Picking midseason cabbage today and laying up some sauerkraut! This is from our second season winter compost bed. Time to start our fall cabbage plants

Setting up the next year's batch of spruce tip balsamic vinegar. This was such a success that I am making larger batches this year. We used Norway and white spruce tips as well as our homemade apple scrap vinegar as well as honey from our bees. Now to put it in a cabinet and shake it every so often

Snake Hill Creek is pretty tame today. Love these little waterfalls.

Happy International Bee Day! We just caught a swarm! These swarmed from our Hobbit hive. We'll transfer these bees to the Sunflower hive once they get established

Many snakes out today around our new food forest area. Snake Hill Permaculture bringing all the snakes to the garden. They especially love to hide near the comfreys.

Northern paper wasp, Polistes fuscatus, building a nest under one of the honeyberry bushes. Luckily this one isn't fruiting this year so we'll just keep our distance from each other. Eat the caterpillars friend!

Last hive going out for the season. This is our sunflower hive, it is baited and strapped down. If you see a bee let them know we have vacancy!

Frogs are waking up again. Here's a Northern green frog, Lithobates clamitans, that is wandering around the nursery.

First fiddleheads from the ostrich fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris. We are reintroducing these to our woodland habitat to combat erosion and to add more diversity as well as a future food source.

Serviceberry, Amelanchier canadensis, is in bloom now. A very early bloomer, this is a great bee fodder and one of the earliest producing berries in June. That is, if you can wrest any from the birds! Fair Share

Today we planted out a mulberry hedge and some Japanese and Chinese Szechuan peppers by the old horse fence. I'm hoping the incredible thorns of the Szechuan pepper helps deter the deer who often follow the fence line

First flush of shiitakes are going in the dehydrator! Hopefully we get thunderstorms this weekend and have another round as many of the logs haven't flushed yet, the extra snow slowed everything down. These are on sugar maple logs from a large fallen branch off our Grandmother tree

Time to start fishing for bees! We're in a better position this year because we now have drawn out comb from last year. I put one in each swarm trap. All the other frames just have strips of wax so the scouts can measure the cavity easier. This trap is going to one of the large shagbark hickories

Dream Rabbit hive is secured and baited for a new swarm. If you see any bees let them know we have space available at Snake Hill Permaculture!

Busy planting our bareroot trees an bushes. Today we put in more jujubes, cherry, apple and pawpaw trees. We also added more goumi bushes into the system. I also planted out over 120 black currants an jostaberries from cuttings. Lots of mud!

We had a bunch of thunderstorms roll through two days ago and now we have a big shiitake flush in our mushroom garden! We inoculated these on red maple. More rain coming overnight

We planted out over 120 black and pink currant cuttings and some jostaberry today! Here is one of our black currants that is just starting to break dormancy from last year.

Fuki is starting to come up down by pawpaw creek.

It's tree planting season! We are starting to get in all of our orders we put in this winter and we seem to be planting everyday. Today we planted out two white figs, two hardy Chicago figs and two American plums. We planted the plums near Nanking cherries, they should make a good beginning guild

New Layens hive set up in the apiary today. Ukrainian hive is leveled, baited, strapped down and metal tie wrapped to the iron stakes (Lake Erie winds and some bear protection). Hoping for a new swarm to make their home here this spring. We still have two more hives to set up over the next month

It's fascinating how the syrup's color changes over the season. Not only the color but the taste as well, in the beginning the light color is more like honey and later it develops the rich maple taste

The ground has finally thawed enough so it's spring tree planting season. Yesterday we planted out four additional pawpaws and today we are planting eastern redbuds. We've been using homemade charcoal as the only amendment in the soil, it seems to improve the trees vigor for sure. Native plants win!

A mad dash right before the thunderstorm!

Red maple is in bloom now and it's a mad dash to gather the pollen to begin the spring flow season. Of course, we'll probably get more snow, but it's good to see the girls foraging again.

The red maples (Acer rubrum) are beginning to bloom in the 70 degree weather so that's the end of maple syrup season. I still have about 18 gallons to boil down, but I'm glad that the bees now have a nectar and pollen source

This is an awesome project! We are planting out more American persimmons this year---however on a much smaller scale

The honeybees are working on the compost pile. They seem to especially like used coffee grounds? Maybe they need a little pickup after the harsh winter 🤔

First pollen of the season! Now that the girls are bringing in pollen, the queen will begin laying again after the winter break. I think this pollen is red maple, probably the trees down the ridge are in bloom. (ours are not, we are still tapping for sap)

One of the experiments in Re-Use. So we were able to find a bunch of take home containers that a local restaurant didn't want because they are switching out their container supplier. We're going to try to repurpose them into mini greenhouses to start some of our cold crops, kale, mustard, collards

Well looks like the snow is returning. We are still boiling sap regardless. Snow syrup!

We had our first maple syrup boil two days ago and we are boiling sap again today --- almost three pints of syrup so far for the season. We collect sap from both red and sugar maple which produces a unique artisanal syrup.

Many beekeepers here in Western NY lost their hives this year due to the harsh winter. Both of ours survived and we credit this to our insulated hives and natural beekeeping practices. Hopefully none of the girls end up in our maple syrup operations!

Our bees definitely made it through the winter so far. Looking pretty healthy for being mostly snowed in and low temperatures since November. First real cleansing flights of the new year.

Even though the snow an cold temperatures are unrelenting, our dittany of Crete is in bloom (well inside the house---nothing is blooming in the 9 degree temperatures outside!) Maybe next week we can harvest some maple sap?

With all of the cold weather we are having the only sap we are collecting is icicles! Next week is supposed to be very cold as well, but maybe we'll get a good sap day after next week.

Canadian Hemlock, Tsuga canadensis, grows on our north slopes and is still very young. In the past these trees were the overstory and grew quite large and tall. Indeed the hemlock needs a mature forest to begin growth and then overtakes the forest as the main succession species--but very very slowly

First tap and we have first sap! An auspicious sign for the sugar season for sure. Not all of the trees are running yet as it's only 35 F and we've had a bitter cold week, but they will soon. We use a combination of Red and Sugar maples, so we end up with a unique small batch syrup for Snake Hill.

Dicamba and GMO soybean seeds forced on farmers "The system’s rollout has led to millions of acres of crop damage across the Midwest and South; widespread tree death in many rural communities, state parks and nature preserves; and an unprecedented level of strife in the farming world."

Sterilizing the maple taps and washing the buckets. Hopefully we can start tapping some trees this afternoon.

It's almost sugar season here at Snake Hill. We are starting to clean the equipment and will likely start hanging buckets on Thursday (snow dependent!) We still have syrup from last year and hopefully we will have a great season this year

Fagus grandifolia, American beech are still holding their leaves. I love that these trees add a bit of color to the snow bound land. Most of ours are small trees as the larger ones have been logged for years before we bought the property. Now we will let them work towards succession.

Snow dog loves the snow. I hope we get a few more inches to help insulate our younger trees and plants before we get the polar vortex blast next week.

Another unsustainable technology

Milk snake from this past summer in one of our woodchip piles. We often find them nesting in the middle of summer and more than one has ended up in the wheelbarrow only to pop out and surprise us!

Garter snake in our raspberries this past July.

Happy New Year from Snake Hill Permaculture!

Sowing wildflower seeds today before the next round of lake effect snow. We do this so the snow pushes the seeds down into the ground and to reduce bird pressure. Four seeds in a hole One for the mouse One for the crow One to rot, and one to grow!

It sure is cold today at Snake Hill. Passed the solstice, now the sun can begin to return and we can get back to growing. Right now we are just growing icicles...

The kitchen herb garden this afternoon. While it looks bleak buried under the snow, the snow will actually insulate many of the perennial herbs like the lavenders, sages and rosemary providing them protection against the bitter desiccating winds of winter.

Mourning doves, Zenaida macroura, gathering near the feeders to try to wait out the storm. More snow expected with whiteout conditions currently. Still managed to get the compost out though...