The Bee Cut-Out

Okay, we finally did it!

This past weekend, in the heavy drizzle/sometimes soaking rain, we got our honey bees. :)

Friends had a hive of bees which had taken up residence in the basement window well of their brick home, behind a piece of plywood covering. These bees had been there probably at least five years or more - it was a very well-developed hive.

We have been working toward the goal of getting these bees since late last summer - up to this point the weather was never right for the bees to survive the move. We aren't really sure it was right this time either - we did lose a lot of bees to the rain in the process.

However, the rain also seemed to help us control the bees quite a bit. Because it was a heavy mist, they really couldn't sting us very well - it was all they could do to voice their buzzing protests. Steven and I were both surrounded with swarms of them at many various times, but neither of us got stung, that we noticed.

We had to improvise some, because we really planned on leaving our hive bodies on the truck and using the truck tailgate as a work surface, but the yard was too wet to drive the truck back into the site.

Took us five hours (not including drive time - including drive time it was seven hours) for this project. By the end of it we were soaked to skin, chilled to the bone, but very glad we had our bees, and hopeful they will survive the transition to our bee hive at the farm.

I forgot to take my camera, and so these poor photos are from my cell phone, but we don't have any of the actual process of cutting the brood comb and fastening it into our frames, etc. because.. well, we were just a bit too busy at that point to take photographs. And the bees were just a little too prolific and riled up for anyone else to get close enough for photos of the process.

(Us suiting up. I know I look dorky and fat (on the left)
but I had on several layers. The nylon jacket I have on over it all,
during the rain, made it impossible for the bees to even land or hang onto me)

Steven beginning to open the hive area in the window well. As you can see, I was already getting quite a bit of rain on my phone camera.

(the exposed hive before we began cutting out the comb,
as we began transferring the bees to our hive.
The top half there is brood comb, etc. but you can also see wax
and old comb hanging down in the bottom of the opening)

An Evening of Relaxation

There are never-ending projects on any farm (as all you other farmers know) and sometimes you need to take an evening and take a break.

Such was this past week when one day I came home from work and Steven said, "Let's go fishing! The fish are biting!" (He had determined it was perfect fishing weather by observing how the fish in our stock tank were acting). There was a storm in the forecast, the barometric pressure was changing, and it was indeed a perfect evening for fishing.

So we quickly loaded up the tackle and poles, dug a few worms, and headed down to our ponds. (I always enjoy an excuse to go fishing).

Steven was exactly right -- they were definitely biting. Seems we got nibbles or bites every time we dropped anything into the water.

Most of the time, we seemed to keep catching small-size bass -- not big enough to eat, although fun to keep hauling in. We would release these further down the ponds, to keep from catching the same ones over and over.

I caught this little pretty sun perch (which we threw back, of course) but shortly after that I happened to get a strike by a large fish -- we know his size because he jumped high and thrashed-- and promptly broke my line! (I sure hope he's not still swimming around somewhere with a hook).

Anyway, as he broke the line, my bobber went flying, so Steven decided to try to "snag" the bobber with his line to bring it back ashore. He had a top-floating popper on his, and he would cast across and try to get the lure to catch on the float as he reeled his line back across it.

He was unsuccessful in snagging the float, though, because about that time his line got hit by this beauty! :

We took this nice fish home and broiled him for supper! He was superb! (oh, and we eventually go the float, as well - as it drifted back to shore!) We were there later than planned and it was very dark by the time we drove back through the pasture for home, but we certainly had a wonderful time!

Potato Planting

Well, first I should mention that our big planned project for the weekend, the bee cut-out, got postponed for a week. :(

We had everything set and ready to go remove a wild bee hive from a wall of a home (where it is not wanted) and transplant it to our bee hive (where it is very much is wanted). However, when that cold front charged through over the weekend, and the winds were gusting to 53 mph, with the temps barely hitting 40 as a high, our expert beekeeper friends said it would probably be best (for the health of the bees) to defer this job until next week if possible. That is mainly because last night and tonight are going to be hard freezes (record cold tonight, they said) and this kind of move and recovery is very hard on bees -- we want to do everything we can to give them the best chance of successfully making the transition. The cold will also be affecting the very blossoms that will be needed for the bees to thrive in the new location. So we need a few warm days. Pray that next weekend will work out, weather-wise. I don't even care if it rains on us, as long as it doesn't make it too muddy to drive the truck into the bee site.

One thing that did get accomplished this weekend was finally getting potatoes in the ground. I am very late with this, I know. Tilled up the potato garden area (north area -- separate from our main garden, and west of our orchard) and put in 10 pounds of Cobbler seed potatoes, 5 pounds of Kennebec, 5 pounds of Viking, and 5 pounds of Russet. Will probably put in more in the future. After working on that for several hours, it truly gave me a deep appreciation for the part of The Farmer Boy (by Laura Ingalls Wilder) that talks about them hand planting and watering 5 acres of potatoes. I can only imagine!

Spring, Snowstorm and Squab

What a busy last few days! I have much to share, and hope I don't lose your interest halfway through.

Last Thursday's poultry auction, while warmer than the previous month, and certainly a blessing that it fell on Thursday this month instead of the following day — there just wasn't much to choose from. About half as many items for sale, and half as many people. There weren't any Cayuga ducks (for me to make good on replacing my son's drake), and no geese or turkeys that Steven was interested in owning.

However, ran into another friend of ours there, and he purchased a huge lot of pigeons (to use to train his bird dogs). In that batch of pigeons were two which stood out from the rest, because they were not colored the same. One was reddish and one was white. Steven talked with Mickey about those two, because he liked them, and ended up bringing them home:



Now, some have asked me "what good is a pigeon?" I have to admit I'm not real sure of an answer on that! Some people eat them, I know, as squab -- quite a delicacy in other cultures. Cheap meat that many Europeans used to raise. Some varieties of pigeons can be kept for competitions in messaging, or in acrobatics, etc. Apparently they can even be used in warfare! (that's an interesting article Steven found while researching pigeons). Overall, though - Steven just likes birds. All types. And he just wanted to have them. Much in the same way I want every dog I see. :)

Steven this week is working toward building some kind of dovecote in the top of the pole barn for his new acquisitions. He is hoping one would be male and one female, so he could raise little ones; but now he's thinking they are probably both female.

Then Friday came the big spring snowstorm. I left work early to make sure I could get home, and it was basically raining ice (sleet) very heavily at that time. Overall, though, the farm got much more snow and less ice than Wichita did. We estimated 8 inches - although since it came down in blizzard conditions, with much drifting and blowing, it was really hard to tell.

The goats didn't like it at all! They stayed in the barn and kept bellowing at us to bring them more food. The ducks didn't seem to mind the snow at all. Most all the other animals stayed huddled in protection somewhere unseen.

Saturday afternoon the sun came out and the melting began. Now things are a muddy mess, but we needed the moisture, so it was good.

Sunday we went to McPherson to see my other two kids, and my young men had fun building a snow fort and having a snow ball fight.

(click on any of the photos to view them larger)

(p.s. -- I think those coveralls I purchased for Steven at Orscheln (back when his sister worked there)is one of the best investments I have ever made! Now I want a pair for me!)

Thursday

Okay, this photo didn't turn out at all like I was hoping -- I will need to find a way to take a photo from up high looking down or something. (you can click on the photo to make it full screen).

This is from the north end of our property, looking back across our orchard area. Steven just finished burning much of it off yesterday (hard to tell in this pic, I know). You can see our one big matriarch pear tree there, which kind of anchors the northeast corner of our land. You should be able to see, in line with it, all the young fruit trees we have planted for four rows. But they don't show up well in this shot.

Tonight we go to the poultry auction. I'm looking for a replacement Cayuga drake; and Steven is hoping there might be turkeys and/or geese (I'm not big on the idea of getting a goose).

But it has turned off cold again, and will get colder -- we are amazingly expected to get several inches of snow tomorrow. Right when our fruit trees are beginning to bloom due to all the wonderful warm weather we've had the past couple of weeks.

Spring is flying by. . .

... quite literally today! (with wind gusts in the 50+ mph range!).

Hard for me to believe it has been a week since I last posted here -- and even more discouraging to realize I haven't accomplished much in that time span!

This past weekend was too busy for me to get much done on the farm. Activities at church and other organizations I belong to took all of my time - - as well as my other kids coming home for spring break (which was very nice!).

However, during the last week we finally got the rototiller going again, with the help of my 93 year old uncle who is much better at carburetor work than I am. So we got some of the main garden tilled; but I still need to do the potato plot and get my potatoes in the ground!

Poultry auction will be this week - day after my birthday ;) Hopefully will have decent weather to enjoy that.

Severe storms expected tonight. We are praying for the rain, without any of the accompanying bad stuff.

Ups and Downs

It was beautiful weather this weekend, and although on the one hand we got much accomplished, on the other hand, we had to deal with bad things, as well.

Because it is so rare that there is actually a windless day in Kansas, we use every chance like that to do any necessary burning. (There had been a burn ban on most of the winter because we had such a horribly dry winter and first part of 2009.) So this weekend we burned off the thatch grass (dead, heavy, clumpy stuff) in the western goat corral, so that next rain it can begin to green up nicely and become viable pasture for the goats.

Then we went to the north edge of the property to where Steven is restoring the orchard, and were going to burn it off in sections. This area has much taller, denser dried grass -- we burned it last year. We are burning this area because it has a major issue with dense poison ivy, and we're trying to get a handle on that organically.

In hindsight, of course, there are many things I would have done different to prepare for this task.

Anyway, we just started just a small section burn, but it burned very hot and fast and I wasn't able to keep it behind the fire line on the north side. While there is nothing that direction (like structures) for it to do any damage to, it did get away with burning one of Steven's hand-raised-from-seed apricot trees before we got it back under control. He was not happy. But we hope perhaps it will come back from root -- we watered it well, and re-mulched it with wet straw after the fire.

The rest of the orchard is in other sections of our burn area, and we decided to not continue that project that day :(

However, back when we were burning off the goat corral - we decided during that time to put the goats into the front chain-link yard, where the dogs usually are. The reasons were two-fold; first, allow the goats to graze off some of the good green grass in the yard; and two, have them secured well away from the fire area. But we can't put the goats in there while the dogs are in there, so we put the dogs into a small area off the goat pen that we use just as a holding corral (like when the one doe had her baby and we wanted to separate her). It is just woven wire, but would hold both the dogs safely.

What we didn't think about (until too late) is that the ducks sometimes go through that little holding pen (because they can go through woven wire) to get to water. We went all day with this arrangement and never thought about it. The dogs are not used to the chickens or ducks being within their own fence (since they are usually in chain link). And we never imagined the ducks would wander in there without realizing there were dogs inside.

By the time we realized our mistake this weekend, we had a dead duck. And no, it couldn't be just ANY duck. We have seven ducks -- six are hens -- four of which are crossbreeds that we have for no particular purpose, and three are Steven's purebred Cayuga's for his breeding stock. Those three are two hens and one drake (male), that he had high hopes of raising chicks from this spring. So no, the dog couldn't have picked one of the crossbreds, or even one of the Cayuga hens of which we had two -- the dog had to go and kill our one and only drake. Steven was not happy. :(

As Steven carried him off to bury — without trying to sound callus, I pointed out that since he was already dead before we could intervene, his life shouldn't be in vain - we should eat him. So then we took time out to butcher our fine duck; and put his breast and leg meat into a crock pot. He has made a fine duck soup - very tasty.

But now we need to obtain a new Cayuga drake.

I think, as a tribute, I will end by posting my recent video I took of the ducks playing in the stock tank. (I think in this video the drake is the one up on the side of the tank, preening, and watching over his hens) :)