Homesteading Craziness...

The past two days at our house have been pretty crazy. I should mention that before the strange-ness, there was an earthquake nearby... It happened two days ago, June 23 at about 1:45 in the afternoon. The epicenter was over 300 miles away in Canada, but some people in our community claim to have felt the shaking. I was in the garden weeding when it happened and I didn't feel a thing... Anyway, since then 3 mysterious things have happened.

1. Our bedroom door opened and closed by itself in the night. No windows open, so wind was not a factor and no other variables were different from any other night.

2. Yesterday, we had 1/2 of one of our bee colonies swarm. It was an absolutely amazing sight (and sound). I was working in our kitchen at the table when I heard a loud buzzing. I looked out to the yard and saw an enormous cloud of bees (maybe 25-30 feet across). I called to A and together we went outside with the camera (pics to follow) and watched the cloud shrink and condense until all of the bees landed in a clump way up high in our apple tree. I could NOT believe this was happening! The monthly beekeepers meeting had been just the night before and the topic was SWARMING(!!) and I chose not to go because I was running late.

The first person I thought of to call was the president of the local beekeepers association and she was at our house within 1/2 an hour. She and I did a full inspection of both of our hives to determine if, in fact, they were our bees. It looked as though they came from our Langstroth hive that contains Russian/Carniolian bees and that the bees left in the hive either had a new queen or one would be emerging imminently. She gave me several options about what to do with the swarm - it was pretty much out of the question to catch them ourselves by cutting them down because they were so high up and on the end of a branch. So, I could call one of two local guys to catch it for me and either let them keep it or pay them to catch it for me or I could try to catch them in an empty hive body with pheremones that would attract them down from their branch and start a new colony, or after removing the queen excluder during our inspection, they might come back into the hive on their own. Apparently, adding a queen excluder can make some colonies feel cramped, so they will swarm, but if you remove it and give them "more room" they may come back on their own and know it's ok to do so either by the bees at the hive fanning, or sending scout bees back. There were several offers to borrow equipment to catch them in, but I had to go buy the pheremone from the nearest beekeeping supply which is in Granville, NY, about 1/2 an hour drive.

So, I drove there and back as quickly as I could, all the while wondering how I would assemble my new equipment quickly and type the pheremone label info into an online translation site since it was all in French. I know a teensy bit of French, but not enough to know what to do with this tube of paste! So, I pulled into our drive way at 3:45, about 4 hours after the swarm landed in the tree and I could see that they were gone. My heart sank... I ran to the tree to see if they were still in there somewhere, but A came out and told me they were gone. Gone.

He had been on a phone call and was looking out the window when they left. He said he couldn't tell where they went, so we went around our property hoping they just moved a short distance into another tree. No such luck.
There was quite a bit of activity around the hive, so we're hoping they just went back home. Otherwise, some lucky beekeeper in our area may have an opportunity to capture a healthy swarm of bees!

3. Two of our hens (Little Pickle and Clemmie) are broody, so we got some fertilized eggs from a farmer friend and they have been sitting on them. The eggs were due to hatch this coming Monday, June 28. I had marked the fertile eggs with pencil so that I could collect our eatin' eggs, so everyday had to physically go into the coop, pick up the chickens and sort out which eggs are which. Well yesterday, the 2 that were under Little Pickle were gone! The only trace were a very few bits of dried shell near her. Well, I didn't think that L.P. ate them, but they have pecked their own eggs open on a few occassions, so I wasn't too worried, more puzzled.

This morning Little Pickle was missing, as well as the remaining 3 eggs that Clemmie was in charge of. Just gone. There were a few black feathers by their pen's fence and a lot of buff feathers. No blood, no guts, no trace of the eggs or their contents. I closed the gate myself last night, so I know it was closed. S is so very sad that her little chicken is gone. She knows there's not much hope that L.P. will come back, but I still have my fingers crossed. Maybe she wasn't in the coop last night (I did forget to check that) and wandered off. I can only hope that she's having a chicken adventure. S has already asked if we can get a replacement, she asked for the same breed and color and wants to name her Little Pickle so L.P. can live on. Poor kid.

I will post pics of the bees and some other fun stuff soon. Cross your fingers for the rest of our flock of hens.

Love, A, R & S

Boy George, The 7th Rooster...

Forgot to mention that the 7th Roo that was spared in hopes that it was a girl...

Yeah, it was a boy, and it was really stupid and sort of mean. Sometimes it ran away from us, sometimes (I think if it didn't see us coming) it would charge at us and he was getting pretty big. I feared for S's eyes...

I was able to get our nice chicken farmer friend to take and "process" him for us. She even gave us a dog cage to bring him to the farm in. So we put him in the cage, piled him in the car and dropped him off. They fed him to their dogs...

Goodbye, Georgie boy!

We're back!

It's SPRING!!! Hooray!

We have had a long, snowy winter, and it seems like the memory of cold weather is already fading away. We have had some beautiful, sunny weather and are preparing for another round of bees, garden, cows, OH MY!

Our chicken girls did well this winter, cooped up. They have been churning out eggs so fast we don't know what to do with them. 7 a day really add up fast. We have started selling them to a couple of friends and also give them to some others. It's nice that the girls can get outside now and forage around the yard, you can just tell how happy they are! They were going through the feed so fast, but that should slow down now that they can munch on bugs.

We will be trying bees again this spring, and I have secured a beekeeping mentor for myself, which I'm really excited about. We're going to do an experiment - we'll put a package of bees into the top-bar hive, and a nuc into a Langstroth hive and compare. Should be pretty interesting. Maybe it will make it easier to know if the package/top-bar bees are on track since I can keep track of the nuc/Langstroth bees easier because there is more literature and information about that set up.

The garden is going - we have teeny tiny onion and tomatillo sprouts in the windowsill. Not so sure about the peppers I tried starting, if they will come up at all! We might have to buy some *GASP* starts at the nursery in May. I just bought a big bag of onion sets and will put them in tomorrow (we're expecting a thunderstorm today!) and see how they do. I haven't tried onions from sets before, so that will be good to see how they do compared to starting from seed. I think I'll put some carrot, radish, beet and pea seeds in too. It's early, but what the hell, it's worth a try.

Our friend and farmer that we get our raw milk from has not been milking for several months now (we've been buying milk from the grocery store) and will not be doing any major milking for awhile because she is going to have a baby in September. (Congrats Sara!!) So, we are planning to milk once or twice a week and be able to take as much milk as we need, which will be nice. I can't wait to get back into the routine of being with the cows!

Let us know what you're up to - are you ready for spring/summer?

Another month gone by...

We have many updates for you, and some fun pictures!

The beautiful magenta pickled beets and turnips were TERRIBLE! They were so salty, they were inedible. In other pickling news, I have put up Asian beans, Dilly beans, Dill pickles and Bread and Butter pickles. We've been busy in our kitchen!

The bees have failed, and I have failed the bees. I opened things up a few weeks ago and saw that there was no brood (babies), no honey, very little comb and very, very few bees. So, we think the queen did, in fact, escape when we installed the colony into their hive and the majority of the bees probably swarmed. Bummer... We plan to try again next spring, this time with one Langstroth hive and our cool top bar hive side by side, so we can compare and contrast.

We went to a potluck recently for a group in our area called Transition Town. The group is working toward a more self-sustaining society. At the potluck we met many great people, including a local small-scale farmer. We got to talking about chickens and she invited us to observe/help her process her chickens the next day. I went and learned all about killing, plucking and eviscerating chickens and it was easier than I thought it would be. All those dissections in biology class really paid off.



A and I processed 6 of 7 of our boys the very next weekend. (One looked different, feathers, comb and wattles, and acted different, so we decided to spare he or she just to see how things turn out.) Ours were pretty skinny it turns out, but they were cock-a-doodle-dooing, so we needed to do the deed. It went pretty well, and we even had a little fun. Some friends stopped by to check on us and their dog helped with the clean-up...


We made a stock with all of the necks and then made risotto with the stock - YUMMY! It was awesome. Our six little guys are in the freezer, we're not quite ready to eat them just yet.

The next day, we finally had the pleasure of naming our remaining girls and suspect-girls. We now have a flock of 8 and their names are: Little Pickle (he/she's had a name all along, it's S's little black cochin bantam pet), Cantelope and Watermelon (Barred Rocks) Buffy and Clementine, or Clemmy for short (Buff Orpingtons) Sheila (our hot Australian chick, Australorp), Sunny (Wyandotte) and Boy George (the possible girl in the flock of boys, Light Brahma).

Earlier this week we found a clutch of 3 tiny little eggs in the corner of the coop, and they could be from none other than our Little Pickle! All this time I was sure LP was a boy, so it's been quite a tough adjustment to start calling him a her. I showed her the nesting box and she took to it right away! The eggs are beautiful and delicious. Hopefully the others will follow suit soon, as they're only a week younger than LP.

In garden news, we have a MILLION GREEN tomatoes. They are just not ripening, I hear because we have had a lot of rain and not enough sun. On the advice of a friend, I picked one of the big green ones and wrapped it in newspaper to ripen it. We'll see how that goes!

Ah, big sigh of relief to get another post out... hopefully the next is not another month away...

Love,

A, R & S

It's been too long...

Hi all,

I'm sorry we've been away from the bloggy world lately. It's just been so busy around our little farm.

Here's a quick update -

The chickens are getting HUGE! They are starting to actually go "cluck" which is pretty funny. No "cock-a-doodle-doo" yet, but it' s just a matter of time. We're hoping to whack the boys soon, but we need them to be a little bigger.

We have been getting a lovely bounty of things from the garden. We picked 10 turnips last week and so we made tacos with sauteed turnip greens, beans and grass-fed ground beef from our favorite real farm down the road and they were amazing!! We also made a shepherd's pie with mashed turnips on top instead of potatoes and beet and turnip pickles, which are pickling in the sunny window in the kitchen. They are the most gorgeous shade of magenta! They are supposed to sit in the sun for 2-3 weeks, and then we can taste them. Can't wait! Today I picked about a pound of yellow wax beans, another of snow peas and mowed down a pretty head of Rouge d'hiver lettuce.

The bees have been left to their own devices since the last posting (no, not only because they stung me!!). I still peek in the window and they're doing their thing, so I'll just let them do it.

A has been plugging along on his Rocket stove, which we will use to scald the chickens to de-feather them, and to maybe do some canning in the great outdoors and boil down maple sap this coming winter/spring. We picked up bricks this weekend and he poured the concrete slab for the base and that's curing now.

Yesterday I picked tons of yummy blackberries at our friends Z & J's house. I plan to go back in another day or two to pick more. They are so sweet and delicious and there are tons still ripening!

We'll try to be better about keeping you posted. Leave comments, it will be so much more fun!!

Love to all,

A, R & S on our little OAID

Cross comb

Yesterday I opened the hive for the first time since the bees have actually drawn out any comb. The comb is so beautiful! Unexpectedly, though, it's wavy and crossing over onto more than one bar. I ended up breaking a piece off (sorry girls) which I left inside the hive so they could maybe recycle it and take the brood out, or let them hatch, or whatever they will do with broken comb. I want to let them do their natural bee thing, but I also want to be able to open the hive to inspect things and eventually harvest some honey, so I found this posting (http://www.biobees.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2763) who's advice I think I will follow. Basically, I will move all the crossed comb all together further back into the hive and give the bees empty bars toward the front to try to start straight and I will check more often to try to help them along.

It's a beautiful sunny day today with at least 4 rainy days to follow, so I will give this a try today while I can get in there. I'll keep you posted on the project.

Tires + Potatoes = Something

It's a pretty simple story actually: R drove around town for awhile and eventually found 4 tires on the side of the road. She then went to the local natural market and bought a bunch of potatoes that were untreated so they'd sprout if given enough time. We left them on the counter for awhile, they sprouted and then we planted a bunch in the bottom tire. As they started to sprout through the tire we then added the next tire with more sprouting potatoes and so on. The theory is that we'll have potatoes growing all through the stacked tires and when we're ready to harvest we'll just kick over the tires and enjoy our bounty. Judging by the info we've read on other blogs this sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. We'll see. (Regardless the tires are a beautiful addition to our yard!)

Udderly awesome

I have recently gotten myself a second job as a part-time cow milker at the farm where we buy our raw milk and grass-fed beef. I went over to the farm for the evening milking today for my 3rd installment of training and I brought the cows in from the field all by myself and I got to actually do the milking!! My farmer friend says I did a great job and she was impressed with my handling of the equipment and cows! It was so cool. One of the girls just had a new calf on Monday and I might get to help name him. I will try to post some pics of my cow friends soon :-)

Amateur mistake

So it seems that I made an amateur farmer's mistake - After running our dying chicken problem by a real farmer friend, she suggested that since Chicken Vindaloo perked up after being given yogurt, maybe they've got a mineral deficiency... so then I started looking into the mineral content of the organic feed we give them, and it hit me!!! I didn't switch them from the chick mash to the poultry grower pellets at 5-6 weeks like the packages told me. I was trying to have them finish up the chick mash, but they weren't getting what they needed from that anymore. So not only have they been getting yogurt as a treat, but we switched them to the feed that is appropriate for their age, and everyone seems ok now. (Knock on wood)

In other news, today I found that we have tiny ants in our beehive. Various sources on the web acknowledge that ants can be a problem, but there aren't many solutions offered. Some say that they don't really pose an issue, but I don't want them in there, so I'll keep trying to figure out a way to evict them without hurting our girls... I might try sprinkling cinnamon inside the top cover, but that requires a bit more research before implementation.

Also, I just checked on our red wiggler worms and it looks like they're doing well. There are various sizes of worms and what look to be little tiny babies, so that's great!

More later on the ants vs. bees...

Chicken Vindaloo

This morning, I found that one of the chicks looked like he was about to check out, so I separated him from the flock, fed him some corn mixed in with our homemade yogurt and gave him water with organic apple cider vinegar and he really perked up. I marked him by putting a blue dot on his head and let him back with the others, so at least if he goes, we'll know it's the same one. Since he has been adorned with a lovely blue bindi, he's been dubbed "Chicken Vindaloo".

An interesting day on the acre

We had a crazy morning today. First, A found another dead chicken in the coop. Again, not really sure what happened. The only hint is that one of the boys (light brahmas) was acting really spacey yesterday. He didn't come running to me when I called like all of the others, but just stood there kind of staring off into outer space for like a minute. I'm not certain that this is the same chicken that died, but it was the same type, so maybe...

And, unfortunately, we had our first bee sting today. I have not been stung at all (I'm knocking on wood as I type this) and we had about 25 guests over the day after installing the hive and the bees didn't bother anyone. This morning, our neighbor walked over to meet the chickens and the bees and check out our garden and as soon as we stopped about 10 feet in front of the hive, a bee buzzed right over and stung him on the neck. No sooner had he been stung, another one came over and tried to attack his nose. He crushed the one on his nose, and we got the stinger out of his neck, and he was fine. I don't know why they acted this way today! Very strange... Needless to say, he will be our first recipient of whatever honey we harvest this summer!

Is there a full moon today? Almost, I just checked and it's on Sunday, so I hope things don't get weirder for the next couple of days.

In good news, we're just about to the edge of the tilled garden. Hooray! Almost done planting!

Raised Bed Garden

Over the next few days I'm going to post about how we are experimenting with various ways to garden. We figure since we are novices at gardening, and voracious readers of books, blogs and other written media, that the best way to determine what works is to try it all.

We were at the local lumberyard a few months ago and found some wood in their "free" pile, picking it up for a project that was yet to reveal itself. When we decided to get our experimental gardening underway we remembered this wood in our barn and it fill the bill perfectly. After a few cuts with the table saw we were ready to go.



First we put down cardboard, mostly leftover from the slate tile boxes from our ongoing downstairs bathroom remodel.



Second, we laid down wet newspaper to cover the cardboard.



Next we covered the newspaper with old leaves.



And finally, we filled the box with composted soil that we've been cultivating for about a year.



We'll see how this experiment goes; we've since planted various vegetables in the garden and so far they are doing fine. More pics and an update soon.

Real "Chicken For Dinner"

So yesterday, I went into the coop to feed the chickens and let them outside and our 2 New Hampshire Red girls were lying dead on the floor. We let S look at them before we buried them in the back yard. She was sad for a minute and then said that we should let Hobbes, our favorite chocolate lab play his favorite game "Chicken For Dinner" (which he usually plays with a rubber chicken). She is a funny kid!

We let all the (remaining) chickens out into the yard while we planted some veggies and they followed us around begging for treats.

They all seem ok today, so we're hoping there was just some fluke with the New Hampshire Reds.

The Bee Adventure

Renee survived getting the bees in the hive. The whole ordeal was caught in pictures.

The Sounds That Chicks Make

Make sure your sound is on and listen to the chicks peep and squeek away.

Upstairs Bathroom Remodel

It's been finished for awhile but we wanted to share the full upstairs bathroom remodel with everyone. We did 90% of the work ourselves, with the exception of some electrical work and some minor plumbing work required to move the sink across the room. We learned a lot, made some mistakes but overall we're really happy with the outcome.