The little hive that could...

Today I opened the little nuc hive from a couple weeks ago to see how it is getting along. The bees have been buzzing about and working their little hearts out. 

When I opened it and pulled out what appeared to be an active frame, I saw two queen cells. When I turned it over, 2 more queen cells! If you look closely the two "peanut" looking cells are baby queen cells. It takes 16 days for them to hatch, therefore it should be a couple of days. 

As I was looking and accessing the amount of bee ratio and additional brood that still need to hatch I thought they really needed a boost, so I went up to my big hive and went to retrieve a frame of brood. As I was looking thru the frames for the best one I came across this one that had a queen cell on it. It is not in the picture but it is at the bottom of the frame. I kicked all the bees off of it and brought it down to the nuc hive which I keep right by the front door so I can watch it. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this will be a successful hive!

It's a boy!

 Well it has been a very stressful 24 hours. Belle gave birth last night around 9:30 p.m. I could have sworn that she had twins on board but so far just one large ram lamb. In the pics, right after his birth trying to get him sea legs...

 As time went on the lamb nursed so I decided to get some shut eye for a couple of hours, getting right up at sun up. I immediately noticed when I went down that he was weak. Well come to find out "Belle's" milk was not coming in. So, off I went to the feed store and got some Colostrum and lamb milk and got him started on the bottle asap. He perked up and was fine. I have been on the phone with a few people and have many opinions and suggestions but my friend Liz has never seen this in all her years. I have been massaging and putting hot compresses on her utter to give her relief as well as antibiotics...

and here is the little guy, resting after his bottle.

Houston, we have labor!

 This afternoon when I went down to feed the animals, I found "Belle" in what appears to be early labor. She was in the barn, staring at the wall and when I offered her food, she was not interested...

...

 So, armed with the trusty "Lamb Cam" monitor...

 A clean, safe and private place to give birth...








Some clean towels and blankets...

I safely put "Belle" into the birthing area and went up to the house to wait and watch for the little ones to arrive!

The making of a new Hive

On Wednesday of this week I traveled down to the Nature Center where I work and love, to check on our Observation hive. As I suspected  they were becoming completely over run so it was time to take some out, so I placed a few frames of bees and brood (baby bees) into a nuc box (pictured).

 I brought them home and set them up, locked inside for a couple of days. This morning I opened it up. This gives the bees a chance to realize that they don't have a queen, select a baby bee or two and make a new queen.

I gave them some sugar water in a feeder and also supplied a pollen patty. At first a couple of bees came out and started to eat. Even though I did provide them with some food inside they were hungry... 

and had to use the bathroom! If you look close see the yellow streaks? That is bee poop! They are so clean and will not use the bathroom in their own house! So I am keeping my fingers crossed that this works and we get a new hive from it!

Post shearing and all that fiber!

 Now that shearing is behind us the animals have settled in and are getting used to their new looks. We have such a hard time telling the sheep apart, we have to get up on them and check their ear tags to determine who they are. People driving by give a little chuckle at how funny the Alpacas look!

...and now to figure out what to do with all this fiber and wool! This stack as well as 4 boxes stuffed to be shipped is also from last year. I still had so much fiber and wool that I never sent any out for processing last year, but this year the wheel has been non stop and I am kicking out some beautiful yarns whick I am stocking up on some upcoming events and projects.

Shearing has come and gone...

Shearing was underway today in our usual fashion with some great helpers, BilllieJo and Sydnie here to help us out. It started out cold but the clouds gave way to sun.

 Angus, gave us his usual hard time by immediately getting his harness off as his way to tell us he was not going easy!

 What a suspicious crew it was! There was a lot of humming and pacing going on in there...

 however, our shearers, Rick on the left with "Fred" and Jeremiah on the right with "Mo" got right to work...

and were done with 7 sheep, 7 alpacas and 1 very stubborn llama in one hour and 45 minutes. This also included vaccines, worming, hoof trims and bagging each fleece appropriately. We all worked together as a team, with great precision and I think this was an all time record set by our amazing shearing team!

The return of the "Lamb Cam"

Well it's that time of year again, time for spring lambs and the return of the "Lamb Cam". Our greatest tool to keep tabs on what is going on down, the camera and monitor keeps us posted!

Here is "Lily" who we confirmed to be
pregnant last week. She is a little behind the other girls but she is without a doubt "with lamb"...and here is "Rose", she is so close, it's anytime now! Stay posted and we will post as soon as the lambs get here!

Early Spring Gardening...

Today didn't work out the way it was supposed to. When I woke up and I found myself with some time on my hands as my daughter Brynn called and didn't need me to run an errand for her after all, so I got right to work in the gardens. To the left are my raised beds that have been full of manure and good stuff all winter...The rhubarb (in the second picture) looked like it just poked it's head up, still with the hay I layed over as a bed cover for the winter...The rhubarb is planted against the greenhouse...

 My soil is based on compost, leaves,

alpaca and chicken manure. All these things are so important for a good healthy soil. It just drives me crazy when I see people "purchase" store bought soil that is loaded with who knows what! It's free folks just takes a little effort and is so healthy too!

 Once I got the soil tilled and raked, I planted the Cold frame with a variety of lettuces...

 The oregano is already up and looks so healthy and happy...

I dug this guy up by accident and found it quite funny looking. It's a   potato that appears to have arms and legs! I immediately put him right back to bed!

Some Anise Hyssop pokes it's head up too!
I just could not help giving it a little rub and enjoying that Anise smell, which made me want to have some tea!

...and all the time I was working about, this raccoon slept in a tree near by knowing that he is always safe here on Coon Hollow Farm...

Welcoming Spring means work around the farm...

Welcome Spring! The weather here in Connecticut has been beautiful and with such nice weather comes much work needed here on the farm. So, over the past few days Tim and myself have gotten to work preparing a new site to move fencing for our sheep. 
The girls are all expecting, except Ophelia, she is too young. We have decided to give the girls a bigger space to move around so we must work clearing brush and cleaning.

 We are also building a new hay storage area and Tim here on the left is contemplating whether to have the new gate "swing in or swing out". My suggestion is to swing out so the sheep don't have the advantage when your arms are filled with hay, but I will let the master decide.

While clearing, we found this most toxic plant that is deadly to our sheep, alpacas and llama, Mountain Laurel. We dug and dug and finally, got it removed. My heart sank when I first saw this because it was so close to the animals.
So we will continue to work, clean and prepare for the lambs which should be here in a couple of weeks...I sure do love Spring!

Early Bee Hive inspection

Yesterday I had the chance to open my overwintered hive that has had a lot of activity in it. I just can't get over how well this hive has done. They were working on a pollen patty that I put in there a few weeks ago...

 The candy board showed that they had consumed most of the "candy", which was such a positive sign. It seems that I had planned and done everything correctly, right down to proper ventilation to get them through the winter.

The sun was very bright and warm yesterday so the glare on this frame is bad but you can see how many bees there are and this was one of many frames that was loaded with bees...

This final frame reveals, after I smoked them to move, capped brood. While I was doing my inspection I actually saw a baby bee hatching but didn't have the camera handy to snap the shot! I could not find the queen but there is overwhelming evidence that she is there! They had full on honey reserves so all is well. I am hoping to get a split out of this one in a few weeks as long as the weather continues the way it is, looks like honey season may be early this year!

Chicken worming, easy, not so much!

Three weeks ago Tim and I set out

 to worm the chickens. We were worried about gape worms and other things they can pick up, so a spring worming was in order. As you can see we wormed the rooster first and got him out of the pen...

armed with good old Ivermectin, we proceeded to worm them all and then follow up 3 weeks later...

This little girl gave us a fight, smacking us with her wing, biting us and giving Tim a real hard time as we attempted to worm her...

These two ladies did their best to give us the slip, but we got them anyway. So, we are wormed for the coming spring season, with Tim and I surviving the process!

Did anyone tell the bees it's February?

So did anyone tell my bees it is February 23rd? We are having an amazingly warm winter here in Connecticut and the temps reached into the 60's today. I began feeding them a few weeks ago because we have had so many nice days I knew they would be looking for food when they were out. As you can see in the super sized pics I posted, the bees were out today and if you look very close at the bottom picture to the left, that little girl has so much pollen on her she appears to have it on her back making her look like a marked queen! They were bringing in pollen, most every bee was covered. This is going to be a very interesting bee keeping season!

Moving on and the return of "The Sugarbush"

 Many of you who read my blog regularly may have noticed my absence and many of you know why. On January 25th my family lost my sister, Laura. She passed away with dignity and peace on that day and left our hearts broken forever. I am finding myself lost and overwhelmed with so much to do and making sure my niece Cassie, her only daughter is o.k. She has been all I can think about.
Tim decided to tap this year which was the farthest thing from my mind...

 So he brought out the equipment and prepared for the maple harvest. The weather has been unbelievably warm this February and the trees are running at a fast rate of drip...

I really think this is Tim's way of dealing with his pain as well, he loved her as well. So he is keeping himself busy with a new coat of paint and a new smoke stack for the evaporator as well.

He has already harvested close to a gallon of syrup as you can see he spent most of the day boiling down and the backyard smelled amazing...as we try to push on we have to thank the farm for never giving us a break and keeping us busy as we continue to heal through this difficult process...