Busy Bees (And Us, Too!)

It's been a while since I posted anything on this blog.  I have had cataract surgery on my eyes earlier this month, first one eye, then a week later the other one.  In between surgeries, my vision was not the best, as one eye was 'perfect' and the other one was very cloudy.  Now that both eyes are done and healed, I can see great!!  I am still in the recovery stage of having to use eye drops several times a day, but that's no big deal.  At the end of next month I will be able to be fitted for new glasses to correct for astigmatism and reading, and a slight vision correction in one eye.  Cataract surgery apparently doesn't give a person 20-20 vision, but comes close.
     Then, we have been busy weeding and tilling and doing yard work.  That is, in between rain storms!   With all the rain, weeds sure can grow!  But everything is growing very nicely, and we have started up our farmer's market booth, selling several varieties of fresh leaf lettuce and head lettuce and romaine and spinach and herbs.   Soon we can add lots of cabbages to the booth.  Check out these (very straight!) rows of cabbages:

Three rows of various varieties of cabbages beginning to head up.  Each row is 50 ft long. 

Our bees have been really working hard!  This year so far our hives are doing well and are very healthy.   Lots of activity today as the bees bring in lots of yellow pollen.

All three hives have bees coming and going like crazy!

I've had a big problem with barn swallows lately!  These birds insist on making a mud nest above either the living room door, or a back window.  I don't want them there and have tried just about everything to discourage them.  I've tried hosing down the mud they gather with a pressure hose, and using "fake birds", too.   But so far, what has worked the best is to tape strips of shiny tin foil above the door and windows.   The birds just don't like that! They don't know what it is, and the shininess of the foil must scare them.

Hanging strips of tin foil above the door seems to deter the barn swallows from building mud nests above the door!

My flowers are so pretty now, especially with all the rain we've had lately.   Here are some views of my petunias on the Ferris wheel Harold made for me, and also the specialty marigolds I started from seed in a pot just outside the greenhouse door.

Lovely shades of pink, purple, blue and red petunias!

A colorful and large variety of marigolds.

We have had many new kittens this year so far.   Some are doing very well, and some died early due to weather exposure and Mama cats who didn't care for the newborns like they should have.  But we still have plenty of mouse catchers on the farm!  Here is one of the older kittens born in mid April.

One of the 10 week old kittens contemplating life under the porch.

And that's the way things are as of today!

A Little Bit Of Everything

It's been a busy time here on Honey B Farm.  We got the gardens planted in between rain storms, and things are growing nicely (including weeds!)  Our new bees are very busy and working hard, and the hives are doing superbly well!   Yard work keeps us busy, too.   Harold has been fixing various things on his tractor/loader, and fixing the mower.   I've been busy trying to keep up with the constant grass cutting.   Yesterday a drive belt on the riding mower wore out and started burning.  So we went to town and got a new belt and Harold fixed that this morning so I could continue mowing.
     In between all of this, I have been recovering from cataract surgery on my right eye.   This coming Wednesday I get the other eye done.   Oh what a difference!!  When I look at everything with my newly fixed eye, everything is so bright and colorful and sharp!   The vision in the other eye is cloudy and yellow.  It will be SO good to have both eyes clear and sharp again!  I need to put special eye drops in 4 times a day, and I am not supposed to bend over a lot or put strain on the eye or lift anything heavy for a week after surgery.    That means I can't bend over and pull weeds.   So the weeds will just have to grow for another week or so.   Harold did what he could with weed pulling and tilling, but it takes two people to keep up with all of our gardens and yard work. 
     I walked around the place today taking new pictures of how things look now.   So far we have had a good June with gentle rains and warm temperatures.   The only thing to complain about is the tent caterpillars.   Those green/black worms are eating everything.   They especially like fruit trees and berry bushes.   We can't really use insecticides here because of our bees.   Harold rigged up a contraption to ward off the tent caterpillars from our apple trees.   They come up from the ground and work their way up the tree trunk to the tree, so we put a bucket or a milk jug around the tree trunk and seal it off.   The worms try to get up the trunk and fall back to the ground with this system.   It has worked well for us for the past few years.  Here are a couple of pictures of what I am talking about:

On a small apple tree we can use a milk jug to deter the worms.

Our large apple tree needed a bucket to keep the worms off.

The apple tree is going to produce apples this year!

One of many young apples on our tree.   These apples are Prairie Magic variety.

The bees are doing so well.   Today we witnessed a massive hatching of young bees and the orientation flights they do around the front of the hive.  Here is what we saw:

Many newly hatched bees learning where home is, and doing their "orientation flights" to practice going into and out of the hive.

Harold also put an electric fence around the garden.   This will keep the deer out.   I have tried many things over the years, but an electric fence works the best!

Harold is stringing the wire all around the garden.   We use a solar powered fencer for this garden.  It produces enough of a zap to keep the deer out, but we have a very powerful electric plug in type fencer around the beehives to keep the bears out.  We haven't seen any more bears since my blog post about them a while back.

Every year I start my flowers from seed.   This year I think some of my petunias are especially pretty in shades of deep purple, blue and various shades of rose.

Isn't this a gorgeous deep blue petunia? I am very proud of my efforts at seed starting on these flowers.

Check out these purple and pink beauties!

This will be a good year for our gooseberries, too!  That is, IF the caterpillars will leave them alone!  Gooseberries are good to eat just as is, but they also make exceptional jelly.

Gooseberries end up being a deep pink when ripe, and about an inch in diameter.

I have tried several new varieties of lettuces this year in the greenhouse.   I hit upon an heirloom variety called Tom Thumb Lettuce which I really love!   This will definitely be a yearly favorite!   It grows into small compact heads of delicious mild and tasty lettuce, about 8 inches in diameter and about 4 or 5 inches high.  If you have a garden and you like to grow your own lettuce, I highly recommend Tom Thumb variety!

Here are 4 heads of great tasting Tom Thumb lettuce, an heirloom variety.

Things are doing well in the greenhouse.   I am on my second crop on some things in there!

Tomatoes and lettuce on the left, peppers and garlic and leeks and carnations in the middle, and lettuces and spinach on the right. 

We mowed a path to the lake through the un-mowed section of our yard.  We call this small lake Two Squaw Lake, and we share the ownership of it with our neighbors.   It makes for a nice trip down to the water on this path!

The path to Two Squaw Lake through our prairie. The front of the lake is a bog, but the back part is a nice sized lake.

The front part of the lake is more or less a bog, but it supports a lot of wildlife.  Canadian geese and loons and wood ducks use the water for nesting, song birds live all around it, too, and there are plenty of muskrats. 

Another view of the path, looking towards the house.  We like to sit on our raised porch and look out over the lake and the woods, and listen to the loons in the evening.   The path looks flat, but it's really a bit of an incline.   I get my exercise walking up this hill!

And that's the status of everything around here as of today!  Life is good and peaceful here and we are so blessed.   The weatherman is predicting some very bad storms tomorrow, but we hope it doesn't include hail!  We could use the rain, but not the hail!

Something New To Grow

My husband and I enjoy growing all kinds of things.  Our motto is 'if others can grow it, so can we'!  My son asked us if we would grow some hops for him, as he is into artisan beer brewing.   We discovered that hops can be used for other things besides beer, namely sleep pillows for insomnia and teas for indigestion, diarrhea, and also for folks with Crohn's disease.  Since we have the room to grow things, and have never tried to grow hops, we thought this would be a fun venture for us.  There is apparently quite a market for hops these days.  Hops require special support as they can grow to 25 feet tall!  We don't know much about them, but we have read enough to get started, and this will certainly be a learning experience.   I am anxious to try out the sleep pillow thing, as I often find myself having difficulty falling asleep.    The hops pillows are not something you sleep on, instead they are small pillows that are filled with dry hops and crushed each night to emit a scent that is supposed to help make a person feel a bit drowsy.   Sort of like aroma therapy.  We shall see.   I am skeptical about that, but I see that hops pillows are sold by many vendors in eBay.  Hops are also used in scented soaps and apparently you can eat them, too, in various recipes.  Maybe the soap thing would be more to my liking!
     Anyway, here is what we have done so far:
We bought 10 rhizomes from a garden supply place in Washington state and they grew like crazy in my big bay window in the living room.

The hops plants ready to put out in the field

Yesterday Harold used the tractor loader to sink a 20 foot tall post in the pasture.  He put a large chain around the top and from that we strung lines down to posts in the ground for the plants to grow on.   Hops grow up the rope and wrap themselves around the twine in a clockwise direction.   We have 10 lines strung to the top of this pole.  Harold is planting one of the hops plants.  The twine is a special rough textured rope especially designed for hops growers. 

A close up of Harold planting one of the hops plants

After planting one of the vines, we began to wrap the vine in a clockwise direction to get the plant started on the special twine.

Harold made 2 ft tall stakes out of scrap iron and welded a washer to the top.  These stakes will make a strong support for the vines as they grow up the 25 foot twine.

You can see several vines already planted in this photo.  We can pump water from our lake if need be to water the plants, if hand watering isn't enough.

It will certainly be fun to watch these vines grow!  Harvesting will be a new venture too!  If we get enough of the hops, my son can have plenty for his brewing purposes, and I will be anxious to try out the sleep pillows and hops soap making.  I have heard that hops are quite fragrant.  We have honey and beeswax also for making soap.   Who knows?   That might be my next new hobby! (As if I need something else to keep me busy!)