Winter solstice pause, and fall by the numbers
It’s the shortest day and the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. Time to shift into a new season.
While many folks look to the start of a week, a month, or a year as a blank slate, I give that credence to the winter solstice. It’s a deep line in the sand. Echoes of “Auld Lang Syne” may be a week away but, for me, the year ends and a new one begins today. I notice that slow-growing fall seedlings start to perk up with the few extra minutes of light each day following the winter solstice. It starts a countdown to starting my first seedling trays of the year (usually about a month after the solstice). It cradles stillness and silence as I take a day of rest.
Before we look back on the last season, I’d like to share a few things coming in the new season.
Winter will bring:
New beekeeping practices. I’m planning to try a different hive design. Before my back injury I had already planned on ordering a few Layens hives. Most hives in the United States are Langstroth hives. (Both hives named after the men who designed them.) Langstroth are the typical stacked boxes with removable frames ranging from a few inches (shallows), to mediums (what I run), to deeps. Each box stacks vertically. The Layens hive has one size frame (larger than a deep) and runs horizontally. The heaviest thing you pick up is a frame of bees. It also mimics how bees would build their space in a fallen tree cavity or tree branch. Horizontal hives come up in chats about natural beekeeping and I want firsthand experience with them.
I shared about biodynamic beekeeping recently and part of that practice is spacing hives farther apart. This means I’m setting up a new apiary to help the colonies thrive with a more “natural” setup. It might sound odd (and sounds odd to me) that swarm season starts in winter, but it does here. February kicks off the start of swarm season in the North Carolina piedmont. For the past few years I’ve always had to split a hive in February due to swarm activity, so I anticipate I’ll start the new apiary and start using a Layens hive then.
I’ll have a beekeeping apprentice soon. Our Australian shepherd puppy turns 1 on New Year’s Eve. He’s been on a half dozen hive inspections. Now that he’s comfortable and listens in that space, I’m ordering a carting harness for him. I’ll spend the next few months training him in carting, and I hope by honey harvest time he can tow hive equipment to and from the house for me.Nutrient-dense garden focus. I typically select plants that are the most nutrient-dense in their respective families. Instead of “growing all the things” like I do each year, next year’s garden will prioritize the most nutritious plants from my seed collection. You’ll see a series this winter about those plants, plus paid subscriber seed packages. I’m also growing a potato next year that’s never existed before. If it performs well, I plan to save seed potatoes.
More chickens than we’ve ever had are coming. I ordered meat chicks for the first time, plus more layer chicks for our aging flock. I’ve never had more than 12 chickens at one time. We have 11 now and six layers arrive next month. We don’t plan on keeping all six. Fortunately, a local friend has offered to split the layer chicks with us. We have about 2 dozen meat chicks arriving, which means we’ll create a mobile coop in the coming weeks. I’ll share about that process as we go.
Trailer modification for the pigs. We’re modifying our utility trailer to make it suitable for transporting the pigs. I have a vision for that, and my husband has his own idea of what that looks like, so it will be interesting to see how that turns out!
Creative downtime. As my back heals, I hope to finish the DIY bathroom facelift I had started. I also have plans of giving our chicken coop a refresh when I feel better. While I impatiently wait for that, I have a few creative retreats coming up. One focused on art and another on writing.
Gardening event. I got my ticket for the 2024 Organic Growers School Spring Conference north of Asheville, North Carolina. I love this event. Please let me know if you’ll be there too.
Let’s look back. Since the fall equinox…
I’ve written more than 27,000 words
Published 29 posts
Grew subscribers by 20 percent
Maintain an open rate consistently more than 50 percent
My top posts this fall:
If you’re new here, all content that’s more than 2 weeks old gets archived for paid subscribers only. As a solstice treat, I’ve temporarily unlocked my top posts from the summer:
Saving money by dehydrating your own dog treats
Raising quail: Things you might not realize you need, like a coffee grinder
Emergency treatment for chickens suffering flystrike
Thank you so much for stopping by to read, subscribe, and share. To honor this time of rest with the solstice, I’m taking a week off from the blog. I’ll be back later next week.