I found this post in my drafts. Apparently, I never posted it. It’s 5 months later now, and I’m well settled into my new home at The Wallow. What has happened and what has yet to come? Here’s the draft I wrote back in August:

“I won’t be moving to my new house in Tennessee until October. So much waiting! I’m reading up on bees and pigs in the meantime, as well as prepping for Burning Man and Alchemy, which happen between now and then. There’s lots to do, but I’m spending a lot of time daydreaming away, too.”

Every time Joshua or I makes something homemade (usually Joshua) that I’ve only ever purchased from elsewhere, I am amazed. Every time we go shopping, I buy bagels. I really like having them for breakfast and sometimes as snacks. This time when I went to reach for them, Joshua stopped me and said this would be the week we made them at home.

Moving in at The Wallow involved a bit of reclaiming the house from the nature that had run rampant in the absence of people. The main project was mowing the yard, which had become insanely overrun with weeds. The other thing that turned into a huge project was the fact that woodpeckers were dining on our home.

Now that it’s 2010, I’m thinking towards the year ahead, which always involves a nod back to where I’ve been. The biggest whirlwind of awesome has been in just the last handful of months. In case you missed some posts, here are a few of the highlights for me:

Here at the Wallow, Joshua and I had a nice tail-end to fall with our new cat, Juli, usually affectionately just called Kitteh. Now that it’s almost winter and it’s much colder outside, she doesn’t have much interest in staying out. Very occasionally, she sits at the door to go outside, but then just a minute or two later she’s back at the door wanting back in.

Here at The Wallow, we have a lot of bees and we have a lot of wasps. Is there a difference? You bet!

Since I’m in love with bees and I hate wasps, it always bugs me when I hear someone confuse the two. The other day someone commented on a yellow jacket sting saying they hated bees. I piped up to say that yellow jackets are wasps, not bees. The other person said it didn’t much matter when you were being stung. Ah, but it does! It matters in the moment right before you think you’re going to be stung (because you might want to act differently depending on whether it’s a bee or a wasp), and it matters when you get stung (because one is just bothersome and one hurts like hell!)

Remember the red tree in the now-pasture I mentioned in the Weeds to Pasture post on Wednesday? The quest to identify it (as, I hope, a Black Walnut) has a new development, so I thought I’d tell you the story from the beginning.

I’ve been trying to identify some of the trees and plants at The Wallow. It’s fun to know what’s out there, to know what’s edible, and to give things a name. When I realized there was a tree amidst the brambles in the field, I wanted to save it from the bush hog. There are no other trees in the main part of the field, and it would be nice to give the pigs some outside shade. Of course, I tried to identify the tree based on its leaves.

The Wallow has lots of distinct parts to it. There’s the house, of course. There’s the two-story barn, which now contains Joshua’s workshop. There’s the hill, which is behind the house. There’s the forest-ish area on the way to the creek, where the bee hives are. There’s the front yard, which will be the garden area come spring. There’s The Bowl, an area made up of driveway and concrete walls at basement level, making it seem like you’re in a bowl of concrete. There’s The Island, a grass and tree space between the two main driveways where Joshua chops wood and wood that has been delivered is stored. And finally, there’s the area we’ve been calling the field or the pasture.

The field is about a 1/2 acre of space, enclosed in a high-quality wooden fence. This is the area that we plan to use for keeping animals. However, like the rest of the property, it had been completely taken over by brushy weeds.

Becoming a beekeeper is one of my dearest homesteading goals for myself. I’ve long had a fascination with honeybee lore. And while having ready access to honey and beeswax will be a nice side effect, what I truly want is to be a human who has a relationship with honeybees. I want to watch them and understand them and interact with them in ways that are positive for me and for the bees.

In a fortunate little turn of events, the house Joshua and I bought comes with a honeybee colony already installed! The previous owner (a friend of mine) began learning about beekeeping here, and he decided to leave his colony behind rather than try to relocate it.

Here at The Wallow, a thing or two has been happening in the kitchen. I’ve been getting used to having an electric stove, but I also got a gas outdoor grill, so there’s also been some grilling out. I made amazingly yummy chicken drumsticks on my first attempt at grilling.

Joshua is the primary yummy-maker in our kitchen, though. We were both so excited when he made the first loaf of bread in the new house: