Spring Spinning!

Spring means a lot of work on the farm! Time for other things is practically none in the Spring. The other day it was raining so I found myself inside and decided to clean the fiber studio...

 I got to cleaning this and that until I came across this bag of kid mohair in the most delighful spring colors of lavender and a light sweet green as well as a hint of blue and yellow. It was as if I suddenly was a terrier and saw a squirrel! I grabbed the bag and made my way to my Country Spinner wheel.

I spun this in a method of core spinning without a core. The trick is extending the core with your left hand and finger and wrapping with the other hand. It is fun and challenging all at once. So maybe we will get back in that room and get some organization on as long as no more "squirrels" pop up!!!

Good bee news!!!

 Yesterday was full on hive inspections! Hive #1 was hopping with lots of bees, capped brood but no queen, no larva which left me knowing I went a bit too far with trying to stop them from swarming. Hive #2 which had part of the swarm added to it. The picture of the frame was a sample of how amazing this hive is doing. They already have the second hive body drawn out so a super was added! Hive #3 netted an amazing amount of pollen that was in their pollen trap! A second hive body was added to that hive.

Little Hive #4 did not make the nuc process sadly. There was lots of burr comb and sorry girls but that is mine! No bad drawn out comb will be permitted! This will be used in my salves!
Lastly, Kisha's hive is queen right and strong, lots of brood, larva and happy bees!!!

Look who came to live with us!

Last week I got a message from a friend that these little chicks needed a home. Apparently they were hatched in a school in NYC as a class program. It was a group effort to get them here, my friend Cheryl Ann knew and arranged everything and Ellen brought them to me. No one is sure of the breeds so we will have to wait to see what they turn out to be, boys or girls too!

We have a broody girl!

I went into the chicken coop today, let the gang out and closed the gate door. We don't want mama raccoon back in the coop! I went about my way, planting some things in the garden, watering and this and that. I then went into the greenhouse, opened the coop door on the other side and discovered our chicken Ms. Ivory is brooding! She tried this at the beginning of the fall last year and I could not allow her to raise chicks then, but I will this year. When a chicken goes broody, which means she is laying on her fertilized eggs and will stop eating and drinking to hatch out her chicks. So time will tell in about 21 days if she is successful!

Composting and reducing our waste

 When you toss that banana or that paper towel into the trash, did it ever occur to you that it could help your soil and work for you? Composting everything from your egg shells to your paper towels could make your garden grow?

Even the waste from some of your animals can be a wonderful food for the worms and enzymes that break it down into beautiful black gold compost!
If you go up on the web, you can search on how to make an easy compost bin with pallets or even hay bales!
Our waste is so important to basic sustainability. In the picture, I had just dumped my rabbits used litter. We use pelleted newspaper which is very compostable! Other types of things we toss out each day that can be added is coffee grounds (and the filter too!), eggs shells, vegetable scraps, used tissues, newspaper and so on! We CAN cut down on what is tossed into the land fills daily! Turning the compost pile from time to time can net the most nutritious soil for your garden.

New Beeks and Inspections!

This past Sunday, myself, and the three new "Beeks" did inspections on the hives. Kisha's hive was queenless again. No signs of brood and the numbers were very low. It was very possible that her queen went out for her mating flight and did not make it back. We have many birds around and queens fly very slow. We found lots of swarm cells in the large hive as well as supercedure cells so we added those to Kisha's hive.

Then it was time for Pat and Sue to do an inspection as I looked on. (That is them in the picture above). It was quite a treat to have them inspecting with concentration and applying everything they have learned up to this point. Each hive had something or another going on and there was a lot of hmmmmm's going on. The bees have been quite bizarre this year. I am hoping as May moves on they will settle down and get to the business of making honey!

'Tis swarm season...

 It is that time of year, honeybee swarm season! We have been holding strong keeping them from swarming, making splits, pulling queen cells to help a hive that was not "queen right", but to no avail, they still swarmed!

With a special swarm attractant wipe, I went to work preparing a "swarm trap". These wipes have worked for me in the past.

 Using a contraption I have used in the past I fashioned my swarm trap, put it in a bush and hoped to catch my bees...and guess what? I did not! I watched for a little bit and about 1000 bees (which is not much) began to swarm and then flew away, but it was a very small swarm!

 But then I got a call! There was a call into a local animal control that a woman had a swarm in her back yard. I went and found this monster huge swarm! This swarm was about 20 times of the one I lost.

 I rushed home, got my equipment and ran back for the swarm. With the woman's pool skimmer I dropped the swarm into the nuc box and hoped I had the queen in there. It was evening so I left the hive there until the next morning.

 When I returned the next day, all the bees were in the nuc hive! The queen was in there along with about 20,000 bees! The size of a bee package!

 I taped up the box and went home with my newly caught hive! Nothing like free bees to make a beekeepers day!!!

Shearing Day on the Farm!

 Here he is, Tim the great Alpaca wrangler! This morning before our shearers got there, we harnessed and wormed everyone...

 The gang was quite suspect, with much humming going on in the barnyard.

 Our shearers arrived and got right to work shearing all the sheep first. The lambs were very upset because they did not recognize their mom's. They began screaming because they thought there were strangers in the barnyard with them!

 

 The Alpacas were done right after the sheep with some screaming. The seasoned old timers took it with a grain of salt and accepted their shearing with grace and composer.

Their teeth and hooves were trimmed. We broke our record for time from last year down to an hour and a half. A big shout out and much thanks to our friend BillieJo who came over and gave us a hand. Tim claims this as the worst day of his year, me it's not so bad! They are trimmed and ready for the hot weather ahead and we got some beautiful fiber as well!

A lesson learned by all...

 Today I made a mistake, and Mrs Raccoon also made an error in judgement. While I let the chickens out, I did not stay there and watch over them the way I should this time of year. If you look really close, this is a nursing mama who got into our coop!

 When I went in to collect eggs this was my first clue, and then suddenly mama raccoon came flying out of the nesting boxes. She only got a few eggs...

 I caught her just in time, she was on to the next nesting box. She is a hungry nursing mama and we must be the best advocates for our farm animals this time of year. We will no longer be leaving the door to the coop open when the chickens are out.

 Autumn the wonder dog was on the scene and was doing everything she could to teach that raccoon a lesson. This she learned from our past dogs and she takes this job very seriously!

 So to avoid Autumn/Mama Coon contact, Autumn was placed into the over flow chicken coop run and I proceeded to move Mama Coon out gently with a stick. She quickly got onto the roof and sat there, panting, terrified and exhausted.

Hopefully her and I have both learned a lesson, I know I sure have! We have to live with wildlife, we all have the right to be here!

Working with new "Beeks"

 Today I had the great pleasure of working with three new beekeepers! We re-visited the hives and found some interesting results. This frame was filled with brood (baby bees that are capped).

 As we went through the hives, Kisha's hive is responding quite well to their new queen cells. They have capped them and are awaiting to see who will be the queen! The over wintered hive was trying to swarm again so we made a split.

 Pat and Sue (not pictured because she took this picture) were observing and able to see numerous scenarios, from queen cells to drawn out comb to capped and uncapped brood. Their bees come next week and they are excited!

 Here is the class of 2014, the new "Beeks", Pat, Susan and Kisha! I hope they enjoy beekeeping as much as I do...

and here is our new split! Complete with two frames of brood with a few queen cells, some bee bread and a sugar water feeder. It will remain in the greenhouse for a few days sealed so the queens pheromone will dissipate and they will choose the new queens they are raising.  With any luck they will complete my hive number 4!

Tawny gets her first haircut!

 It has been a very cold Spring here in Connecticut and I have been holding off on shearing Tawny. Today was warm and a perfect day to get it done!

 Her fiber was so long and pretty. She was pulling it out her self even as much as I was brushing her so it had to come off.

 I am giving up on the scissoring method. I am terrified of cutting them so I asked around and most use clippers. I used a 40 blade and it got the job done.

 She still needed a bit of scissoring to finish it up but now I can see her eyes! I kept those beautiful ears in tack!

 A huge bag of super soft fiber fro her first cutting. It is gray, with shades of brown and some white, really pretty and soft!

She had to wear Fluffer's little sweater for now because she was insisting on licking and grooming which is very bad for a bunny to ingest her own fur. She did surprising well, but she is the most laid back bunny I have ever known. There was some grunting when we put the coat on though!

April's Farm Friend of the Month

It seems like we blinked our eyes and April flew by! So before the month ends we will be featuring good old "Norman". This boy is such a sweet soul and you can see it in his eyes. We bought a couple of alpacas a few years ago from some friends and passed on him. We were looking for special colors, etc. He is fawn on his head and white on his body. We bought three males, went home and I could not get this boy off my mind. I thought about how lonely he was going to be without his brothers who he was inseparable from. He arrived the next day and was so happy to see them. We love this boy and are so happy we got him. He is always intrigued by what you are doing and is kind to everyone! We love you Norm!!!

Bee Inspections today!

Today, Kisha and I, my new bee partner in crime, opened the hives with some interesting results. In her hive we found no evidence of a queen. The bees were disorganized, had only drawn out a small amount of comb and were clustering on three frames all the way to the left. We assumed that they either killed her or she may have flown away. In my hives, hive #1, which was brought through the winter was filled with bees, as well as brood, pollen and honey too! They were beginning to work up in the Super as well, but we did find swarm cells! This is very common this time of year with an over wintered hive. We took a frame of swarm cells and switched them into Kisha's hive. Later we checked and they were tending to them. Got to love them nurse bees! Hive #2 was a recent new package. When we opened it up, the hive was doing exactly what we wanted it to do. The girls had used some of the frames that had drawn out comb. The queen had laid eggs, larva was apparent and all was well with this hive! Then we went to hive #3 and what we found was far different from the rest. The queen in this hive was there, meandering about, had not laid a single egg. My thoughts are that she is not a bred queen. The worker bees in this hive had drawn out numerous superceder cells with nothing in them. It was a great day for Kisha because she got a chance to see so many scenarios of hive results! The coming week is filled with rain, so we will re-inspect next week and hope for some real positive results! Happy bees make the beekeeper happy too!

My new beekeeping partner and the bees are here!

 The Apiary aka Bee Yard is up and running! We are now up to 5 hives with the additional hive owned by a woman I am mentoring. I am so excited about this because it gets lonely up there working away with no one to talk to but the bees! Yesterday we worked together and 4 hands are definitely better than two! We located the queens and marked them which is so much easier to do with someone helping!

This is Kisha's new hive! The bees are active and adapting quite well. Looking forward to teaching her what I know and learning together. The bees are forever teaching us!

The lambs are weaning!

The lambs are weaning! Even our bottle fed baby has weaned off her bottle. They take forever to eat, but we distract the mom's with some hay and they can enjoy their grain.

Taking a moment for cuteness!

I'd like to take this moment to say awwwww, so cute!? This is little "Ivy" with our first time mom, Daisy. These two are madly in love with each other and we have decided to keep her! For the most part we always let our ewes keep their first ewe. There was no question from the first time we saw her!

An "Ivy" update...

It was inevitable from the moment I saw her, her name would be "Ivy". She is so cute, we are so in love with her! She is laid back like her mom and just stunning like her dad!

Our 5th generation of "Babydolls", born

 ...and here she is!!! We were so surprised to see this little one, I was secretly wishing for a white healthy little ewe and that's what Daisy had!!! She is beautiful, adorable and quite personable already!

She comes to us as the 5th generation of our line of Olde English "Babydoll" Southdown sheep! Welcome little one!

March's Farm Friend of the Month

Our farm friend of the month is our wonder dog, "Autumn". She does her very best to be the greatest guard dog ever! She learned from Jesse, who learned from Amy, who learned from Charlie, who learned from Sunny who learned from Jack! All our past farm dogs. She does her very best to keep them proud. She works tirelessly treeing raccoons and making sure that our neighbors are always okay too! She is not the easiest dog we have ever had, she is stubborn and not a good listener but takes her job very seriously!