Buzz Kill

Well, not everything goes as planned on the farm.  We have made so much progress on many things and we have also taken a few steps back on some others.  But this is the way we learn.

Ruger with baking soda on her bee sting

Kenn and I opened our hive on Saturday to check things out and what we found were a bunch of sluggish bees.  After checking the frames we noticed there weren't any eggs.  What happened to our queen?  I'll tell you what happened to our queen... once again, we made a beginner beekeeping mistake.  We hadn't changed out our poor honeybee's sugar water for over a few weeks.  Who would have thought that something so loaded with sugar could go bad?  Well it does and bad sugar water causes bees to starve.  StinsonFarm should write a book titled, 101 Ways To Starve Your Honeybees.  We have already found the first two ways.  Lucky for us, once we changed out the sugar water and threw some powdered sugar into the hive, our sluggish bees came back to life.  We did have to re-queen though.  Hopefully she takes!

We lost some of our rabbits too.  Not as in they hippity hopped away from the farm, but rather, they died.  As I'm writing this I'm realizing how terrible at farming Kenn and I must sound.  I can assure you that it is normal for any farmer to lose animals every once and a while.  It just seems that it happened at StinsonFarm all at once.  We had somewhat of a cold snap during the evenings last week and a few of the baby bunnies got out of their nest box and couldn't get back in.  Unfortunately those babies didn't make it through the night.  The same litter had a runt that didn't make it either.  We're pretty sure that momma rabbit wasn't feeding it and that it died from starvation.

My lesson in rabbit butchering (note: this
is not one of the baby bunnies that died)

Drying anise leaves

In good news, I was able to harvest some of my anise leaves already!  It's so early for this so I'm pretty excited that I'll get more than one harvest out of them this year.  Anise meringues here we come!  My cousin, Nicole, was visiting us this weekend and brought us some perfect containers for storing the leaves.  Thank you Nicole!

Spring Madness

That whole bit about sticking to one project at a time in order to actually finish them definitely doesn't work for us.  We didn't finish the chicken run last weekend but boy did we get a lot of other farm chores worked on and some completed.

The corn field is finally planted with sweet corn and a few other varieties.  We want to see which variety grows best here in the PNW at 1,100 feet.  In past years I have had troubles with birds plucking the corn kernels out of the ground after they've germinated which rips the tops of the plants clean off.  This year Kenn and I put together quite the creepy scarecrow.  It looks more like a Night of the Living Dead character.  We also strung some string across the rows of corn in hopes of deterring the birds.

Corn Field With Extra Creepy Scarecrow

Since the bottom story of the barn coop is all sealed up and temperatures outside aren't too cold, we decided to move the chicks and turkeys out to it from their tiny nest box in the shop.  We're still using a heat lamp just in case and so far so good!  They made it through their first night in the barn coop and seem to like their new home.

Chicks And Turkeys In The Barn Coop

And if these birds weren't enough, Kenn came home Monday night with nine more.  Nestled in their nest box in the shop we now have two Guineas, two Bantams, and five Broilers.  I'm guessing we should make some headway on the chicken run this weekend...

Guineas, Bantams, Broilers

In other news, our garden is doing pretty good so far.  Even with that last cold snap!  Chives are well on their way to producing seeds for next year and the lupines are getting huge!  We can't wait to try these legumes.  Neither Kenn nor I have ever eaten lupine beans so if we like them we will harvest them again next year.  The strawberries and raspberries seem to be very happy and the rest of our starts are well on their way.

Chives, Lupines, Garden

It's None Of Your Beeswax

Week two check on our honeybees was a success!  Well, except for the part where I sent burning embers from the smoker into the hive which really pissed the girls off.  Before our week three check I plan on putting a screen over the opening of the smoker.

So far, the queen has been released and the worker bees are working hard.  Quite a bit of the wax foundation has been drawn into honeycomb on the center frames.  We checked for supersedure cells and swarm cells and we have none.  This is a good thing since supersedure cells are indicative of a sick queen and swarm cells are created in preparation for swarming.  Our frames also show that our queen has been busy laying eggs.  Good job your majesty!

Honeybees

 

 

Barn Coop

In other news... the barn coop is sealed up!  Well, on the lower story anyway.  Siding is up and the doors are on.  We started sinking logs as posts for the chicken run on Saturday.  With good weather on the way this coming weekend we should be able to finish up the run!

Future Duck Pond

Even though Kenn and I keep telling ourselves to finish one project before starting another, we conjured up a new idea which I started on over the weekend.  We decided to use the little stream run-off from the property and gutters as an area for ducks someday.  So, I started digging yet another pond and will create a small dam to hold the water.  So far it's a muddy mess.