honeybees

Winter duties completed as spring arrives

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Mr Rainman came out last weekend to help out and on Sunday I decided that the we should actually finish the last of the winter duties since spring is here. We tore the bird netting off of the raspberries and tame blackberries. The berries had thoroughly integrated themselves into the netting, it just had to be cut away and rolled off the top. The berries needed to be trimmed anyways. So we hacked out everything in between the rows then started to trim them back. Removing the dead out first always makes it easier. A few of the raspberries have migrated over into the blackberry row. We cut some out but others just got left.

The netting did its job and kept the birds out so we could actually collect a crop. It’s the raspberries that the robins love. As soon as they start to turn colors the birds eat them without the netting we get none. It was not fun to remove but the year before we did not get any berries so it is worth the hassle. I learned to cut the raspberries short and tie them to a central wire. It helps control them and makes it easier to pick. After talking to Mr Rainman everyone treats their raspberries differently. I had no idea, I learned from my father so that is what I do. I do use sisal or cotton cord so it can just rot on the ground afterwards. It makes cleaning up easier.

Annmarie went out and checked on the bees again. They survived the winter! We have one hive only right now. We are buying another nuc the first of May. We had some moisture get into the hive over the winter and this is a bad thing. I am going to install a gutter on the back of the bee enclosure to keep the wind from blowing water from roof into it. I am also going to cover the back. We have been talking about a tarp but I am afraid the wind may tear it up. I am still thinking about what to use. I have some old tin that with four support boards I could just install along the back wall. I am also trying to be a cheapskate and use stuff we already have on the farm. I am hopeful we will get some honey this year. She did not get stung and the bees got sprinkled with freshly made powdered sugar and another chemical treatment for mites. The sugar helps the bees shed the mites which fall through the mesh bottom then the chemical knocks down the rest. It is an eternal battle.

Our bulbs are starting to come out of the ground and are now blooming. If we don’t get rain soon I am going to have to hand water the flowers to make sure they get enough water. Also we now have six of the big bushy roses planted alongside the side fence. In three years they should totally obscure the fence.

I want blueberries next and someone in Pendleton is offering 10+year old plants for $120/each. The price of a pack of blueberries in the grocery store is $8/ea. It will not take long to save money on owning our own plants. I have four 3 foot metal troughs set up in the orchard on the other side of the berries. I drilled holes in the bottom so they can drain and have filled the bottom with four inches of gravel. I am hopeful that I can get the plants next week and get them into the troughs. We really like container gardening. Not having to get on your knees and bending over all the time is wonderful and as we age it is even more wonderful!

The strawberries are trying to take over their container. I just started grabbing dead leaves and pulling. I figured as prolific as they grew last year they would have no trouble filling in again this year. The bamboo poles are where our asparagus plants are located in the bed. I bought a few more metal troughs at an auction last year and am going to create an asparagus only bin. We read that you could overgrow the asparagus with strawberries but the type we were given (free) are super aggressive and just grew like weeds. It was hard to find the asparagus. This should be our first year that we can harvest asparagus if it grows. Hence the reason for asparagus only bin, it will be obvious and we can fill it up with plants to get a nice crop from. I have a 12 foot circular bin! I cut the bottom of the bin off, it was rusted through, so the plants can go down further into the soil if they want. They have to be planted 18” deep to begin with so I figured growing down another 18” would be easy for them.

The horseradish that was given to me last year survived the winter. I planted it in the ground, away from the sheep and it is just now starting to peek out of the ground. I will dig some up in the fall and see how it tastes. I am told that fresh horseradish is amazing.

Winter is here sorta

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Every year I transplant a bunch of houseplants as gifts for the staff at work. I have taken over the breeze porch as my indoor garden area. I share the space with the dog kennels which actually works well for me as I have covered the roofs of all of the kennels with plywood to make more space to put out plants! I have been cloning my basic plants for a few years so I have decided to branch out and start to grow a more diverse selection. To that end I have started to buy seeds online and have been trying to get them started. I am using a heat mat and now I have a grow light and I am still having trouble. I bought some mini greenhouse and that has netted me two plants. So far I have managed to grow four plants from seed. The tallest plants are three inches and fairly spindly. The smallest one is the size of a pea. This is a problem for me as I have taken it on as a challenge. I am up there every couple of days now nurturing them. I usually just water 1-2 times a week under normal circumstances. The wife got me a new DeWalt shelf system for Christmas, the kind of present where I ordered it and it arrives after Christmas. So I will now have two four foot wide by four feet tall three high shelf system on each side of the door. This is good as my other shelf has 50% of it covered in planting paraphernalia. I may need a four foot wide grow light for the new one but I am going to hold off and see what I can do with my little grow light.

I have almost 15 plants started for the next year. I am trying some plants that require a frequent amount of water to grow. I am putting water absorbing crystals into the soil in an attempt to get the plant to have a continuous source of water and not my normal up and down watering quantity. I also got a better quality soil and have been mixing my own batches for the type of plant I am growing. My goal is to have 35 plants ready to go in a year. I have freed a variety of Jade plant that I have had for years and just recently discovered that it was a Jade plant. So now I will be trying to get it to grow another foot tall in the next couple of years. I don’t actually know what I am doing, I just keep trying different things until something works.

Our daughter and paramour got us the perfect farm gift for Christmas, they got us a cast iron boot scraper! I put it out in the yard near the back gate so we can scrape our boots off before we go into the gravel area of the back garden. So far we have not had a chance to use it as it is now freezing most of the time but its potential usefulness cannot be diminished by its lack of participation. We have great hopes for the future.

The cows are now needing fed about every ten days. The second feeder we brought home from the neighbors is a little small for a full big bale to drop in. Mr Rainman broke open a big bale last time and forked it into the feeder with the tractor. I decided to one up man ship him and opted to try and get the bale into the feeder from the top. The problem is the bale is at the top weight capacity of the Kubota tractor. I got the bale directly next to the feeder head on and then dropped the three point box of horseshoes onto the ground then I started to make the front end lift of the tractor to bounce. Every time the weight bounced upwards I got the bale a few inches higher. I kept doing this until I was level with the top of the feeder and was able to dump it inside the old feeder. I had three of the tractor tires on the ground by the time I dumped the bale. If the bale had weighed another 20# I don’t believe I could have done it for fear of tipping the tractor forward. I made sure to take a picture so that prowess with the little Kubota could be immortalized.

Annmarie had me go out and swap out bee food. We are feeding concentrated sugar syrup to supplement the honey. We would like to harvest a bunch of honey in the spring. It was warm enough for the bees to move around and even fly out of the hive box. They are still pretty dang calm when it is this cold outside.

The table saw is now covered on the old house back porch and is ready to ride out the winter weather. I have covered the grain cracker on the end of the porch with the same tarp. I still need to crack more grain. I have been saying this for the last six weeks but Monday night I used up the very last bit of cracked grain and will need to fill the feeders in a couple of days, my procrastination days are about to end.

I have been looking at various spray on insulation foams for the inside of the old house. I am only going to spray it on two walls in the old house for my craft room. What I really need to do is find an old external door with intact seals and a frame to install inside and on the back door. I don’t want to spend a fortune on doors and I need two to finish this space. But I am not installing door or windows until I lift the room up a couple more inches on the outer wall.

Predators 13/ Farm 8

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I did get the hand towel and wash cloth hooks hung in the bathroom. I had plans to go pickup sheetrock on Saturday but it was raining. I did try to get oak boards on Friday but they did not have any and the store I would have normally gone to was closed on Friday for the holiday.

Honestly, this is a stupid problem to have. After breakfast, I was relaxing in the living room, our daughter was feeding the baby and next thing I know the Gingerman is scrambling for the door. He grabs the 30-30 on the way out the front door and runs to the end of the front porch and shoots once out into the ram pasture next to the house. I am looking out the window but I cannot see a coyote. He leaps over the railing and then scrambles around in the snow. He gets one more shot off in the yard then almost falls trying to get through the gate into the ram pasture. I see him line up for a third shot and pull the trigger, click no boom! There were only two cartridges loaded in the rifle. I had not checked it recently. He had ran out into the snow in only his socks in an attempt to kill the coyote. He did not kill it and it had another chicken in its mouth! I am going to count chickens again tomorrow after work but at this rate I was already going to give the neighbor four chickens, I may have to to give him 12 and some chicken food just so we get some eggs through the winter. At this rate I won’t last two more weeks before they have killed every chicken. This is a stupid problem.

Sunday the Gingerman helped me pull down all of the Christmas decorations. We pulled it all down so the wife can sort and organize her village setup. Half of the boxes are for the village setup. But while we were in the attic the Gingerman points out that the side window would make a great sniper location for offing the coyotes. So we have removed the screen from the window and laid out a rifle. So now instead of bursting outside and the coyote seeing you coming we can just run to the attic, pop open the window and bingo, next chicken killer is out of commission. The real problem is that the Gingerman took a walk up to the CRP while the fresh snow was still present. The entire fence line looked like a coyote highway. He thinks there are multiple coyotes living up in the CRP. So it is not going to be a one and done kind of endeavor.

I had purchased some cedar oil a few months ago and had plans for rubbing it on our walk in closet walls and ceiling. That plan did not materialize and the full container has been sitting on a shelf in said closet for a few months. Annmarie went to grab a skirt and noticed some moth damage! Needless to say, I spent most of Sunday cleaning the closet, polishing the shelves and putting oil on the walls and ceiling. We also threw out the trash, junk and clothes that do not fit. By the time we were done there was quite a bit of closet rod visible. The instructions said to use the stuff sparingly and it is not a very big container. I probably only used about 20% of the small can, a little truly does go a long ways. We are keeping the door shut for a while so the smell does not overwhelm the bedroom. It smells like it did when I installed the cedar 20 years ago.

Annmarie made some bee food and I took it out today. I listened at the box and could not hear any bees, I also could not see any bees. I popped the feeder lid off, we have an extra box on top that houses two 1/2 gallon feeders that they can come up into from inside the hive. I had to pop the lid off and there were no bees. In their defense there was no food either, they had emptied both feeders. I did knock on the box once also. By the time I got done changing out both feeders I could see the bees around the outside entrance. They were kinda milling around without any real purpose. I even saw one fly for a couple of feet before going back to the hive.

I waited until Monday to finish the post. Annmarie had a great idea today, she said we should move the two angry brown alpacas to the field with the chickens! The alpaca do not like dogs and will cause a ruckus and try and chase them away. So now we have the two meanest alpaca we own in the same pasture as the chickens. I even put out a couple of bales in the middle of the ram pasture so the alpaca would spot any coyotes coming. I also counted hens once it got dark and there are still 17 hens and three roosters alive and well in the chicken coop. So I am still going to let the chickens free range for a while. I will need to lose a couple more before I lock them up. They will consume more food and they will need water that is not solid. This means more work for me and I am not willing to do more unless it is really necessary.

Barn clean out done!

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I managed to finish getting the barn dug out this week. I figure my total time on the barn was around 12 hours. This is a far cry from the 40 hours it used to take me. Using the manure forks on the John Deere and just figuring out how to make it into most crooks and crannies with the tractor has cut way down on the hand work. I probably only had to do about four hours of hand digging. The next big thing is to haul the old round bales from the lamb shed and put them into the overhead walkway so we can use them as bedding. They are three years old and have virtually no nutritional value but will make great bedding. I used to buy straw but using old round bales has zero cost associated with it. I used to spread it out when I put it out on the floor. Now I just spread the rolled bales evenly throughout the floor and the sheep break it apart and spread it out throughout the barn. If I have a gap or two a week later I just dump another bale in the shallow spot and the sheep do their magic again. I do need to reset the chute and bring in the four feeders from outside. This will need to happen next week as I am thinking about taking some sheep over to Hermiston next week.

Annmarie wants me to work on getting the old compost out of the barn lot so the horse will quit digging in it for a snack. About 1/3 of the way into digging out the barn I remembered this so I started to put the bedding into the momma/baby area. This has a very shallow soil depth and does not hold water very well. I am hoping to increase the soil depth so I can add some seed. I figure this area can take next year’s material also and I will hopefully have something to work with after that. As I was filling that area I noticed our chickens in the front ditch eating out of the water. They had waded into the shallow water and were eating bugs out of the water. I had no idea chickens would do that! I have only ever seen water birds do that. The chickens do have all you can eat grain available so it is not because they are starving. It was pretty weird.

We had several people send us pictures of Annmarie in the Mounted Band so I picked a couple I liked to add in here. Roundup is pretty much nonstop for us with me having to work in the ER and Annmarie working and doing Round-Up stuff also so not a lot gets done on the farm except feeding animals and collecting eggs.

Our honeybees are still alive from the nuc we purchased this spring. The flowers are fairly sparse this late in the season so we have had to start feeding the bees sugar water. So Annmarie took out one frame so a one gallon frame feeder could be dropped into the hive box. I scraped it and let it gravity drain into a bucket, we got almost a quart from the one frame. We are using it all for ourselves! We are hopeful that we can get one more hive next year and then we can start to actually harvest some honey. I set the frame and wax back outside so the honeybees can clean it up and get it ready to be used next year.

Experiment a success

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Today we went and picked up the sheep from Hermiston. They probably could have gone a couple more weeks but we can maybe start a little earlier next year. It was a success for the land owner and the field looks great. Their first cutting of hay next year will look very nice. We brought all of our light panels from the barn and were able to form a chute to the trailers. Initially, we had a Y setup but the stupid sheep did not want to go through the chute system so we had to push them and do one trailer at a time. We took down the temporary fence and rolled it all up, we will reuse it next year. The field was so wet that no one used the water trough, they just drank from the various low spots that had a few inches of water. We ended up just loading up all of the sheep into the two trailers then drove them to our house. We backed up to the corral and then unloaded each trailer into the corral area and then we sorted the sheep off into three batches. One group went back into the trailer-those were Wil’s, one group to the back pen-all boys, and last group was all females and the two rams. Since we have three pens that worked great and all of us managed a single gate to move them in or out of the chute as they were moved in. This worked great and took us about 45 minutes.

Once Mr Horse Tamer had his and left we sorted off all of the lambs and put them back in with their mothers. We also sorted off the two rams and moved them into Alcatraz. Then we sorted the boys and took 13 off that are already sold and turned them in with the mothers. They won’t get slaughtered until early January. That left us with 18 lambs that will go to the auction next week. This will be the first time we have ever taken any to the auction so we hope it treats us well, but you never know. We had to move the feeders back into the barn and filled them all with hay. We won’t have lambs until early April 2025.

Mr Rainman and I worked on getting the bee shelter completed this week. He got the posts set and frame built. I made a trip to Home Depot and got three sheets of roofing tin at $45/each. The prices for materials these days are amazingly bad. Now is not the time to build a new building. We were able to use up the last of the 1x8x8’ boards on the shelter. We had to go to a board and batten siding pattern as we did not have enough lumber to go over each side twice. It is very loud inside the enclosure when someone is working on the roof with an impact driver. If the bees complain of the noise we can line the roof with plywood to dampen the sound. I will wait for the complaint department to voice an issue before doing this. We did have to put up a panel to keep the alpaca and cows out of the shelter, they had already found it before we had the roof on it and were hanging around. I had opened up the orchard to allow them to come in and knock down the foot tall grass. Now that there are no leaves on the trees they will leave them alone.

We were also able to but the boards on the new rock crib on the corral. It used up the last two rough cut 2×8 inch tamarack boards I had left from building Alcatraz. We cobbled it together and Mr Rainman will fill it with rocks tomorrow and put a panel over the new gate so the sheep don’t crawl under or through it. We used the old gate today to keep them from going through the new gate, by propping it on the inside of the new gate.

We have finally started getting eggs again, we are getting about a 30% production rate which is normal for us in the winter. Wil is hatching 30 chicks for us so that should get us 15 more hens. By mid summer we should be back up to 30 hens.

After all of that today, I needed a nap and I got one!