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.

Turkeys And Chicks Are Here!

Chicks and Turkeys

Finally!  We've been waiting for these little cluckers for a while now.  Last Friday Kenn picked up our order of seven New Hampshire chicks, nine Delaware, and two turkeys.  Two of the Delaware chicks are roosters.  We are hoping to breed and hatch our own chicks and turkeys one day.

With our new addition we need to amp up work on finishing the barn coop!  I haven't been so helpful recently as a mole in my front landscaping has captured much of my attention.  He just won't die!  I should write a post about ten different ways not to kill a mole.  One of them being: don't stand over the moving mole hill with a shotgun because you'll be there all day which makes you late for your dad-in-law's birthday dinner.  But I digress...

Kenn has been ripping boards like a mad man to finish the siding on the barn coop.  Next we will finish the three doors.  One for us and two for the chicks and turkeys which will lead to the run.  This run will have tall enough fencing and netting over the top so that we don't have bobcats eating our chickens again.  Hopefully we can get all of this finished within the next month so that all 18 birds can be moved out of their current box house before they get too big.  I guess I should table Project Kill Mole for a while.

Jinx!

I guess I've learned my lesson after bragging about our beautiful spring weather.  Apparently the Grinch stole spring and started doling out mid-April snow.  The dogs are loving it but I'm a little worried about all of our crops that have already started peeking through the garden soil.

Barn Coop

Last week, pre-snow of course, we were able to get loads of outside work done.  Kenn has made good progress on the barn coop.  Almost all of the siding is up!  It has taken more than the average share of time since he has to cut down cedars on the property and then mill them up.  We keep reminding ourselves of how much money we have saved using our own lumber though.

Remington and the corn field

And our medical disaster dog, Remington, was finally able to get out and about to help spread some manure (no, not his own) in the corn field.  Another yard of good, mixed compost and soil should hopefully be enough to get the field ready for planting (weather-permitting of course).

In past years I have had trouble keeping birds away from newly planted corn kernels.  This year we may have to try netting or a scarecrow until everything has germinated.  It's tempting to set up a scarecrow just to see the reaction from our dogs.

Grape trellises and lavender

The early spring weather we were having had the lavender happy for a while too.  So in order to make more room for it to spread, I pulled the messy landscaping rocks out of the bed.  We can use the rocks in the future for the pig wall (more on that when we start getting ready for pigs).

Our wine grape starts will ship soon too!  We don't have our permanent trellises in yet but they need something to climb so smaller trellises will have to do for now.  The grape starts will be planted between the lavender plants since the soil pH requirements for both overlap.  Someday I'll have to set aside a larger portion of the property for more lavender since I plan on pressing the oil for different uses.

The Latest Buzz

Spring is definitely here and it's bee time!  Our little mason bees have been hanging out in our fridge during the winter months and are ready for their new home.  I realize how bizarre that sounds, but I can assure you that if you open up our refrigerator a swarm of bees won't come flying at your face.  They're actually resting in cocoons in a box until temperatures are warm enough outside for them to emerge.  Keeping mason bees in a refrigerator during the winter months keeps them protected from severe weather (as if we ever actually have severe weather in western Washington) and predators.  We should have set them up in their new home last month since the temperatures have been warm enough but building the barn coop and getting the garden ready for spring planting apparently took precedence.  Oops!  I'm hoping our mason bees are still alive in their cocoons.

Mason Bee Hive

Our honeybee nuc is going to be ready for pickup in a few weeks as well so last week we spent some time getting the hive ready.  Last year we made the common beginner beekeeping mistake of not giving our bees enough sugar water to supplement since they didn't yet have honey stored.  Lesson learned when one day we opened the hive to check on them and we found 10,000 sluggish or dead honeybees.  To this day I'm not proud to admit to having starved to death 10,000 pets.  Terrible.  This year we are going to do it right.  I hope.

Honeybee Hive

Worms, Turnips, Barn Coops, and Drunk Dogs

There has been a lot going on at the Stinson homestead this last week!  Mostly good and a little bad.  I'll go against the grain and give you the good news first.

Our baby bunnies are two weeks old now and hippity hopping all around their cage.  They're a little ahead of their growth schedule since there were only two bunnies as opposed to the typical nine or ten.  We're not sure of their sex yet but one is brown and the other is black and they are FAT!

We also got all the big rocks picked out of the field we're going to use for corn this summer.  It only took us about 3 weeks.  And by the way, I'm never doing that by hand again.  Kenn planted buckwheat in the field for now in order to churn up the soil a bit and give it some nutrients before we plant corn this spring.

Worm Bin

And we got worms!  Not the parasite kind, the worm bin kind. I cannot wait to use the worm juice on our plants and I'm excited to get some of our food scraps composted more quickly.  This will be fantastic for our garden!

Our turnips finally went berserk, grew their bulbs and we've been eating them with our homemade hummus.  We really were hoping to have these during the winter since turnips are supposed to be a cold weather crop and we grew them in the cold frame but I guess getting them in spring is better than not getting any at all!

Turnip

The barn coop roof is finally up and the loft finished too.  Now for the siding and doors and we'll be set!  It's a good thing we've had some good weather to work on this considering our chickens and turkeys get here in April.  I'd also like to camp out in the loft one night before we put the birds in there.  Hanging out in that loft is like relaxing in a glorified tree house! 

Kenn in the coop loft

And then there was Remington... you realize how much you love your pets when you spend your tax refund fixing their teeth that they broke on rocks in the yard.  He was pretty groggy when we brought him home from his procedure on Tuesday so of course I snapped a picture of the poor dog.  He looked pretty snazzy in the green handkerchief the vet gave him for St. Patrick's day.

Remington