First Frost

I have been wondering when the first frost of the year will hit and last night it did.  Good thing I was prepared and covered up any important plants with bed sheets.  I have a few plants I am trying to keep alive until the Carp Fair next weekend (namely my marigolds, zucchinis and herbs) so they are the lucky ones who get tucked in nice and cozy under a bed sheet at night.  After the fair though, all bets are off!

This morning on the farm

Frosty lawn and gardens

Ever Think About Adopting....a Chicken?

This past weekend, Gael Glen Farm welcomed five new feathery friends who needed to be re-homed.  These brown hens are actually the cousins of the Lohmann browns that we adopted in the spring.  They are the same breed, from same farmer and are the same age.  Our newly adopted birds used to live in a beautiful little coop at Liam's on-call nanny's house where they could free range on the front lawn.  Sadly, they were being systematically stolen by a neighbourhood coyote and each day the flock would lose one member.  They were very well taken care of at their old home but in the interests of safety they have come to live with us here at Gael Glen Farm where they can free range in the security of a chicken run surrounded by an electric fence.

Our new additions are adjusting well.  The first night three of the five new birds tried to sleep outside and I had to pick them up individually, bring them into the coop and place them on the roosts.  However, they have since gotten the idea and now come in on their own.  I have one bird who is a bit of an escape artist and so is scheduled to have her wings clipped in the near future.  The chicken run is divided into halves so the grass has a chance to regrow on one side while the hens eat it up on the other.   The escapee hen keeps flying into the cordoned off side and then cannot get back over to her comrades.  At least she is not flying over to Emily's side of the fence since we know what happens in that scenario.

We are glad our new chickens are taking to their new home and are establishing their position in the pecking order.  Just call us Gael Glen Farm and Avian Rescue - haha.

That's Nuts!

Autumn is nut harvesting time at Gael Glen Farm.  We have two nut bearing trees on the farm, only one of which is edible.  In the front yard we have a prolific Horse Chestnut tree.  Unfortunately, horse chestnuts are not good for anything really - definitely not to eat even for horses.  I think squirrels are likely the only ones really excited about these nuts.

Horse chestnut tree

For the first time since we moved to the farm, the Black Walnut tree in our back yard has produced nuts.  We are super excited about this since many people say black walnuts are the best tasting nut.  They are expensive too at about $14/lb.

Black walnut tree

Black walnut on the tree

Today I picked as many nuts as I could reach and we ended up with a bowl full.  We cracked off the green outer husk by crushing the nut with a cast iron frying pan.  Under the green shell is a stinky yellow substance that stains everything and smells really awful.

We rinsed the nuts discarding any that floated and then laid them to cure for one month on clean, dry newspaper.  

We will return to the nuts in a future post when we are ready for next steps....I can already taste the maple walnut ice cream I am going to make using our home grown black walnuts and Ian's homemade maple syrup.  Mmmm...

Wax on Wax off

In addition to harvesting honey from our hives, this year we also harvested beeswax.  The wax comes from the cappings when you slice open the comb in order to spin the honey out and from rogue comb that the bees build in places where they should not.  We have never had enough wax to make it worth while to melt down until this year.  So, we have been saving up all of our beeswax up and finally, Ian decided there was enough to warrant melting it down, filtering it and making it into wax bars in preparation for candle making.

Rogue comb built on the underside of the bottom board.

We started by melting the comb and cappings in a small slow cooker with some water.  Ian then scooped out the impurities from the melted wax or scraped them off once the wax disc hardened.

We then remelted the wax and filtered it through five layers of cheesecloth into silicone ice cube trays.

The wax hardened up again and now is ready for candle making.

We made wax Jenga - too cool!

We are not big candle burners in our house and honestly, I think beeswax candles kind of smell like Ian's sneezes but candle making will be an adventure that we are eager to try.  We are debating between buying a candle mold or pouring the wax into a mason jar with a wick in the middle to make a container candle.

Candle mold.

Option 1: bee hive candle.

Option 2: mason jar candle.

I think the mason jar idea might be the best since then we will not have to deal with any dripping wax when we light them. Thank you to the bees for another cool and useful product!

Shape Up or Ship Out

With the onset of the cool weather, it is time to begin preparing our honey bees for winter.  All of the honey supers are now off the hives and the honey has been extracted from the frames.  We put the empty frames and honey extractor out in the back yard for the bees to clean up before we store them away for the winter.  It is a job they are taking very seriously - there are bees everywhere!  I think even the bees from the neighbour's hive two doors down have found them.  It is a real community effort.

A honey raiding bonanza.  A photo cannot capture it but there are
hundreds of bees cleaning out our honey extractor.

Back in the bee yard, I have changed out all the screened bottom boards for solid wood ones - less ventilation but warmer during the cool nights.  I have also started feeding each hive a sugar syrup mixture to help them store up enough honey to last them through the winter.  Since there are less and less natural sources of nectar outside as blossoms on flowers and trees die off, it is important for the bees to have an easily accessible source of sugar to make into honey.  In the fall we feed 2:1 sugar:water syrup.  The bees love it and each hive is able to drain a pail in as little as three days.  Each pain contains about 3L of granulated sugar - which for five hives is a LOT of sugar.

Getting ready to place the white pail full of sugar syrup on the hive.

I did a thorough hive inspection yesterday and on the whole things are looking good.  We have two trouble hives, they are the ones that swarmed late and were trying to grow new hives on the underside of the bottom boards.  One of the hives has a queen but is a weak hive with a smaller number of bees that it should have at this time of year.  The other hive is currently queenless - eeks!  However, there was a queen cell in the hive last week, which has now hatched.  I am going to give both hives another week to get themselves straightened out and if they still do not have a queen or are showing a weak egg laying pattern - I will re-queen them.  Shape up or ship out!

Hive inspections.  Luckily I still fit in my bee suit though it is getting pretty tight around the tummy!

While preparing the hives for winter I removed a frame from the hive that offers a very good illustration of eggs that have been laid in the comb.  It is quite hard to see eggs while inspecting the hive so I was thrilled to finally see them in real life.

Can you see the tiny white egg in the middle of each of the cells?  Amazing.

First Prize at the Carp Fair

As Fall is ushered in by cooler temperatures and some changing leaf colours, we are knee-deep in preparations for the 2014 Carp Fair.  Ian and I are both competitive so this is a great venue to compare our wares with other farmers in the area and a wonderful opportunity to engage with our community in some fun and friendly contests.

The first category that we worked on was the 2014 Carp Fair Outdoor Decorating Challenge.  It was a family affair and I think our final display kicks butt!  Getting the sheep in the photos is (I think) ingenious but was a bit ridiculous in its execution.  Apparently sheep do not have listening ears and mine were not feeling particularly obedient at that specific point in time.  Even under the lure of delicious grain - I ended up having to carry Violet from the barn to the display TWICE before she would stand still enough for the photo.  Abbott and Alice absolutely refused to cooperate and so missed their opportunity to be famous - too bad for them - especially since WE WON FIRST PRIZE!  Our Ward Counselor and the President and Vice-president of the Carp Fair stopped by the farm tonight to take a photo with Ian and I to celebrate our victory.  I am thrilled!  We won a great prize - ten yards of top soil to add to our veggie gardens and to use to create the rose garden I have been wanting for years.  What a great start to the 2014 Carp Fair season.

Farm Update

It has been a busy, busy summer here on Gael Glen Farm.  However, I cannot entirely blame my blog hiatus on that...I have been sick - nothing life threatening - quite the opposite, the best kind of sick (if that is even possible).  I am thrilled to announce that we are expecting another dependent here on the farm - due around the end of February 2015.  It is this little munchkin #2 that has been making me extremely ill for the past six weeks.  As noted by many a pregnant woman before, clearly "morning sickness" was named by a man because it happens all day long!

Baby #2 is laying on his/her back and has his/her legs crossed and
tucked up near his/her tummy.  This baby was very shy and did not
want his/her photo taken - it took forever for the (very patient)
ultrasound technician to get a photo.

In other very exciting news, Baby Liam - who is growing oh, so quickly into a toddler - has finally started to walk.  Finally.  At 14.5 months old.  We were beginning to think it was never going to happen.  Today he walked all by himself down to "Baaa!" at the sheep.  He literally stood in front of them and shrieked "Baa!  Baa!" over and over and over.  Much to his delight they obliged him by "Baa-ing" back enthusiastically.  He continued his journey by walking independently to the chicken coop to shriek at the hens.  He then walked to the pond at which point he was redirected.  It is time to fence around the pond.  That has moved up to the top of our To Do List.

Speaking of sheep, Alice and her lambs, Abbott and Violet, are doing fabulously.  Their vet appointment was a breeze.  Abbott weathered his minor surgery to become a wether like a trooper.  $450 dollars later I have vaccinated sheep and no possibility of incestuous pregnancies.  I recently sourced hay for the sheep to eat during the winter months and the farmer who will be supplying said hay thought it was hilarious that I had a vet come out for sheep.  "But they aren't worth anything!" he argued.  Fair point, I did spend more on the vet than I did buying the sheep, but now I know how to vaccinate livestock and I have happy, healthy pet sheep.  Worth every penny.

While I usually do not like to admit I am wrong (who does?!) - today there was no way around it.  I was very, very, very wrong.  My very wrong decision was made three weeks ago when I faced the very unappealing prospect of suiting up my very nauseous body in a hot, constricting bee suit and conducting hive inspections by lifting and moving 40+ lbs hive supers in 25+ degree weather.  The prospect was simply so awful - who wants to puke inside a bee suit? - that I decided to give the bees a short, unsupervised period (a bee vacation of sorts).  The hives were all doing great three weeks ago so I figured that the bees would simply keep up the status quo and continue to store away honey in their honey supers.  I was very, very wrong.

Apparently a few weeks of unsupervised bees makes for a ghastly mess.  Only one of our four hives behaved itself.  Two of them actually proceeded with unauthorized hive splits and established new colonies under the bottom boards of the original hives.  What a disaster!  It took me 2.5 hours this morning (thank goodness Liam had a very long nap) to sort out the mess.  Now, unfortunately I think we have five hives instead of four (it was not in our plan to expand our hives) and a (somewhat) compromised honey harvest.  I learned my lesson: unsupervised bee vacations are like letting a toddler feed themselves chef boyardee ravioli - very, very messy and time consuming to clean up.