Finally! Planting Weather!

Today it was sunny and warm and the soil had dried up enough to till up and get things planted.   Harold and I spent about 5 hours outside planting various things.   It was enough for today.   I think we are a little sunburned.  Tomorrow and the next day will be even warmer, so by the end of the week we should have all 3 of our gardens planted.  Today we planted green beans, 4 kinds of dry beans, carrots, and sweet onion plants.   I was also able to put out my flowers and hanging planters.  The cats were busy catching mice, we discovered a batch of 4 healthy new kittens, and the trumpeter swans were having a big territorial fight on the lake.   Life is good again!

Here I am planting Walla Walla sweet onions that I started from seed in February.  Look at all that "bee food" in the back yard!  But I am going to mow it tonight.

Harold prepares another row for planting onions.  Besides the Walla Walla sweet onions, I planted Candy sweet onions.   Sweet onions sell extremely well at our market booth, so we planted about 175 onions.  We also planted red onions, white onions, and yellow onions. 

Our bees were just buzzing today, not only on the dandelions, but also on our wild plum trees. 

Three of our wild plum trees.  They produce lots of plums, but we have to fight the bears and the deer for the fruit!  These plums are about the size of Italian prune plums, and are good not only for eating, but for sauces and jelly.

One of our bees working a plum blossom.  The plum blossoms are full of nectar, so this is a honey flow right now.

We stopped working to come inside and have a lunch of steak and potatoes for Harold, pasta for me, and a salad.   We enjoyed a salad from our greenhouse lettuce and spinach.  It is SO nice to have fresh salad greens again!

A batch of freshly picked Romaine, Buttercrunch lettuce and spinach.  I added some chopped hard boiled egg, grated cheese, and tossed with homemade sweet onion dressing.   It was a yummy salad!

Tomorrow we will plant cabbage plants, cucumbers, yellow beans, and winter squash.   It is so nice to be out in the warm sun again.  Makes a person feel human!

A Beekeeper's Yard

Beekeepers never really have grassy lawns - we have weeds and wildflowers!  All of this is "bee food"! To many folks in the urban areas, a lawn full of dandelions is considered bad and hundreds of dollars are spent on weed killer and many hours spent digging out the weeds.  I realize that in some neighborhoods there are city ordinances regarding dandelions.  But out here in the country we don't worry about that, and our bees are grateful for the food and pollen!  Right now our yard is buzzing so loud with thousands of bees, all working the dandelions, woodland flowers and wild plum blossoms.  When we walk out the front door the 'roar of the bees' can be almost deafening!  But that is the sound of honey making (and later on, money making!).  We are so thankful that we can live in the country where we don't have ordinances about weeds and wildflowers.

  I took a few photos of various areas of our yard.   There are many areas all over the place in everyone's yard that our bees are working now.   Bees will go up to 3 miles for food and pollen, although most of our bees only have to stick around our yard.   I can hardly walk around without almost stepping on bees working the dandelions.  I do have to mow the yard this week, but I mow in the morning before they get out of the hive, or in the early evening when the bees are back into the hives, and I only mow a section a day so as to leave plenty of areas for the bees to work.   Soon the dandelions will be gone, and other flowers such as birdsfoot trefoil, basswood flowers, and wild asters and clovers will be their food of choice.

What a buffet of dandelions for the bees!

Another area of "bee food" - you can see what a paradise this is for our bees!

Some of these dandelions are 6 inches tall and 2 inches in diameter - really big ones for bee food!

A couple of our hard working forage bees on the dandelions.

The bees are lined up in front of the hives to bring in the nectar and pollen.  All 8 of our hives are busy now with active bees.

Repairing Some Wind Damage

A few days ago we had some very gusty winds all day long that took off big chunks of our roof shingles.   We watched in horror as section after section flew off and landed on the ground.   Today it is sunny and not windy or rainy, so Harold is up on the roof repairing what he can.   We hope to finish putting on a metal roof this summer, which will be a permanent fix to our roof problem.   We have part of the back of the house done already with metal roofing, but we need to do the front of the house very soon.   We gathered what we could for shingle sections, and Harold used his trusty tractor/loader to carry them to the roof.   He went up on a ladder.   I took a few pictures, in between worrying about Harold falling!

Harold nails shingles back on after the wind damage.

The sections came off in random pieces, so it is like a puzzle to figure out where the pieces go.   Harold studies where the next piece goes.

Just about done.   A brave guy to be standing up on the roof like that!

We find so many uses for this tractor.  How wonderful that Harold can do repairs like this.

Now that he is finished I can quit worrying!

Trying Something New

Today we decided to try planting a couple rows of potatoes in straw.    We have heard that this method is an easy way to grow potatoes and has many advantages.  This method cuts down on potato bugs, weeds don't' grow as much, and a person doesn't have to hill up the rows, which can be back breaking work with a hoe.   When it is time to harvest the potatoes, the plants lift right up without digging.   We are going to try a few rows of the traditional way, too, and then compare notes.    Our goal for the straw potatoes is to harvest them at the baby stage - i.e. "new potatoes" - which sell like hotcakes at our market booth.   I will have to keep you posted on how this method works.   If anyone has already tried this method, please let me know how it worked out!

Harold has finished one row already and is starting another row.   Several of our ever-helpful farm cats hung around to watch and play.

Harold dug about a foot wide trench in the newly tilled soil.   We also added a thick layer of composted manure we got from another farmer before digging.

Harold sets in the potato pieces that we cut a few days ago.  Cutting up the potatoes ahead of time allows the surfaces to heal, and the potatoes don't rot quite so quickly before they get going.

One of our farm cats Tommy  intently watches from a distance.  Is he wondering what 'the human' is doing?

Farm cat Boots Randolph watches, too, but thinks it is pretty boring.

Covering up the second row with straw.  Now Boots Randolph the cat, gets closer to watch Harold.   Flinging hay around is interesting now!  Hopefully our "ever-helpful" cats won't dig up the potatoes in the straw, as they love to dig.

Bee Day! The Start of Season #12

Today we went to Hackensack Minnesota to pick up 4 packages of bees.   It is a considerable drive to the bee place there, a little over 2 hours.  Fortunately the weather was good, the rain held off, and we had a good day to start our 12th year of beekeeping.  Before we got to Hackensack, we stopped at a store along the way to pick up a couple donuts to eat.   There was a guy there giving away large size Tootsie Rolls from the Knights of Columbus.  We struck up a conversation with him, telling him that we were going to get 4 boxes of bees.  He looked at our car, and said "You're going to put BEES in your car?  Are you really going to drive with a bunch of bees in there?"  He was amazed that we would do that.  We explained to him that the bees come in screened boxes and behave very well, but he just couldn't visualize this!  Here is what we mean:

The four boxes of package bees fit nicely in the back seat of my little car. 

A close-up of one of the boxes of bees.  We bought 3 pound packages of Italian breed bees.  They are good honey makers and a docile breed.

As we were driving through Akeley Minnesota, we stopped so I could have my picture taken with Paul Bunyan!  Paul Bunyan is the legendary lumberjack up in the northwoods country.   This little town has a very large cement replica of Paul Bunyan at the edge of town, and lots of folks stop to take pictures with him.

Paul Bunyan is a big fellow! 

When we got home, we got the bees situated in their new home.  Still, the rain held up long enough to get the Italian girls settled in.

Harold sprays the bees down with a sugar syrup to calm the bees.

Harold removes the can of feed and the queen box.  Hey, Harold - zip up your bee suit and put that hood on!  He didn't, and got stung!

Harold removes the queen in her little box before preparing to shake the rest of the bees into the hive.

After shaking the bees into the box, Harold drops in the queen.

After the bees are shaken in, a vented top cover is put on.

Harold shakes more bees into another hive.

After the bees are in the hive, Harold puts the queen inside.  You can just barely see the queen in the little box in Harold's left hand.

 

After we got the bees settled in, we propped up the boxes in front of the hives because some of the bees never want to leave the original cage when shaken.  After the queen is placed into the hive, the bees eventually learn that she is in there and they go into the correct hive.

Some of the bees are stubborn and just won't leave the original container.   But eventually they all figure out where to go.

Here are bees left in the original container crawling into the correct hive, since their queen is now in there!

The last hive is done!

All the bees are into their correct hives, and the covers are put on, and everyone is happy!  The powerful electric fencer is turned on to deter the bears!  In about 10 days we will inspect the hives.

This evening if the weather holds, we will install more bees that we bought from a fellow beekeeper.  We bought two double deep hives that we will split, and two extra queens, so that we will have 4 more hives.  This season we will have 8 hives.   We used to have a lot more hives but they were not ours - we were managing them for another beekeeper.  We could gather and sell the honey, but the hives were not all ours.   These hives all went to California.  But we no longer do that.   In recent years we have purchased and managed our own hives and we keep them in our own yard.   This winter our bees did not survive in spite of our best efforts, so we had to buy all new bees. 

And so, season number 12 begins!  Right now these bees have plenty of food until things start to bloom around here.  The bottom hive boxes are full of honey packed frames for the bees, as well as most of the top box frames.   Around here now, the willows are putting on pollen, so the bees will have plenty to gather for their brood.   Within a week or so, the dandelions will be blooming and the bees love that!    By the way - I only got stung once taking these pictures!  It was my camera finger, of course!