Like Peas in a Pod

Came home to find the family unit busy harvesting some of our first crop of Alderman peas.  The 'Wall of Peas' has come to full fruition, the 6' trellis is covered top-to-bottom with pea vines, which are now showing quite a few mature pea pods.  The kids had a great time picking these and then shelling them inside.  We had to stop Tavish from eating most of them, but eventually got them all blanched and into a vacuum-sealed bag and tucked away in the new chest freezer in the garage.  We should be able to harvest for the next several weeks, as we planted seeds three weeks apart this spring.

Ocean's Bounty

Several weeks ago I got an invitation for a late June trip to go salmon fishing on the Pacific Ocean near Westport, WA.  The salmon season is heavily regulated here in the Northwest, and at times the window of opportunity to chase these beautiful Kings is slim.  This trip was going to be two days of fishing, and would require some ridiculous travel efforts.  But the chance to fill the freezer was too tempting and so I headed out of Yakima at 11:30pm on Sunday evening, June 19th and headed west for about 4.5 hours, aiming for Westport and a boat scheduled to leave the dock at 4:30am.

Westport is located at the south end of Gray's Harbor, WA, looking out onto the Pacific Ocean.  Ocean fishing has a whole different feel than fishing the Columbia River and it's tributaries.  The boat was the same one I fished on a month ago at the Wind.  It felt large there....but when I found it moored at the dock in the boat basin at Westport, it seemed like a child's toy as it nestled there between large commercial trawlers and coast-guard cutters.  Clearly we were in a different class of water.  Crossing the bar at the entrance to the harbor can be notoriously bad, as outgoing tidal currents meet incoming ocean swell.  I popped a couple of dramamine and prepared myself for the worst.  The guys I had joined there had fished the day before, enduring conditions that they were still talking about, a little wide-eyed.  But that morning and the rest of the two days we enjoyed fantastic weather and smooth seas.


One of the real pleasures of ocean fishing is seeing your prey, in this case Chinook Salmon, in the context of the rest of the ecosystem.  The sea is alive with every level of the food chain, and it was fascinating to see the chinook as part of this larger system.  We cruised looking for circling birds, which were feeding on large schools of anchovies balled up into "bait balls", sometimes just under the surface.  The anchovies were sometimes schooled up large enough to cover a large parking lot, at times stretching a hundred yards.  The depth finder would show them spread out between 20-30 feet depth, at other times they made the surface ripple like it was raining as they flashed and darted at food made just their size.


The birds preyed on the anchovies from above, but other, larger predators worked on them from below.  At times you could see the anchovies leaping up out of the water in a kind of a wave that would travel from one end of the ball to the other - something was coming at them from underneath.  Often, it would be hungry chinook.  But there were all kinds of predators out: seals, sea lions, dolphins, and even whales.  And, of course, there were the fleet of boats out pursuing the chinook who were pursuing the anchovies.  A regular circle of life.


On the Wind we pulled candy-red prawns on spinners, but here it was lures only.  This meant no bait to worry about, which was nice.  The focus becomes on color and shape, and the newest trend is in ultra-violet colors that are part of the visual spectrum of the fish.  We trolled at fairly high speed, and varied the depth from 30-80ft, picking up fish all through the water column.  The catch was more varied than on the Columbia, we saw more wild fish and more coho salmon in the mix, both of which had to be immediately released.


We limited the boat, 2 keepers apiece, the first day by about 12:30pm and motored back to the boat basin to process the fish.  Enforcement was pretty sharp - a uniformed Fish and Game officer boarded every boat that returned from fishing, examining each fish to make sure it was legal, searching the holds of the boat for any hidden catch, and checking each on of our catch cards, to be sure they were filled out.  We had a pretty impressive fish box, lots of lookers coming by to see what we had brought in.  This included a 1500lb sea lion that had a reputation for being a bit too forward when he thought a snack could be found.


 The next day we had even more beautiful weather, and the anchovies were more plentiful than the day before.  The birds seemed to be sated, but we saw more dolphins and a pod of orca was spotted nearby as well.  We even watched a gray whale plow through a large section of fish at one point, about 100 yards off to one side of the boat.  The fishing was slower, and we had to cut loose a bunch of coho in the morning, but we managed to get 4 in the boat before calling it quits around 12:30.  This was a great experience, though the guys kept reminding me that the conditions we saw over the two days were not common.  I was glad for the chance to experience it and am especially glad for the freezer full of fresh salmon!

Milestones

Evie's family picture....we look good...

Evie and Piper have both been enjoying some important events over the last couple of weeks.  Evie had her first piano recital, and Piper graduated from preschool.  Both exhibited great poise at their respective events.  The boy is excelling in his own ways, of course.....ways that are not necessarily easily measured by science or appreciated by his sisters.

Evie, Piper, and Evie's friend Maya at Evie's recital

Piper receives her diploma - the world is her oyster!

Evie is proud, and should be - she NAILED IT!

Veggie Tales

The wall of peas is becoming a reality.  This cool spring has played havoc on most of the rest of the garden, but the peas have loved it.  These pictures were taken maybe a week or so ago, the peas are now full of blossoms.  We are getting ready for a bumper crop!

Busy Bees

The bees have been busy over the past several weeks, building comb just as fast as they can and filling them with brood cells and pollen stores.  They have built about 10 bars of comb, some of it fully formed, and are working on some honey stores.  The weather has been unseasonably cool this spring, but we finally seemed to have turned the corner towards summer.

I finally received gloves and a smoker, plus fuel, that I had ordered and was all ready to check on them on Monday.  Thunderstorms and a couple of really windy days delayed those plans, but I was able to go up during lunch today and do a hive inspection.  In truth, I have very little idea what to look for.  But I have noticed that the photos are hi-res and reveal a lot of details, so I am considering making digital photos a regular part of the inspection....then I can review the photos later for details that are hard to spot in the field.The small bit of comb that these bees are working on was drawn on the bar furthest from the hive entrance.  I had added three empty bars a couple of weeks ago near the entrance in order to give them room to expand their brood area.  They have filled all three bars in that time, really amazing.  I am not totally satisfied that I have optimized the brood area/storage areas, but they will deal with it in their own way, I am sure.

As I was inspecting some of the brood comb, I was able to watch a couple of bees emerge.  It was pretty cool to see.  I have always thought of bees as a flying insect, but when in the hive they are really better thought of as a swarming/crawling insect.  They have some personality, it seems to me, and I chuckled a couple of times as I was trying to close up the hive.  The girls line up on the edges of the top bars gazing up at the sky, making it hard to get the bars positioned close to one another.  Some brave few even venture out onto the tops of the bars, fanning themselves in little groups, seeming to congratulate themselves on their bravery.  Until the bars start to get put back, in which case they scramble to get back inside.

Evie and Piper are excited about some business opportunities that might arise from the bees.  Piper is going to be in charge of honey sales, Evie has decided to focus on wax products, especially natural lip balms.  Future posts may include shameless sale's pitches.  You are forewarned!

It's Good to Be King

May brings about one of my new favorite pastimes - fishing for spring Chinook salmon, also known as King Salmon!  These fish are just incredible.  In the late spring they begin returning to the rivers of the Northwest in order to spawn.  Anglers keep their internet tuned to the salmon counts at Bonneville Dam, one of the earliest checkpoints on their way up the Columbia River.  Early counts run in the single digits - 8 salmon, ah ah ah aaaahhh.  9!  9 salmon!  And so on.  Until one day when the count begins to rise...100, followed by 500, followed by 1000, followed by 10,000, then 15K, and even higher!  The run is in, and anglers head out in incredible numbers to chase after this tasty trophy.

I got an invite (by way of incessant off-season whining) on a boat for a two-day trip to The Wind River, a tributary to the Columbia and a popular fishing destination.  Our captain was Rip "The Ripper" Hollingbery, whom I refer to as The Fish Whisperer.  He is a dedicated fisherman and also one of my congregants (well...unless the salmon run is on, then his boat becomes a chapel of sorts).  We headed out of Yakima at 2:00am in order to hit the boat ramp at 5:00am and beat the rush (still had a short wait, even at that hour).

We fished hard for two days, spending the night on the boat, tied up in a calm inlet.  The fishing is pretty simple, really - boats of all shapes and sizes troll lures around a strictly defined area at the mouth of the Wind.  Lures at first seem to be of two basic kinds: spinners and plugs.  But the amount of variation expressed within that basic binary is truly mind boggling.  Last year, large diving plugs were the ticket, specifically orange ones with black tiger stripes.  This year, plugs were useless (on our boat), but a spinner set-up with a bright red prawn at the hook seemed to do the trick.  Bait is trolled just off the bottom, where the fish travel in groups up-river.

These fish are fresh from the ocean, where they grow up big and strong.  When they hit the lure, there is no doubt about what's happening - the rod tip slams down and the fight is on!  The previous weekend, Rip had boated a 28lb beauty, so our hopes were high.  We didn't see any that big, but did manage to limit the boat (2/per angler) the first day, netting six fish all around the 11-13lb range.  The second day saw four more in the boat, two smaller, two a bit larger than the day before.  Ten fish to the boat in two days is a great rate-of-catch....the Fish Whisperer never disappoints!

The freezer is now full of fresh salmon, and I mean stacked full.  The plan is to get a bunch of this in the smoker for some holiday treats this year.  The Yakima River opens for salmon fishing on Friday of this week, so there is the outside chance to catch one of these beauties right here in town!  I love this place!

Good with the Ladies

Finally got the phonecall we've been waiting all spring for - Bill Bennett, beekeeper extraordinaire and a congregant at WestPres, got ahold of me last night just as I got home from work.  A swarm of bees had settled in the backyard of a house just minutes away.  It was time to go pick up the ladies and hive them in the Top Bar Hive that I built over the winter.

In the spring, bees get busy growing.  That means that they grow as a colony, and this sometimes leads to overcrowding in their hive.  When the conditions are right, they will produce a second queen who will lead half of the hive away in search of a new home.  What that means around here is that it is pretty common for an unsuspecting suburbanite to arrive home and find a ball of bees clustered on their house, car, fence, landscaping, dog, whatever.  The bees are very docile in this state, they are loaded up with food and clustered around the new queen to protect her, but it is still an alarming sight for a lot of folks.  For me, it meant a chance to capture a colony for the new hive.

The process is pretty simple.  The bees must get transferred into the hive, and then allowed to settle in until nightfall, when the hive can be moved to its final location.  Bill brought his bee gear, I brought the hive, and we got to work.  The swarm had settled in some arborvitae in the backyard of a suburban home.  The first task was to cut away any of the shrub that would be in the way.  The bees tolerated our presence very well.  I was able to get close for pictures without a bee suit on, and feel that I probably could have even done the whole job without being all covered up - they just weren't interested in a fight.

After trimming away some of the surrounding branches, I clipped the three branches that the bees had clustered on, holding on to them as I did so the swarm wouldn't fall to the ground.  The whole group came off neat as I could hope, Bill called it the easiest retrieval he'd ever experienced.  The swarm was then shaken off the branches down into the hive (really one big shake and the whole group dropped in).  The top bars were replaced, being careful not to squish any of the new bees (who were a touch more agitated at this point, understandably).  The hive had been pre-loaded with a frame of honey for them to eat on, and one frame of brood cell for them to start laying in.  The rest were just empty top-bars ready to be drawn and filled (more on all of these terms and processes later).

Bill and I returned at dusk, and the bees were all quietly settled into the hive.  I put the lid on, secured it with some bungee cords, we blocked the exit hole with duct tape, then we loaded it up into the mini-van.  Yes, a bee-hive in the minivan.  I had taken out the middle section of seats and we just loaded it into the car and I headed up to the bees home location.

It was a little disconcerting, I will admit, to be in the car with them.  After closing the doors, I became away of a low-level buzzing, the colony humming away in the hive just behind me.  I don't know that I have ever been so self-conscious about the level of craftsmanship I've put into a project than I was right then.  My mind was reviewing all the construction steps, making sure that I hadn't left a gap, attached something a little less securely than I wanted to, or worked out a poor design.  We made the trip just fine, and Bill and I carried the bees to their new home, a beautiful sage-covered lot overlooking the whole of the Yakima valley.  I will go check on them in a few days to make sure they are settled in.