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VonDraeger Conceptions

VonDraeger Conceptions Homesteaded, handmade products, workshops and resources for those who strive for simpler things.

25/04/2025

Cherries, and apples, and pears, Oh My!

Roughly 50 newly grafted babies starting to wake up for this season. Pat's getting purty dern good at this grafting stuff!

Grateful for lessons that become blessings. If it weren't for losing 2/3rds of our trees a few years ago, we'd never have this skill, nor would we have met Don & Janeen at Albrecht's Nursery & Orchard . They are some of the nicest & most knowledgeable people you'll ever meet. I HIGHLY recommend any & all of their workshops about growing fruit trees, whether you have 1 tree or 100.

24/04/2025

Picked up 40,000 new friends and drove them 90 miles home in the back of Pat's car on Tuesday.

The afternoon turned out beautiful, sunny, and in the upper 60's, so we decided to install them as soon as I got home.

The queens are marked blue this year. We went with Saskatraz bees again this year. They were good producers last year, and pretty chill in demeanor, too.

As of nightfall, they all looked to be heading inside their new homes well. We'll check them sometime Friday-Sunday, whichever is the best weather day and ensure they've released the queens, or we'll release any that the attendants haven't yet.

Thanks to Nature's Nectar LLC for a super easy ordering process & incredibly smooth pick up.

23/04/2025

Welp, I know, I know ... long time; no post. I kinda fell off the radar for a while. March '24 to about now has been a bit of a hot mess for me personally, but we're solidly on the other side now, and I'm very happy to be getting back into the homesteading swing of things.

We got one of the first major tasks of the spring season handled this weekend - cleaned up the hives to ready them for new packages. Unfortunately, we lost all 4 hives over the winter, so we'll be replacing with 4 new packages. Wisconsin winters, especially this last one, are not kind to honey bees.

But! Bee yard got a nice upgrade with an old swimming pool under the hives to help with w**d control.

20/10/2024

Adventures in homesteading part 5,280; Fire Cider.

I am unreasonably excited to see how this turns out.

01/07/2024

Test day is my favorite day.

Testing 3 experiments today that we started just about a month ago.

We recreated our Grand Champion mead from 2022, but wanted to see what other yeasts might do to the formula.

So we did 5 gallons each using two new yeasts for this recipe, but also a 5gal batch of the original yeast cuz why not make more of the award winning original?!

Happy to report these have some definite promise! Now, we'll re-rack and wait for some bulk aging.

21/06/2024

Missed opportunity, if you ask me. Mead is delicious.

14/06/2024

I wish you could smell this 1st picture! The bees are already packing away some gorgeous honey. This frame is already about 80% capped. Didja know that bees won't cap honey until it is the correct moisture content that makes it not spoil? (Less than 20% moisture, but ideally between 17-18%.) Honey is hygroscopic, meaning it will absorb moisture from surrounding air if left open.

Also, totally not sorry for sharing yet another stunning pollen pic. This rainbow from nature never gets old.

30/05/2024

We did our hive inspections this afternoon and both splits that we recenlty did look great!

The other 2 hives that made it thru the winter are doing some weird stuff, but nothing concerning yet; we'll just watch, wait and see how they handle it.

Also - snapped this absolutely gorgeous frame packed full of ALL OF THE POLLEN! 😍🤩

19/05/2024

MAJOR upgrade for the homestead this weekend. Prior years' gardens didn't often feel worth the work, as the deer, bunnies & others (even a loose horse once) would completely destroy a huge bulk of what we'd plant. 🫎🐇🐎

NOT THIS TIME! 💪🏼

Pat worked super hard and drilled in 28 x 6in dia posts, and then put up some welded wire fencing. We still have to get real gates made for the ends and one on the side, but this is a BIG accomplishment! 🎉 And, we also need to get and spread more chips, as this is a no-till garden.

The garden is also 98% planted. Only about 3 more things to go in. But after 2 back-to-back all-dayers out there, we're beat! 🥴

11/05/2024

Today, Pat and I tried something new! We made two splits!

We had all 4 hives make it TO spring, but only 2 made it THRU spring. Fortunately, the remaining 2 were very strong, so we acquired 2 new queens and made a couple of splits.

A split is when you take brood and food from a strong hive, and split it off with a new (purchased or raised) queen to make a new hive.

🤞 this will get us back up to 4 hives!

Check out that gorgeous queen and all those pollen colors!

28/04/2024

In honor of Dolly's recent , I wanted to share a little "how it started vs how its going"...

Guess somethings never change 💜

21/04/2024

Another (almost) , and more homestead work going down at VonD's.

Patrick got seven more fruit trees in the ground today, and some nice headway on the new layout for the lasagna garden.

Not to mention the 65-ish grafted trees that are resting in the shop til the timing is right (not pictured).

Please enjoy some waking up sights from the orchard 🌱

18/04/2024

I know spring has been arriving in fits and starts here in Wisconsin... but a quick little reminder: You can help out a ton by not clearing and cleaning out your yard debris, gardens, flowerbeds and other such landscaping until the daytime temps are consistently above 50F.

Native bees and many other pollinators are still relying on natural habitat of yards, lawns, ditches, woods, prairies, and other feral horticultural systems.

Besides, who doesn't need another valid excuse to skip some chores?!

Don't forget, is also almost here! You can read more about this important initiative at: https://beecityusa.org/no-mow-may/ . You can also find out how to help your hometown become a !

13/04/2024

Long time; no post! Have no fear... we're still here!

If you remember back to last July when we started this ... we made some serious progress on the hügelkultur bed today! Hügelkultur is a German word that means hill culture or mound culture. It is a permaculture method of no-till, raised beds.

The haskap and blueberries have been transplanted and we cannot we to see how this fills in 🙃

(Last 2 pictures are from July, for refresher.)

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