Clare | Curbstone Valley

Jeepers Creepers, Where’d You Get Those Peepers?

by Clare | Oct 7, 2011 | Chickens, Farm Blog

This Fowl Friday we thought we’d show you how much our hens are making a spectacle of themselves. This has nothing to do with the lastest craze in poultry fashion though, it’s because some of our girls have aquired the evil habit of feather-picking their...

The Sunken Garden

by Clare | Oct 4, 2011 | Farm Blog, Garden

There are many beautiful examples of sunken gardens to be found, but our own sunken garden, directly in front of the house, was not a consequence of intentional garden design. When we were first considering purchasing this property, the most evident features of the...

Interior Live Oak, or Shreve Oak?

by Clare | Sep 28, 2011 | Farm Blog, Flora and Fauna, Native Plants, Natives

The woodland on the property is mixed evergreen forest, composed of a variety of native California tree species, including Coast Redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), California Bay Laurel (Umbellularia californica), Pacific Madrone (Arbutus menziesii), Douglas Fir...

Hive Management: Increasing Mite Levels Post-Treatment

by Clare | Sep 23, 2011 | Farm Blog, Honeybees

Beekeepers in this area have been telling us for some time that this has been a very bad year for Varroa mites. By late summer we knew that one of our hives had an escalating Varroa mite problem, which we outlined in our last post. The other three hives in the...

Our Great Heirloom Squash Experiment

by Clare | Sep 21, 2011 | Farm Blog, Garden, Vegetables

This year we devoted an area toward the north end of the orchard to growing an assortment of heirloom summer, and winter squash. The intent was to see which varieties performed the best here, when compared side by side, under the same growing conditions. With our...