budged, and I’m thinking about the $500 deposit I’d left as down payment. “Our trucks have been very busy,”they explained, “and we just haven’t been able to free one up for the trip to Seattle.” Two weeks later I turned into the driveway and was surprised to see the stone had left the yard. My next visit our half, neatly sliced, was back on its pallet in the yard. And there it sat: the next phase, sandblasting an inscription surface still unfinished.

April came and went. I talked to the fellow assigned to our project: “Every time I’m about to get started, they give me another job,” he apologized. Back to the office where I suggested they hire more help if they weren’t able to complete their orders.

Finally in mid-May, progress at last: the face of the stone had been sandblasted, smoothed and sculpted to a shiny, obsidian-black. My hopes soared.

May passed into June and the epitaph had yet to be engraved. Two weeks later…same old, same old, and I’d had enough. I stormed into the office, asked to see the manager, and unloaded on him: “If the project isn’t done by the first of July, I want my money refunded and I’m cancelling the project.” July 1. I drove down promptly at opening time and there, strapped to a pallet, ready for transport, was—at long last—Dad’s stone. An American flag, posted in the top of the stone above the epitaph, fluttered gently in the Tualco Valley breeze. Now all that remained was transporting the 1,200 pound monument across Stevens Pass one hundred eighty miles to Packwood Memorial Cemetery.

Whether my little Toyota was up to the task, I wasn’t sure. I asked Larry at Courtesy Tire about the weight issue. He thought the truck could handle a 1,200 pound load. “Air up your tires to 40 pounds pressure,” he advised. “You’ll be fine.” I had the stone loaded, made sure the pallet was moved forward to the cab to distribute the weight forward. Departure was two days away, and to spare the Toyota’s suspension system, the truck sat in the driveway with a one ton jack supporting the springs.

At five a.m. July 6 I headed east. My little Toyota performed admirably: third gear the last few miles to the summit but otherwise a routine drive. Proper weight distribution made the difference and kept the front end from floating at highway speed. Before noon I arrived at the packing shed complex on the ranch where Dad had been foreman for so many years…our staging area. One of the shed hands met me and with a ranch forklift relieved the truck of 1,200 pounds of stone. The monument spent the night in an empty cold storage room.

July 7. I arrived at the staging area around 8:00 a.m. The ranch mechanic gave me a brief driving lesson for the balloon-tired big forklift that would carry the headstone uphill the last seven miles to the cemetery. The family gathering and installation were at 10:00, so with brother Tim as escort, I began the last leg of our seven month “journey.”

Seven slow miles…plenty of time to let memories wash over me as the big machine whined its way up Central Ferry Canyon Road.

 

 

As I turn into the cemetery driveway, I can feel the tension of the last seven months slip away. I bring the  forklift to a stop in the shade of the big pine tree in the dusty parking lot, lower the pallet to the ground.

I need to reposition the stone so the epitaph reads downhill, and reverse the machine, approach the pallet from the opposite side, and with Tim’s directions slide the forks under the pallet. I ease along through the sagebrush to the gravesite, carefully lower the pallet to the ground, and shut down the engine. As the roar subsides, the murmur of the pines whispers a gentle welcome.

One by one our families gather. When all are present, we prepare the gravesite for the stone’s final resting place. The brothers fashion a sling from the canvas strapping belt, and I lift the stone while they remove the pallet. Placing the monument is done with ease, thanks to the forks of the lift which not only lift and lower but also slide horizontally.

A few hand directions from the brothers and the stone settles to rest. We pull loose the straps, stand back and admire our work. The stone belongs, as if it’s always been there…a part of the place…at home at last.

                  *          *          *          *          *

I set the rake and shovel aside and critique my work. Another year and Dad’s gravesite is cleared of the  growth of native plants ever anxious to reclaim the site. The grave is newly mounded, raked and smoothed. I decorate it with the lilacs I cut earlier and add the iris I brought from the Valley. Only one thing left to do: I retrieve the new flag from the truck, return to the stone,  release the red, white and blue cloth from its furl and insert the dowel in the posting hole. A few steps back for final approval. The ever present breeze sets the flag in motion. Time for a moment’s reflection: my journey of eleven years ago to honor a man, my father, and his lifetime.

If a man deserves the stone, I say he should have it. Now Dad has his. A stone for the ages…a promise kept….

The Lab Has Spoken…

I recently received an email from Erin O’Rourke of WSU’s Bee Diagnostic Lab, sharing the Lab’s findings of the sample of bees from my spring dwindling colony (see “Necropsy Pending,” 4/27/2012). Over the period of a half dozen days in March I collected dead bees from a catcher board placed at the entrance of the distressed hive, bottled them up, sent them off to the Bee Lab, and anxiously awaited their findings. The report was surprising, yet puzzling:

Nosema spores: 0 spores per bee (Good, but a surprise)

Tracheal mites: 0 % colony infection (Good news indeed)

Varroa mites: 1.6 mites per 100 bees (Seemed excessive…)

Here I quote from Ms. O’Rourke’s email: “Unfortunately, the data from this sample did not yield any definitive explanation for why the colonies are suffering such losses.” O’Rourke continued: “Varroa mites are present but at a relatively low level.” One and a half mites per 100 bees seems like a hefty amount of parasites…but Ms. O’Rourke and colleagues are the experts, not me. A strong colony can have between forty and sixty thousand bees at peak population; however, if a hive has a severe mite infestation, it’s not likely to achieve such numbers—if it survives at all. The Bee Lab and I did concur on one point. Ms. O’Rourke: “Your assessment of the seasonal presence of nosema symptoms in the spring that subside with the availability of fresh forage corresponds to our research. There was pollen in your sample.” I was aware that two or three deceased bees in my sample carried pollen pellets. That bees bearing fresh pollen should die before delivering the goods seemed to me an indicator that something was amiss.

I thought it only right, for the purposes of bee diagnostics and research, to respond to the Bee Lab’s findings…to thank them, of course, for the fine work they do for us beekeepers, but also to give Ms. O’Rourke an update on the hive sampled. In my letter to the Lab I gave a detailed history of my experiences keeping bees here in the Valley; however, I purposely withheld certain information about the distressed colony because it didn’t seem pertinent to my sample. I had examined the colony shortly before my sampling and straight off noticed a problem. In addition to the adult bees present, the hive had three frames of capped brood—bees in their pupa stage--shortly to emerge as adults. I would have wished for four of five frames in mid-March, but only three frames of brood did not spell disaster for the colony. I searched for new eggs on an outer frame of capped brood.

Examining the egg laying pattern of the colony’s queen is an excellent way to assess the health of the colony. A honeybee egg is translucent, shaped like a tiny bean. The queen lays one egg in the center of the cell and glues it on end so it stands upright like a tiny appendix. By tilting the frame to the light, the beekeeper can easily spot the eggs and thus check the queen’s egg pattern. The queen begins laying eggs in the center of the comb and lays outwards until most of brood comb is full of eggs. A sporadic egg pattern, eggs laid helter skelter, indicates a failing queen. The outer cells of the brood comb are left to store the nectar required to feed the larvae. Because the eggs laid in the center of the comb metamorphose first, the beekeeper knows to look for freshly laid eggs at the perimeter of the capped (pupa stage) brood on each frame. Years of beekeeping have taught me to look first for eggs and examine their pattern to assess the health of the hive and the vitality of the queen; eggs, larvae, and capped brood are the colony’s indicator of wellness.

That was why I was alarmed at what I discovered on a brood comb. I located eggs where I expected them but noticed straight off many cells contained multiple eggs, two and three per cell. In this case, strange as it seems, less is better than more. Multiple eggs per cell indicate something is amiss with the queen and the hive is no longer “queen-rite.” She has either failed or died and her attendants haven’t been able to replace her. In desperation, some workers try to rescue the colony by assuming the queen’s egg laying role and becoming “laying workers” themselves. And even though the worker bees are females, too, theirs is a futile attempt. The queen is the only fertile female and can lay at will both fertilized and infertile eggs: the former become workers; the latter drones. The eggs from laying workers metamorphose into males, drones, and once a colony is “governed” by laying workers, it most certainly is doomed to extinction (not meant as“male-bashing,” just a simple fact). Attempts to requeen the colony will fail because the laying workers will usurp any newcomer and sting her to death, further sealing the hive’s fate. Egg-laying workers lack the genetic code that signals them to lay one egg per cell and will lay multiple eggs. These are readily visible on the floor of the cell like little stacks of cordwood or a jumble of pick-up sticks.

The workers bees are acutely in tune with their leader’s health and in most cases will “supersede”(replace) her when they sense she is ailing, injured or suddenly dies. This period of interregnum is a perilous time in the life of a honeybee colony. Any fertilized egg has the potential to become a queen bee; however, there is a very narrow window of time for the workers to select the queen’s replacement. Larvae selected to replace their faltering mother should be 2 to 3 days old (to insure they are fed the maximum amount of “royal jelly,” a special ambrosia fit for a queen). If, for whatever reason, this narrow margin is missed, the colony will “drone” itself into oblivion. Larvae much older will not produce a perfect queen, either. Once the old queen is superseded, a new virgin queen will emerge as early as eleven days later. By the time she takes her mating flight and begins her egg laying duties, ten more days may have passed. (In the spring our fickle Valley weather makes a queen’s mating flight even more problematic.) And a full month may go by before any new eggs are laid. With a "gestation period” of twenty-one days from egg to adult worker bee, such an interruption in the brood cycle can have a significant impact on the strength of the honeybee colony.

My response to the superfluous eggs? “Oh, great…first disease and mites, now laying workers!”and wrote the hive off as a certain “deadout.” I didn’t trouble Ms. O’Rourke with this information because the hive was distressed before I discovered the laying worker scenario and for all I knew, its dwindling and queenless condition was cause and effect.

What I did share with Erin in a follow-up email was the surprise I found a week later when I looked in the problem hive and discovered a lovely egg pattern, and what’s more, a nice, plump, healthy-looking queen! I mulled over this new development and somewhere in my beekeeping repertoire of information, I remember reading that sometimes a new queen, healthy and vigorous, being new to her role, will sometimes enthusiastically lay more than one egg per cell. In retrospect I remembered that the excess eggs were not spread willy nilly  but were deposited in the cell on end, each correctly positioned, just as a single egg should be.

In talking with beekeeping newbies, long time beekeepers, or the purely curious about the satisfying pastime of keeping bees, I usually include this statement: “I’ve been keeping bees since I was fourteen years old, and every season I learn something new or experience some oddity I’ve never encountered before.” Perhaps that’s why I keep on keeping bees: you continue on, wondering just what’s going to happen next. And thanks to Erin and WSU’s Bee Diagnostic Lab, I feel I’m not alone in this mysterious and challenging era of modern beekeeping.

Salmon in a Spacesuit: The Asparagus Version…

Welcome to The Ripple’s food page. So you’re scratching your head wondering what to fix for dinner? Why not try “Salmon in a Spacesuit,” an astronautical recipe guaranteed to elevate your kitchen status to that of a Julia Childs or at least our modern Goddess of the Kitchen (and everything else domestic), Martha Stewart. And in due respect to Marvelous Martha, I’ll credit her with the following recipe; however, when her apron was turned, a bit of sleight of hand (by me) whisked away the baby spinach leaves and replaced them with fresh garden asparagus from the same patch featured in the previous post.

The “spacesuit” component, by the way, is Martha’s clever way of embellishing her recipe: the “out of this world” material is simply plain, old parchment paper and you don’t need the Apollo astronauts to stuff it full, either. Have your grocery list handy? Here’s what you’ll need:

2 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temp

1 Tbsp capers, rinsed and coarsely chopped

1 Tbsp coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

1 medium garlic clove, finely chopped

1 large (or two small) russet potato(es), scrubbed and thinly sliced (I prefer new red potatoes myself)

2 medium shallots, thinly sliced (or substitute red onions)

6 or 7 stalks medium thickness asparagus sliced in half

2 six-ounce salmon fillets about 1 1/2” thick (Spice up your recipe with some “seasonal” excitement: Copper River salmon is now booking flights in first class on Alaska Airlines, Washington bound, ready to be suited up…at its usual astronomical prices, of course)

1 lemon, thinly sliced

2 twelve-by-seventeen-inch pieces parchment paper [Note: This recipe serves two, by the way…dare we think Martha was expecting a gentleman caller?  Salmon in a Spacesuit can easily be prepared for the lone diner or the number of guests at your family reunion, prepared ahead of time and refrigerated until mealtime. And unlike most of Stewart’s recipes, with this one you don’t have to hit the kitchen at dawn to prepare for a dinner at 8:00]

Preparation: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place a baking sheet in oven to preheat. Make caper butter: combine, in a small bowl, butter, capers, parsley, and garlic. Mix well.

Fold each piece of parchment paper in half crosswise, then open, creating a crease. Lightly spray one side of the crease (the right, for this right-handed guy) with vegetable oil (prevents your meal from sticking to the “suit”). Divide potato slices between the two pieces of parchment paper, creating a bed of spuds on each. Season with salt and pepper.

Top each bed with one-quarter of the shallots (or onions). Lay half the sliced (to prevent movement) asparagus halves (six or seven) on top of the shallots.

Place salmon fillet on top of asparagus, divide remaining shallots or onions between the two packages. Top each piece of salmon with two or three slices of lemon and dot the top liberally with the caper butter. “Suit up” the meal by bringing together both ends of parchment paper, roll, fold and crease them until the fold rests gently on the contents. Fold and crease the short ends next. (Note: I like to seal the short ends with metal paper clips.)

Lay your spacesuits on the pre-heated baking sheet, load them into the “capsule” (400 degree oven), and after a twenty-five minute countdown, the spacesuits will be ready to orbit around the dinner table. An out of this world meal--without the zero gravity.

…And Then Sprinkle Lightly with Fresh Parmesan…

It’s asparagus season. Local asparagus, that is, tasty stalks grown right here in Washington State. Road side farm and vegetable stands entice you with their signs. “Local asparagus,” they read—and unlike the stuff imported from the four corners of the earth, “locally grown” always commands a premium price.

When I was boy growing up on a Douglas County apple orchard, our family never paid one thin dime for our  asparagus. The plant grew wild in the orchards, spread by birds and the cultivator which chopped up the crowns and replanted them everywhere throughout the orchard. (Let me know if you remember the often ridiculed Euell Gibbons, author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus fame.) Those days our family of eight had a tight budget; we cut corners wherever we could. We had access to an abundance of gratis fruit: cherries, peaches, apricots, and, of course, plenty of apples and pears which we ate fresh. When these fruits were in season, our childish summertime antics were put on hold and we children became sweaty wards of the kitchen until the crop of the day was canned, preserved, dried, and stored away for winter. “I always remember freezing asparagus on Lisa’s birthday,” Mom told me a while back. My sister Lisa’s birthday is May 6, and I imagine she had immunity on her special day, but the rest of us were sent out to forage for asparagus. In those days before herbicides withered the stalks and poisoned the root systems (the spaces between trees were “defoliated” to prevent rodent damage during the winter time), with little effort we kids could pick an entire apple box full of tender spears in half an hour. It was random harvesting: we hopped from row to row, snapped a handful of spears while keeping an eye out for the next cluster of stalks. Ten, fifteen pounds of delicious vegetable we’d haul home and when the asparagus plate made the circuit of the table at winter meals, we were instantly transported back to May, the warmth of spring, and hands sticky with and smelling of asparagus juice.

Once you’ve had something for free, it becomes a matter of principle not to pay for it again if you can help it. As I said, asparagus grows wild in Eastern Washington. Harvesting it now in orchards is problematic because of  herbicides used in routine weed management. Besides, the new agriculture of cover cropping, which necessitates frequent mowing between rows of trees, prevents asparagus from the normal cycling the plant needs to store nourishment for next year’s crop.

For several years my free asparagus came from a thirty acre field in Chelan County. During asparagus season locals from all over the county thronged to the site to pick the crop. This non-local had to get up before the sun to make it to the patch (a two and a half hour drive from Monroe) to stay ahead of the competition. Even then there were always pickers ahead of me, sometimes half a dozen or so, ballooning plastic bags in hand, on the hunt as they marched across the field through the early May morning. A few years back my environmentally-sensitive friend Nancy L and I arrived at the plot (we left town at 6:00 a.m.) around nine in the morning. Five hours later we had bagged over fifty pounds of the tasty spears between us and were back in Monroe by six in the evening.

A couple years ago I got to thinking about those trips east: up early, three hours there, three back, all the time, the traffic, the gas…maybe those bags of asparagus weren’t that cheap after all. It was then I remembered Old Baylor’s place (now Kelly Bolles’ Organic Farm). Aside from his strawberry business, Baylor had a nice asparagus patch. I remembered seeing a forest of lacy fronds of the seeded out stalks and marveled at how Baylor had mulched the patch with sawdust to keep his asparagus weed free. “Why not add an asparagus patch to my garden inventory?” I thought and set myself to the task.

I hauled out my stack of seed catalogs, sorted through them, and ordered fifty-two asparagus crowns, two dozen from the east coast (Vermont, I think), the rest from Oregon’s Territorial Seed catalog. Then up to Lowe’s for some 2” x 12”s. Measuring twice and cutting once, I constructed a 5’ x 8’ x 12”raised bed frame and waited for the UPS van to visit our driveway.

In the meantime I filled the raised bed halfway with soil from the garden. The Vermont crowns arrived first (Territorial Seed’s wouldn’t show for another four weeks). I hoed three deep furrows, spread the crab-like roots of each crown along the bottom, and filled in the furrows. When the remaining crowns were shipped a month later, I repeated the procedure: six furrows’ worth of crowns. As the first spears sprouted, I added more soil, covering the tips until the bed bulged with fresh dirt.

The asparagus gardener, according to the experts, should allow his new asparagus bed three years to develop a vigorous root system before he harvests a full crop. On one of my Valley walks I stopped to chat with Tony Broers and mentioned my asparagus enterprise. Tony told me he watched growers in Toppenish plant their asparagus fields. “First, they dig a furrow three feet deep,” Tony explained, “and spread the crowns at the bottom. As the stalks grow, the grower adds more soil until the furrows are completely filled.” This technique guaranteed a deep, sturdy root system. When I heard this information, I wished I had tilled the location first, then planted the crowns below ground level, and finally set the wooden bed frame over the planted crowns, and then layered on the dirt. Had I used a little forethought, the crowns would have had an extra foot of earth in which to stretch and grow. 

This spring was the third for my new bed, and I looked forward to a full harvest of tender, delicious stalks to steam, broil or grill on the barbecue—our favorite mode of preparation. The first heads appeared in mid-April and with our recent stretch of warm, summer-like weather, we are able to pick a hefty meal every three days. To date, we’ve harvested nearly two hundred tasty stalks from the little 5’ x 8’ patch. I plan to continue harvesting until mid-June and then let the bed go to seed and replenish itself for next season.

The nursery crowns I purchased were hybrid crowns, which made me wonder if the plants would throw seed, and if any did, would the seed sprout? Two large fronds seeded out last summer. I harvested the berries, cast them about on top of the bed, and brought fifty or sixty ripe pods into the house where they wintered in a paper cup behind the woodstove. My plan: plant some seed indoors to see if it was viable and would sprout. Back in mid-March I planted several seeds in eggshell halves (for the calcium boost, you know) and installed them, egg carton and all, in my little seed starter. To my delight, all the seeds sprouted. And furthermore, the seeds I spread about on the surface of the bed sprouted as well. Asparagus propagates in the wild thanks to the dispersion of seed by birds. I decided to forego the avian route and do the work myself. Hopefully, through my efforts, I’ve  guaranteed future crops—perpetuating many more asparagus meals smothered in white sauce.

Or hollandaise sauce, if you prefer. Again, we like our asparagus brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with garlic salt, broiled or barbecued (but not too long…leave it al dente--over the coals for three or four minutes. Roll it once, cook three or four more minutes and remove… ). Top the hot stalks with a light sprinkling of fresh parmesan and let rest until melted. But the extra, added flavor comes from the satisfaction of knowing what you served up for the evening meal came from your very own asparagus patch.  And for an “out of this world” asparagus recipe, don’t miss The Ripple’s next post.

Canola? Dale Can…

“…through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling. They fell on the town all through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roofs and blocked the doors and smothered the animals who slept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral procession could pass by.”

[the night preceding the funeral of Jose Arcadio Buendia, beloved patriarch and founder of Macondo]

One Hundred Years of  Solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Maybe they were canola flowers….

Drivers crossing the Lewis Street Bridge might be tempted to reach for their sunglasses when they glance east up the south riverbank toward the mountains. A splash of tropical sunshine, as if someone had taken a giant paintbrush and daubed the landscape a brilliant yellow, bathes the riverbank. It’s a wonder drivers don’t cause “gaper’s block” as they slow to take in the spectacle; or rear end other drivers who abruptly flip on their left turn signals to turn down the side road for a chance to photograph the four acre swatch. It is a yellow found only in nature; there’s no such thing as a Crayola “canola yellow.”

Dale Reiner likes to talk; he especially likes to talk about farming. I called him the other evening, and we talked for over an hour about canola, the crop now yellowing his four acre parcel of riverbank.

Canola, along with its cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and kale cousins, is a biennial belonging to the plant family Brassica. The mustard plant, the same whose seeds you find in the spice section at the grocery store, is a near relative as well. When it seeds, a canola stalk produces hundreds of slender, finger-like pods, each, when mature, contains several 1-2mm seeds. The seeds are harvested for their oil content which is pressed from the seed. Canola oil may find its way to your kitchen or into the gas tank of your diesel-powered vehicle. (That canola is a valued source of bio-diesel fuels proves its high demand and further explains its higher cost as a food product in the supermarket.)

A half dozen years ago, Dale continues, Snohomish County in cooperation with five County farmers, funded by some Federal grant money, embarked on a feasibility study of canola as a County cash crop. Reiner was one of the five. Canola’s appeal to Dale is its two season productivity: first season, a silage crop; seed crop the second. (Reiner is even mulling over the possibility of double cropping canola and field corn.) Because canola is a biennial plant, its first season yield is primarily leaf matter, vegetable material. Summer and fall of Year 1, the plant can be chopped for silage like pasture grass every thirty days. During the winter months surface growth slows but our temperate climate allows canola’s root system to flourish and store the nutrition that come the following summer, produces vigorous stalks, an abundance of blossoms (plus the current virtual study in yellow) which seed out into hundreds of thousands of pods of oil-producing seed, doubling one crop for the farmer’s effort.

In the fall I have shelled out the seed from my summer garden broccoli plants and wonder at the ability of a machine harvester to separate these miniscule 1-2mm seed from pods and stalk. Modern combines, Dale replies, can be calibrated to separate just about any seed or grain crop (according to Reiner, even sunflower seeds). It took a bit of experimenting to find the most efficient way to harvest the seed. Combine and header were used at first, but because of canola’s numerous side bracts, too much seed was lost or knocked to the ground. Dale decided to cut the field with a side swather first, rake the stalks into windrows, and then combine the downed stalks.

I’m curious about harvest time in our short season, rainy climate. Seed maturity needs to be closely monitored. When the majority of seed pods present brown or black seeds, the field is ready for harvest. Doesn’t our typically rainy Octobers make harvest difficult? Certainly, Dale replies: our climate has its special challenges for canola. Isn’t it easier to produce grain or seed in a drier, arid climate like Eastern Washington? It’s all our annual moisture, I’m surprised to learn, that makes Snohomish County ideal for the biennial plant. As earlier mentioned, our mild winters allow canola’s root system to grow and flourish. Not so in arid regions where single season crops are the rule. Dale tells me Eastern Washington canola yields average 1,500 pounds of seed an acre whereas in our County the yields per acre ranged from 2,500 to 3,000 pounds. What about marketing, I ask Dale. I learn the first seed crop was transported to Hermiston, Oregon, but most of that season’s crop went to waste: the seed hadn’t been properly cured (dried) and most of it sprouted. For the portion of the crop that was salvaged, Dale tells me he was paid thirteen cents per pound. The second crop sold for fourteen cents. Today’s going price for a pound of canola is double that: a whopping twenty-eight cents a pound. Reiner continues, explains how the County and the Canola Cooperative with the aid of grant monies, built a seed/grain drier on the old Cathcart landfill. Methane is collected from the fermenting site and used to fuel the drier which now serves the County growers. Curing the seed eliminates premature sprouting and preserves the crop.

For your information, that four acre splash of yellow will not be harvested. “Not cost effective,” Reiner says. “By the time you figure in the cost of harvesting—machinery, marketing expenses, fuel—I’d lose money on the deal. Now if more acreage were involved, it might be worth it.” Equally interesting is the fact the field of yellow is all volunteer; Dale did not sow a single seed of it. What a crop, that canola! Not only does it yield two crops in consecutive years, but it seeds itself as well! (Dale cites some figures: it only takes three pounds of seed to plant one acre. For a 2,500-3,000 pound yield, that’s a tremendous return on your capital.) Because of canola’s propensity for self-seeding, no canola crop is allowed north of a certain point in Snohomish County. Fears that it might hybridize with other Brassica seed crops in Skagit County restricts the crop to certain areas of our County.

Reiner shares that cropping canola has yet another advantage. Because of its long root system and profuse vegetation, a crop of canola plowed under can rejuvenate over-cropped farmland, replenish the nutriments in depleted soil. When I ask Dale what’s the future of canola for him, he says the five farm cooperative has learned a lot about the crop, and as he’s a firm believer in diversified cropping, canola continues to be among the crops in his inventory.                  

For a storyteller like Dale, it’s no surprise he has a canola story or two. He chuckles as he tells about trying to “shrink wrap” his first silage canola, put up the crop in those white plastic pasture muffins you often see in County hayfields. The crop was so full of moisture, the resulting bale was like a giant water balloon; when Dale tried to pick it up and transport it, the bale slipped off the forks like a waterbed mattress. “We only baled two,” Dale laughs, “and left the rest of it in the field to compost.” One sunny weekend day when the field was bursting with color, Dale drove down to tend to his cattle. He was surprised to see an entire Hispanic wedding party using his four acres of sunshine as a backdrop for their wedding pictures: a white wedding gown against a field of yellow! Canola…now there’s an original wedding flower for your future bride!

In gathering material for this post, I learned something else. While I was visiting Reiner’s field, taking pictures for my blog , I picked a blooming flower spike and took it with me. The flower buds and four-petal flowers seemed familiar and I wanted to do a floral comparison. My last summer’s crop of collard greens wintered over and is now in bloom. The buds, flower spikes, and blossoms are identical to the sprig of canola blossoms from the riverbank acreage. A little research tells me why. Collards are Brassicas, too, a near cousin to canola. Can you tell which is collard, which canola?

(Canola on the right.)

 

 

 

 

The Skagit County may boast tulip fields but Tualco Valley has its own floral spectacle: canola…and just right up the road.

Dale said the yellow bloom is waning. The golden petals will sift down, leaving nothing but nondescript green stalks flush with pods. If you are planning a wedding and want your wedding album to spotlight you and your blushing bride silhouetted against a field of flowers so yellow it hurts your eyes, I wouldn’t wait till June; by then you might as well pose next to a cow pasture. Every day I drive by Reiner’s field, the yellow seems more pastel, more washed out, less and less a spectacle. If you wish a photo op, it fades away day by day, for as Robert Frost observed, “Nothing gold can stay.”