Fall Squashes

Butternut Squash

Today was the first day of my week-long fall recess from my new full time job at a school. I wanted to do a little gardening while having the time off. I got a pleasant surprise when I looked into one of the wine barrel planters. There is a small butternut squash! I didn't even intentionally plant butternut squash. The seed must had been mixed in with the pumpkin seeds or my compost. I am pretty excited because it's something new on my farm, and I actually like butternut squash. I usually make a big pot of butternut squash soup during the winter when it's cold and rainy. I also found another squash in one of the vegetable beds. I am not sure what kind of squash it is. One of my neighbors gave me a bag of mixed pumpkin seeds, and I just randomly planted a few.

Sunday in Golden Gate Park

Gold Gate Park Map

This morning I woke right before 8 am. I got up, packed up, and headed over to Golden Gate Park with Kelsey in the back seat. Do you know there is free parking in Golden Gate Park? It's limited to 4 hours during Monday through Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, it is unlimited, but you must get there early. I got to the park at 9 am, and there was plenty of parking. As I was parking, I could see one car after another pulling up and parked behind me. I was pretty sure by 9:30 it would be hard to find parking.

Banjo Stage of Bluegrass (photo taken 2011)

I can see why people love the city. Every weekend and every day there is so much going on. One can never and should never be bored in this area. Many of the weekend activities are free, and if you don't mind taking a little time to plan and pack your own food and drink, you don't need to spend any money at these events. This weekend was the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. It always runs for 3 days starting from Friday to Sunday. People come from all over the Bay Area to enjoy this free music festival.  It is also SF Fleet Week. I am not sure whether that's free, but I am sure if you know where to go, you can see the air show for free by looking up the sky.

The Golden Gate Park Band

Today there were 6 stages on one side of the park for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. On the other side, just across from De Young Museum, The Golden Gate Park Band was having their last free performance of the season. After I checked out several stages of Bluegrass Festival, I sat on one of the green benches in the shade to enjoy a different kind of music. Kelsey seemed to be pooped after hours of walking, loud music, and being surrounded by people.  She just laid down to take a nap.

Cape Gooseberries

Today I finally picked some perfectly ripe Cape gooseberries! It took them almost 2 months to be ready. The bright orange color is very Halloweenish! They definitely look like an autumn fruit. One of the reasons I fell in love with them right away besides their taste is that I always feel like opening a little present when I break the papery calyx to get to the berry. It's such a fun fruit to eat.

I have 4 Cape gooseberry plants but so far the one in the pot has most berries. Since Cape gooseberry is native to tropical Peru, Columbia and Ecuador and related to tomatoes, I figured it must like heat and lots of sun. I was able to move the potted Gooseberry around to get most sun.  In the winter I can bring it into the sun room if the temperature gets too low. I hope they all survive the winter and produce more berries next year.

My Amazing Honey Bee Friends

I grow 5 bushes of lavender flowers all around Sand Village Farm. I love their scent and color. I know my honey bee friends love them as well,  so I want them to visit often. The sound of buzzing bees are music to my ears in the hot summer sun. They are amazing little creatures. Let me tell you just how amazing they are:

Honey bees have 6 legs, 2 compound eyes made up of thousands of tiny lenses (one on each side of the head), 3 simple eyes on the top of the head, 2 pairs of wings, a nectar pouch, and a stomach.

Honey bees have 170 odorant receptors, compared with only 62 in fruit flies and 79 in mosquitoes. Their exceptional olfactory abilities include kin recognition signals, social communication within the hive, and odor recognition for finding food. Their sense of smell was so precise that it could differentiate hundreds of different floral varieties and tell whether a flower carried pollen or nectar from meters away.

The honey bee's wings stroke incredibly fast, about 200 beats per second, thus making their famous, distinctive buzz. A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour. The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime. A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.

A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees and one queen. Worker honey bees are female, live for about 6 weeks and do all the work. The queen bee can live up to 5 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 2500 eggs per day. Click here to learn more about the Honey Bee Life Cycle. During winter, honey bees feed on the honey they collected during the warmer months. They form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.

Check out the short youtube video I create for more photos of my honey bee friends.

We Are Now Sandvillagefarm.ORG

Sadly, the domain name I have been happily using for almost 3 years has been held hostage by Google due to one of their many changes in order to generate more revenue. Knowing Google, it's unlikely I'll even get a reply to my plea on getting my domain back. In the meantime, I am using sandvillagefarm.org. Hopefully, in a few months I will regain the original domain name.