It's All Good Bee Food!

Check out what just about every inch of our yard looks like here on Honey B Farm - dandelions everywhere! Now I know all you city folks spend hours and big money trying to get rid of dandelions and pour weed killers on the yard.  But for us, dandelions mean bee food, money, and successful hives!  Right now the dandelions are providing a honey flow for the bees to stock up on their own honey stores for making lots of brood and getting the hive strong.  When the bees have filled up a couple deep hive boxes full of brood and honey, then we start putting on honey supers for OUR honey!  Of course by that time the dandelions will be gone and the summer wildflowers will be in bloom and that means our wildflower honey will be made by our happy bees!   With all the rain we've had lately I haven't been able to mow the lawn and so here's what happens as you can see.  But no worries - even when I cut the grass, within hours the dandelions are back up providing food for the bees.   Now all you city folks, don't laugh - things are different out here, you know.............and especially so for beekeepers like us!   Most folks see a field of weeds and we see a field of "liquid gold honey" !

A honeybee's Field of Dreams

Kitten update

Here's the latest photo of Rosie and Catnip.  Rosie seems to be a little less camera shy than Catnip, who still won't look at the camera.    Tippy Girl had 5 kittens a while back, but when I checked the box today there were only 3 in there and the others were nowhere in sight.  Well, when you have semi-wild outdoor farm cats you never know what's going on.    I will probably never know what happened to them.  One of our other mama cats, Skunker, is probably going to have kittens any day as she spends a lot of time close to home and inside the cat house in one of the birthing boxes I have prepared.

Scenery and Critters

I walked around the farm this afternoon taking pictures of what things look like now.   The trees are blooming out, fruit trees are starting to blossom, and all the animals were out enjoying a sunny afternoon.  I planted 35 tomato plants this afternoon, and lots of  seeds, but I still have a long way to go AND more tomato plants to plant.  An update on the 2 kittens I told you about a while back - I named them Rosie and Catnip and they are running around the outdoor cat house now!  They look nice and healthy.  Two days ago Tippy Girl had 5 kittens!!  Four of them are dark grey and one is black and white.   I have also included a photo of one of our horses, Dick, who is losing his winter coat and looks shaggy now, but soon he will be sleek.   I also (reluctantly and embarrassingly so!) show you my pitiful looking raspberry patch only just so you can see how much work everything is around here.  It's not easy growing your own food!  A person could work 24/7 and still not finish.  I need to weed whack a path and pull out the dry weeds.  Then maybe I could take an 'after' photo. 
     Harold is fixing the wheel bearing on the Echo today.  Tomorrow he will get the mower going and we need to cut grass, but today we are letting the dandelions grow for the bees - they really appreciate those flowers!  The bees were really buzzing today!  Next Tuesday Harold will be fitted for a face mask for his radiation procedure.  Then we will add daily trips to Fargo on top of all our homesteading chores.   There's never a dull moment around here. 
     As soon as I can I will get a photo of Tippy Girl's 5 new kittens.  These were her first and she sure had a big load!  And so............this is what's happening at Honey B Farm.......

My sorry looking raspberry patch - don't laugh - it'll look better soon!

About 1/2 planted, those are cabbages in the cans

My grapes actually have life!

 Belgian horse Dick losing his winter coat - 1/2 shaggy, 1/2 sleek

Our fine lookin' rooster Jerome - he crows all day long, gotta keep the girls happy!

Lazy tomcat Sampson sunning in the road and looking like a roadkill. 

Beautiful "Lake Harold" - one of 2 ponds on our land

Our road

The Good, the Bad, and Everything in Between

I was able to plant about 1/2 of my main garden on the 16th as I wrote about.   Then the rains came.  And it rained, and it rained, and it rained and it is still raining!  Hopefully I will be able to get everything else planted very soon.   In spite of all the rain, a few of our Nanking cherry trees are blooming - hardy little things, bless their hearts!  I am not sure, though, how well they will do this year as the mice chewed the bark off the bottoms of all the branches this winter.   The snow was deep, the winter was long, and the mice were hungry.  Harold and I are thinking we should paint something on the bark to help heal the stems.  Maybe wax?  Paint?  Tar?  Garden wrap?  We are doing research on the internet as to what to use.  The very fact that a couple of the bushes are blooming is a good sign, but they might not last more than this season.   The mice ate through our grape vines, too, but one vine shows signs of life.
     The constant rains are stressing out my peppers I planted.   The leaves are a whitish/yellow.  Maybe a couple days of sunshine will help.
     It has poured rain in more than one way, too.  Yesterday Harold had a PET scan to check for signs of new cancer.  Today we got the results - he has a new tumor on his spine up near the neck.  This is what has been giving him pain.  But his attitude is so good!   He says he is actually glad he has a "fixable" thing like a tumor instead of a non-fixable thing like lifelong arthritis.   Harold always has such a positive attitude - I learn a lot from him!  We will have to put garden work and yard work and house work on hold for a while.  Sometime within the next week or so we will be driving to Fargo every day for 3 weeks for radiation.   We go before that for Harold to get fitted with some kind of face mask made just for him, which connects to the radiation table and keeps his head and neck absolutely still during radiation.
     We hope my little car holds up.   Today the front wheel bearing went out (or it will very soon) and the check engine light has been on for about a week.  With over 188,000 miles on the car I suppose it's time for things to break down.   Well, we will get through all this.  Harold will be fine.  The garden will prosper in spite of too much rain, and a lot of neglect.  We certainly needed the moisture, so at least our drought is ended.   As soon as I can get to the garden I will post those promised photos!

Planting Day

Today Harold and I are planting up as much of the gardens as we can.  I know........there is the absolute MINNESOTA PLANTING RULE that states under no circumstances should a person plant before traditional Memorial Day.   But this year every gardener I know (including myself!) is going to break this rule!  The 10 day forecast doesn't call for any frost warnings, and so, why wait?  Ten days from now would be - almost -  traditional Memorial Day anyway.   Everyone is so tired of our long winter and almost no spring, so we're " yust goin' crazy" out there now! (To quote those old Norwegians).   Rain is predicted for this evening and off and on this weekend, so that will be perfect for the plants.   Besides, I have already trimmed my nearly 3 feet tall tomatoes several times already and they need to go outside!   I'm ready to reclaim my living room and get the huge sawhorses and planks out of there and the grow lights and rearrange things the way they're supposed to be. 
     Yesterday we planted potatoes (red Nordland) and some corn, a variety of heirloom open-pollinated bi-color corn called Double Standard.   Open pollinated means you can save the seed from year to year and plant.   You can't do that with hybrid seeds. 

The 2013 garden season has begun!!  Look for garden photo updates soon!

Getting The Porch Sided

Today the pastor from our church, Ben Carpenter, came out with 3 of his sons (Justin, Jordan and Josiah) to help put siding on the front of the house around the porch.   What a wonderful blessing to have this help!    Now we only have 1 side and part of another to finish regarding siding.  It's only been - how many years since we built this place? - 7 years?  Well, better late than never.  It was a warm but windy day and with all the guys doing a little something, work went quickly.   Harold and Justin did most of the cutting out in the yard with the Skil Saw, the other boys and the pastor did the positioning of the boards, and I served as a photographer, "go-fer", and commentator (not sure how important that last one is, but......).  Here's a few photos of the work and progress made.

Getting the house wrap on was the first thing.

Window cut out and ready to start putting on siding.

Halfway done!  Good work, guys!

The hard working crew is proudly finished.

First New Kittens

Our mama kitty Barbette had the first kittens of the season just a little over 2 weeks ago.  Looks like we have one boy and one girl.  The light orange one is probably a male.  There are 4 other pregnant farm cats, so there will be other kitty pictures coming in the future.  One of our wild mamas had kittens out in the pasture machinery somewhere, and I can't get near her or her kittens.   She will just have to take care of things herself if that's the way she wants to be!  Any name suggestions for these two?  I am running out of ideas after all these years.

First new kittens, about 2 weeks or so old. 

Mama Barbette

A New Way to Till the Garden!

We finally got smart and got a riding tiller last fall.  Harold used his sugar beet hauling money to buy an International Cub Lo-Boy tractor with 3 attachments - a tiller, a grader, and a mower.   We usually till up the garden with a walk behind Troybuilt tiller.   But it is so bulky and heavy and hard to manage.  When Harold came down with bone marrow cancer, managing the heavy tiller was extremely difficult.   And I certainly can't use it.  The last couple years we had the pastor from our church come out and help till the garden, and one year a young friend in his early 20's came out and did tilling.  But this year we can just ride and till!   Our garden is quite large (we actually have 2 large gardens), and the rider really makes sense, especially for old folks like us!  So here are photos of me and Harold getting the garden ready for this year's crops.

My first time with this thing, just getting started.

The tractor expert enjoying the new toy!

Look at the nice smooth job the tractor does!

The finished job.  The old Troybuilt is next to the edge of the garden.

Morning Cacophony

The past few mornings have been incredibly noisy!  Minnesota's wildlife critters have  been anxious to 'get on with spring', since they came back in early April and there has been snow on the ground ever since.  But now the snow is gone, the ponds and lakes are starting to ice out and the birds have some water!  Since everything is behind schedule, the birds are going strong now.   Starting around 5 a.m. the trumpeter swans start their noisy chatter (imagine someone playing staccato notes on a trumpet), the Canadian geese honk away, the crows - some of the noisiest birds around  - do their thing, the Kildeer scream while flying around, the song sparrows are singing, the robins are chirping their "cheer-up, cheerily" song, the pond ducks are quacking, the farm cats are meowing at each other (and telling me to hurry up and get out there with food), the woodpeckers are banging away at metal machinery in the pasture calling for mates and others are banging away at trees, and today the loons also arrived and have started their calling.   Imagine all this TOGETHER from 5 a.m. to about 9 or 10 a.m. and you get a good idea of the lively noise up here in the north country!   But I'm not complaining!!  How wonderful it is to have all our birds back.  Spring has truly arrived!
     The snow is gone, our ponds will probably ice out today with the predicted rain, and the Nanking cherry trees are about to bloom out.   The grass is getting green (well, grass is a rather loose term to use for the green stuff growing in the yard), and the trees are budding out.   The new bees are coming back to the hive loaded with pollen from the willows and popples. 
     Oh - in addition to the sounds of the wild birds, add the constant crowing of our roosters in the morning.    What a symphony!!

The Texas Girls are Here!

Today we went to Clearbrook Minnesota to pick up 4 nuc boxes of bees.  A nuc is 4 or 5 frames of bees, brood (eggs) and a queen.   We add 4 or 5 frames of stored honey frames for them, and then we have a complete hive.  These bees came from just north of Beaumont Texas, so they're a long way from home.  Each nuc has about 15,000 bees, so we added about 60,000 bees to our place today.  As this new hive grows and thrives, we will add more boxes on top for them to expand in, and we'll be back in the bee business this spring.  Right now the only natural plants for them are some pussy willows, but soon there will be dandelions, and a few early wildflowers in the woods (wood violets, blood root flowers, and columbine).   We will probably give them some pollen patties for a while, and they will use up the stored honey in the spare frames for food.   Here are a few photos of the guys putting their frames of bees into our boxes in the nuc yard.

Lifting up a frame of bees to put into our bee box

 

 

Bees everywhere!  Bee veils required.

A truck load of Texas bees ready to go to their new home

Chickens Runnin' Wild

All winter long (and it's been a looooooong winter!), the hens have been cooped up 24/7.   Now that spring is finally here, they can roam free during the day.   In the evening we check to see that they are on the roost, then shut the door.   During the day we leave the door to the hen house open for the girls to lay eggs in the nesting boxes, but otherwise they run around like crazy, enjoying the fresh air and freedom! Life is good for them now!

Free at last!