waggle dance

The Bees have made a full recovery and are doing better than ever.

I tried to take a video of the bees doing the waggle dance, my camera doesn't take very good video but here it is. 

I've finally finished the garden!! I fixed the tractor and this weekend spread the compost.  Yesterday I spent four hours planting veggies.  I took a "natural" approach to the bed layout and did a lot of casting seeds about.  

finally done with excavating 

One part mud pit + one part compost = garden

Jared is happy that we are done spreading compost

Tilling soil amendments 

I've also finished the pig pen last week.

They've got about 1500sq ft of woodland to roam around in, complete with solar powered electric fence and metal roofed hovel.  unfortunately the people I was going to get the pigs from have kind of run out, so I'm scrambling to find a new supplier.

Bee-isaster - n. a disaster relating to bees

My bees are dying!.  I went to check on them on thurs. afternoon and where usually I can't see any of the comb this is what I saw.

actually it's a really good picture of what they've been doing the past three weeks what with all the bees out of the way.  The next morning I hurried out and gave them a little sugar snack, my current theroy is that with all the rain and cloud weather we've been having the past week+  they didn't have energy to keep everybody warm,  for the good of the hive the fat was cut.  luckily on friday and today it was nice and sunny and they were flying about like mad, and ignoring the sugar water I put out for them, so I think that the hive is going to make it, but there is a depressing number of dead bees on the floor of the hive right now.

The garden has been coming along, and like everything else taking much longer than I had hoped.  The lateest set back came on wed. afternoon when the dipperstick hydroluic ram quit.  And I only had one more day of digging to go!  now I have to wait for a week or more for a new one to get here.  but here are some pic of the progress so far.

In the mean-time I'll be working on setting up the piggy pen I've already got the bottom strand of electric fence, and the shelter for the pigs done. 

What $72 can get you these days - 3#s of Bees

I got Bees!!!  This morning I got a call around 9 that my bees were ready to be picked up.  Unfortunately I hadn't quite got around to a few all important finishing touches on the hive, like oh say actually setting it up outside or a roof.  So I scrambled around for a couple hours to finish everything up.

improvised cedar shingle roof

All the Parts ready to go

Ready for bees

I went to the apiary ready to drive home in a cloud of bees, but they have the bees in these really nice little boxes, and there's not a spare bee to be found.

The installation was nerve wreaking, you have to open the lid of the bee box and hold on the string that's attached to the queen cage.  needless to say with all the bees flying around and the gloves on I dropped the cage into the bee box (which has a small opening).  eventually I got the cage out and then had to "pour" about three pounds of bees out of the box into the hive.  The bees were very patient with me through all of this. 

Within five min. or so they had settled in to their new home.  I left the queen in the cage for a couple of hours so they wouldn't move out.  

it took a little while for the bees to learn where the entrance is

First floor view

the swarm

I had to force myself not to spend the rest of the day watching them.  I've named the queen Ba‘alat Gebal after the Phoenician Goddess of the city of Byblos.

 

Conected

I guess it has been a while since I've been near the internet.  The big news around here is that I've gotten rid of my cell phone in favor of a landline, which means DSL and Internet access.  So I should be able to update a little more often now.  

Spring is solidly here.  I boiled down the sap from my maple trees today.  Unfortunately I tapped the trees late and weather warmed up quickly.  None of those below 32F nights that really make the sap flow, so I only ended up with about 7 gallons of sap.  Which turned into about 3 cups of maple syrup, not a whole lot but it is very tasty.  

 My bee hives are  ready for bees, which should be here in the next couple of weeks.  I was going to post detailed how-to make these beehives but someone already did a much better job than I ever could - http://thebeespace.net/2008/07/30/introduction-warre-beehive-construction-guide/

The whole beekeeping thing was a really nice organic process.  Last fall I had no plans to keep bees this summer, then the Cap'n mentioned that he had some old langstroth hives in his barn that I could have if I wanted.  I took him up on the offer, cleaned out the hives and was just about to hit the send button on a overpriced order of foundation and other replacement parts, when I thought to myself - there has to be an easier way to keep bees.  Not more than 5 min later I found Abbe Warre and The Peoples Hive.  The short version of his story is that he decided to find the best hive for the masses.  So he built a lot of very different hives to test different designs, took the best aspects of each and came up with the People's Hive. I'll add some very informative links about his method of beekeeping and his book to the sidebar.  The main Idea though is to let the Bees be, they know what they are doing, and they don't need your help.  This is what my hives ended up looking like, 

For the past couple of weeks I've mostly been clearing trees and making a lot of really big mud pits with the tractor.  The ground is still really soft from all the rain but if it stays dry this weekend then I should be able to really start in with the backhoe. 

 

Snow.

I'm back from my first trip up to hope and thought I'd put up a couple of pictures of the absolutely gigantic snowbanks.  I'd gone up kind of hoping to do some clearing and other outside work, but ended up pretty much shoveling for two weeks.  I guess clearing a woodlot in February is a little bit ambitious.

The snowbank that welcomed me home, measuring in at about 6 1/2 feet.

It did give me a chance to play with the tractor though, after I spent a day digging it out.

The road into Camden the day after

I've been taking to the phone company and it looks like I'll be getting a landline by the end of march.  And saying goodbye to the ole cell phone!  I think a big part of me was worried (probably irrationally so) about having a cell phone and keeping bees.  luckily I never had any reception near my house anyway so I don't think that the cell towers in the area will hurt them.

I've got a date for the bees arrival: April 16th.  I've still got to finish up building my hives, which are actually coming together fairly easily and should be done this week.  

Robert Hart's grave

Robert Hart's grave, Rushbury Church Stretton, Shropshire, UK. 

Robert was one of the founding people of the modern idea of forest gardening.  Basically, without knowing  a whole lot about plants or gardening he got a smallholding and lived off of an 1/8th of an acre for about fourty years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hart_(horticulturist)"

http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/forestgarden/

http://www.pfaf.org/leaflets/gdlovene.php

ready... set... go

after I bought a new-used tractor this past fall I think that I am obligated to give my farm a name and call it started.  here's what I've got at this point in time towards being self-sufficient;a strawbale house, a piece of land that's mine in all but deed, a new/used tractor, my first seed order is slowly arriving, and I'v absolutely no experience growing things.

I'm choosing to view the fact that I only know about farming and other homesteady activities as an advantage, I figure that it just means that I will have less of a bias towards doing things one way or another.  If I'm not caught up in my own traditions than hopefully I'll be able evolve my own farming practices more effectively.  although I might just be telling that to myself in order to feel less nervous about the vast amount of work that this whole thing is going to end up being.  

My current list for stuff to do through to this fall:

tapping maple trees

get a land line to the house - for internet and so I can get rid of my personal radiation device

Raising three pigs

slaughtering and butchering said pigs

keeping bees - hopefully with out getting covered in bees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs-tl6GBOBo&feature=related

making three hoop houses - one for a workshop, one for the tractor, and one for a winter garden

clearing trees for the garden

planting walnut trees 

starting a winter garden and sowing cover crops on the rest of the garden area

finish the outside trim work on the house

cut and split wood for next winter

that's all I can think of at the moment though I'm sure there is more.  so that it then the official start of my farm as far as internet is concerned, here's to gettin in over you head... and staying there.