Homestead Happenings: Random Pics From First Half of May

Things have been rather busy around here, lately, and I've not had time to record much of it.  I did take the camera out a few times and got some pictures, however.

The meat rabbits are still doing well. 

Simon and Timothy enjoy taking care of them!

Our Angora rabbits are also doing fine.  Christina tends to them everyday.

Matthew, Christina, and Simon went on a fishing expedition down the river the day before Mother's Day.  Lisa was hoping for some catfish for her Mother's Day dinner.  They had a nice time on the river, and saw several geese and a couple of mama ducks with their ducklings, but the fish weren't biting.  Maybe next time.

Chief is rather old, for a Great Pyreneese, but he is still with us.  I think he has the sweetest face!

Christina did not want to wear the helmet, but since they were going to be on the road, we insisted.

Augusta (long u in the middle) is a good dog and loves her family.  Wherever we go, she is sure to follow!  Luna is still with us, also, but she didn't make it in a picture this time.

Timothy, 'Gusta, and Sandy looking around up the mountain.

Tigger is one cool cat!

I didn't take pictures of the other cats, but they are all cool cats as well. 

Since I'm thinking about it, I'll report that Fritsie has had her kittens!  The children found them in a box in the wood shed.  I think there are 6 of them, but Fritsie hasn't brought them out to play yet.  When they start appearing in the open and playing, I hope to take several pictures of them.  It's been many years since we've had the kitten experience!

The chickens enjoy their free-range time! I like to let them out early in the afternoon, as long as they don't go to the highway in front of the house.  When they get into that bad habit, they find themselves staying in their lot much later into the day!

One of the White Rock hens is setting right now.  If all goes well, we should have baby chicks around the first of June.  But I'll not count my chickens before they hatch!

We still have 2 hogs at the moment.  We will be butchering them if we don't see piglets pretty soon.

So, I've reported about our dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens, and pigs, but I've not said anything about the cattle or bees. 

Well, one of the hives swarmed earlier this month before we could divide it.  We lost them because they swarmed to the highest point in a tree in an impossible location for us to capture.  We need to try to divide the other hives before they swarm, too.

I haven'tt gotten a picture of the cows in their lots for a while.  Right now we have Violet, Dandelion, and Rosebud  here, close to our house.  They have both barns and the hill lot that we originally fenced off for goats.  It's not a very good pasture, but at least they have room to move around and they like to eat some of the leaves and branches from various trees and they find some grass and weeds that they eat. 

We plan to start trying to milk Dandelion soon, but are concerned about her cooperating with us.  Rosebud was her first calf so she has never been milked.  Violet should calve sometime in June, we think.  She is starting to show some signs already.  But after our experience with Dandelion, we're not going to expect any calf too soon!

Meanwhile, Gracie and the two bull calves are at Pure Water Pastures.  There has not been much change over there in a while.  I plan on doing some more fencing work over there.  I already have all the materials laid out there for a second lot, but I need to find the time to invest the sweat equity required.

So, that's a bit of what has been happening around our homestead.  We've also spent several evenings getting our garden out.  I hope the garden will do well, even though we've had some cold temperatures in May.  Last week we even had a few nights in the 30s!  But I'll save the garden news for a future post, because we still have some room out there to plant.

Thank you, Lord, for your many blessings!

Taking Care of Some Beesness

We have been learning about how to run an apiary and earlier this week we decided to check on how our honey bees are doing.  We have 4 hives right now.  Two are colonies we purchased in 2011 and two are new swarms from last year.  Last year, our colonies began to swarm in March and continued to do so through the summer, so we were afraid they may have been getting ready to do that again.  This time, however, the plan was to head off the swarms by dividing the colony that seemed to be the most active and possibly ready to swarm.

Here are Lisa and Matthew suited up and checking them out.  They are looking at the hive that we thought may be ready to divide.

This was the scene between the super and the top hive body box.

These frames show that some of the brood has been capped, but we were expecting the frames to be completely full and capped.  If they are all like these, then this hive is not ready to divide.



Pulling out a couple more frames.

Here is Lisa examining it.

These are not as full as the first frames checked.  We will check on that hive again in a few weeks to see if they get everything filled up.

They also checked on the other hive that has been most active, which was a new swarm from last year.  They looked good.  The bottom frames are getting filled up nicely. 

All the hives seem to be doing ok, even though none are ready to divide yet.  We had a very cold March, over all, this year and it seems that true Spring weather was slow getting here.  I've noticed that everything is blooming later this year, so I guess the bees are just rounding out everything later as well.  Maybe last year everything was just earlier? 

Thankfully no one was stung very badly during this expedition.  Lisa actually did some bee work all by herself a couple days earlier with no protection except the veil and did not get stung at all.  When these pictures were taken, last Wednesday, the only sting we had was a friend who was visiting.  I was up there very near the bees taking pictures and he was up there also, observing.  Neither of us were wearing any bee protection and he unfortunately got stung on the ear.  Thankfully it didn't swell much and he discovered that he is not allergic to honey bee stings! 

A Brief Reflection on Our 2012 Homestead

The year 2012 has absolutely flown by, it seems!  On this final day of 2012 I find myself reflecting about many things in my life concerning the past year.  However, for this post, I'm going to try to stick to mainly my thoughts concerning our "homesteading" aspects during 2012.  It is with some difficulty that I attempt this, as the entire year of 2012 seems like a blur to me.  I notice that I only blogged sporadically and missed writing about many daily homestead happenings throughout the year.

We were very successful raising 3 hogs from feeder pig to butcher hog during 2012.  Our new lot worked well, they grew fast and large, and did not present much trouble at all!  Simon took care of the feeding and watering chores most of the time.  These pigs reminded us that raising home-grown pork could still be done very efficiently and also be a rewarding experience.  We had two of them butchered in the summer and then processed the final one ourselves in November.  I regret that I did not find a boar to go with that 3rd hog as my original hope was.  I think she would have thrown excellent piglets as her genetics seemed to be of  a fast growing large hog!

We also had some bad experiences trying to raise some pigs from an outfit that sells "show pigs".  These were supposed to be superior genetic hogs, but ours did not want to grow and actually had trouble surviving!  We first bought three girls and they all got sick.  When the first one died the fellow gave us the boar I was wanting for free.  I wonder now if he was worth the price, because he has also had trouble growing!  A bit later another of the girls died.  It looks like the other girl along with the boar have at least survived as they are now 9 months and 7 months old, respectively.  We think they have bred so I have decided to keep them around to see if they will have piglets and then see if those piglets will grow better than their parents did.  I am afraid it will all turn out to be a disaster and we will have to start over again with new stock.  But, let's try to be optimistic and enjoy the adventure!

Our garden did well in several areas, although it seemed difficult for us to focus on it the way we should have.  Our artesian well did the job keeping everything watered during the drought.  Thanks to the drought, there was not much weeding that needed to be done early in the season.  This turned out to be bad for a family that was having trouble focusing on the garden anyway because sometime in there the drought was over and the weeds were ready to make up for lost time!  Since we never got in a good habit of working the garden earlier, it seemed like in no time those weeds completely took over!  We learned that tomato plants and pepper plants are very forgiving as they still provided abundantly for us, even when they could not be seen!  We had a modest harvest of most of the crops that Lisa planned, although the watermelons and pumpkins did not do anything.

Our honey bees did a fine job keeping everything pollinated.  2012 was the year of the swarm as they swarmed much more than we wanted!  Perhaps it was the mild winter, but whatever the reason, they swarmed and swarmed and swarmed!  Sometimes we had two and three swarms hanging in our trees at the same time!  We were able to capture 3 swarms and start new colonies, but one of them was a partial swarm and did not make it.  We did get 10 quarts of honey from the strongest hive, but since the other one swarmed so much they didn't produce as much honey and we decided that they would need what they had to survive the winter.  As we end 2012 we think we have four good stands of bees.  We just need to get into them and take out the queen cells so they won't swarm themselves to death in 2013.  If all goes well, they should make plenty of honey for us this next season!

We also attempted to re-stock our chicken flock in 2012.  Twenty-five white-rock chicks arrived on July 13th at our post office in town.  Due to the fact that we free range our chickens amongst a predator laden environment, we were expecting to lose some of them.  I thought we may even lose a third of them by the time they reach maturity.  I expected, however, to still have at least 17 or 18 at this time of the year.  I am sad to report that we only have 11 white-rock pullets as we close out the year!  We lost them gradually.  Some were taken off by hawks (I even witnessed it once), some were hit in the road, and some just disappeared.  But the 11 we have right now are all beautiful, big hens and should start laying eggs any time now.

The worst chicken news of 2012 happened one of the nights that I did not close up the cage where those chicks slept with their surrogate mother, One Feather.  One Feather was the beloved game hen we had had for 8 years who had raised clutches of chicks every year, sometimes 2 and even 3 times during some seasons!  She could always be counted on to go broody and she was always an excellent mother to any chicks we gave her.  She was one of the hens helping to raise some of the new white-rock chicks. They would free range during the day but One Feather always took them back to the safety of her cage at night which I would then close up for the night.  I had been lulled into a false sense of security as there had been no night-time evidence of any predators for quite a while. 

That night had not been the first night I neglected my duty, but it turned out to be the night that I severely let our beloved mama hen down.  We heard the squawking from the house after we had gone to bed, and got out there as quickly as we could.  She obviously fought the predator off as evidenced by the 50 foot trail of scattered feathers leading away from the cage down to the creek to where her body was left.  At least the predator did not have the satisfaction of having One Feather as a meal and, as best we could tell, all of the chicks under her care were also accounted for.  We found them scattered all over the yard, hiding in different places, but not harmed.  One Feather gave her life to save these chicks!  She will be greatly missed and I doubt that we will ever have another hen quite like One Feather.

So as we end 2012, our laying flock consists of 3 mature Buff Orpington mixed hens, 11 almost mature White-Rock hens and I think 4 black pullets from eggs we hatched that a friend gave us later in the summer.  By next summer we should have 14 to 18 hens laying for us, so we will be getting plenty of eggs!  We have already been getting one or two eggs a day these last few weeks of December which we have been happy with.  Our butchering flock currently consists of one Red-Star hen (who developed a habit of eating eggs and plucking feathers), as well as 6 black cockerels hatched from those eggs from a friend.

The summer of 2012 was also the summer of the horse as Christina and Simon took lessons with Gracie as we had her trained.  Gracie did very well and is now a good saddle horse.  The children had fun and I think it was a great experience for them.  After we finally got Gracie moved to Pure Water Pastures, the children did ride her some on their own, and I expect they will more as the weather gets better this spring.  I think we have a potentially nice place to make a horse trail along the river up there, but some fallen trees will need to be cleared.

Fall found us fulfilling a dream of having a family milk cow.  Violet, the 4 year old Jersey cow, was already in milk and had two bull calves with her.  Dandelion, the 2 year old Jersey cow, was expected to calve in December.  So our plan was that we could milk Violet now and dry her up around March or April in order to help her have a healthy calving in June.  About the time Violet was being dried up, we would be milking Dandelion pretty heavily.  A note about Dandelion calving:  today was the last day of December and she has still not calved!  She has been put up by herself in the barn since December 10th, and it has been driving me crazy wondering where her calf is.  She still seems healthy, and as far as I know, she is ready to calve any time (just like she was on the 10th.)  It looks like the New Year will find us learning much more about raising dairy cattle!

It was a great accomplishment to get a large section of our pasture fenced for Gracie and the cattle.  I was amazed at how quickly the field got eaten down, though.  It has really demonstrated the need to get some more areas fenced as soon as possible so we can rotate pastures in the spring.  It was also wonderful to see the shelter being erected for the cattle that Matthew, Christina, and Simon have been working on.  There are many, many other projects that still need to be done, however, both there at our pastures as well as here on the home front!

After re-reading the above paragraphs and thinking over the past year, I can't help but notice that our homestead in 2012 was only marginally successful.  At every turn there were challenges, setbacks, and unfulfilled plans.  I think the word I used about the garden sums up our entire year:  a lack of focus.  There were some serious distractions that we were dealing with throughout the year (which I have not written about), and I believe that they affected our overall family and homestead more than can be measured.  It is difficult to stay focused on anything while dealing with serious emotional disharmony and stress. 

These issues are still not completely resolved, but, for the sake of my family, we need to regain our focus in this coming year!  As we enter 2013, I want my life, my family, and Pure Water Hollow Homestead, to glorify God in every aspect of what we do!  We cannot do that without living purposefully and staying focused on the tasks at hand while also staying focused on God and His will!  To Him be the glory and we give Him thanks for all he allowed us to do in 2012 and for the lessons He taught us along the way!

A Swarm In July Is Not Worth A Fly

" 'A swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly’—for it is then too late to store up honey before the flowers begin to fade."
~from Wild Life In A Southern County by R. Jefferies, 1879

Our bees were NOT supposed to swarm now! Unlike our Genesis colony, which we kept up on the mountain and lost to the wax moths, we now have our hives just outside the kitchen window. We can see them all the time and Lisa has been checking on them regularly. We've given both of our colonies two hive bodies, so they should have had plenty of room, and the one that swarmed had filled less of the frames than the other one that has not swarmed. We were hoping to put supers on them within a week or so, but Lisa checked them just yesterday and thought we had plenty of time since the frames were not full!

We are very concerned that the colony which lost this swarm will be too severly weakened this late in summer, and we are sad that now we won't be able to get any honey from them this year. And if we can capture the swarm, will they be strong enough to make it through the winter? It seems doubtful.

Would we be able to put the swarm back into the original hive? We are still novice beekeepers so we don't really know. We will have to identify the queens and decide what to do with each of them. If we can capture the swarm we will be calling in for some help in identifying the queen since we don't know exactly what to look for.

At least we were successful in getting the swarm to land on a tree in the front yard, not far from the original hive. We made such a racket, that I'm sure folks could hear us all the way across the river! Erica was doing the dishes when she noticed the right bee hive buzzing around very vigorously and told me to look at the bees. When I saw the bees, I ran out to get Lisa who was heading to the garden. I wasn't sure what was going on, but I knew she would be interested.

Lisa immediately yelled, "They're swarming, oh no! Get some pots and start banging!" Erica hastily handed out some pots and pans and Lisa, Matthew and I commenced to making the most noise we could! (I think my pots had the most melodic sound of the three of us.) Christina went to the front porch and began ringing our large dinner bell. We watched the cloud of bees hover above our house and move to above the side yard and slowly on up toward Simon's tree house tree where they gradually settled as a mass waaay up toward the top!

We succeeded in persuading the swarm to stay close to home, but how in the world could we get to that branch 40 foot above? I asked Matthew if the fire department had any ladder that could get up there. He said they had three extensions but we would need something solid to lean the ladder up against, not just some little branches.

We put a hive box with a bit of honey underneath the tree in hopes that they will find it and decide to move in. That would be the ideal conclusion to this puzzle, but what are the possibilities of that happening? We don't really know. We will be watching them carefully tomorrow to see where they head off to.

Lisa suited up and wanted to check on the hive that lost the swarm. She was happy that there were still very many bees left in the hive. She had been afraid that Matthew weed-eating below them had caused them to swarm and maybe the entire colony had departed, but that is not the case. She thinks it must be a legitimate swarm.

She didn't check them until 8:30 or so and it was starting to get darker. But since I had not taken any pictures of our new hives, I decided to capture the moment on film anyway.

Here is Lisa checking the frames:







Here is the tree where the swarm landed. You can't see them in this picture, but you can see Simon's tree house. The swarm would be above the top of the frame:



Waaay above the tree house you can make out the glob of bees:



The pictures didn't show up too well since it was so late, and when I zoomed up on them it got more blurry than I wanted, but maybe you can get an idea anyway:




Simon was a trooper, and went up on the hill with Lisa when she got a closer look at the bees. He didn't get very close, but afterwards he decided to put on the bee keeper garb just for fun:





I say that he was a trooper becasue this is what he looked like just one week earlier after being stung in the face by two honey bees:





He wasn't wearing a veil when he was changing out the bee feeders, but we have done that chore several times before without a veil. This time, however, was different! He put the first feeder in with no trouble, but the second colony didn't like him being there and let him know it! He's not been allergic to bee stings before, but I guess with two of them getting him in such a sensitive area made the difference. He didn't feel like going to church that Sunday, but after some cayenne pepper, the swelling went down pretty quickly. Some children may be scared of bees after something like that. Simon was a bit nervous about bees for a day or two after the stings, but he was very interested in them today, just a week later.

So, we have a swarm in July, which, according to the old proverb, isn't worth a fly! So sad. But will we be able to salvage something out of this experience? I guess only the days ahead can tell the rest of the story.

Another Short Generic Update From Pure Water Hollow

We are enjoying some fruit of our labor:

Lisa made a wonderful cherry cobbler back the first of June and we have enjoyed strawberries and many raspberries. It looks like we will have an abundance of grapes, peaches, and apples. Blackberries are waiting to be picked, but they did not do as well as other years.

Vegetable update:

We have been blessed with fresh green beans, broccoli, kohlrabi, onions, cauliflower, peppers and new potatoes. The corn has tassled in the upper garden and is still growing on the river bank. We have an abundance of tomatoes ripening and many potato plants still growing, although some have died.

“Pure Water Hollow Chicken Flock: The Next Generation” began on June 24th.

That was when our new breeds of day old chicks arrived at the post office. We have tired of the game/mixed hens that have been so good to us for the past several years. We have been getting plenty of eggs from them (we have been selling some), and we have taken advantage of the free meat, but we decided that in the future we want bigger eggs and bigger and better meat. We have 28 chicks of four heavy breeds: Buff Orpingtons, Light Brahmas, Black Giants, and Partridge Rocks. We’re talking future hens of 10 pounds and roosters of 13 pounds! Our current chickens are only 3 to 5 pounds, I guess.

2 Litters of Piglets: Take 3!

Our new batch of piglets came sooner than expected this time, but since we just have our boar and two sows together all the time, we didn’t really know when the sows were bred. Sally gave birth to 13 piglets on July 1st and 10 of them have survived. Nellie gave birth to 10 piglets today, July 6th, and so far they all look good. This is the 3rd batch of piglets for us, and this is the first time that Sally and Nellie did not deliver on exactly the same day.

Our two sows were born in September 2006, and they had piglets July 13th, 2007, February 9th 2008, and now July 1st & 6th 2008. We raised or sold 15 piglets the first time, 19 piglets the second, and it looks like we have 20 healthy ones this time. One guy called today and has already asked to buy 3, and some other fellows were over today looking to buy some. It appears as though they will again be able to sell easily.

Genesis Colony of Honey Bees:

Our honey bees have been working hard and we need to rob them again right now! Don’t know when we will get around to it, but it’s time. We have another hive body set up and are hoping to start a second colony. We will see.

Goats:

They are doing well and clearing the hill side of the kudzu just like they are supposed to.

Pond Project:

Maybe we will get to do the pond before summer is over. Wish I had it done already. The people I am hiring think they can do it the end of July, but I will believe it when I see it.

Misc:

Much more has been going on it seems (like all the Christian camps the children went to: they had great times but I am glad things can now get back to normal), but I just wanted to get some sort of an update in. I would have liked to do separate posts on each topic with pictures and all, but this is the best I can do for now. At least these things are now recorded for the memory book, even if I did not polish the writings up like I usually enjoy doing.

God is continually blessing us every day. By the way, Timothy is doing great, starting to sleep through the night and is growing almost too fast. He will be 4 months old next week! Where does the time go?

We are trying to sit back and enjoy these blessings and not allow everything to happen so quickly that we miss out on what’s really going on. We do desire a simple life of hard work and quiet reflection. The quiet reflection is often left out but it is so important. Without some quiet reflection the hard work can turn into just aggravating busyness that is less than the goodness God wants for us! We desire God's best!

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3 comments
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sheryl on July 12, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Sounds like you all very busy. I just wanted to stop by and say hi. I have been wondering what you all have been up to. I can`t believe the baby is almost 4 mos. old. We got a new baby here on the farm. Not us, my cousin. She delivered him early and he just got to come home two days ago. He was nine weeks early. I just hope she lets me help spoil him. Take care and happy homesteading, Sheryl
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Schatzi on July 25, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Just stopping by to see how everyone is doing…can't believe your son is 4 months already…how exciting. Also sounds like you are busy harvesting all the goodness and blessings from the Lord.

Well, I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Connie
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HandsNHearts on July 29, 2008 at 10:19 am
I have passed along an award for you blog…stop by and collect it when you have time!

Deanna

A Short Update From Pure Water Hollow

I don’t know if there will ever be a great time for me to jump back into this blog, so I decided to just jump. I did not intend to leave off recording our happenings for such a long period of time.

Then I had an idea that I would back-date several posts and still record some of the things that have happened. That might have been good a month or so ago, but too much time has now gone by to do that with any continuity.

I have many pictures that I wanted to gradually post as I catch up on everything, but I have been foiled in that plan, too. For some reason I can no longer upload pictures to photobucket the way I used to, and I have not yet found another photo hosting site that will work with my computer. I never have fully embraced the technology of the 21st century and now the computer age may be passing me by...

Now on to the short update:

I have not really blogged anything since February, when there was snow on the ground. Now it is June and we have been having near record high temps for the past 4 days in the mid to upper 90s each day, and there is no end to the heat in sight. What a difference 3 months can make!

March at the Pure Water Hollow Homestead was of course dominated by the arrival of our newest blessing, Timothy. He will be three months old next week and he has grown so much. He is already about 20 pounds and can hold his head up by himself. Everyone here has been loving him and pitching in to help take care of him. He has truly been a wonderful addition to our family and a tremendous blessing!

Those piglets that were born in February all sold the same week Timothy was born. All kinds of people wanted them even though they were only 5 weeks old, and in just a weekend we sold 16 of them! We wanted to keep three for ourselves, or we could have sold them, too. I must remember that spring piglets are in greater demand than fall piglets, and therefore should probably be priced higher, but the $400 they brought in has been helping with the feed costs for our 2 sows, boar and the other 3 pigs. The three that we are raising for the freezer are 4 months old now and weigh about 129, 136, and 155 pounds based on their measurements.

April and May seemed to be pretty busy around here with getting the gardens tilled up and planted, the spring cleaning, getting the mowers and weedeaters working, working on our goat lot, and taking care of a newborn. We planted more vegetables than we have ever tried and tilled up more ground than we have in the past. I still do not have a tractor, so we have done it all with a tiller. We enlarged the goat lot, almost up to the ridge, so the goats now have an abundance of food that they are loving. All 5 of them are doing fine, even the crippled Tiny Tim (we are trying to call him just Tiny now) which the vet thought was not going to live very long over a year ago! We also rebuilt the chicken lot, enlarging it quite a bit (they are now giving us plenty of eggs again), and completely rebuilt our grape arbor for the seeded concord grapes, and made a new trellis for our seedless grape vines. The grape arbor is about 30 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 6 feet tall and the vines are hanging off the end and will touch the ground if we let them! Our Genesis colonly of honey bees are doing well and this last time we robbed them, Matthew put the suit on and helped Lisa get the honey. She got a neat picture of him in the suit with the smoker!

It has not been all work and no play, however. We opened up our pool on May 31st (the river) and the children have been enjoying wading and swimming and splashing in the cool water of the shoals.

This first week of June has been a hot one, but I have been in the gardens with the hoe most mornings. Our beans have had a lot of trouble and we need to re-do them and the corn on the river bank is very small (I am wondering if they get enough sunlight to do any good). The potatoes on the river bank are looking great and are blooming now and the tomato plants are forming little green tomatoes. Some time I will list all the vegetables we are trying to grow this year. Many of them are first timers for us, so we don’t really know if they are doing well or not.

June this year is also camp month for the children. Mathew goes next week, Christina and Simon the week after, and Erica and Matthew goes to another camp the following week. We are going to be working a bit short handed arounded here for the next three weeks!

I think that pretty much does it for my short update. So much has been happening it is just impossible to try and recapture it. God continues to be good to us and we are enjoying living life here at Pure Water Hollow! I will try to journal a bit more often again, to better record things for the memory book. If the updates are slow in coming, however, it is probably because I am hoeing, or reading, or mowing, or watering, or building, or swimming, or feeding, or hiking, or hoeing, or watering, or fixing, or feeding, or napping, or hoeing….

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4 comments
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mountainmama on June 10, 2008 at 6:42 am
I had missed your posts and I am glad you are back. I do understand about spring busyness, I have not been able to do much posting either.
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sheryl on June 10, 2008 at 11:55 am
I was tagged by vicksmom and now I am tagging you. Go to my blog and read what to do.

I have been missing your posts. I know this time of the year it is hard to get on here and post. I haven`t been on here much lately. I am so glad to hear everything is going good for you all. Sheryl
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CandyFoote on July 1, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Have a happy 4th of July!!

Candy
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Schatzi on July 4, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Thanks for the update on your family life….you all seem very busy and so we are thankful for any updates that you give us….will check back again shortly…Happy Fourth of July.

Connie

Snow 3 Weeks Before Christmas! 76 Degrees 2 Weeks Before Christmas!

Other parts of the country have been getting ice and snow storms, but here at Pure Water Hollow, in eastern Kentucky, it was a balmy 76 degrees today, with a lot of sun coming in and out from behind the fluffy white clouds. Coming home from work today I saw a man walking through town with no shirt on! (That’s not really appropriate even in the summer, but especially not on December 11th!)

We were going to take advantage of the nice weather and trim the goats’ hooves but we could not find where we had placed the hoof trimmers. Instead we just walked around a bit, checked on the honey bees that were very active today, and cleared out a flower bed. The quince bush next to the house is blooming!

We had gotten much rain the past few days with some flash flooding in areas, but today everything started to dry out a bit.

We did have some winter weather back on December 5th with 2 inches of snow. The public schools were dismissed and it was nice to have some sled riding and snow cream. Christina and I had a bad wreck sledding, but I’m thankful that neither of us were really hurt. Sadly, it melted rather quickly, and turned to yucky rain the next day.

It has been some interesting weather here at Pure Water Hollow, with snow, rain and flooding, and a beautiful 76 degree spring day all within a 7 day period!

I wonder what the weather for Christmas will be?



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4 comments
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Debbie on December 11, 2007 at 7:01 pm
I am happy to see that you are still around. I hope you are enjoying the temps. there. We have had 6 inches of snow the last couple of days with more on it's way. We are lucky if it reaches 30 here for our high! I can try and send you some snow!!!

Debbie
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sheryl on December 11, 2007 at 7:26 pm
I have been missing your posts. We had nice weather up this way too. I told Sam, I sure wish it would stay this way all winter. I not sure what the temp was but it was nice. sheryl
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guest on December 11, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Hi guys~

I wonder if you could tell me the name of the book you all recommended to me a while back? It was a "classic" in the realm of homesteading, and written by a woman. I think you even told me which edition to get, as the later editions had to be edited to be more "politically correct" or something like that?

We're thinking of starting a garden and getting some chicks in the Spring and starting our own little homestead out here in the Gap. I thought I'd like to get started reading about the "how-to's" involved in raising baby chicks and veggies, as I've done neither before.

You can call me if you want, I just came here because I thought maybe it was listed in the sidebar, but I didn't see it. It is interesting, this weather, huh?

Thanks and hope all is well with you and the rest of the family!

~Lori U.
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Karen on December 12, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Weather is the same here (even warmer!) in SW Mississippi! We've been running the air conditioner in the car and in the house!!!!!!!!! I want a cold Christmas season.

The First Honey From the Genesis Colony of Honey Bees!

We found gold in them ther hills! Golden honey, that is.

Actually we were hoping we would find gold when the time was right, back when we first set up the Genesis Colony of honey-bees at Pure Water Hollow in March. We jumped into the honey-bee business without much prior knowledge or experience, but I think things have gone very well. All the credit really needs to go to Lisa. She seems to have a natural sense as to what needs to be done with them, as well as taken some time to study up on honey-bees.

We have donned our veils and gloves a couple other times checking on the hive and adding additional supers, but this is the first time Erica got a picture of us.

Here we are ready to break into the lid of our hive and "rob" them. I have the smoker which should calm the bees down, but at this point, we really did not know what to expect from them. I guess I was picturing a wild and fierce attack on the part of the bees when we would open the hive, but they stayed calm. On some of these pictures you can note the time. We began as dusk was settling in at 8:16 pm



The heat index for this day was supposedly over 100 degrees again. The outfits made it even hotter, but the heat did not bother us too much. Here was the Genesis Colony on this warm evening as we approached:



When we took the lid off, there were bees and honey comb right up at the top. It appeared as though the top super was filled up completely with honey!





We smoked many of the bees on down into the hive and lifted the top super off the hive. I could not believe how heavy such a small box was. When we weighed it later, it came to 43 pounds, which is a lot to lift slowly, straight up, trying not to stir up the many bees that were still in this part of their hive!



It looked like each frame was full of honey and honey bees! This picture came out a bit blurry, but you can get an idea.



We put an empty super, with all the frames ready to be filled, on top of the hive and then put the honey-filled super back on top of that. The idea was that the bees left in our honey-filled super would go on down into the new, spacious super we had just given to them. With some encouragement from the smoker, many more of the bees deserted the super we were wanting to take by crawling on down into the new super.

We then took the super full of honey off again and began to take out each frame. Here we are looking at the frames:







There were still plenty of bees that were staying with the honey so Lisa gently brushed all the remaining bees off of each frame in turn, into the new super. A few of them were crawling around on us during this time, but not too bad. Erica got a picture of some of the bees on Lisa’s veil and arm.



Here are some of the frames, all the bees brushed off, and ready to go back into the super:





After we replaced each frame back into the box, we were ready to transport the super full of honey down to the house. There were still a few bees that accompanied us along the trail, but by the time we got to the house, we could find only two bees.

Now that we were in the house, we could examine the frames in better light.



Some of the cells had come open, and golden, delicious honey was oozing out! We immediately knew that it was delicious as we licked our fingers that had gotten covered with honey. Of course everyone had washed hands!



We are now still letting the honey drain from the frames. This is taking a very, very long time. We do not have any fancy extractor or anything, so as of now we are just cutting the beeswax open and letting the honey drip out. At first there is much honey that pours out, but then it takes a long time for each drip to come out.

We are very thankful that no one got stung and that it looks like we have a good harvest of honey for our first attempt. I am looking forward to seeing how many quart jars of honey we can fill from this one super. We would also like trying to make some beeswax candles some day. That would be a fun project on some cold winter day when we are all snowed in!

Thank you, Lord, for allowing us to learn about honey bees and providing us with such a delicious, natural food source!