Just Another Bee In Our Bonnet

With an orchard you need bees.  Last year, our early season fruit trees went into bloom due to a few weeks of warm weather that came far too early.  So early, in fact, that the pollinators weren't awake yet.  They were still tucked snugly in their little beds, hats on, sawing logs.  The blooms came and went, and with them the future fruit that would have been born of them.

The mid-season blossoms were sparse due to a late cold spell, which I'm sure was mother nature's revenge for those early weeks of warmth.

I only have two late season trees, and they tried so hard to set blooms, but just didn't quite get there.

So what is normally a field of white and pink blossoms abuzz with flies and bees doing their busy work, swimming through air sickeningly sweet with perfume was silent.

While I cannot control the effects of the weather on the fruit trees, or when the bees decide to pry themselves out of bed, I can increase the number of bees on the property.

We are a registered state pollinator habitat and are on the DriftWatch and BeeCheck registry.  We let as much native grasses and flowers grow on the property as we can and I have many areas where I have planted additional areas of flowering plants.

So after a great deal of research and decided that we would start by adding just one hive.  I have a friend about 8 miles away who has traditional square box hives for honey.  She grows fabulous flowers for the farmer's market, and she had a rough weather year too.

We decided we liked the eccentric look of the top bar hive.  I actually began looking at them sometime last winter, but after seeing the price tag, and then being saddled with the barn project, I put the hive on such a back burner, I forgot about it.  At the beginning of January, my renewal for the DriftWatch program popped up in my email.  Suddenly, the beehive elbowed its way back into not only my memory, but forced it's way to the front of the project line.  How long could building one take?  Besides, I could work on the hive in the workshop when I got sick of working on the bathroom remodel in the house.

A quick Google search for Top Bar Hive Plans brought me to the site of The Barefoot Beekeeper  .
He, in very plain English, explains not only beekeeping, but how the hives work.  While his plans online are quite easy to follow, I did decide to go ahead and order his books to have on hand for reference.  There a great resource for beekeeping for dummies.  Because honestly, I have NO idea on what I'm doing with bees.

He discusses three main methods for keeping bees.
*Keeping bees just to have bees.  Completely let them be and just give them a place to live.
*Being a mid-range keeper.  Give the bees a place to live.  Give them minimum maintenance, and take only the honey the bees won't themselves need for over wintering.
*Having bees for honey.  These bees work hard, hives are heavily maintained and checked, and honey is harvested and bees have food given to them to overwinter.

We decided to go with being mid-range keepers.  We'll care for them, but not hover.  Their main job is pollinating and any honey we get is just a bonus.

marking out the sliding boards

So on to the build!

The instructions are quite good and the build went quite well.  Like all projects I thought it would be a quick 2 or 3 hours.  Turns out those are football hours, but they were easy hours, not at all confusing or difficult.  The full instructions are online, so I won't go through them here.  I'll just post the photos and comments.

These pieces are critical.  They must match, and are
what the angles of the sides are based on.  Building
around them makes the sliding boards fit like a glove.

I painted all the pieces before cutting.  This is much easier than
painting all those little corners.  

The top boards are color coded for easy
selection.  Sliders are yellow, feeders are blue, wax starts are blue with a red dot, and
wood starts are plain blue.

The roof was far more complicated.  The instructions basically said, wing it.  Make the roof however you want, out of whatever you want.  LOL!  So it took me forever.  I really tried to keep to the scraps of lumber I had in the shop and then make it happen. It had to be high enough to allow for ventilation, and it had to fit snugly over the base frame, but not too tightly, but not enough to let in intruders.  It's trickier than it sounds.

The floor was also tricky.  It can be solid, it can be micro mesh less than 1/8 of an inch square (not found in US, but you can use gutter screening, or what I opted for, an ECO-floor.  An ECO-floor most closely resembles the litter floor of a tree stump or rotted log.  The tiny mesh floor is covered in small twigs and shavings.  It allows for the natural friends of the bees to move in and take care of dead bees and mites.  This requires an add on to the bottom the hive that has to custom designed.  It is made so that it is removable to be checked and cleaned.  It is filled in it's entirety, so that the litter comes to the bottom of the slider boards.  The litter is so thick that it is insulating and a barrier for those that would also like to move into the hive.

The ECO-floor frame shown here upside down.

The feeding station for sweet water for food drought season.

the new porch

Here she is all finished.  I also added a barn quilt square called Bee Hive.  End cap vents, which have screening on the inside
to inhibit other bees, wasps, and hornets.  We also added heavy duty handles on each side so we can carry it from location to location if needed.  I also removed the red porch and replaced it with a 3 inch wide, composite porch that is cut at an angle so when it is mounted to the side of the hive it is horizontal.  There are black rubber stoppers for entry holes not currently in use.  The paint color name escapes me, but it is Tiffany Box Blue.

The bees themselves will be ordered next week from Valhalla Bee Farm, they carry both Italian and Carniolan bee boxes, as well as a well stocked room of beekeeping supplies. (There is nothing more glamorous than a full beekeeping getup.)  While the Italians make more honey, the Carniolans are a "friendlier" bee.  Since our goal isn't honey production, we plan on getting the Carniolans.

So that's the buzz at the Ranch this week.

Deep In The Yuletide

The past six months have been a whirlwind of work on the Ranch. My hopes to keep up to date on the blog were dashed by an endless parade of jobs and tasks.  Outdoor work took priority in fine weather, which bumped indoor work days that weren't so very nice.

So instead, please enjoy the following photos to catch you up.

Cornhusker Games in late July resulted in 4 Gold and 2 Bronze Medals
for the household.

The garden produced a crazy amount of cucumbers, tomatoes, and
peppers.  The corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes were a bust, although
pretty while growing.

The first of the Alpacas arrive and join the pasture with the donkeys.
This is 10 year old Odin.

On a trip to the farm store for more feed....well, we heard peeping.
Yes, we remembered the feed.  We added 4 americanas all girls.
Or so we hoped. 

We had a large hay shed built and filled it with 75 bales of our own hay.

Gorgeous summer cicadas.

We added Angus Kissed by Starlight, a one year old True Black.

The chicks at two months old.  It was looking like one was
a boy.  He was huge, with feed to match.  SnowWhite, Cinderella,
Rapunzel, and Prince Charming.

Then came Sir William the Red, 5 year old Medium Brown.

The windmill purchased from a moving neighbor was fully restored.
I built a platform.  Doc helped me get the base up and I hired a tree guy with
a lift to get the blades on.  It looks great!

The ornaments for the Governor's
holiday tree at the Capitol Building were
designed, created, and delivered.

We sold Odin.  He didn't want to mix with the other animals.  He
had been kept inside so long at his other farm, he wanted nothing
to do with being OUTSIDE, but kept others from being inside.
  We added Nova, 7 year old Beige and rose. 

We added 3 year old Sterling.  Light Grey.

Here's Stormy, 1 year old fawn.

The snow storms began in the middle of October.

We sold the Donkeys as well.  They are missed, but they were making life
difficult with the alpacas.  They moved 8 miles straight down the road to a farm of 11 horses and one
very lonely Jack.  We can visit whenever we like.

The pasture is full of fluff. 

Prince Charming turned out to be a GIRL!
She's a large breed that got mixed in with the Americanas.
She is a Husky Red.  A dual breed meat or egg bird.
Meet Mirida.

It's been a good fall.  They boy is back in school.  Doc is back teaching at school.  I run the Ranch, tackling all the honey-do's, and the fix-its, project planning/execution, and errand running.  We had a bathroom pipe go, so I've been gutting and rebuilding a bathroom for what seems like forever instead of writing or painting like I had planned.  Christmas is upon us and I have managed some knitting, and to my credit the tree is UP. 

So there you have it.  Happy New Year!

Canning Season is Upon Us

We are dead smack in the middle of summer at the acreage.  The Spring rolled in and out again over a period of about two days, and fell head-long into Summer. There were no ifs, no buts, no coconuts.

The orchard suffered the most from our leap into the 90s.  The blossoms dropped on all of the early and mid-season varieties.  That means no pears and precious few apples.  On the upside, it gives the trees a year off from production and puts the energy into growth and root system.  We did manage 12 ounces of tart cherries from one tree, but I'm afraid that's it for the orchard this year.
The garden is back up and running full swing.  I opted for a new gardening method that is based on the composting in place method I used on the garden when we first moved here.  That garden now being under several feet of new barn floor.  This method is from a new book Raised Row Gardening. (not affiliated, nor do I profit from)

The garden walking spaces are a deep layer of mulch material, while the growing zones are mulching/composting in place.  The growing rows are then planted with a cover crop after harvest and allowed to over-winter.  The new season planting are then planted directly into the mowed cover crop, and then mulched again, providing moisture control and more organic material.  So far, so good.  The garden is going gang-busters, although due to the early heat, things were slow to get going as the ground went to cold to blazing hot and dry, and then hot and very wet.

It is currently surrounded by a 100 foot poultry net fence.  I do plan on installing a permanent wood and wire fence when the weather cools down.  So far we've harvested 4 pounds of new, red potatoes from one pound of seed potatoes from the potato towers.  I've canned 6 quarts of pickles and one quart of jalapenos and banana peppers over the past two days.




I planted a sacrificial patch of dill to spare the tomato plants from horn worms and swallowtails.  So far it is working, which doesn't mean I won't be vigilant on my hunt for those voracious plant munchers.

The BIG news is the DONKEYS ARE HERE!  Once I finished the barn, Poppy and Tulip arrived in a big silver stock trailer.  From the get-go, they were snuggly and loving giant puppies.  They love to be groomed and pet.  They love their giant green pasture and their fresh straw. (Yes, they eat straw, not hay.)  When the weather turned to scalding, we made the command decision to shear them down for the summer.  It was my first lesson in clipper or shearer purchasing, and I learned a LOT.

Wooly Tulip

Fresh Haircuts

After a week of blade purchases and fooling around with a very pricey, highly recommended clipper for all stock, I returned the clippers and invested in a professional set of shears.  I, with the help of Doc, sheared both mini-donkeys, or dinkies as we call them, in under 25 minutes. 
Not only is it a fast shear, but clean. 

Poppy is always looking for a cookie.

I invested in the alpaca blade, as we will need it in the Spring.  The alpacas start arriving this week.

such a ham

New solitary bee houses in the orchard.

Princess has decided that the straw bales are HER spot to make nests.

On the chicken coop side of the farm we have suffered the loss of Hyacinth to cocci.  A rapidly progressing illness, and I didn't catch it fast enough to save her or Rose in time.  The rest of the flock was treated for cocci, worms and mites (regular seasonal treatment) and then back on replacement vitamins.  They all seem to be doing just fine. We have plans for chicks in the Fall.  I still haven't decided if we'll hatch or purchase chicks.



Art-wise I am still producing photographic art and watercolors.

In fact, all five of my submissions for the Governor's Christmas tree were selected with a deadline of October 15th.

I also purchased a spinning wheel and am learning to spin fleece.  Hey, if you're going to have alpaca running around.... LOL.

I am also learning Norwegian.  So far, it's going well.  So wish me luck on that one.  Takk!

In June I earned my NRA Range Safety Officer Credentials.

And in two weeks we have the annual CornHusker Game competition.

So, as you can see the ranch is just as crazy as normal!  Thanks for visiting!

When you're miles and miles away from a good doughnut...

No, they're not good for you, but every once in a while you just have to have a fresh ring of fried dough and a tall, cold glass of milk.  But when the closest doughnuts, mediocre at best, are a 30 minute drive one way and the really good ones are a little further, but cost an arm and a leg and there's a looming ice storm and blizzard and you MUST have them, you do what needs to be done.

You google doughnut recipes.

I am picky when it comes to doughnuts.  My favorite are chocolate cake doughnuts, moist but not greasy, with vanilla icing. I was out of baking cocoa, so those were out of the question.

Next in line for the crown are simple, plain, old fashioned glazed yeast doughnuts.  Now, I've never made doughnuts. I don't own a fryer, but I do have a large cast iron dutch oven.  My mouth watered at the prospect. So that was the plan, a vat of 350 degree oil on my gas stove.  That WAS the plan.  But when I dug out my clip-on thermometer, I discovered that it slid up and down in its mounting so what the actual temperature was at any given moment was anyone's guess.  Reeling in my disappointment, my wind whirled with other options.

The electric fry pan!  It wasn't very deep, but it did have an automatic thermostat, so that was good.  And if I was careful loading the pan and flipping the depth I could work around.

I scrolled through dozens of recipes to find one that wasn't overly complicated and for one that required ingredients I had on hand.

Bingo! Krispy Kreme Copycat from Genius Kitchen

The photos on the site aren't the best, as the doughnuts are over cooked.

I also used metal skewers to flip and lift the doughnuts. And I kept the glaze warm and after letting the glaze set, I dipped them again.

I used my 3 inch and 1 inch biscuit
cutting rings to form the doughnuts.
They looked rather sad.

Once they hit the oil, my worries were
over.  They puffed and filled out nicely.

Using a skewer for a quick flip.

Cooked to golden.

Draining on a cooling rack above a paper towel catch all.

Of course when you make doughnuts, you get doughnut ball!
I also made all the scraps into balls.

Glazed and ready to eat.

With the remaining scraps, I mixed apple, sugar and cinnamon
and pressed together and made apple fritters for Doc.