Hello Friends!
For sometime now you might have noticed that I've been sort of inactive with this blog. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE farming, and telling these funny stories, but there has been A GREAT DEAL of activity going on behind the scenes for consolidate these stories, my funny little online business, and creating wonderful places that combine my life of art, animals, and agriculture.
SO...
Helllooooooo!
Yes, yes, I know...this blog is all but abandoned. So, here we go again! As of later today, this blog will seriously be reformatted into a whole 'nother farmy concept blog. So, hold onto your seats, kids!
Hello All! I'm sorry to have been hopping all over the place for awhile. It's been summer madness! Right now, I am excited to announce I'll be hosting a workshop: Winterizing Your Bees!
Here's the flyer, below (feel free to click the image to enlarge the text):
The workshop is on Sept 26th, 1-2pm and is at the wonderfully low price of $25! It'll be chock full of information on the fundamentals of getting your bees ready for winter and keeping them healthy for spring! You'll walk away with new insights on Fall/Winter management plus a nice brochure with bee disease identification, hive prep, and more!
We've been wrangling a website, but it doesn't seem that the server will let it online until tomorrow, so check back at bronxbees.com tomorrow for payment options on the workshop, or email me if you are interested in attending!
More soon!
Holy Smokes!
Wow, I didn't expect to be away from my little blog for soooooo looong! I am sure there is some sort of blog purgatory for people like me! Apologies friends! It's funny, because I can remember many farmy-blogging friends nearly abandoning their blogs because farm work got too overwhelming, and I thought: "gee, that won't happen to an ultra savvy city-girl like me! And I was right...except for the part where the ultra busy urban insanity, mixed with near unemployment, and wrapped in farmy overtures would eventually take me out! Gahhh!
So, here I am to catch you up on the bedlam of the last few weeks. And I welcome the many new readers! Wow, you really want to read my half baked, crazy ramblings? I swear there has to be some kind of award for that!
...And I promise to catch up with everyone else's writings, also, I just have been soooo far away from my computer this last time....
I am not sure how to describe the past month. My best analogy would bring up an image of a tornado--it's unpredictable arrival and violent crazy nature. Sometimes all you can do is hold on and try to ride it out and watch the pieces of your life flying all around you. Yeah, that's sort of my life right now. To be clear though, not all of it is horrible, but there certainly an uncontrollable element that I can get a hold of and that, piled with so many other little things, sometimes makes it hard to get to the computer, or too crazy to even WANT to write anymore.
Secondary to that, there are certain impracticalities going on that I am trying to alleviate so that I can write in a better and more timely fashion. It is no secret that I write....ALOT. I have this blog, the Wild At Heart Farm blog. I have the Wild At Heart Art Blog. I write for Art Dolls Only (and you know it's bad when you haven't written a blooming thing for ANY of the three).
And now, apparently, I might be adding a blog about beekeeping (not my idea, TRUST ME, but rather the owner of the company for which I am starting all this beekeeping), and yet another blog(!!) on some top-top-secret-blog-which-I-will-announce-later blog. And I'm trying to figure out what to do with BigTownFarmer as well.
You see where this is going, right?? I mean, don't get me wrong, I love writing, adore it but...you know...the outside world still calls. And then there is that pesky thing called a job. Yep, that rent ain't getting paid on this half dozen or so NON-PAYING writing stuff. Plus there are bees and gardens to take care of. So I am trying to think if I should combine this blog with something else?
What do you think? I would love feedback about this!!
I have no idea, and am not sure that any logistics will work, though my mother jokingly (err, I think jokingly) says I should stick to one interest. Pssshaw! Why, when there are so many beautiful things in the world to learn and see?
....so stay tuned, I will try to find a sane way to work with the writing problems, and the other sticky situations I seem to be getting into, lately!
Thanks everyone, for your patience!
Wow, it's been raining something like Biblical proportions over here. Okay, maybe not BIBLICAL, but when you consider there have been only 5 nice, non-rainy days out of the last THREE WEEKS, that says something (which sounds a lot like: "it's probably time to start looking into boat transportation").
I guess I can't complain. The water bill for our garden is non-existent, the temperatures have been cool, which means no high electric bill for air-conditioning usage, and while the bees maybe grumpy, there are extra blooms in the neighborhood--so hopefully pollen is being produced into honey at a rapid rate.
Speaking of gratefulness (and rainy days), days like these are a good time to contemplate--and I am always amazed how, increasingly, simple things are at the heart of what I do. I've said it before and I'll say it again--I can easily scare my urbanified friends with how LITTLE I need, and how the smaller, dare I say hokey, things make me happy. Yes, one man's hokey is another man's treasure....or...something like that.
ANYHOO...
Here are a few pictures of what I am getting good vibes from (feel free to insert slow country music, pull up a good chair, put your feet up, and enjoy some sweet city farmgirl thoughts, a.k.a hokey-ness!)
I love this chicken shaped egg basket! I think it was supposed to be decor at a cooking store here in the city, but I could see it being a functioning basket for a small flock of chicken. Right now, it holds my garden labeling supplies. Ahhh, someday I will use it for it's intended purpose. Note my mom's old fashioned ceramic trivets in the background.
Here is a lovely old flour sifter that I managed to find at an outdoor city antiques market. The price? Only $4! Score! This was cheaper than anything I've found in southern "junk shops" or bargains online. I couldn't believe it--and in NYC, nonetheless!
Farmgloves..we currently use them for bee-work. Don't they look great contrasted by the Indian Sari tablecloth of mine?
Homemade food--I always find such satisfaction in creating with home grown or natural ingredients. Here, I made this with farmer's market eggs, spinach, or own tomatoes and basil. I can also say how proud I am because I've never made quiche before!
I love these puppets. Yes, I am a big kid! But you knew that, right? And no, they're not exactly "farmy" but they are "old world"--each of these is handmade in other countries, from a long ago time when puppetry was an artform. I've spend awhile collecting them; they are from India, Asia, and Europe.
And finally, what's a farmgirl without a farmgirl hat? This is a hat my sister gave me...for now, it sits on my wall--waiting. I know this, too, waits for actual farm-time. I can see myself sitting in a huge field of wildflowers in this hat....ahhh, yes, someday.You might remember waaaaay, long ago (you know, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth) I mentioned I would start talking to you a bit about herbalism....and then managed to forget?
Well, I decided to do it--and you can blame it all on a mulberry tree. See, I live in the middle of the city, but traces of wild plant life still seep their way into this concrete jungle. Which I love...persistent plants still stick to the world of concrete! Rock on!
*ahem*...I mean, fascinating. So across the street from me there is a massive tree in a small gated up park. It sits high above the rogue dandelion and chicory and knee high grass. And every May and June, it grows out huge black berries that go ignored by everyone who lives here. Eventually they fall off and rot and get consumed by flies and washed away by rain.
At first I, too, was among the ignorant. I thought, "hey, they must be poisonous. Noone is touching them." Except, the more I moved toward green living and farm living, the more I realized that there might be something more to it....maybe people had lost the conscience to look at this tree as something vital. That's what city living does to you sometimes, it makes you forget the natural world, and your place in it...which is a derned shame.
ANYHOO...
This year, I finally went up to the tree and pulled off a few leaves and berries for identification (see leaf in picture, below) and pulled out one of my trusty plant books. I had long suspected that these were mulberries--because my mother told me childhood stories of "blackberries that grew on trees" where she lived. Hmmm...but didn't blackberries grow on bushes? After looking online and in the books, sure enough, I found that they WERE mulberries.
Mulberries--yum! 
