Nuc Box, Beehives and Life

If you read blogs long enough, you invariable encounter ones where, after so often, it seems like the author must have been conscripted, dead or reading A Song of Ice and Fire, then crying in the corner whilst waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish writing the last two books.

As it happens only one of those things was happening to me and now, through a variety of forces I'm making things and losing some of the acquired apathy I've been feeling for the last couple of months. It's a good feeling.

First thing on the agenda, tomatoes, because what's the 7th week before last frost without tomato planting? Depressing, that's what.

Labeling cups and arranging them by cultivar, we're starting 13 different types, I'm most excited for the Azoychka, Amana Orange and Amish paste. 

We planted about 400 different types, this group is the Amana Orange, and they about a 92% germination rate! We intend to sell about half of the seedlings around 7 weeks, so people can get local heirloom plants instead of whatever Burbee sells to the hardware stores and BORG.

Next stop pollination. Which means either Q-Tip swabbing or bees. I'm lazy and I like honey so guess what I'm doing... 

One of my friends, an avid beekeeper, climber and general badass named Sarah, was asking about a couple of different pieces of woodenware related to catching swarms, and rearing queens. One of the pieces we spoke about was a nucleus hive, which is a small hive or box that can hold about half the frames of a standard Langstroth hive. I built one, like this.

Then Sarah started talking more about bees, and I started getting excited hence this whole sort of revival going on. I got to work scoping out my roof, and building on campus (because they have roofs too) and I started designing my top-bar hive, and continuing the build for the Warre hive I started a while ago.

TBH, I still have a lot of CAD to finish, I'm going to add some sort of quilt/insulating layer like the Warre hive in an effort to maintain temperature when it gets opened up. Which is Warre's nadiring idea to keep heat in the brood nest.  

The Warre hive box. I have a minimum of two more of these, bottom board and quilt/roof to finish. Then maybe build a whole 'nother set.

So, see? Still woodworking, hardly fine furniture though (I think I'm screwing together the next set of boxes, the finger joints are nice, but they use a lot of wood and take a lot of time.) But now I don't feel bad about writing about not-furniture, and it feels great.

The introduction from my old blog, reposted.

The following is what I posted about 7 months ago on a new blog I was starting during a tumultuous period of my life. A lot has changed and in the last few weeks I've been getting my drive back. I've set some ambitious farm/agricultural goals for this season, and built some cool things that are hardly fine furniture. It's coming back together. 

"Hi, my name is Trevor, I'm 26 and I live in Philadelphia.

I'm having a crisis.

You see I've got two major loves that pitch me down a rabbit hole nearly daily. I love to learn, by doing, reading or hearing what others have to say. I'm also deeply motivated by doing what's right for the planet in a long term legitimately sustainable set or practices.

The need to balance these motivations makes me want to quit my job and move into the woods nearly weekly; but that brings a whole slew of problems stemming from my debts (University, what a brilliant idea, "Here, spend $120,000 and 4 years doing what we say to figure out what you want your life to be about) (I'm out of debt as of 2/6/2014!). Ultimately I look at one or two workshops, maybe $1000 in leisure reading (that you could borrow), a visit to Dickinson's campus, hiking in the Wissahickon park, and working at Weavers Way co-op for my working member shifts as the most influential experiences in my "green" education. Added together they account for about 3% of the time, money and effort I spent (along with my parents, and the government) getting a "practical education". I made awesome, lifelong friends, and yes I had the opportunity to discover these things partly through college, but that doesn't mean I couldn't find them without.

I find it funny, here I am 3 years into a career after college, yes I use my skills gained and interests in my work but when I go home at night I find myself browsing biodiesel, waste vegetable oil heaters and cook-stoves, renewable energy, self sufficiency, eco-minimalism, beehives, farmland to buy, Sketch-Uping tiny house plans, etc. The poignant take away is that these are all words you'd find archived on my internet history from high school. Maybe if I started reading soon enough I would have been fortunate enough to become that amazing college drop out, who's well adjusted, completely focused in life and totally at peace."

Yes I've quoted myself, I know it's uncouth. It's fine.

Major Changes

Firstly to all of you who have followed this blog as it directly relates to woodworking, thanks. I've had fun writing and capturing some of what goes on in my head, and on the bench for the last few years.

I'm going to me migrating a few posts over, and re-title the blog to more adequately contain all the things I want to talk about. Mostly using the same voice and platform as I did with the woodworking to cover my other passions like small scale farming, tiny houses and a downhill spiral into honeybees that a friend of mine seems to be leading (knowingly or not) me into. I thought of breaking up these pieces of my life into different blogs, but that's too much damn work. Re-titleing, addressing and expanding what I'm working on seems to be the more cohesive option.