honeybees

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!

It’s cold outside

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Winter is finally here. It is down in the low 20’s F at night and barely over freezing during the day. So it is not super pleasant to be outside. I have been so busy that I have not done much around the farm. Luckily, Mr Rainman is still cleaning up and working on small things. He was able to get the three posts installed on the corral. The two internal posts required that the old posts get reset and tightened up also. There is not a bit of wiggle in that side of the corral now! You used to be able to grab the rail and move the fence a few inches in each direction. The last thing for the corral is to finish building the rock crib. It just needs some wooden sides and wire mesh inside that to hold all the rocks inside. It will take 4-6 hours to fill the entire space with rocks but by the time it is completed there will be no moving that side of the corral and the new gate will be anchored securely.

The Gingerman spotted that our main gate into the barn lot broke at the base on the hinge side. When the gate was used it was starting to flex apart due to the break. In true farmer fashion, he plugged in the welder, dug around in the scrap pile and dirt to find some old small metal pieces then proceeded to just randomly weld them in place until the crack was repaired. He then tack welded the hinges as the bolts were not holding them rigid. He also raised the gate a few inches and dug out the hinge side so it no longer drags when you open and close it. The gate works better now than it has in 15 years!

Mr Rainman also got all of the holes dug around the bee platform. I had to make a run over to Home Depot last week so I was able to get all of the pressure treated lumber necessary for building an arch over the bee platform. I am going to use the same 1×8”x8’ pieces we used on the inside of the fencing shed to sheet the outside of the arch. I also have some leftover metal roofing from working on the barn that I will use for the roof. The wind just tore up the empty hives we had on the platform. If there had been bees in them I am not sure we could have salvaged them after the storm. The bees are hard enough to keep without us just letting the wind destroy them. We already have a new Nuc ordered for the spring and Annmarie is fairly confident she can split the hive fairly easily now. I would like to see us going into next winter with three hives.

We are still getting ready for the bathroom remodel. I have ordered the tile for the last two walls, which look like linen wallpaper. I am looking at the custom cabinet design for the right side of the vanity that I want, so I can start in on it soon. This has to be wife approved, it will be made out of oak plywood.

I did the cabinet mock up and the wife did not like the single door on the sink side of the cabinet. It will house all the electronics, my electric razor, hearing aids and any other items that need electrical outlets. This will clean off the countertop. So I had to move it to the front. Now I just need to go buy my three full sheets of 3/4” oak plywood. I will have to do the doors last but they can wait for now.

Staycation day 8 Final 10% completed

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My goal this time off was to actually check items off my list. I love the first 90% of a project but that last 10% is always painful! The last 10% of a project can take 25% of your time and by the time it gets to the true detail work I am tired of it and ready to move onto the next project. So what you are going to see are a lot of completions of little things that I have ignored for years!

Last winter I had the outside chicken door freeze open and/or shut. In a bad ice storm it is going to freeze. There is no way to really effectively block that without applying some type of heating system. I just want to stop the water from running down to it and then freezing in the night. To stop that I took an old metal wring from a whiskey barrel and cut and bent tabs then attached it over the door. I caulked it top and underneath to ensure that the water cannot run down the back of the door. This should work 98% of the time, we will see how it does this winter.

I spent a day cleaning the wife’s office. I had not been in there in a few months and I was applying for school last week and noticed that the office needed a good once over. I ended up vacuuming and dusting and removing all spiderwebs. I oiled down the window sills and cleaned the windows. After I did all of that I realized that I had never touched the Murphy bed we bought at auction. I have to repair it but I had not even cleaned and oiled it. So I spent a couple of hours and rubbed orange oil/beeswax combo into the wood. It looked amazing once I was done so I was determined to get it repaired. I ended up finding some furniture barrel nuts and a bronze sleeve bearing. The wood is torn up around the place they had the old screw attachment located. So I decided I could drill an oversized hole, insert and glue in place the bronze sleeve and then use locktite to keep the barrel nut at the right location. I ended up having to drill out the support straps a little to get the barrel bolt through it. I opted to let the super glue dry for a day or two before I did any assembly.

Yesterday, Mr Rainman came out and we really worked on knocking out a lot of little projects. I cut the last piece of oak kickerboard to go under the oven cabinet and we nailed/screwed all three pieces in place. This way the dog’s play toys cannot go to purgatory. I only had to fish out two toys before installing the boards. You can see from the pictures what a difference it made. The picture on the left is before I completed it and the one on the right is after they are all installed.

We have some of the very first cooking stones that Pampered Chef ever made and one of them is a large round pizza stone. It occasionally just rolls out of the open fronted storage area. Annmarie wanted me to install a wooden stop to prevent this potential tragedy. The stone has survived several rolls out onto the tile floor undamaged. I sanded down the front of the cabinet and glued then pin nailed and clamped the little 1/4” stops in place. I will rub a food grade finish on them tomorrow so they will be off the list. The slot on the left holds the stones but I wanted both sides to match and if someone accidentally puts the stone on the wrong side it still will not roll out. The stones are very well seasoned and cookies just slide off of them after all the years we have had them.

The back door trim got reinstalled for the third time. The mud room outside door keeps shifting with the weather. I think I have gotten it figured out this time. I ended up doing some latch work and should have it perfected. If I have to remove it a couple more times I will need to recut a new piece due to all of the nail holes.

We had to bring the table saw around to the front of the old house so that the window trim in the mud room could be finished. I needed to cut a custom width on the inside of the window. Luckily, we were able to find four pieces of scrap that were wide enough to work. I trimmed off the joint sides and kept the middle. I had to shim the window trim quite a bit to get it to fit correctly. The outside trim was just an intact 1×4 that we cut to size and sanded down. I will rub finish into all of this trim tomorrow when I get the trim in the kitchen. The pneumatic nailer and compressor had to be brought over. I am missing my 18g midsize nailer. We have looked everywhere for it but I do not really want to buy a DeWalt trim nailer to replace it, those things are expensive. So we made do with a larger finish nail.

The mud room does have an attic enclosure. I was up there when we first moved into the house as I had to run wire for house power through it. We sealed up the gaps and then installed the old trim back up. Due to adding a wall we ended up having to leave off the back board. I painted it all today after the caulk had time to dry. I am not sure we got the right white paint can correct. When it was wet the paint looked a little off. I won’t know until it dries and if it is really noticeable there is enough leftover paint to repaint the entire ceiling so it will all match.

Friday the last of the oversized roofing screws came in. So on Saturday I got back onto the machine shed roof to finish screwing in the roof ridge. It only took about five minutes to complete but before I could get down I wanted to remove the antenna pole that had been on top of the machine shed. Another thing I should have used the boom truck for along with the ridge line installation. So instead I just crawled up onto the hay room roof ridge and scooted over to the pole. I was able to unscrew five of the six anchors. I had used one off brand type with a weird star shaped pattern. I stayed on the roof and Mr Rainman went to get bits and then put it in a leather glove finger held in place with a rock jammed into the finger. He then tossed it up onto the roof at me. I could not move at all so the throw practically had to hit me for me to catch it. There was much cajoling and when that did not encourage him to throw harder some name calling may have been utilized. He could not find the correct head type so he had to throw me up two 1/2” open end wrenches so I could unbolt the pole from that half of the roof anchor. We ended up having to move the ladder, cut the grounding wire holding it up then move the ladder again and unhook one of the anchors. It came down finally. All the usable parts were removed and salvaged for later potential use and the rest tossed onto the metal scrap heap. That has been up on the machine shed roof since 2017!

After four attempts at welding and a couple of days to spray paint the house number was ready to be installed on our fence. I argued pretty vehemently against its current placement location. After I installed it I was unsure why I thought this location would not work. It turned out pretty nice, the paint covers some of my juvenile welding but it should hold together. I think the wire fed welder would work better for this kind of job than the stick. But I have not yet setup my wire feed side of the welder. I will need to do that next year.

Mr Rainman stayed very busy today. He mowed our entire lawn and tossed it all over the fence for the sheep and chickens. This should help remove some of the foxtails from our yard. The yard is pretty rough and not very easy to mow. He repaired the drip line in the lavender patch and put all the spare repair parts into Annmarie’s shed. Some weed whacking was done on the front hillside to knock down the rest of the thistles.

We don’t have any bees currently but Annmarie wanted us to expand the bee area so that she could easily walk around the hives and set stuff down without it always disappearing into the grass. He installed approximately another 50 blocks and the area is definitely large enough for 2-3 hives now.

Lastly after much discussion it was decided to dig the electrical ditch so I can run a single outlet to the gazebo. This way we can have the pellet grill out there and a string of lights. Unfortunately, where the ground is not getting hosed down by the sprinkler it is incredibly hard. So Mr Rainman started digging and then put water on in a couple of locations to soften the ground for tomorrow. I was able to go in and dig out another ten feet of the ditch and then start it all the way to the Gazebo. I took the hose and made water run down into the ditch from the gazebo side. I did this three times so hopefully in the morning we will not have any trouble getting down far enough for the ditch. I will need to buy conduit on Monday after work so I can wire it all up this next week. Mr Rainman is only going to be able to help three day in the next couple of weeks. So I will be flying solo most of my staycation. I am very happy with the progress we are making on the list.