From "Scaries" to Berries...

Cough, cough...  AAAACHHOOO!  Excuse me.  Springtime is beautiful.  Cough, cough.  But the pollen in the air gives me fits.  It seems like there is a blanket of pollen on everything.  Take a look at the hood of Russ' truck.  It is actually a red truck underneath the yellow coating of live oak pollen.


Russ' yellow pickup truck

Okay, enough complaining.  Cough, cough.  Speaking of pollen, as I walk up to the side entrance of our house, I see that our visitors are back this year.  If you look closely in the next two photographs, you can see that a swarm of honeybees for the second year in a row, have made their home in one of the columns that supports the roof over our side door.  This is the door most people use to enter our house.  They fly up to the top of the column and with legs filled with pollen, climb into the space between the top of the column and the roof.  Their hive is inside the column, with a large honeycomb that I have no way to get to.

My beekeeping friend says I should cut a hole in the column and rob the honey, but a big hole in the column is not aesthetically appealing, now is it?  I think for now, I'll leave them alone.  They haven't bothered anybody and we just sort of ignore them.  As long as they don't sting us, they are beneficial as they will pollinate our garden and fruit trees.  That's a plus, right?  Also, I look at having a bee hive at my back door as somewhat of a discouragement to salesmen, census takers, etc.  If only I could train the bees to be discriminating.  I don't want them to chase off our friends and family:)


Our "Watch Bees"

Here are a couple in flight with one honeybee coming out and one going in as well.  Yes, I need to pressure wash the house and repaint the columns.  It is on my list, I promise. 

Not Killer Bees

Along with "friendly" animals in the insect kingdom, we have some "not so friendly" ones as well.  On the gate that leads to our pasture, I captured a shot of a caterpillar that most people in Louisiana call an asp.  They fall out of the live oak trees and usually on your neck.  They are supposed to sting you, although I've never left one on me long enough to find out. 

When I "googled" it using the name asp, I get a lot of things, but not a picture of the caterpillar in the photo below.  Actually, according to a caterpillar identification website I found, this thing turns into something called a tussock moth and will sting you and leave you with a painful rash.  Okay, I'll steer clear or squash them.  They're not beneficial to the extent that our friendly bees are.


Tussock Moth Caterpillar waiting to sting me on the gate to the pasture

Let's close with some good stuff.  Russ, Benjamin, and I went to check on the progress of the dewberries growing in the ditch on the property by our mailbox.  Bingo!  They're ripe.  Go get the bucket, boys!  In a previous post: http://ourmakersacresfamilyfarm.blogspot.com/2013/02/making-homemade-dewberry-jelly.html we showed you how we make homemade dewberry jelly with these berries that grow wild and run along ditches and fence rows.


Ripe Dewberries!

Houston, we have a problem.  The dewberry crop was not as plentiful since the farmer plowed the land last year.  He hadn't plowed in several years and by plowing, I think it killed a lot of our dewberries.  We'll have to see if we can get together with my family and go to the farm in Oberlin and pick blackberries to supplement.

Here's all we got after picking for about 15 minutes:


Slim Pickins'

Maybe another issue affecting the low yield of berries was the fact that Benjamin didn't put a single berry into the bucket.  They all went into his mouth!  They're meant to be enjoyed.  What a blessing - a crop you don't have to plant or care for.