Always Good News

This is my second year of gardening.  I’m trying to do it better this year.  Last year I didn’t really plan anything, never weeded, watered all wrong, and still had some pretty good success.  So come to think of it, I don’t know why I am putting forth more effort this year.  Nevertheless, I am.

Mary helped with planting this year!

I have a soaker hose system this year for watering, and my rows are spaced wide enough for my tractor to drive through for weeding.  Lately I have been reading about no-water gardening — that sounds interesting — and I guess Thomas Jefferson never weeded his garden.  So maybe I have sufficient grounds to be lazy this summer.  Maybe.  Maybe.  But the way the garden is set up, it won’t really take any work to maintain it anyway.

I also decided to try some container gardening this year.  Last year’s tomatoes and carrots were a crock, so this year I put ‘em in five-gallon buckets on my porch.  I like having them close to hand.

As a chicken owner, all I have learned so far is that chickens smell bad.  If you put them in your garage for a couple weeks, your garage will quickly become a smelly, dusty place.  So today I kicked their feathered butts out — and into their permanent coop!

Here they are inspecting the indoor area of their new home.

It looks like one of them is turning out to be a rooster.  That means that I have nine hens.  They should supply me with a heck of a lot of eggs beginning this fall.

I have decided to up the ante as a beekeeper this year.  My original plan was to go up to five hives this summer.  Now my target is 10.  By focusing on making splits instead of producing honey, I think I can reasonably expect to make it to 10 hives and still (maybe, hopefully) have enough honey for myself for another year.

To that end, I made my first split last week.  And I am fairly certain that I did it correctly!  I took a couple frames of brood and a couple frames of nectar and pollen and put them into a hive body.  The brood ranged from fresh eggs to capped and ready to emerge.  All the nurse bees on these frames went to the new split.  Then I shook in some extra bees from a couple more frames, added empty frames to fill out the rest of the hive body, and closed it up.  Some of the bees will return to the old hive, either right away or when returning from foraging, but the nurse bees should remain, and the brood, when it emerges, will be right at home.  In the meantime, the bees will be busy taking the youngest brood and feeding it lots and lots of royal jelly, which will trigger the bee to develop into a queen!  Voila, a brand new hive!

There are things that could go wrong, of course.  The bees might not raise a queen, and a queen is always at risk of being killed or eaten on a mating flight.  But I’m optimistic about this.  A couple of weeks after the split, I should be able to see if it was a success or not.

Expanding my hive count requires lots of new equipment, and I’ve been busy putting it together.  I thought about leaving these looking natural, but they wouldn’t stay pretty for long (and wouldn’t last long).

I had lots of paint sitting around, so I decided to step away from my All White theme and get a little colorful.

Mary says this picture makes her look scary. Uh, yeah!

Yesterday, Mary and I picked out some chickens.  We got 6 Rhode Island Reds, 2 Barred Rocks, and 2 rainbow layers.  I don’t know if these are good ones, but I do know that they are what Orscheln had.  Ten birds may sound like a lot, but I figure some of them will die or turn out to be roosters.  If they all survive and turn out to be hens, then that’s okay, I have enough room for them.  My coop is bad ass.

I have a tried-and-true method for building things: just start, and never think more than one step ahead.  I retrofitted part of my barn to be a coop. Like most retrofits, it ain’t perfect. The previous owners of my house left all sorts of building materials lying around, including several rolls of fencing and chicken wire.  All I had to buy for the coop was a few sheets of OSB and some hinges and a latch for the door.  Altogether, I have about $150 invested in materials, supplies, and birds.

Anything lying around was bound to be incorporated into my “design.”

This is all part of my quest to be able to refer to my place as a farm whilst putting forth as little effort as possible.  Chickens seem to be relatively low hassle and high output.  I was surprised, though, at how long it took me to throw a coop-and-run together.  I worked on it for a few hours a day for about a week.  In that time, I could build a hundred honey supers, a project with more need of precision.  Running the wire was tedious, though, and the 4 x 8 sheets of OSB — while not tremendously heavy — were certainly enough to cause someone my size to strain when lifting multiple sheets overhead, balancing them, and then fastening them carefully with one hand.  At one point I lifted one into place, then held it in delicate balance with one hand while straining to reach anything — a drill, a hammer, anything! — with which to attach it.  Alas, I could not reach.  And since it took a Davidic effort to place the sheet, I was reluctant to let it drop.  Mary arrived right at that time and lent a hand — disaster averted.

Cordless power tools proved worth the investment.  It probably would have taken me twice as long with corded tools.  Having the tools I needed close to hand — lightweight, cordless, and with plenty of batteries — saved more in frustration than it did in effort, but frustration tends to slow me down more than fatigue does.

For now, the little chickies are enjoying the good life in a tub in my laundry room.