Whirlwind

Every time-related adage I can think of is absolutely true. Being the mother of young kids? Time goes by so fast. Getting older? Time goes by so fast. Farmer in the summer? Time goes by so fast....

And when they all it at once it is absolutely mind-boggingly exhausting. My favorite is when people are just getting to know me and asking questions to scratch the surface... "oh. You work full time? And you're building a house?".... "oh. And you have kids with all that? And animals?" The beginning of the conversation may have people politely wondering about everything and putting themselves in my shoes.... by the end they can't even fathom it anymore and start looking at me as if I MUST be an escaped mental patient, and surely nothing I am saying is true?

And yet here I am, once again, sitting staring down the downhill slope that is the rest of the summer. I'm not sure how we did it, but we're past the point of no return on this particular frantic season. It's time (or was time a bit ago) to get my fall and winter garden in, and I never really aught up to my summer one. It's time to get the house finished (so close!) and get ready for winter. It's time to resist the urge to hatch out more chickens, give up on breeding the rabbits, and stop putting cuttings and small plants in new pots. Thankfully, it is NOT time to stop canning, because I don't know that I could ever get my fill of that one.... and I don't feel like it's something I get to do a lot anyways....

But I don't have a choice. And while it seems that most of the people staring at me as if I'm batshit insane and from anther planet entirely from the one they pleasantly and sense-numbingly nhabit are terrified of that, I relish not having a choice. I would never ever get 1/2 of what I do done (and that's far from how much I'd like to get done) if I had a choice about it.  My kids, the house, the garden, the animals, if you bite it off, you have to chew.

So I dream of being able to blog as much as I'd like, and I dream of being able to do many romantic probably-pinterest-inspired things as I feed, schlepp, nurture things along.... and try not to plan too many more big bites for the next year.

The Acorn had a birthday!

LOVES Kombucha!

Babies!

Veggies!

BUMPER crop of marigolds

Fur harvest.

Gherkin, Oops.

Haven't barely harvested any this year... :(

Snarkles began his photography career

Mommy's trunk = best playhouse!

Just Enough To Be Dangerous Pt 2

....so after all that, the next day I get a phone call from the Redneck telling me I have idiot bees. Ok. Fine. In the realm of expected reactions out of said manfriend. Plus the cell reception was kind of crappy as he was driving back from somewhere and the phone was cutting in and out and I didn't push the WHY the bees were idiots issue.

Was not expecting to come home to this:

Just to prove how big of a point I am trying to make, note the lack of caption on the photo. Ahem.

When installing your package of bees, you're supposed to, AND I QUOTE: "spray them down, bump the bees back, open the box up, and shake them in".

Got it? Good.

We talked about it in class extensively, and watched videos in class as well. Of people doing this. They showed us how to do it at field day (although I was not one of the few who tried it there....). And then in preparation for doing it myself, I watched more youtube videos of people doing it. Guys and gals with no protective gear whatsoever transferring happy bees into their new happy home happily and probably then turning off the camera and going home whilst singing tralalala through the woods.

So. I sprayed mine down, bumped them back, opened up the end instead of the top where the can is because with the newfangled containers we got that did not match ANY of the videos of bee shaking I watched (but I'll get back to THAT in a minute) you can do that, shook them in and good golly holy hell where there a lot of fucking bees flying around. The acorn, who had been taping up until about this point when the battery on my phone died because I was TOTALLY prepared, started backing away slowly at this point. I can only imagine what thoughts were going through his head as he watched a million gajillion angry bees swarm around my body. I had been told (and told, and told....) that a few bees would be left in the package and that you just leaned it up against the hive body and that they would want to go in after their sisters and would within 24 hours or so. OK. No biggie. Got it. It seemed like a rather large amount of bees that hadn't made it in the hive, but surely that was OK....

Did package #2, although with this one said 'fuck it' and decided to open the middle top of the box where the can of syrup is inserted like they did in ALL the videos I watched (albeit of the older packages, but still). Spray, bump, shake, boom, all in. Lean package up against side for stragglers. Except not nearly as many stragglers on this one. Hrrrm. Went back and checked #1.... only to find a good half of the bees still in the box. Fuck. Figuring I had royally screwed this hive up and probably didn't have enough survivors anyway, I decided I had nothing to lose by opening that hive back up again and spraying, bumping, and shaking the bees into the box again in hopes of getting them all in.

Whew. Mission accomplished. Ish. I think. I've never done this before.

Being a total genius and *not* wanting to burn down the 40 acres of woods and new house we're building, I set the still-lit smoker down on a cinder black a good 15ft or so from the hives and went down and went to bed excited that I finally had bees. SQUEEEE!

Until the Redneck called me at work the next day.

Came home to find all those bees all over the smoker. I figured it was no big deal. I had to feed the bees anyway (um. yeah. because I only had enough sugar for about a quart total of syrup when I really needed close to a gallon....), so sprayed down the outside of the smoker and bumped and shook them back into the box. Yes! Success! Wait. Is that a bee coming out of the spout? Oh! And another! Ok. A few must have gotten inside. No biggie. I still have sugar syrup in my spray bottle, I'll just spray them down and open up the can and bump and shake those into the box, too.

Except when I opened the lid, a million gajillion bees came pouring out of the can of the smoker like a horror movie of some sort. They just kept coming out!!

Loooong story short, it took gasoline and taking the bellows off the back to get all the bees out. Yup. It sucked.

Carnage

Still. More. Bees.

My smoker's all cool and vintage and shit. Got it from a very awesome local farmer who kept bees 30 years ago....

Old staples...

...new staples!!

Back in action.

So lesson learned. Spray, bump, and shake with confidence.

Or - follow the video of the maker of the new-fangled package we got and set them in the box and let them crawl out on their own.

Or something. But definitely no leaving lit smokers 15ft away from bees looking for a home and a refuge due to an idiot beekeeper not knowing how to bump and shake them properly!

Just Enough To Be Dangerous Pt 1

Because once you've taken a 10-week course, had 2 field days (or a field day and a hive removal at one of the instructor's houses), passed a written and a practical test and trolled all the facebook Beekeeping forums that'll have you, you obviously know tons jack shit.

I think at one point my facebook status read something along the lines of 'I hope passing a certification test in beekeeping is more helpful than High School French was in France'. Totes magotes. I know *just* enough to be dangerous.

I was SO EXCITED to get my bees. Finally the day I had been waiting for had arrived! Weeks of anticipation on top of 4 years of wanting to had finally come down to one day in which I would go to work at 6am (where we were down a person) on 2 hours of sleep, dip out at 9:20, get my bees, drive them home, go back to work by 10:30, stay until 5pm, go home, feed childs and manchild and the menagerie, and then! Oh! And then! INSTALL MY BEES.

Oddly enough all of *that* part went off without a hitch. Seriously surprised the shit out of me that it did. I left my bees under (what will be) our back porch so they could stay cool and wait for dusk.

Adorable! This is what 6lbs of bees comes in!

Wait. Hold up.

A few days BEFORE the arrival of my bees, because I've totally reinvented myself this year into a planner/organizer extraordinaire, I actually set up the hives outside where they're going to be. The phone call that day to the Redneck went something along the lines of "...oh. yeah. I set up the hives.......Where did I set them up?......You remember where we talked about them going? Where I showed you?.....Yeah, I didn't put them there." Thankfully he is amazeballs awesome and this is a typical conversation for us.

So I actually had them all set and ready to go for bee arrival day.

If my life were an old book, this plate would read "where we find that the Element, indeed, acts as a farm truck"

SO MUCH HELP hauling heavy-ass cinder blocks and commercial pallets. Sidenote: that was the pallet the cinder blocks for our house foundation got delivered on, so pretty damn sturdy methinks.

Because CUTENESS! And ready for BEES!

There's a lot of equipment involved in setting up your bees. And I'm not even talking frames and supers and whatnot.  Syrup to feed them, syrup to spray them (so they can't fly AND so they're distracted while you're shaking them around in a box they've been cooped up in during transport for 2 days....), protective gear, rubber bands (!), the list goes on and on.....

Checking the equipment.

But I had help.

Bee buddies!

First thing you do is check the queen cage to make sure she's alive and kicking.

The queen in her cage with her attendants

Yay for 10 year-old videographers.

Then you get her situated on the frame. She'll stay like this for a few days while she and the other bees chew through the candy plug that's keeping her prisoner. Then she'll get to the business of laying eggs as soon as she can. The hope is that by the time she gets out (3 or so days) the hive has accepted her as their queen and they have drawn enough comb for her to have somewhere to lay said gazillion bajillion eggs. The game here is to boost the population enough that they store a LOT of food for the winter and so that they still have an OK population to start out with next spring.

Queen cage installed onto frame. Note the super professional rubber bands. Next up: install the rest of the bees!

The Acorn's fancy shmancy shot

Needless to say at this point I kinda screwed some shit up that took another day to fix. But that is another story for another blog post.

Spring!

So excited to see spring springing. I was talking to my dad on the phone the other day, and as I was gushing on and on about the first leaves popping out on the apple trees I bought and planted, he responded with a "what did you expect to happen?". So he's not the most outwardly sentimental of folks, but dammit if nature doesn't surprise the shit out of me every year when it does EXACTLY what it's supposed to. I don't feel like I emerge from single digit temps as enthusiastically as my plants do - I seem to have to spend some time licking my wounds and reminding myself that it's a whole 9 or 10 months until I have to go through that again. Our plants, with their lack of dwelling on the past, just burst forth and make the most of the turning tides of weather. Gosh darn it I gotta take a hint.

But I'm trying. I almost finished hemming in our meadow garden this year, although putting in 3 rows is more than enough (so says my back) for now. My trapezoidal gate is awaiting chicken wire and then it's done. The onion starts are ready to go in the ground, and I've got rabbit-poopy hay to go between the rows and mulch/fertilize. My starts up in flats are ready to be joined by more starts of the warm-weather variety. Holy hell it's gonna be a busy growing season!

Handsome dog amongst the flowers

Embarrassed to say I'm not sure what this sweet little white flower is. Damn you eastern flora!!

Three rows. 3!! About 10 more to go...

Not everyone has a trapezoidal garden gate. BOOM. Lucky girl, this one.

Red maple.

Bradford pear.

Vinca.

Daffodils + vinca = Spring!

Onions!!

Preparing for Bees....

I am so so so very excited to be getting bees this year. And so so so very excited to cross #2 on my list off for the year.

I mentioned that I had like a 1 in 4 chance of getting a cost share - AND I DID!! Whoopee!!! The list of things they give you is long so I won't list it here.... suffice it to say that I really just need protective gear, a smoker, and a bee brush. And so many people have come out of the woodwork to give me old equipment they found or no longer use, or whathaveyou. Which means I have to find a bee brush and some leg bags and possibly an old white shirt.... and then I'm good. Everything else has been supplied through the Farm Bureau's cost share, or friends. AMAZING. Thank you thank you thank you!!

I don't know yet who my mentor will be, but I know a lot of the members that live near me, so very excited. A bunch of really cool people.

OOOH. And one of the women working in the county planning and inspections office put this little map together that shows all the locations of beekeepers in the county with a one mile radius around them, emulating the bees' range. SO COOL. I grew up in a household with maps in the bathroom, and now that I am going to have 2 GINORMOUS bathrooms, I ordered a 38 x 48 copy.

Starting on hive bodies!

Finished hive bodies!

SO. MANY. EYELETS.

25 done. 15 to go....

Couldn't resist getting started on these. Such a yummy yummy smell.

Blink and You'll Miss It

...so there went that plan. It really does seem that farmsteading, and life these days in general, is all about taking a giant leap forward, and then getting knocked several steps back. It's frustrating, it's annoying, it's heartbreaking, and the few victories that you have (however brief) are so addicting you go back for more. In this day and age it would be easy enough to hide my head in the sand and not do ANY of this. No garden, no chickens, no rabbits, no house building... just do what 99% of our countrymen and women do - work, pay rent, watch TV, sleep, rinse, wash, repeat....

But I can't. I'd be miserable. I have been miserable without my garden DESPITE my being preoccupied with being pregnant, giving birth, and not sleeping taking care of my baby. I've been miserable not PRODUCING anything here off the property, so I have chickens, a rabbit and will put in the garden this year. All is peachy.

Except this morning, when I went to check on the rabbit and chickens in the pre-dawn gloom... no bunny. Wide gaping hole in the side of the pen, and a few tufts of fur. I'll save you the gory details, but it wasn't our dogs, although it was something comparable in size and potentially smarter. (Sorry guys)

Got back to down where our dogs are, and the wall of skunk smell hit me. Looks like Luke got skunked, although it's still fresh enough it could be either of them - you can't tell. And then I saw a small body in the driveway behind my car. Obviously my first thought was that it was the bunny and something and dragged her 1000ft down the driveway and left her behind my car. Upon closer inspection, it was a possum. I sat and tried to tell in the light of the flashlight on my iPhone whether it was dead or just playing dead.... it was dead. No idea by what. Dogs won't go near it, but Zora is walking very stiffly this morning which usually means she ran hard the previous day. her poor old arthritic bones can only take so much....

We will rebuild and try again. I feel terrible about the rabbit. It is so easy to get lulled into a false sense of safety... we've been so lucky so far. The only animal massacre we've had was in broad daylight when a fox (we think) got several of our chickens and our poor dogs were tied up and couldn't get to them... and our chickens have always been secure in their coop. But just because they have been safe doesn't mean they ARE safe. We will persevere. Lesson learned.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Thank you for indulging me last time. I really did rant, but I really did need to. Sometimes if I don't let it get to a boiling point, I don't do it. I know. But I learned to procrastinate at one of the BEST schools ever.

See?

But I'm excited. Progress is being made. I can cross #3 OFF my 2015 to do list!
 And it's only February! FUCK YEAH!!

A THIRD kind of animal has taken up residence here at Stoneyhaw - The Rabbit. She is a (just shy of a) year-old French/German Angora Rabbit. However, I noticed today in the daylight that her ear has a breeder's tattoo, so I might see if I can find out any further background info on her. She's a very warm light brown, with grey guard hair. She looks like she needs to be groomed soon...

The meat/fiber production adventure has begun.

We still owe her a box/shelf/shelter, but the tote will have to suffice for today. I wish we had something more substantial than chicken wire for the 'walls', but feeling good about the hardware cloth underneath the bunny butt, so that's a start.

And she needs a proper name...

Bunny feet!

"You assholes better finish my palace soon..."

THIS was NOT the agreement

Inspected by the Chicken Mafia. Bunny doesn't even flinch.

Tub is temporary. Bunny is pissed...

She found a way, despite inadequate 'shelter'

Inching Closer

As I mentioned before, I have a great desire this year to produce something. Don't get me wrong, we're producing shit. Babies and houses and whatnot. But I have this grand desire to produce something smaller and more intimate.

I had a baby. Maybe 'intimate' is not the best choice of words. You mama's reading this know what I mean.

But having a baby, building a house, juggling a young family.... these are big big things. Big things that take up all your focus if not time and energy (and resources). And I feel like they're floating on an infrastructure that's quite shaky, frankly. If you could strip them away (which you can't, thankfully), there would be nothing left. And that's kind of starting to feel empty to me.

So it's time for me to come "out of the baby funk" (thanks for the perspective, mom!) and get to building that foundation. The house won't be under construction forever. The baby (OK, toddler) won't be a baby forever. The family won't be young forever...

So three things I'm looking to produce this year. Like I said before, if we pull ONE off, I'm a fucking winner.

#1 - THE GARDEN
We're bringing it back. Yes yes. It's time. I planned it (I used a planner! What!), I ordered half of the seeds, I found the seed starter light set up thingy I got from a generous soul, I bought seed starter trays, I bought seed starting mix, I am patiently awaiting time to start 'em (just around the corner). I got everything all figured out, and then in a casual sort of way the Redneck threw out that we should use the meadow instead of my raised beds... Time to re-plan! Which I did. Which of course just made the project bigger, because if I'm going to plant in the meadow, then OBVIOUSLY this opens the beds up to being herb beds.... snowballing already, this one. And I've barely even begun.

Thankfully the rainwater tanks are still in good condition and I was already planning on putting a soaker hose in the blueberries this year, just in case. The Rabbiteye blueberries have a tendency to ripen late and right when the rain stops, so hoping this way every single last berry gets a chance to ripen instead of shriveling up into nothingness....

#2 - BEES
Everybody I know personally has listened to me squee! every Tuesday night for the past two weeks (so twice...but it feels like there was a LOT of squeeing...). Dude. I'm in a beekeeping class. And effing LOVING it. (Because I was born an eighty-year old peasant woman) I am the one in the middle of the county extension auditorium surrounded by people in varying stages of boredom fucking wide eyed and so excited I'm about to pee. And then coming home and verbal vomit gushing/regurgitating it all back to the Redneck who very patiently pretends to listen to it all when he so just wants to get back to his video games now that the toddler has FINALLY gone to sleep.... and he threatened to stop letting me go if I thanked him for taking care of the kids every Tuesday night (on top of already having them every Monday night) just ONE MORE TIME.

I can't help it. I have been trying to take this class for the past 3 years. I finally just sent the check in and figured I'd figure out logistics later. And so I'm doing it. I have a 1-in-4 chance of getting a Farm Bureau sponsored pair of beehives and bee packages and I've got my fingers crossed I'll be a lucky recipient. Because there's a lot of equipment involved and that shit is pricey! And they give you bees, too. And one of the requirements of the cost share is that you agree to take a mentor. Ahem. GIVE ME A MENTOR, YO!

I'm really, really excited about this one.

...and #3 - BUNNIES

We need to supplement protein. Our chickens give us a lot of eggs, 'tis true. But we need to start supplementing meat. It's time. And chickens take forever and a day to get big enough to eat. IF they go broody and raise hatchlings. Because let's face it, with everything else going on, I'm not getting on the incubator bandwagon. That is too mush trouble. So with my far-fetched dream (it's good to have goals!) of a fiber farm in mind, I'm eying some Angoras. French Angoras, specifically. I'm hoping to be kicking myself that my table loom is at my mom's and wouldn't fit in the last car load out this time next year. Oooh - raised bed garden with herbs morphing into dye garden? Fuck yeah! I already ordered the indigo seeds. Not even kidding.

Maybe it's the company of some truly inspiring women recently and getting to spy into their farming endeavors (here and here - and one of the spouses is in my beekeeping class! Small world!), maybe I'm coming full circle, maybe I'm in fantasy land... but I am a strong believer in if you say it out loud, it's true. So I'm saying my shit out loud. I would love to make these three things a reality this year. I'm anxious as hell to get started.

Holiday Layaway Plan

With housebuilding, working, 3 kids to shop for, etc, etc, by the time Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around the thought of shelling out some serious dough for a bird for the table just seems to hard to do.

This year, I'm going with a layaway plan:

Baby Turkeys. Cute. For now.

Four baby turkeys. I only wanted 3 but the nice young man at Southern States held them for me and I couldn't help but feel bad to leave him with just one.

And before you get all "oh but they're so cute and if you name them you can't eat them" and blah blah blah on me, yes they have names, and YES we will eat them. Their name are: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Alternate-In-Case-We-Fuck-Up, and.... (wait for it)... Bob. Everyone should have a turkey named Bob.

Since I was firing up the brooder anyway, I got 8 Easter Eggers:

Baby Easter Eggers. Floooooofy.

The child put them in their new home:

Hard at work

The two groups are mingling fine and getting along well!

Hello?

Bob

And for no reason at all:

Mr Snarkles!

Oddly looking forward to the holidays this year!