Giving the Honeybees a Jump Start

It is 79 degrees right now and feels like spring (or even early summer).  It won't be long now until we see new growth on trees and other plants.  The songbirds were singing loudly this morning, signaling their happiness in the change of seasons.  That's not saying that we won't get another freeze or frost, but the long range forecast through February 25th shows the lowest temps at 52 degrees with highs in the upper 70s on most days.

It's time to feed the bees!  We want to make sure they have enough stores of food to make it until the pollen and nectar starts flowing, especially since we pulled honey this fall.  Many bees starve in the early spring.  Lots of beekeepers feed their bees with sugar water, but we opt for a more natural food source.  We are feeding them back some of their own honey.  

When we pulled honey, we processed the beeswax in a crockpot with a little water.  This process separates the honey and water from the beeswax as the beeswax, upon cooling, will solidify at the top.  The remaining honey/water mixture is frozen in gallon-sized Ziploc bags for what we are about to do.

Honey water thawed and ready to feed to the bees

We use a large rubber feed tub in which we fill partially with pine straw.  The pine straw is used as a flotation device so that the bees have something to stand on while drinking the honey water.  If you don't do this, and we learned the hard way, many bees drown in the sticky concoction.  I then poured the honey water over the pine straw into the feed tub.

This was done at 8:06AM

The honeybees weren't moving until around 10AM, but at that time they found it.  Like a bad rumor being spread, the first bee that located this feed source reported back to one of the four hives and before you knew it, all the bees in all four hives were clamoring to get it.  There was a steady stream of bees from the hive to the honey water.  You quickly understand the term beeline.  They made a beeline for the honey!

It was a little dangerous to be this close to them without my bee suit.  The buzzing was loud and they were getting after it.

Here's a close-up shot of the bees getting their fill of the honey:

We took the photo below at 12:45PM, right after lunch.  There was absolutely nothing left.  Even the pine straw that once was a sticky mess had been scoured dry.  We have a few more bags of honey water and we'll be feeding them once a week until our supply runs dry.

By 12:45PM the cupboard was bare!

They bring all this back to the hive and fill cells in the frames and they'll use this as a feed source.  What feeding the bees also does is "fool" the queen into thinking that the bees are bringing in nectar - that it is spring.  She'll immediately begin to lay more eggs as she knows she needs more workers to gather pollen and nectar since it is spring, even though it's not quite spring yet.  This gives the hives a jump start, so that when spring actually arrives, there are enough bees to do all the work.  In economic terms, it is 'full employment.'  This also relates to more honey production, which is good for the colony and good for us too!

Pulling Fall Honey

We pulled honey in the summer in early July and got 20.5 gallons of honey off of our four hives.  We've never pulled fall honey before, but this year we decided to see what we could get. Join us while we show you our extracting process.  First, we got the smoker going and went out to the hives, opening the boxes and going through each frame, pulling out only the frames that were completely capped.  

We used an organic compound on a fume board to push the bees off of the honey.  Then about 20 yards away I had a leaf blower ready and we blew the remaining bees off of the frames and then carried the boxes of honey in the garage.  We ended up getting 22 frames of honey.  Full boxes of honey are heavy!

We don't have our own extractor or uncapping trays, so we borrowed from a friend and set up in the garage, blocking off any way for the bees to follow us inside.  The previous day we had cleaned all of the extracting equipment.  Now, it is time to get the show on the road.

As mentioned the honey is all capped.  That means the moisture percent is correct and the bees have put a protective layer of beeswax on top to seal it off.  In order to extract it, you've got to take the cap off first.  Tricia accomplished this with a sharp knife.  The was falls into the tray along with some of the honey that drips out.

The uncapped frames are placed in the extractor.  It holds 8 frames at a time.  This extractor is manual.  That means you turn the crank by hand and the frames in the rack spin. Centrifugal force causes the honey to be slung out of the frame and on the walls of the drum and it drips down to the bottom.  When the frames went in, they were heavy, but once you're done, the frames now empty of honey are light.

Once we've spun 8 frames, we opened the honey gate at the bottom and a rich, sweet flow of fall honey comes out where it goes through a double screen before ending up in a food grade 5 gallon bucket.

These are the cappings in the uncapping tray.  Honey drips out of the wax into a reservoir in the tray below from which we drain the honey.  The beeswax will be rendered and we'll make candles and lip balm with it.

Once we emptied everything, we had roughly 5 gallons of honey for our fall honey project!  We are pleased with our first fall honey project.

I took a picture of our spring honey and our fall honey side by side.  What is easily seen is the difference in the honey.  The boxes are in the same place.  What's the difference, you may ask?  It's what the bees are foraging on in spring versus fall.  In the spring, the bees are largely getting nectar from Chinese tallow trees, privet and white dutch clover.  In the fall, however, the honey is mainly derived from wildflowers and Goldenrod.  This generates a darker, stronger honey.

Spring honey on left, Fall honey on right

Our fall honey pull yielded a little more than five gallons.  That's a success in our book.  In the next post (or the next) we'll finish up talking about honey.

Spring is a Berry Nice Time of Year

There is an old saying around here that says, "It's not officially spring until the pecan trees bud out."  Well, here we go!:

Speaking of pecans, I've finally gotten around to shelling the 2 five gallon buckets of pecans we collected underneath our trees.  Tricia took them to our feed store here in town and they crack them.  I like to sit and mindlessly shell the pecans.  They freeze nicely, so we have gallons of pecans frozen, waiting to be turned into pies and such.

I wanted to show you the strawberries.  We've planted strawberries in the past.  I'd like to say we had success growing them, but no, I'd be telling you a tall tale.  In years past slugs would eat them before we could get to them.  I decided to try again this year.  I ordered 22 bare root strawberry plants.  They looked very strange, almost dead, when they arrived.  I planted them, ensuring that the crowns were above ground and they began growing immediately.  We had fresh, green growth the very next day.  

Soon, we began to see blooms and little berries.

It was a beautiful sight to behold.  Right there in amongst the sweet potatoes were red, ripe strawberries.

Each morning, we gather a handful of fresh strawberries and wash them, chill them, and snack on them.  I've got to say they are very sweet.  Even Russ, who is not real big on compliments, told us that they are some of the sweetest he's ever eaten.  The variety is called Ozark Beauty.

So far, the slugs have NOT been eating them.  I was prepared for that.  Someone told me that the remedy for slugs in the garden is beer.  I was told that if you pour a saucer of beer and set it down in the strawberry patch, slugs are attracted to it, fall in the beer and drown.  But no slugs have bellied up to the bar yet.

One thing we have had is Birds eating on the berries.  A few have holes where the birds peck at them.  If this continues, we have a net that we can string out over the strawberries to protect them.  I was also told to make some "strawberry rocks" and scatter around in the berry patch.  Strawberry rocks are ordinary round stones that you paint red and place around the base of the plants.  As the story goes, birds arrive to eat berries and instead are fooled and peck into a hard, red rock.  They soon get discouraged and give up.  Interesting strategy.  We'll see how that works out.  Strawberries have a difficult time with slugs and birds and other pests.  That's why strawberries are the crop that you always read about that have more pesticides on them than anything else on the produce aisle.

Spring On the Way!

 

In the past few days it has warmed up into the 70's in the afternoons.  The remaining hens that we have left after the marauding minks massacres, are laying.  We are collecting about 18-20 eggs each day.  That's enough to where we've put the For Sale sign out in front of the house again.  We sold 5 dozen today.  The sales help us with barnyard expenses and we eat PLENTY of eggs as well.  

As you can see in the photo above the hens lay primarily brown eggs but we do have some that lay beautiful eggs in various shades of blue and green.  The photo also evidences the white Dutch clover that is coming up all over the yard.  Neighbors are already mowing, but I'll put off mowing until maybe May.  We'll cycle the cows through the yard to clean up the clover and other winter grass.  We'll allow our honeybees to frequent the blooms in the yard as well.

This early spring has me itching to get in the garden.  Here's what we've done so far:

This is my first year to plant bare root strawberries.  I ordered about 40 Ozark Beauty plants and got them planted in the garden in two rows, planted about 12 inches apart.  It's only been three days and almost every plant has new leaves.  I'm anxious to see how these do.  I've planted strawberry plants in the garden before, but slugs and snails have given me fits.  I'll anticipate that problem this year and find a solution.

On a 16 foot long trellis, I planted 8 feet of Sugar Snap Peas with the remaining 8 feet split between Boston pickling cucumbers and Marketmore cucumbers.  On a separate 8 foot trellis, I planted some Suyo long cucumbers.  All from seed.  The growing calendar showed a March 1 plant date from seed for all of these, but I looked at the 10 day forecast and jumped the gun a little.

Tomorrow I plan on planting an 8 foot trellis of Blackeye Butter beans and a 15 foot row of snap beans.  We harvested the last row of Danvers carrots today, so that makes some room for additional planting that we'll be doing in the next week.  We'll put up the carrots tomorrow or this weekend.  I keep checking the progress on the Irish potatoes that we planted on February 14th.  So far nothing has popped up out of the ground.  I'm a little impatient, so I'll be walking out and checking every day.

Spring is such a lovely time.  We're looking forward to enjoying some spectacular weather!

A Springtime Walk Through the Garden

Today was a gorgeous spring day.  It was one of those days that you want to relish and enjoy before the humidity, mosquitoes and heat kicks in.  After work, I did just that by taking a walk in the garden and checking on things.  First, I checked an experiment I was running on old seed.  I planted some butternut squash and green striped cushaw squash from 2009 I had saved.  It's old seed, but I figured at least some of it would germinate.  Nope.  Not one.  It teaches me that saving seed is good.  Saving seed for too long is not.

I also checked on a row of cowpeas I planted.  The variety was Ozark Razorback Peas.  They were from 2012.  I knew the germination would be low, so instead of planting every 4 inches, I planted every 2 inches.  On the 15 foot row, I would say only about 20% germinated.  I filled in the holes today by planting in the gaps at a 1 inch spacing.  We'll see how well this fills in the holes once Round 2 germinates.

Let's take a look at the other garden progress:

Straightneck Yellow Squash

Crookneck Yellow Squash

Black Beauty Eggplant

The Onion Crop

About a month away from harvest

The row of zucchini

Baby zucchini just forming

One row of blackeyes and one row of purple hull peas

The trellis of cucumbers blooming

Baby cukes setting on the vines

39 Heirloom Tomato Plants trellised

A Cherokee Purple setting fruit

Snap beans flanked by sweet corn

I'll be picking the first mess of Contender snap beans tomorrow!

Watermelon, Cantaloupe, and Butternut squash where they can vine

                                                                40 feet of Irish potatoes

Hope your gardens produce bountiful produce for your kitchen tables!

A Colorful Walk

Don't you just love Spring!  After a dull, grey, rainy winter, it seems the switch has been turned.  Mid-80's in the afternoons, sunshine and bright green growth on most every tree (except pecan trees).  Some days, Tricia and I take a stroll in the yard and just enjoy the beauty of God's creation.

We have a little concrete bench by the big old live oak tree.  We sit here and read the mail when the weather is nice.  The entire area around it is engulfed in wild African violets.  I'll put off mowing until they're finished blooming as they are nice to look at.

In total contrast with the rich green and vibrant violet colors, I was walking through a portion of the garden where I'm saving broccoli seed and waiting for the pods to dry out and turn brown.  The broccoli plants are almost dead and the big brown leaves of the broccoli cover the ground.  In the midst of the drab color, there's a spark of red.  A ladybug!

Ladybugs are beneficial insects in the garden.  I like them in the garden as they eat aphids and other small insects.  As a guy, I feel sorry for the male ladybugs, though.  As a bug that was a dude, it would bother me to be a 'ladybug.'

I have beets growing in the garden at all different stages.  The photo below shows Detroit Red beets in front and Bull's Blood beets in the back.

On the very next row is Rainbow Swiss Chard.  The stalks are brightly colored, as the name suggests - some pink, others white, and others yellow.  We had swiss chard and buckwheat as a tasty side dish tonight.

And speaking of brightly colored things, it's azalea time!  Twenty five years ago we lived in Kinder, LA, in the home that was my grandmother and grandfather's home at one time.  When we moved to our home here, my sister and brother-in-law moved in and took out the azaleas.  We were able to get some of them and replant them in the yard.  One of them survived.  I think they are Formosa Azaleas.

Each year at this time, it fills with beautiful blooms and we get lots of photos of it.  I've often said, it is nice to have plants with a history.  Plants that remind you of people you love and times you cherish.

In addition to being pretty, the plant serves a purpose.  We have one of those ugly telephone markers.  You've seen them.  I think they call them bollards, but they are filled with wires.  It's just not something that you want as the centerpiece of your front yard.  Well, we planted my grandma's azalea in front of it and now... voila!  No more telephone obstacle in the front yard (that you can see, anyway.)

There must be an animal that hides out in the foliage, though.  Everytime Belle passes by the azalea, she sniffs and is real curious.

I hope you are enjoying spring as much as we are!

Spring is Officially Here

Spring is a very, very short window around here.  It moves quickly into summer.  We're already seeing afternoon temps in the mid-80's.  We will enjoy the mornings in the 60's while we still have them, cherish them and relish them.  They will soon be a distant memory as the humidity rolls in.  Enough of that melancholy talk!

The plants are all sporting new growth and the very last tree in our area that puts on leaves are the pecan trees.  Some folks say that is how you can tell that spring has officially arrived.  Well, it is here.  The warmer weather has provoked the pecans to come out of dormancy.  They have quickly put out fresh, green growth and they'll soon be providing shade.  The cows, goats and chickens like to sit underneath them and nap.

The garden is quickly growing as well.  Everything is coming up aside from some Ozark Razorback Peas that I planted.  They were old.  I had saved them in 2012 and planted them this year to rotate my old saved seed inventory.  Well, due to their age, I only achieved about a 50% germination rate.  I'll likely fill in the gaps with a bunch more planted closely to use the old seed up and get a better stand.

The other peas and beans are popping up in every row.  I love to see seedlings popping up in an otherwise barren landscape.

From the cotyledons come fresh first true leaves that soon open in the sunlight.  Spring is an optimistic, hopeful time.  Each new day brings noticeable growth in the garden.

Along with the coming of the new, there is the finishing up of the old.  The fall crop is about gone.  The last of the dinosaur kale will be chopped and fed to the cows.  At this time of year, they get little bugs all over them.  The swiss chard is still producing well.  We have two more kohlrabi plants to harvest.

The last of the fall crop is the bull's blood beets.  You can spot them by their leaves that look like bulls bled all over them.  They are quite colorful in the garden contrasted with the green leaves of the beans growing nearby.

We have started harvesting them and Tricia cuts them up and roasts them in the oven.  A very tasty side dish, that's for sure.  We had pickled beets in a salad today and they were delicious!

Perhaps Sunday I'll post an update on the garden and show you what's growing and give a progress report on the spring garden.

From the Texas Line Back to Our Maker's Acres Family Farm on a Spring Day

I had a work assignment that led me out west to Starks, Louisiana.  Starks is pretty doggone close to Texas.  My wife was with me and I asked her how far the Sabine River was from our location.  She pulled up her map and said, "A half mile that way."  So we turned around and headed that way.  In no time at all we were on the bank of the Sabine River.  The sun was shining.  It was cool.  The current in the river was brisk.  Right on the other side is the State of Texas.

We made it back home, finished up with work and decided I would soak up a spring day just relishing the beauty of God's creation.  These were come oxalis that were blooming by the fence to the east of the pasture.  This is a bad weed in the garden, but it is beautiful if not growing in the garden.  I pulled these and fed them to the goats.  They were begging me for them.

Speaking of the goats, many years ago I planted some yellow iris along the border of the eastern fence.  My thought was that it would be a privacy fence.  Not so much for us but for the neighbors, so they wouldn't have to look at all the activity in the pasture all day.  Well, the goats had other plans, and I should have known better.  As soon as the iris came up, the goats devoured them.  The iris migrated to the east and now they form a border fence on the neighbor's property.  They are blooming now and are very pretty to look at.

Here is our Japanese Magnolia.  We call it Laura Lee's tree (our daughter).  It puts out blooms THEN puts on flowers.  I learned a valuable lesson from this tree.  We planted it in the side yard and planted it close to the sewer line.  Well, the roots clogged the drain line!

The previous photo highlighted the flower.  This one shows the entire tree.

Right next to the Japanese Magnolia is the Redbud tree.  Similarly, it puts on blooms BEFORE the big, heart-shaped leaves come out.

Here is a close up of the flowers.

Here is an African yellow iris.  Tricia planted this a couple years ago between the palm trees and has been waiting for it to bloom.  Well, it finally did!

Here is the red lily

And finally, the amaryllis.

Spring time is a beautiful time of year!