Mother Earth News Fair

Stress is something that we all experience on some level in our everyday lives. While a little stress can help motivate us to do the things we want to do, too much stress can take a toll on our bodies and our emotional wellbeing.

After giving energy to family members, work projects, home duties, and friends there is often little time left for ourselves! Taking a few minutes to brew, sip, and enjoy herbal tea provides an easy and much needed opportunity for personal reflection and self-care during an otherwise hectic day.

Adding herbs with calming, nervine, and adaptogen properties to your favorite tea blends can benefit your whole body and mind by strengthening and preparing your nervous system for the busy day ahead.

Herbs like Skullcap, Milky Oats, Holy Basil, and Chamomile can help ease anxiety, irritability, sleeplessness, aches and pains, muscle tension, and can support us during times of heartbreak and grief. Thank goodness for the generous healing comfort they offer!

Here are a few of my favorite calming herb tea recipes that can be enjoyed daily.  Feel free to play with the ratios to find the best cup of tea for your needs.

Good Morning Tonic Tea

1 tsp Skullcap Leaf

1 tsp Peppermint Leaf

1 tbsp Yerba Mate

Add 3 droppers of Milky Oat Tops tincture

Skullcap is a wonderful nervine herb that is nutritive to the nervous system and helps ease anxiety. Peppermint is a great choice for the morning since it helps promote mental focus. Yerba Mate is rich in vitamins, minerals, amino acids, antioxidants, and caffeine for a stimulating boost that is mellower than coffee. Milky Oat Tops are a classic tonic for the nervous system.

Afternoon Uplift Chai

1 tsp Holy Basil Leaf

1 tbsp Firefly Chai or loose-leaf chai of your choice

Holy Basil is an important adaptogenic herb in India that helps the mind adapt to incoming stressors. Chai is spicy, mildly stimulating, and balancing. You can use a rooibos, green tea, or black tea chai for this blend, depending on the amount of caffeine you want in the afternoon.

Sunset Tea

1 tsp Chamomile Flowers

1 tsp Catnip Leaf

1 tsp Skullcap Leaf

1 tsp Rose Buds

Chamomile is a mildly sedative herb that helps promote healthy digestion. Catnip is another mild sedative that can be helpful for headaches and is gentle enough for children. Skullcap is a wonderful nervine herb that is nutritive to the nervous system and helps ease anxiety.  Roses help elevate your mood and can offer antidepressant effects. This is a gently relaxing blend to be sipped 1 hour before bed.

Wishing you much peace and relaxation!

Erin McIntosh of FAIR sponsor Mountain Rose Herbs will present two workshops at the Puyallup, Wash., FAIR. 

Please visit the FAIR website for more information about future FAIRs: June 1-2 in Puyallup, Wash., Sept. 20-22 in Seven Springs, Pa., and Oct. 12-13 in Lawrence, Kan. Tickets are on sale now. 

You can also get FAIR updates on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

As organic gardeners, most of us are well aware the benefits organic compost can provide to our fruit and vegetables, but many may have less of an understanding of how it fits into the larger picture of sustainability. Organic compost may be an absolutely essential thread in the tapestry of preventing ecological ruin.

It should go without saying that we are fundamentally reliant on the viability of the soil for our survival, but as we speak that very soil is being decimated at an exponential rate. Though erosion (soil loss) is a natural and necessary process, recent scientific analysis has shown that human-caused erosion has outpaced all natural erosional processes combined by a factor of 10. By contrast, natural soil formation roughly keeps pace with natural soil erosion. The primary driving force behind human caused erosion is large scale, conventional agriculture. Within our current agricultural system there are few measures in place to rebuild healthy soils to account for the huge amount of soil lost and destroyed. Human caused soil loss is one of the great ecological crises of our time, but is largely under recognized.

So, what's the good news? A large part of the solution to this daunting problem may lie in your table waste, lawn clippings and autumn leaves. Studies by The Rodale Institute and others have demonstrated that using organic compost in lieu of conventional chemical fertilizers is not only an economically viable option in terms of comparable crop yields, it has the added benefit of restoring health and structure to the soil itself by increasing the soil's ability to absorb and retain moisture, decreasing waterway polluting run off, increasing beneficial microbial life, buffering soil pH and enabling new vegetation to easily take root.

Organic compost

We want to make organic gardening easy and accessible to everyone, so we film a short video every week and e-mail it, along with a special discount offers, in our weekly newsletter (click to sign up). Visit our Organic Gardening Resource Center to browse all our archived videos & articles.

Here's a sampling from our Organic Gardening Resource Center:

Video: Composting 101

Video: Vermicomposting

Video: Fast & Hot Composting

Article: How to make your own high quality compost

 Shop Composting Supplies from GrowOrganic.com

I love coming to the Fair. You get to learn so much. People share their hard earned insights into green living and there are always lots of very interesting new (and old!) products to check out. 

It will likely happen that you meet someone and think “What a cool green home they have.” Or, “How did they get to where they are now?” But mainly, it is probably more like, “I just don’t have the time to do this to the level that I know I should.” Or, “How do I even start this process? It seems overwhelming!” 

Green living is similar to taking yoga. It is a ‘practice’ – the more you get into, the more there is to learn. But this doesn’t have to be a Herculean task.  

It really comes down to three simple things. Are you ready, willing and able to start living green? Understanding these three aspects is important.  

1. Being ‘ready’ means you understand what is required and are prepared to begin the journey.  

2. Being ‘willing’ means you have committed to the notion that living ‘green’ is the correct way to live.  

3. Being ‘able’ means that there aren’t any issues preventing you from starting. This could mean that the timing is correct, you have the finances required to do this, etc.  

Conversely, if you are ready and willing, but not able, you can’t start. If you are willing and able, but not ready, same thing. You get the idea. 

If in fact you are ready, willing and able, it is a simple task to start. By attending the Fair, you are off to a great start. You can now pick and choose how you want to build your knowledge base - by attending seminars, checking out the great bookstore, talking with people at their booth (I hesitate to call them ‘salesmen’... they are usually not pushy at all and instead are loaded with info they are happy to share), and gleaning information with like-minded people who are in the middle of their own path to green living. 

After all of that, the simplest way to traveling along this journey is that at each decision point, at each fork in the road, consciously think about the ways to make a greener choice. It doesn’t mean that every decision needs to be rigidly about going green, and you end up feeling guilty if you don’t do every single thing perfect. Rather, look at each option and decide if it makes sense to select that green route. Sometimes it might potentially cost too much, there are negative aspects that don’t make it a good fit, or you don’t like the current choices available, etc.  

Keep your options and your mind open and think creatively. Instead of contemplating the latest hybrid or electric car, maybe the answer is moving into a walkable community, one where the vast majority of your needs are within walking distance, mass transit or biking are logical choices and a car is not what is required. Maybe you can’t grow your own food, but you can join a community farm cooperative. You might not be able to install renewable energy devices on your home, but perhaps you can select green power from a local power provider to offset your usage and reward renewable power projects in your region. 

When it comes time to consider your housing arrangement, you should be doing a lot of research. Green buildings are amazing places to live. Ideally, they are more efficient in terms of the energy used to run them and embodied energy – the energy it takes to build the home including to produce and transport the actual building materials. They have healthier interiors because the materials are preferably non toxic, there is good natural ventilation and they have natural daylighting. It takes much less energy to run them, thereby saving you money. The building’s carbon footprint is significantly reduced compared to equivalent homes in the same area. They may also be adaptable for aging in place. Good ones have an overall spiritual feel very different than your run of the mill homes. There isn’t much not to love about these homes. 

I design homes and buildings that integrate great design with green living. High Design/Low Carbon is what I call it. Just because I design a green home doesn’t give me an excuse to not make it a beautiful home. It is that added challenge that my office finds the most fun. As the great Chicago architect Louis Sullivan famously said, “Form follows Function.” I think this is especially true of real green architecture.  

Another well-known Chicago architect, Mies Van Der Rohe, was renown for his mantra, “Less is more.” The simplest solutions tend to be the best ones. Homes that are able to learn the lessons from historically classic homes – the best homes are the ones that are tweaked over the course of generations of trial and error to find the perfect design. They are the best answer to their local climate, available local materials and local culture. These are the homes that are most successful, even if the home designs themselves are not ‘classical’ in appearance. Passive solar, natural ventilation, daylighting, and calculated shading are ideal starting points before considering loading a house up with expensive technological solutions. It is also what gives living in well designed green homes such a special sense of place and beauty. 

Nathan Kipnis presented a workshop at the 2012 Pennsylvania MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR. 

Please visit the FAIR website for more information about future FAIRs: June 1-2 in Puyallup, Wash., Sept. 20-22 in Seven Springs, Pa., and Oct. 12-13 in Lawrence, Kan. Tickets are on sale now. 

You can also get FAIR updates on our Facebook and Twitter pages.  

Have you started your tomatoes and peppers yet? 'Tis the season to start seeding long season crops indoors. If you normally buy organic starts from your local nursery, try your hand at seed starting. It's so much more economical and you get to select from such a range of unique varieties.

Here's a video of our company co-owner, Tricia, showing you how to start seeds.  

Ready for more? We gathered all our videos and articles about vegetable seeds, seed selection, seed starting & seedling care. Whether you're brand new to seed starting, or an experienced vegetable gardener, we have useful information for you.

We want to make organic gardening easy and accessible to everyone, so we film a short video every week and e-mail it, along with a special discount offers, in our weekly newsletter. You can sign up for the newsletter at www.groworganic.com. Visit our Organic Gardening Resource Center to browse all our archived videos & articles.

Here at Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply (online as GrowOrganic.com) we've been supporting organic farmers and gardeners since 1976, and we believe organic seeds are a sound basis for an organic garden.

Organic farmers are required to use organic seeds if available, and home gardeners want to use organic seeds for three reasons:
1. the seeds grew in fields without synthetic pesticides (non-organic seed is exposed to even more pesticides because they sit in the field much longer than food crops),
2. they were grown with organic methods and respond well to conditions in an organic home garden,
3. supporting organic seed farmers gives vitality to the organic seed supply.

All our vegetable and herb seeds are certified organic, with many heirloom varieties. We carry over 1700 kinds of seeds, including cover crops, and open pollinated flowers. Worried about GMO's? We signed the Safe Seed Pledge and our seeds are all non-GMO!

Our Seed Catalog is full of details about our vegetable and flower seeds -- and Tricia gives her organic gardening advice and tells you her favorite products for organic growing. Download a PDF of our Seed Catalog here.

We have the whole array of seed starting equipment, from a device to make Soil Blockers, to Speedling trays, and even a wooden form around which you wrap newspaper to make tiny pots. Find everything at our online store GrowOrganic.com.

We give you 2 free seed packs for every order over $50, and 5 free seed packs for orders over $100. Live far away from our home base in Northern California? We can ship up to a 40 lb. box to you for a flat rate of $7.99. 

Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply is a sponsor of the 2013 Washington MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR. 

Please visit the FAIR website for more information about future FAIRs: June 1-2 in Puyallup, Wash., Sept. 20-22 in Seven Springs, Pa., and Oct. 12-13 in Lawrence, Kan. Tickets are on sale now. 

You can also get FAIR updates on our Facebook and Twitter pages.  

Are you looking for ways to grow most of your own food? If so, you probably have the fruit and veggie patches going great guns. Or, maybe homemade goods such as breads and pastas rate highly on your family’s dinner selections. In this excerpt from Fair presenters Hank and Karen Will’s new book, Plowing With Pigs and Other Creative, Low-budget Homesteading Solutions, they’ll show you how to add small grains to your plot.

Small Grains, Big Benefit 

The backyard food garden brings ready images of labor converted to greens, fruits, beans, and corn – but why not small grains? There was a time when almost every farm and homestead out there made some provision for growing grains – and not only the larger grains like corn and beans, but also the small grains that continue to feed the world and that most folks in North America consume in large quantities every day. Is it because these staples have drifted into the realm of the highly processed and therefore are not for home growing?

Whatever the reason, it’s true that dry beans, flint, flour and dent corns, along with a whole host of small grains are not among the top tier of food-garden favorites in North America. When was the last time you were involved in a conversation about the awesome flavor of a particular variety of corn, ground into meal, or which variety of wheat’s flour was responsible for that oh-so-delicious homemade pasta?

No doubt, one practical reason for small grains falling out of favor is that there is quite a bit of labor involved with getting the crop out of the field and sufficiently processed to be able to make flour. And the making of flour requires milling – a process that we’ve been raised to believe requires vast stone or metal wheels powered by water or electricity to crush the grains and liberate that white starchy stuff we call flour. And we have a vague idea that it takes even more complicated machinery to separate the starchy stuff from the protein and the fiber – the germ and bran. And that’s where we’ve gone wrong. Somehow, we’ve been convinced that the only flours worth eating are white and starchy.

The homestead is a perfect place to devote a little energy to the production of small grains. All it takes is a bit of fertility, some effort on your part, and minor cooperation on the part of Mother Nature. And come harvest time, if you don’t have time to process the grain from the get-go, it will store quite nicely – so long as you keep insects, rodents and birds at bay. Let’s take a look at what’s involved to make it happen.

 Consider Your Needs 

Before embarking on a full-scale small-grain production, try growing one to three small patches of your favorite grains (or some you are just curious about) as a means to dip your toes in the water. While those patches are growing, do some calculations to get a feel for how many pounds of whole wheat flour you consume in a year. Move from there to consider what fraction or multiple of an acre it would take, under average conditions, to produce that amount of grain. For example, if winter wheat is among the crops you want to grow, you might be able to achieve a yield in the realm of 40 bushels per acre, which roughly approximates one bushel per 1,000 square feet. So, if you devote a patch that’s 20 feet by 50 feet to winter wheat, you should come close to making a bushel of threshed grain for your efforts. A bushel of wheat should weigh in the vicinity of 60 pounds – that’s a lot of flour, when you think about it.

Putting in the Crop 

Once you’ve decided on a wheat variety, you’ll want to prepare your ground. You can do the initial prep with hogs, but you’ll want to spend some time with a tiller, wheel cultivator, rake, etc., to get a fairly uniform seed bed. If you want to grow winter wheat, make sure to first check with local growers or the extension service (or online) to discover if the Hessian fly is an issue in your area; if it is, then find out what the earliest planting date is to avoid Hessian fly infestation. If you are in doubt, err on the later side for planting – but, with winter wheat, you’ll need to give the crop sufficient time to germinate, sprout, and grow a bit before snow cover or freezing weather shuts it down. If you happened to have your peas, beans, or a cover crop of clover in a patch prior to the wheat, you won’t have to worry too much about fertility. If you think fertility might be depleted, feel free to work some composted manure into the soil as you prepare the seedbed.

Once the seed is on the ground, go ahead and rake it in, and then pack it. Once the soil is packed, all you really need to do is sit back, relax, and wait. If you are in an area that requires irrigation for any green life to thrive, you may need to sprinkle your wheat patch to get things moving.

 Harvest Time 

Winter wheat generally ripens in early to late summer, depending on your elevation and latitude. The farther north you are, the later it will be. You’ll know it’s maturing as the verdant green turns silvery and then to various shades of amber, yellow, straw or brown – there is plenty of variation in the color of mature wheat. At some point, you may notice that the seed stalks curve until the heads are aimed more-or-less downward. Pull a head or two, and rub it between your hands – if it is anywhere near ready, you should wind up with a small handful of loose wheat berries along with some chaff. Select a few berries and chew on them – crunchy means the wheat is ripe. This stage is ideal for combining wheat (mechanically harvesting and threshing with a modern combine), but you needn’t worry so much about timing if you are going to be cutting and threshing your wheat by hand. Ideally, you want to harvest it before it is crunchy and allow it to dry to the crunchy state before storing it.

When your wheat has turned mostly to amber (or red or whatever color your variety turns) and the berries are a bit on the soft or chewy side, you should feel free to begin your harvest. Use a scythe or garden sickle to harvest your wheat – if you happen to have a scythe with a cradle, so much the better. The cradle will collect the cut wheat stalks and keep them oriented head to tail for easy bundling. In any case, once you’ve cut sufficient stalks to make several bundles (perhaps a double handful of stalks or at least 6 inches in diameter, measured at the stems) you want to gather it up, keep the heads facing one direction and the stalks the other. Tie the bundles (sheaves) with a wheat stem or piece of twine. Shock several bundles by stacking them together (leaning against one another, teepee style) with the seed heads up. If you’re worried about moisture, set a couple of bundles horizontally across the top. You could also simply haul bundles or loose wheat stems (with heads oriented together), and bring them into a well-ventilated and dry barn or mudroom where you can allow them to dry unmolested by rodents and birds until you can thresh out the berries easily with your hands; if they’re crunchy, you’re good to thresh and store. If they’re still soft or chewy, you should allow the threshed wheat to dry before storing. Spread the berries on a tarp placed on the ground or a table to facilitate drying.

Getting at the Good Stuff 

Finally, you’re ready to separate the wheat from the chaff – literally. Humans carried out this operation for millennia before the advent of threshing machines or the modern combine, which harvests and threshes in a single pass. Luckily, ripe wheat shatters relatively easily, so all you need to do is rig up a threshing floor of some kind – and have at it. The threshing floor can be as simple as a cotton drop cloth, light canvas tarp or some other clean, aesthetically pleasing piece of material spread on a hard wooden or concrete floor. One of the simplest methods is to toss a few bundles into the center of the cloth, fold it in half or quarters, and then simply stomp on the enclosed bundles. You can crush the wheat in lots of other ways, so long as you use relatively light force, lest you crack the grain.

Winnowing can be as high tech or as low tech as you desire. We suggest that you let Mother Nature do most of the work for you, as follows. Gather your threshed wheat in a large bowl or 5-gallon bucket, grab another vessel with as wide an opening as possible – like a galvanized wash tub about 24 inches in diameter. Take the works outdoors and into the wind. Set the wide-mouth vessel on the ground, grab a handful of threshed wheat, and drop it slowly from a standing height into the wide-mouth vessel. You might need to adjust your point of release depending on wind conditions. As the grain drops, notice that the wind whisks away the chaff. Voila! You have clean wheat berries, or nearly clean, anyway. You might have to repeat the process a few times to remove 99 percent of the chaff; if the wind is fairly stiff, you might simply be able to slowly pour the wheat from the 5-gallon bucket into the wide-mouth vessel. Experiment with pouring from a few steps up on a stepladder – the longer the drop, the more chance for the chaff to catch the breeze.

 Use It Up 

Wheat berries are incredibly versatile as a food source. Boiled or steamed, you can eat them much as you would pearl barley or rice – and you don’t need to think so far ahead as to soak them overnight – although there’s nothing wrong with soaking. Add two cups of winter wheat berries (be sure to sort for any stones that may have entered the scene during threshing) along with 6-7 cups of water to an appropriate-sized saucepan, bring to a boil, and then simmer for about an hour. Pour the works into a colander and rinse. You can serve this delight with butter and maple syrup, chill it and add it to a salad, or use it as a starch in place of pasta or rice. If you happen to own a rice-cooker machine, you can cook wheat berries in that. Add the recommended amount of berries and water for a “normal” batch of rice, and turn the machine on. It might take a bit longer than rice, and you might need to modify the ratio of grain to water some, but once you figure it out, you’ll have fluffy, soft (not mushy) wheat to use in any way you can imagine.

Fresh whole wheat flour also makes excellent pancakes, muffins, and other quick breads. The first step in baking anything with whole wheat flour is to measure out your wheat berries and grind them into flour. If you don’t have a small grist mill, experiment rendering your wheat into flour using a blender. You can sift the result, if you’d like to get it really fine or remove the bran. Once you have a fine flour, it’s time to make pancakes. Take a cup of the flour and mix it with 2 teaspoons of baking powder. Next, mix together 2 teaspoons of honey (adjust to suit your own taste), 1 cup of whole milk, 2 farm-fresh eggs, and a tablespoon of melted butter (substitute coconut oil, sour cream, cold-pressed sunflower oil, or cold-pressed peanut oil for variation). Finally, fold the works together and drop onto a hot, greased griddle. Serve these pancakes anyway you like – and don’t be afraid to refrigerate leftovers – packed them in tomorrows lunch pails to make some family members really happy.

Beyond Wheat 

There are many other grains and grain-like crops that you can grow specifically for the food and storage value of the ripe seeds – many turn out to be cover crops. Check out Gene Logsdon’s wonderful book, Small-Scale Grain Raising, for all you ever wanted to know about raising, processing and using grains on a homestead-sized scale.

Our family was recently honored in Mother Earth News (Aug/Sept 2012) as Homesteaders of the Year. Being avid readers, this occasion has us reflecting on some of the books that have most influenced our values and lifestyles over the years. We’ve borrowed library books and amassed a family reference library on a variety of topics including gardening, frugality and simplicity, crafts, food preparation and preservation, and spirituality. We’ve collected a range of plant and animal identification books as well as ones filled with naturalists musings.

We believe that connecting with a community of people working on similar goals and projects is important but that good books can often fill the role of a friend or mentor when a real one isn't around. Books have taught us new things, challenged us to go beyond what we already knew, inspired us, and sometimes purely entertained us.

As I, Barbara, wrote in my Mother Earth News nomination, my husband Alan’s first gift to me was Helen and Scott Nearing’s Living the Good Life. This classic, subtitled how to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World, was the first book that popularized a back-to-the-land lifestyle.

The books we turn to regularly have changed, although some we go back to again and again, year after year. It was difficult to trim our list and so we are leaving out many favorites. We decided to include both some oldies and some newer books, especially ones that influenced Rebecca in her urban homesteading. Many books on this short list you may recognize as classics, while others hopefully are new to you.

We hope we can inspire you to pick up a new book or revisit an old standby for education or entertainment. And we’d like to hear about your favorites and suggestions.

Our Top 10

1. The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing – As mentioned, the original back-to-the-land manifesto.

2. The Whole Earth Catalog edited by Stewart Brand – Originally published annually in the late 1960s through the early 1970s; a helpful and almost-overwhelming compendium of counterculture resources.

3. Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman – Coleman is both respectful of tradition (where respect is truly due) and not afraid to challenge conventional farming and gardening techniques, making this season extension book one you'll turn to again and again for gardening techniques and solutions, new and old. (His Winter Harvest Handbook builds upon and adds to the information presented in this book, with more of a focus on production for market).

4. Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money and Achieving Financial Independence by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin – The authors created an inspirational 9-step program focusing on the difference between ‘making a living’ and making a life and computing how much life energy we use to consume products and services.

5. The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron – The go-to spiritual reference book in our family,  with short, easily digestible chapters, simple meditation instructions, and a down-to-earth approach to Buddhist philosophy that makes it accessible to people from all walks of life.

6. The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe – This is probably the gardening book that I, Rebecca, currently go back to most often, with lots of brand new to me, useful information, much of which I haven't found in other sources.

7. The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukouka – While this book from a Japanese farmer doesn't contain much hands-on advice, it presents a unique philosophy of farming in a more natural way, honed over decades of trial, error, and observation of the natural world.

8. Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter – Well-written, humorous, and hopeful but realistic about the challenges of urban farming, this excellent book was one of the first to expose us to the concept of farming in the city.

9. Toolbox for Sustainable City Living by Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew – An excellent inspiration and reference for city dwellers interested in building a more sustainable life, including info on DIY aquaponics and greywater systems.

10. Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz – Part cultural history, part cookbook, this amazing book is the next best thing to having a friend or relative in the kitchen guiding you through the steps of fermentation, gently encouraging you, and giving you the courage to experiment.

Barbara Heller and Rebecca Heller-Steinberg presented a workshop at the 2012 Pennsylvania MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR. 

Please visit the FAIR website for more information about future FAIRs: June 1-2 in Puyallup, Wash., Sept. 20-22 in Seven Springs, Pa., and Oct. 12-13 in Lawrence, Kan. Tickets are on sale now. 

You can also get FAIR updates on our Facebook and Twitter pages. 

This post follows Kim Flottum’s Urban Beekeeping article, posted last August..

OK, you’ve got a start: where to get equipment, groups to join, classes to take, and mentors to hook up with. Now’s the time, before you have bees, to take a long hard look at some of the rest of the things you need to be thinking about.

Now’s the time to make sure where you are is zoned for bees, if some level of registration is required, and any other legal items are taken care of. Finding out later can be expensive, and painful. And will insurance of some kind cover anything that might happen? A neighbor’s dog gets stung and you get sued. Vandals destroy your equipment. And here’s one you can prevent, but I’ll bet you never thought about… when bees leave the hive, they drop their waste as they leave. This material is usually golden brown, sticky, and very, very acidic. It’ll take the paint off cars, stain the siding on a house or clothes on a line. Avoid this certainly, but if caught in the middle of a bee poop battle…who pays to have that car painted? Plus, just having bees may cause your homeowners insurance to be canceled. Find out before you need it.

Oh. What do your neighbors think of your new found activity? Most don’t care a bit, some will be concerned but can be won over, and some will become hysterical and run straight to the local council office demanding your head on a municipal code platter. Find out before those bees arrive anything that won’t work, or needs work when it comes to neighborhood relations.

Where will the colonies go? Backyard, roof, balcony, maybe a community apiary, someone else’s property? The cardinal rule for bees and people is out of sight, out of mind. Consider painting them a color that blends in with the surroundings. (Probably the greatest temptation in the world is two 14 year olds with an “I dare you” attitude.) Full sun if possible, on a hive stand, that’ll hold four or five hundred pounds for late season crops, a screen if at ground level so bees have to go up, up and away when they leave home, above people’s heads to avoid close encounter of the honey bee kind. If in a yard, as far from property lines as possible, or legal, and keep the front door aimed away from sidewalks, doorways and where kids play. It’s all common sense when you think about it.

Water, however, is a serious matter. On a hot summer day, a full sized colony will use up to a gallon, even more sometimes of water a day! Where will that water come from? They will get it, and if you don’t provide it, everyday, they’ll find a swimming pool, several bird baths, leaky air conditioning units or faucets, pet watering dishes, sprinklers in the garden… anywhere and everywhere there is water. And, if there isn’t one good place, lots of foragers will be looking instead of foraging for that honey crop you wanted. So, supply water. Lots of it. And never, ever, ever let it go dry. Once bees can’t get it where they could get it, they move on. Before you get your bees, get your water source set up: a large pool, an automatic livestock waterer, a water garden. Make sure there’s a place for the bees to land – floats, a beach of sorts, something – and if stagnant, add a scent such as food grade peppermint oil or Honey-B-Healthy, so they can find it at first, and can locate it later. Water is the second biggest problem urban beekeepers have, and it shouldn’t be.

Kim Flottum presented workshops at the 2012 Pennsylvania MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR. 

Please visit the FAIR website for more information about future FAIRs: June 1-2 in Puyallup, Wash., Sept. 20-22 in Seven Springs, Pa., and Oct. 12-13 in Lawrence, Kan. Tickets are on sale now. 

You can also get FAIR updates on our Facebook and Twitter pages.