Thanksgiving in the Bee Garden

Chickens rotating on string while roasting by the fire near the coals

This year we decided to make Thanksgiving more than just dinner.  We decided to make the preparations for dinner into a reminder of the first Thanksgiving by cooking our dinner out by the garden.

As a part of the Mint Wars, clearing out one of the garden beds, I reclaimed a fire pit I had built in there many years ago. I dug out all of the bricks and rocks buried there and re-stacked them into a new fire pit- a three sided one to create a wind block.  We drove iron posts into the ground on either side of the pit and put a third post through them as a place from which to suspend chickens cooking next to our fire.

We planned to start our feast with salmon.  This we prepared by taking a cedar plank and soaking it well.  Then we greased the skin of the salmon and nailed it to the plank with square cement nails.  The salmon was well spiced and oiled and set to leaning near the fire- close enough to cook and smoke it but not close enough to burn.  I had seen this technique at a historical re-enactment site and wanted to try it out.

The chickens would be the longest cooking of the foods we were preparing and required a great amount of coals so we had the fire going at least an hour before we started cooking  to build up the coals we needed.  We used wild cherry and mulberry wood from trees that came down on our property a few years ago.  They made a fine long-lasting bed of coals!  I found the idea for cooking the chickens at a website that specializes in teaching about and selling all manner of grills and grilling techniques. (  http://www.firepit-and-grilling-guru.com/roast-chicken-recipe.html  )   They are a wonderful resource .  We decided to build the fire away from the back wall of the fire pit and use that wall as both a wind block and a reflective surface to increase the heat for cooking the chicken.  We trussed and suspended the chickens from strong, heavy, cotton twine after first having a bit of a disaster with the jute cord I sometimes use for fuel in my beehive smoker.  While the chickens were suspended, we spun them on their strings and they were slowly rotating for about and hour and a half before they were done.  I had marinaded the chickens first and rubbed them with oils and herbs, basting them repeatedly during the cooking. We kept wetting down the string as we went along so it would not burn and break.

The salmon cooked on the other side of the fire and took only about one-half hour.  As that was cooking, we set up a grill over the coals and sauteed kale with hard salami adding wine vinegar and some herbs and spices.  We also had a dish of green beans with onions and mushrooms going in a cast iron pan at the same time.

The feast was delicious as we had earlier prepared a cranberry relish and a pumpkin pie- with Cinderella pumpkin harvested out of our garden.

The day was lovely and brisk- a bit too cold for my bees nearby (who remained in their hive).  There is not too much else as relaxing as cooking by an open fire, drinking apple cider with my honey and sharing a delicious feast afterward.

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Mint

Mint- A hardy , fragrant and very useful plant to have in a bee garden (or any other garden).  Mint is also in that category of invasive plants and will make itself very comfortable and reach its fibrous roots to all corners or your garden.

At this time, I am at the beginning of the Mint Wars.  Mint has taken over one bed of my garden. Peppermint, spearmint and chocolate peppermint. 

I originally planted it in large clay pots and sunk them into the bed.  I thought this would keep it from spreading uncontrollably.  I did not know that it would reach and stretch its lovely stems and put down new roots wherever it touched the earth!  It  has crept and burrowed and filled the space to its very corners and walls.  Harvesting it has only helped a little!  My honeybees enjoying the nectar of its flowers has probably increased the fertile seed which will fall to earth starting new mint plants for the coming season!

Truthfully, this did not happen in one season.  I must admit to negligence in working my garden for the last two years, except minimally.  A back injury and a massive increase in mosquitoes have made things more difficult for me.  But I am back and hopefully stronger and smarter.  I am ready to do war against the mint! 

I realized that I would have to dig out and sift all of the soil in this bed and so I have begun.  I have a large screen- a wooden frame with a hardware cloth screen.  This is set over my wheelbarrow.  I dig up a narrow strip about 10 inches deep at a time and gently rub the soil against the screen, sending the good earth through and leaving all of the roots and rocks (and other surprises) behind.  When I have filled the wheelbarrow with soil and my trash bag with roots (I do not put perennial roots into my compost-you can guess why!) I dump the soil carefully back into its bed. 

I am taking some of the mint to replant into its original pots but will not reset them into the bed.  Instead there will be large, beautiful containers of mint alongside my garden attracting my honeybees this coming season. There will  be fragrant and delicious mint teas to sip while sitting and enjoying my Bee Garden.