Missing Monarchy

I told my bee hives to shape up or ship out and unfortunately, they chose to ship out.  Seriously? Unfortunately, this leaves me queenless in three of our five hives.  I am not impressed.  What kind of queen abandons her hive as winter approaches?  An irresponsible and negligent one, that's for sure.   I can think of many other suitable adjectives but you probably get my drift.

Bad bee

The unfortunate state of our hives warranted a call to the local bee supply store that, luckily, is managed by a very knowledgeable and experienced beekeeper.  I explained about my queenless hives and (to my dismay) the very knowledgeable and experienced beekeeper agreed that I was indeed in a sorry state.  Truth be told, I was hoping for an "it's not so bad" but that is not what I got.

It is pretty late in the season to have the hives grow a new queen themselves.  It is possible if the weather holds out but it is risky.  My safest bet at this point is to requeen my hives with a mated queen purchased for a whopping $26 per queen from the bee supply store.  I had a bit of a heart attack when the very knowledgeable and experienced beekeeper said that it is also quite late in the season to secure queens and he was not sure if he would be able to get some for me.  Luckily he called back a few hours later and said he was able to get me my three mated queens after all.  They will arrive on Thursday.  Thank goodness.

I explained our latest bee conundrum to Ian over dinner and he wondered aloud if we are just unlucky beekeepers or if everyone has this many bee related problems.  I do not have an answer to that but regardless we will just keep powering through, learning from our mistakes and hopefully becoming more successful (or at least less unlucky) beekeepers next year.

Sage Storage is Wise Preservation

Every year around Thanksgiving and Christmas, as I stand in the grocery store and stare at the cling wrapped bundles of sage for $5, I wonder why, oh why, didn't I grow sage in my herb garden during the summer?  Of all the useful and delicious spices to grow, it took me until this year to get some planted on the farm.  Luckily, it grew to be huge and fragrant and so, was very much worth the effort.  With all my outdoor plants on the decline, it was time to cut the sage, dry it out and store it until it is turkey cooking time.  I was so excited about this task, I forgot to take many "in the process" photos but the end product turned out amazing.  My cling wrapped bundle of sage is about four times what you buy in the store and smells simply amazing.  It makes my mouth water thinking of cranberry sauce, my dad's stuffing and my mom's pumpkin pie.  I am glad Thanksgiving is coming up soon!

My herb garden.  The sage is the purple bush on the back left.

The dehydrator was the perfect tool to dry out the sage.  I put the whole bush in at once
and ran the dehydrator overnight.  It was dry as a bone come morning.

Finished product: cling wrapped sage.  The herb is so easy to use when packaged this way.
You simply hold the bundle upright and squeeze along its length until lots of crushed up
sage leaves sprinkle out the bottom.  Perfect.

Squash Fest

It is time to harvest our squash and pumpkin - yes, pumpkin, singular.  We only got one.  Normally we are overrun with squash and pumpkins at this time of year.  However, these particular veggies did not grow very well this year much to the dismay of our sheep who were looking forward to a pumpkin feast.  We read that when you have a surplus of pumpkins you can let them freeze outside and then defrost them one by one throughout the winter as a delicious snack for the livestock.  Sadly, our one pumpkin will not go very far.  Especially since we will likely eat it ourselves in the form of delicious pumpkin pie.  We are thinking about doing a post-Halloween suburban neighbourhood drive-by to pick up some old Jack-o-lanterns to use for sheep snack purposes.

Our 2014 squash and pumpkin harvest

In the meantime, we will enjoy roasting up the squash that we did harvest - except the nicest ones which we will enter into the Carp Fair this coming weekend.  

Carp Fair selections

I am especially looking forward to roasting the squash seeds - nothing says autumn like roasted squash and pumpkin seeds.  Not to worry though, our sheep and chickens will not be completely deprived; we will feed them the pulp and the roasted skins.  They will think this is quite the delectable treat.

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!