A Place to Rest Your Wings

Our two new hives are doing well.  Friday's inspection went great and we have been watching the forager bees coming and going from the hive entrances ever since.

Today we heard from Beekeeper Jim that the third hive he made for us is queen right and will be joining our apiary later this week.  He also advised us that some of his hives are preparing to swarm and suggested that we might set out some spots for a swarm to land in case any of these swarms happen to come our way.

So today we set out a nuc box up on a ladder with four empty but drawn out frames in the spot where our swarms always liked to go.

We also made some small swarm lures.  They are a pill bottle with some holes drilled into it and a cotton ball soaked in lemongrass oil inside.  These are hung in a tree and are supposed to give swarms a safe place to temporarily gather.  The swarm can then be safely lowered into a hive body and relocated to the apiary.

Look carefully and you will see the bottle hanging in the tree.

We can now officially say that Gael Glen Farm and Apiary is a safe haven for honey bee swarms looking for a place to rest their wings.

Fences and Hills

With our new fence completed, our morning and evening animal routine just got a whole lot easier.

Charlie: "I don't think I like where this is going..."

Done and done.

This leaves more time for other farm chores, like weeding the garden and hilling the potatoes.

I was not sure we would get a potato crop this year after Seamus "helped" by ripping the eyes off of all the seed potatoes.  Lucky for us, they still sprouted.  Here's hoping for a great crop of purple and yellow potatoes.

Sweaty Work

Halfway there....

The Great Animal Shuffle

Keeping Charlie and the lambs separate unfortunately requires us to engage in a twice daily Great Animal Shuffle.  The first thing you should know is that making sheep go where you want them to go is next to impossible.  There is a reason that shepherds use sheepdogs.  Second, and lucky for us, a lamb acts as a homing beacon for its mother.  It is really quite amazing how quickly most ewes come running when her lambs call.

Each morning and evening, Ian and I must move both sets of ewes and their lambs from the barn in one paddock into the goats' grazing field in a separate paddock.  Unfortunately there is no gate directly between these fields, so we must wrangle the sheep through the backyard and past my ever so delicious vegetable gardens to get to our final destination.  Alice is an excellent mother and stays glued to the leg of whomever is carrying her lambs.  Violet, on the other hand, gets easily distracted by new greenery.  This often results in one (and usually both) of us yelling repeatedly, "Violet?  Focus!  Where is your baby??"  and hoping Cobalt baa's continually to keep her on track.  If it wasn't so frustrating, it would be funny - Violet running haphazardly around the backyard in search of her lamb stopping every 2 or 3 seconds to munch a tree, vegetable, or hops plant as she forgets what she is supposed to be looking for until Cobalt's insistent call jogs her memory and she continues on her way.

Liam and Seamus helping with morning lamb relocation.

The ridiculousness of the Great Animal Shuffle cannot continue.  Tomorrow Ian and Weston are constructing a fence to divide our back paddock into two sections so that Charlie and the lambs can co-exist safely and in relative harmony on their respective side until the lambs are grown.

Seamus and I secured all the necessary fencing materials today.  Ever the helper, Seamus aided Mr. Pierre at TSC (thank goodness for his patience) in loading our trailer with bags of quick set post cement. I have no doubt that he would have tried to load the t-posts and corn crib if I'd let him.  Seamus was the talk of TSC with many the farmer noting his exceptional work ethic and alerting me that I am lucky to have such a fine farm hand in the making.  I know.  Seamus is quite the kid!

Seamus and Mr. Pierre at TSC.

Moonlighting

The members of my family are hard workers.  Like many family farmers, much of our farm-related activity occurs after our day jobs or on weekends.  For example, my brothers Shawn and Kyle moonlight as a hay man and a farm supply store/farm tool rental agency, respectively.

Shawn the hay man.

Upon hearing about our Charlie woes (Side note: Charlie has decided she hates lambs.  After she maimed Cobalt in a nasty (and obviously unprovoked) attack, we now have to put a fence across our paddock to separate her from the lambs.  Cobalt's leg is not broken and his limp is slowly improving.  I am still mad), Kyle generously supplied us with many of the tools and supplies we will need to construct our new fence.  Thank you!

How Charlie cannot love this adorable beast I cannot understand.

Ian moonlights as a our farm carpenter and handy-man.  Today he fixed my gate and finished building my milking stand (Side note: Cobalt has decided to nurse only off one side.  That leaves me needing to milk out Violet's other udder as it fills up and puts her at risk of developing mastitis in the apparently undesirable teat.  Resigned sigh.  I did not love sitting on the barn floor to milk her so Ian stepped in with a milking stand so I can sit on a stool.  Happy sigh.).

I moonlight as a calf namer.  Much to my chagrin, Kyle and Shawn tried to name their male calves with a number (e.g CAF1).  Unacceptable.  As I explained to them, these beautiful animals should have a proper name even if they are destined for the dinner table.  They humour me now by allowing me to name all their lovely male calves.  So far, we have Calvin, Malcolm, and Oakley.  Good cow names, right?

Oakley and Charlotte.  Oakley was born this afternoon.

All this moonlighting makes for long but satisfying summer days.  I wonder what other people do after work?

Back in the Game

Beekeeper Jim brought over two new hives for me today made from his spring splits.  I am back in action as a beekeeper!  I am thrilled.  Thank you Jim!

I will let the hives settle in until Friday, then I will check them out, add a second brood box, feed them sugar syrup, and generally get to know my new ladies.

Everyone is eager to come out now but they need to wait a few days to acclimatize to their new apiary.

Welcome to Gael Glen Farm honey bees.  I hope we have a long and happy time together.

Delivery Day

On Tuesdays we deliver our CSA baskets.  This week's basket was another beauty.  We had red scallions, radishes, a turnip, chard, spinach, kale, leaf lettuce, cabbage leaves, broccoli leaves, arugula, jalapeno peppers, basil, mint, parsley, daikon microgreens, wasabi mustard microgreens and our first head of broccoli.  Our extra this week was a bouquet of beautiful fresh cut flowers.

Today, however, we were treated to a double delivery.  Alice finally gave birth to her twins!  Two beautiful chocolate brown lambs - a boy and a girl.  Ian and the boys named the new ram lamb Lego.  As innocent toddlers, they were excited to name him after a toy.  Given Ian's other name suggestion (Racka), I do not think his intentions are nearly as pure.  Before lambing season began we agreed that ram lambs would become supper, while ewe lambs I would add to my flock.  As such, I am thrilled to get at least one ewe lamb this season.  I have not decided on a name for our new little girl yet so if you have suggestions, feel free to send them my way.

We finished out the day with "Family Weeding Hour" after dinner.  While this was more like a half hour, we are trying to encourage the boys get involved in the farm.  We let them weed in their underwear (we have little nudists on our hands) with lots of sunscreen and bug spray on.  They had a wonderful time and were actually quite helpful.  You know what they say, a family that weeds together stays together - or something along those lines anyway.