Bees
Just a few days after my last post my bees swarmed! Luckily Greg was down that weekend and was able to retrieve the cluster from a cedar. We moved them into the honey super that I had on hand and then moved the super of bees several hundred yards from the original hive. All seemed well till the next day when they swarmed again while I was gone. When I came out to inspect the new hive the air was full of bees and they were in the process of flying away. There was nothing I could do but watch. The only thing I could have done differently (that I’m aware of) was to enclose the bottom entrance of the hive more completely as I’ve read many people do when creating a new hive from a swarm. The problem with that was we were so hot last week I was afraid to close it more than 80%.

So, that was a bummer. I still have the original hive which is still a very nice, healthy hive and I’ve got the honey super on. Still waiting on the two I ordered to arrive. My hope is that I’ll still get a good harvest of 2-3 honey supers. I’ll be picking up another couple of deep hive bodies and hope we’ll be able to successfully split the hive next year via a caught swarm or pre-swarm split.

Garden
The garden is slowly waking up. The onions, sugar snap peas and potatoes are looking good. The lettuce, spinach and a few other cool weather greens are slowly getting there. I think the week of crazy warm/hot weather did not do them well. I watered a good bit this past weekend as we’ve not had rain for over two weeks. The tomato seedlings in the greenhouse are looking pretty good. I’m eager to sow the fence borders of flowers like cosmos, zinias and a few perennial herbs such as feverfew but I was waiting for the past few days as we had some pretty chill night time temps. The rhubarb seedlings came up great and were just transplanted to pots. I’ll likely sell or give a few of those away as I have far more than I need. Strawberries, blueberries, currants and gooseberries are all doing great. Two of the hardy kiwis look fantastic and two died for some reason, no clue why. I’ve lost three fruit trees also not sure why. One was a bit flooded, the other two I don’t know. The comfrey seeds are coming up now. I planted 30 or so and will be transplanting them out around the fruit trees.

I’ve been nurturing the original forage area used by the chickens last summer. It is now full of red and white clover, yarrow, self-heal, and comfrey just to name a few. It is well on the way to being a lush polyculture of nutrient accumulating plants that will provide a food source for the chickens as well as our pollinating insects.

Water Harvesting
I finally finished off my rain barrel system. Five barrels behind the cabin will collect up to 275 gallons of water! There’s another barrel to collect water from the greenhouse roof. I may paint them at some point but plan to try growing ground nut or some other food producing vine first. They’re not real pretty to look at so I want to do something to pretty it up a bit, growing food on them would probably be the best choice. Some folks were wondering if this was for drinking water and the answer is no. I’ll use it mostly for the garden in the area right around the cabin. Also for washing my hands or for the critters to drink. It is fairly clean though and I probably could drink it if need be. I filter it at the inlet with a screen. There’s probably a bit of minute grit from trees and wind making it in. I suppose worst case scenario is a bit of bird or critter droppings from the roof and I do have the wood burning stove so the first few rains of spring probably contain some sort of smoke/soot type contaminates. If I were going to drink it I would run it through some sort of filter and would feel pretty safe with it. The barrels previous use was food grade flavorings with the exception of one that had concentrated hydrogen peroxide. They’ve all been very well cleaned.

One last bit of news, the kids’ cabin is finally finished! Greg came down this past weekend and finished off the soffits, trimmed, caulked and painted. They’ll likely repaint the trim with a different color but for now it all has at least two coats and is safe from the weather.

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I finally did a bee hive inspection yesterday and have good news to report: a very full hive! In fact, I’ve gone ahead and ordered two more honey supers for a total of three. I’m in an ideal pollen situation surrounded by autumn olives, red buds, and dogwoods just to name a few of the flowering trees and bushes. I’ve also got an amazing variety of perennial wildflowers, white and red clover, and grasses. The nectar flow should be fantastic. If I remember correctly a small honey super, when full, contains around 30 lbs of honey so if the girls fill all three that would be 90 lbs!! I’m hoping I don’t have to deal with a hive split/swarm just yet as that would knock down production a bit. It will happen sooner or later though.

The chickens and guineas are all doing great and enjoying the warmer weather and time outside free ranging all day. I’m very happy with the chicken situation. They’ve got lots of space and a fantastic diversity of foliage/insects to browse on. I’ve got more fencing scattered about than I’d like but as long as I want them to free range and also keep my young plants alive it is a necessity. They are relentless in their scratching and so the mulch is always a mess but I’ve accepted it as a good tradeoff for happy healthy chickens. It’s also lots of turned and manured mulch/soil which is a great thing.

The earthworm population in and around the garden seems to have really boomed since year one of the garden. Any time I have occasion to dig I uncover far, far more than I remember seeing in the spring of 2008. Very cool and I have little doubt the result of all of the cardboard/straw/woodchip layer mulching.

Planted in the garden: a huge bed of potatoes, onions, lettuce, radish, kale, chard, spinach and more. Tomato seedlings look great though the peppers never came up so I started more. The fence row of sugar peas are doing starting to really take off. I’m about to start several trays of seeds: feverfew, comfrey, hyysop, and marshmallow. Also about to direct seed calendula, cosmos, zinnias and marigolds. Very soon will be time to put in basil, melons and squash.

The only real negative is Petunia the deer. She’s very skinny which is understandable coming off a winter with no acorn or nut crop. But what really worries me is what I saw yesterday. She seemed to be a moving just a bit strangely so I started having a look at her. Her legs seemed fine but when I looked up under her tail (warning, this gets very gross) a mass of ticks all around her anus. I mean a MASS. My guess is at least 1.5 inches out in every direction from the outer perimeter of her anus. They were completely covering her bum with no skin showing. 60? 100? Maybe more. It must be terribly painful for her to poop and my guess is that the skin underneath that mass is a terrible mess. Is that normal for wild deer? You’d really have to see this to believe it. I had no idea ticks could be so thick. Pardon the language but this was really FUCKING gross. So, I’m a bit worried about her. I don’t think there’s much I can do. I’d pull them off if she’d let me but I tried repeatedly to no avail. They’ll just have to fall off.

Homesteading with critters is mostly a wonderful experience and one I’d not want to give up having had a taste of it. That said, it has its gross and difficult moments.

Hopefully my next update will bring news of my rain barrel system finally plumbed up and ready to collect rain. I’ll be jumping up from one 55 gallon barrel to five for a total of 275 galons. The current barrel will move back to the greenhouse for collection there for a grand total of 330 gallons. I’d like to add more but that should suffice for this summer.

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