Unity Farm Journal - 4th week of June 2014

Last weekend, we had two days of clear, warm weather, perfect for harvesting vegetables, inoculating mushrooms, and caring for bees.

We received 40 pounds of mushroom spawn from our supplier, Field and Forest, and we created two new mushroom areas - 4 raised beds of compost with Agaricus (almond mushroom) and 12 new stacks of logs with Oysters.    The Golden Oysters are beginning to fruit in the warm humidity of summer afternoons.

Eating on the farm can be as simple as taking a basket to the hoop house and gathering a potpourri of delectable vegetables.    Sunday’s brunch was a bowl of fresh strawberries, handfuls of snap peas and tender zucchini pancakes.

We’re at the height of nectar production on the 15 acres of the farm and our 12 bee hives are storing away honey at a rapid clip.   At this point, we’ve done our best to gives the bees their best chance to build up brood and food stores for the winter ahead (yes, Christmas is 6 months from now).   When nectar flows stop in July, all the food reserves until next Spring will have been stored.    Here’s what the bee yard looks like as of this morning.    Plants like borage, chamomile, and clethra line the bee yard, while salt marsh hay keeps the weeds to a minimum.

This weekend includes many animal care tasks, updating immunizations, ensuring that our pregnant alpaca are healthy for their upcoming late July deliveries, and moving the keets (baby guinea fowl) that were hatched by the ducks to the coop.     On a farm, you never know what each day will bring, so I look forward to the 12 hours a day of joyful work that awaits.

Interoperability in Real Life

On Monday afternoon my wife was speaking with my 82 year old father-in-law, when he began speaking in word salad - not slurring his words, but clearly speaking words that made no sense.   He had no numbness or weakness, no confusion, and no change in consciousness.  After 5 minutes all symptoms resolved.

My wife called me and after hearing the history, I knew he was having a transient ischemic attack (TIA).   Given that he was stable, I recommended that we coordinate an immediate hospitalization at a site suggested by his primary care physician (PCP) rather than take an ambulance to a random nearby location.     My wife called his PCP and was given a choice of two hospitals - one with IT systems I control and one with IT systems I do not.   She drove him to the hospital that offered care coordination via interoperable IT systems.

My father-in-law has records at 3 locations - an academic medical center (home built EHR), a community hospital (Meditech), and a multi-speciality practice group affiliated with but not owned by BIDMC (Epic).

Upon arrival at the Emergency Department, he had a blood pressure of 180/90.   The physician asked - what is his baseline blood pressure and has it varied over the past 6 months?   The physician clicked on the external records link we’ve placed in Meditech and he immediately viewed my father-in-law’s blood pressures in his PCP's Epic system.  

He then asked about recently specialty care.  One click later, all this information appeared from the academic medical center.

His care was materially different because his continuous lifetime record - inpatient, outpatient and emergency department - was available without going to a separate portal or  adopting a new workflow.

Over 24 hours, he received an echocardiogram, EKG, carotid ultrasound, and MRI.   All were essentially normal and he was started on aspirin and will followup with a neurologist recommended by his PCP.  Upon discharge, he was given a meaningful use care summary and a transition of care document was sent electronically back to his PCP.

Interoperability becomes much more real when you watch your own family members experience it.    As I’ve said before, the end of paper records and data silos will happen in our lifetimes.  This will not be a problem we pass along to our children!

Unity Farm Journal - Third Week of June 2014

With evenings lit by the amber hues of the June Honey Moon, we diligently worked on bees, hives, and honey over Father’s Day weekend.

At the beginning of the weekend, we had 11 hives, but with the transfer of queen cells to prevent swarming we ended the weekend with 12 hives.

One by one we opened each hive, checked for signs of health issues, looked for queens, checked eggs/larva, inventoried food stores, and documented wax building progress.   Frame by frame we reviewed the status of 100,000 bees.    Here’s our report

Hive 1
First honey super (extra food stores) is full and some is capped
Starting to build out second honey super comb
Went into second deep (core of the hive) and found two frames with queen cells that are not yet capped
Gave one frame to hive 5 since it is queenless
Started hive 12 with one frame with 5 queen cells and also took two more frames of brood and nurse bees
Gave hive 1 four new frames of comb to work on

Hive 2
Building out some of the comb in the honey super
Looks healthy with plenty of brood
Did not go into bottom deep since second deep was good

Hive 3
Weak hive
Spotty laying of eggs and have not drawn out more than 60% of the comb in the first deep
Watch queen for poor mating
Added syrup to feeder
May be able to add a second deep at next inspection

Hive 4
Filled most of second deep with comb and brood
Took off feeder and gave them a honey super

Hive 5
No queen or eggs
Removed four frames and gave 3 to hive 11 and 1 to hive 9
Found a frame with eggs in hive 7 and gave it to hive 5
Added a queen obtained from another beekeeper

Hive 6
70% comb built out so may be able to add second super next week
Added syrup
Watch for egg laying in next two weeks if queen successfully mates

Hive 7
Saw queen laying in upper box
Built out 45% of frames
Beetle larvae in feeder cleaned out
Added syrup

Hive 8
Top brood chamber 60% built out in comb and already has brood of all ages
Added syrup

Hive 9
Added syrup
Left hive alone since a saw queen piping https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qXLEZejRow after hatching yesterday

Hive 10
Added syrup

Hive 11
Queen hatched today
Need to add a frame of brood
Added syrup

Hive 12
Started with three frames of brood and five queen cells uncapped from hive 1
Also nurse bees in abundance

While we were doing our work, a purple swallowtail decided to join us, looking for any traces of nectar on the burr comb we removed (extra comb built between frames).

At the end of the day, we had a large collection of wax fragments from our cleanup of every hive component.    My father in law and I built a solar wax melter (cypress with a lexan cover) on Father’s Day morning - it was a dad thing.   Wax melts at 144F and the greenhouse effect works very well to heat a box that hot.   We placed the raw wax pieces (which contain many contaminants from tree resin to bee parts) in women’s stockings which serve as a perfect filter.   Below are photographs of the raw wax/stockings, the melter, and the finished product.   We processed 3 pounds of wax over the weekend and we’ll be making votive candles and lip balm from it.

The rest of the weekend was filled with the usual Unity Farm visits

Egg laying snapping turtles

Wild turkeys in a meadow

The deer and groundhogs were very active but too fast to get a good picture.

We harvested Shitake (4 different subtypes) and Golden Oyster (has a citrus-like taste).   There’s nothing better than a fresh Shitake stir fry.

Next weekend will be more mushroom inoculation, and vegetable harvesting.   It’s definitely the peak of our vegetable season.