Cooler temps spark creative inspiration

 The summer was so hot this year, it was hard to get into any projects and hard for me to stay inside in the nice weather. These two spools of yarn have sat on my wheel all summer...

 numerous knitted bags awaiting zippers to be sewn into them...

needle felted pictures ready to go into frames...

and a pile of fiber and wool to be spun. I must say that I bid ado to August and the unofficial end of summer. I look forward to getting back to my projects, awakening my creative side and as I turn the calender into September, the cooler temperatures, and all my favorite things like country fairs, apple picking, pumpkins (which I will be harvesting), cider, roasting a chicken in the oven, hoodies, the smell of fall on a crisp day, and the beautiful colors of the trees. The turn of the wheel of the year will bring us back to this time next year once again...

Feeding the bees!

 The end of August brings cooler temperatures and the flow of nectar begins to decline. This is the time to start feeding our bees sugar water and Honey Bee Healthy which has various herbal oils to promote good health.

When feeding we get other pollinators who are not received well by our honeybees. If you look very close at the blur in the photo, it is actually a honeybee and a yellow jacket fighting. Honeybees are tough little creatures and everyday when I go up to get the feeders I find some dead yellow jackets, don't mess with my girls!

Hhaaayyy!

The end of August signals second cut hay and the need to store up for the winter ahead. We save the money from the sale of the lambs just for our winter supply. This year we have a helper, our son Timmy!

 The truck was loaded and took three trips to move 100 bales of second cut hay. Our Alpacas are especially fussy about what they will eat, only the best for them!

We unloaded and were able to store 60 bales in our newly built hay storage area...

 the lamb birthing area acts as an over flow area for storing hay.

The end of the summer spells hay storage for us for the long cold winter ahead. So for now we have some hay to get us through. With my summer chores and prepartion coming to a close, I may just be able to get back to some spinning and knitting!

Chick update: 3+ weeks old

 Lately I have been getting a lot of questions about the little chicks we rescued unclaimed at a Post Office 3 weeks ago...

 They have more than doubled in size and are eating us out of house and home...

and this guy, I think he might be the rooster! Always in my face and right up front wanting to know what I am doing...

I went on the website from the hatchery where they came from, there are numerous possibilities of the breeds they can be:








•New Hampshire Red
•Red Star
•Speckled Sussex
•Dark Cornish
•Light Brahma
•Australorp
•Buff Orpington
•Dominique
•Barred Plymouth Rock
•White Plymouth Rock
•Partridge Plymouth Rock
•Delaware
•Golden Laced Wyandotte
•Silver Laced Wyandotte
•Columbian Wyandotte
•Black Jersey Giant
:•Rhode Island Red
This list is from the info I got off the shipping label, 25 hens and one rooster, brown layers. So if anyone can identify the breeds, please chime in. I myself am a Rhode Island Red fan and am seeing one or two possibles but not sure. So for now we will just wait and see who they grow up to be!

Holy Bee Pollen!

Over the summer I have been collecting bee pollen from one of my hives that has a pollen trap. There is not much on the how to's to do this so I have asked other beekeepers for tips.

The health benefits for bee pollen are incredible, as well as bee pollen containing vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, lipids, and protein. It comes from the pollen that collects on the bodies of bees. However, I found out why it is hard to find and expensive too! The two jars I have harvested in the picture to the right took me an hour of painstaking picking and cleaning through the pollen! The bees also deposit all kinds of other things in there too!

Honey for Sale!

 It's been a long hard road as a beekeeper for me. Many knocks along the way, learning as I go and making countless mistakes that have taught me well. This year I will have an amazing honey harvest though...

 My payoff for hard work and never giving up! It was never even a glimmer in my mind to quit. A few weeks ago I pulled out a frame of comb honey and it was as if I earned a gold medal!

 This year our farm will have this beautiful comb honey for sale as well as honey with a piece of comb in it (first picture above).

We are currently sold out of honey, but will also have Bee Pollen as well. That harvest is coming along too!
Raw and natural just the way the bees and nature intended it! I am so proud of my honey harvest and give great thanks to these little creatures who work so hard for us!

Baby Chick Update: One week later...

 Baby chick update: One week later...
Out of the 26 baby chicks we rescued last week, we were able to save 16 of them. Five days in a shipping box was very hard on them and I am so thankful that they called us.

They have doubled in size and out grown the laundry basket and are now in the largest bin I could find, my yarn bin! They are little eating, drinking and pooping machines. Doing further investigation of what happened, the person who ordered these chicks in Hawaii did have all the proper permits, it seems there was an error made at the Dept of Agriculture and someone is in a lot of trouble. I am just happy to have them, Tim and I were already talking about building an extension onto our chicken coop which we were already planning to do. We have all the material as well. These are all brown layers so we will be able to add to our egg business which is growing. I got a call from a friend two days ago who is expanding his business in Hamden and wants me to supply his new store with eggs, honey and whatever I can come up with. So these chicks were really meant to be!

Bee drinking with her "straw"

Over a few days last week, I was harvesting some honey. I have found one of the best ways to clean your equipment off from the very sticky honey is to give it back to the bees and let them clean it for me, after all they are getting back what we didn't use. I had some comb that was still pretty sticky with honey so I put it out on the deck and they went to town. If you look close at the bee in the center of the picture, she is using her proboscis or "tongue" to get deep down into the cell to get the last little bit of honey. Their proboscis is like a straw with a delicate tube and has a spoon like lobe (called a labella) that gives them the ability to suck the nectar right up. I just love these creatures and their abilities are fascinating!

The color of honey

The color of honey changes with the summer and the bees available nectar sources. If you look at the jar on the left it is lighter in color. The jar on the right was collected a couple of days ago and notice the color, more darker and also a little bit thicker too! Even the taste ranges as well. I am really looking forward to the early September final harvest to see what color it is!

Oh no, not the Greenhouse!!!

 This morning at 5:00 a.m. I went up to let the chickens out and feed them and almost walked right into this branch that came right down on top of the greenhouse during last nights storm.

 The branch is a left over remnant from last years October storm. We have been watching it from way up far hoping it fell to the left or right a little farther, but to no avail...

When I opened the door I almost died when I saw the branch that had come crashing thru the upper window...

when we looked closer inside we also realized that another branch had punctured straight thru the roof. Thank goodness none of our chickens were harmed and that was the most important part. By 4:00 p.m. this afternoon, with the help of our friend Kenny, everything was repaired and all is back to normal.

Our Honey Extractor has arrived!

This year we decided to purchase a honey extractor. With the past 4 years doing it manually, taking so much time and not being an efficient way to extract honey from the frames it was time to take the step and add a honey extractor to our equipment.

Our extractor is only a two-frame extractor and a hand crank at that as well as a low end of the kind you can buy, it's basically the economy version, but we are just happy to get one! The picture on the right is a look down inside it. You can see the two baskets that the frames sit in, you slide the top close and it acts like a centrifuge, spinning at a fast rate of speed sending the honey down the sides to the spout below that opens up to filters that empty into a dispensing bucket that fills the jars! We are gearing up for the best honey season we have ever had. I have grown as a beekeeper and this is my pay off for never giving up on the bees!

Our morning chick rescue!

This morning Tim and I got a frantic call from my friend Debbie that a box of baby chicks were unclaimed at a local post office and were in danger of dying. She asked if we could go right down and get them. Not knowing much more than that, off we went.

Apparently these chicks were shipped out of Georgia on Monday from a hatchery there, stopped in Ohio and  a woman in Hawaii ordered these 26 chicks not knowing that they have strict agricultural laws about the import of fowl and other animals into that state. They were turned away, shipped back to Ohio and the return label was in Monroe, Ct but there was no such address! These babies sat in this box for 5 days with no food or water. Tim and I made a mad dash to get them home and my rescue skills kicked in! When we opened the box there were already 4 dead, one more died a short time later. We began to warm them, hydrate them and feed them. There are a few weak ones but we have been dipping their heads in water every 15 minutes and getting them to eat. It just make me so sad that these babies had to endure such an experience.

The Chicken Aprons have arrived!

  Our Chicken Aprons have arrived! Now my girls can get some peace and heal their wounds!

 They fit over the wings and lay over their backs.

This picture gives you a view of just how comfortable of a fit they are...

 and moments later another chicken is out in the yard not even phased by the chicken apron!

She never even acted like something was on her back...

and Mr. Red your days are over of ravishing the girls! I want pretty feathered and healthy chickens in the back yard thanks to the new "Chicken Aprons"!

My Apiary and Honey!

 I thought in this blog posts I would share my apiary, aka my bee yard. If you notice I call it my bee yard because Tim is a bit afraid of the bees :(  I guess not everyone is crazy about bees the way I am! We sit on the deck and watch the bees come in and out all day long.
 The apiary sits on a hill just next to the garden and greenhouse. We have gardens planted with various flowers that attract them and provide them with a lot of pollen as well as neighboring yards. The storage bin is an essential part for keeping this and that. If you look closely each hive has a couple of cinder blocks for the smoker and tool placement.

Today I had a very exciting discovery, honey, but not just any honey! During the winter I did some research on how to get Comb Honey by putting a frame with foundation, then put a frame next to it with no foundation and repeat this process in the super which is the top box (smaller that they store "our" honey in). Not all the hives have this but this one is showing success with the process! In the first frame you can see where they have built comb in the negative space and filled it with honey!

This picture shows some of the space that they have not quite filled in yet. There are queen excluders to keep her down below so only honey is stored in these cells. I am trully excited about our bees this year, we will not only be offering honey for sale, but also lip balms, bee pollen, beeswax ornaments and comb honey! 

A ravished chicken and a Maxi Pad!

   What do you do when you discover your chicken has been pecked beyond just feathers but down to the skin and you don"t have any bandaging material handy? You improvise! I am a Wildlife Rehabilitator by trade so I am used to having to use what I have, so I whipped out the peroxide, bandaging tape, anti-biotic cream and a Maxi Pad!  First step was to clean up her deep and mean wounds and then make a make shift bandage. I will be researching how to make a "Chicken Dress" for her, I have seen these for hens who are favored by the rooster. In her case she is a chicken I took in a few years ago that was found wondering the streets in Waterbury. She is picked on by everyone, but she is the sweetest thing. When I returned her to the coop they were all afraid of her make shift "Chicken Dress"! So I guess "Sherry Lynn" Wins!

Our first honey harvest!

   Our hives have been going full speed this summer! The bees are crazy busy. I sit on the back deck in the morning with a cup of coffee and it's like an airport, 20+ bees taking off every 5 seconds from each hive, the backyard is like a runway!
   I was able to harvest some honey last week. Notice the light yellow color of the summers first harvest and it tastes so good too! The way it looks we should have a very bountiful honey harvest this year!

Black gold makes our garden "sow" beautiful!

I have been ever so busy bringing soil down to the garden. Under the manure piles lays this wonderful "black gold"! I dug, filled the wheel barrel, brought it down the hill, emptied it into the raised beds and repeated this process more times than I would like to admit! The results are amazing and our garden is getting off to a good start already this year! I have already harvested rhubarb and made strawberry rhubarb jam! If you are in need of some good soil for free, bring over some buckets and we will get you hooked up!