Category: News, etc.

I haven’t written about our bees in quite some time. On our tours, I don’t really point them out anymore. It’s because while we had two wonderfully strong hives last year and one weak one, by early winter the weak hive had died as expected but so had the strongest hive. By late winter so had the other strong hive and frankly I was depressed looking out at those hives. The view above is of our wonderful sunset but it’s overlooking our bee hives. I’m the Pol Pot of bee keeping and I’ve murdered more bees than I care to think about. I know that everyone else is loosing bees too, but these two hives were doing so well, I just knew they were going to make it. Having all three die over the winter was just too much and I was considering calling our bee supplier and canceling the order for packages I have coming this year and just getting out of beekeeping altogether.

When I inspected my hives this winter, I was so disgusted that I didn’t even bother to put them back together correctly and left one hive open and exposed. I figured the honey that was in there would at least feed the native bees. The other two hives were closed up properly because who knows, maybe a swarm will drop in.

The other day, Miguel asked if my bees had shown up. Nope, don’t have them yet. Not sure when they are getting here, I think it was in May. What’s that then? I looked over, and one of the hives was awash with bees.

Too late for native bees to be robbing I think. Goodness! A swarm has moved in! And guess which hive it is. The one that was open and exposed. Go figure!

I went over and carefully put the hive back together. I noted that the foraging bees are steadily pulling honey from the other hive, plus there is honey still in this hive. A swarm of native bees, with a new queen, and plenty of honey to get started! These guys should do alright.

Suddenly I’m happy about beekeeping again and I’m looking forward to my three packages of bees showing up. I’ve never had a native swarm take up like this so it’ll be great to see how they do against package bees.

I’ve always let me bees swarm if they wanted to. I figure that’s another chance for bees to be out in nature replacing the losses that bees have been having. It sure feels good that nature gave me back a swarm, and my hope.

SWMBO sent me this the other day. She thought it might make good fodder for a blog post. I’m always wary of any top 10 list on any major news site but then this one starts out with bacon! Anything that starts with bacon has to be good.

Items one through four are items we use all the time here on the farm, and have available for you to buy from us.  Are we trying to increase fertility here? I certainly didn’t think so but apparently one of the kids asked for a little brother the other day. A little brother?!! Yikes! I think the old folks in the house are past that phase of life. If we need a little brother, I’ll rent one.

Note that for all the items listed like eggs, beef, liver, etc, they are all recommend to be real food, raised on real farms instead of factory farms. There are real differences between corn-fed animals and grass-fed animals. Differences that you can taste and differences in the health profile. Fertility is natures measure of your overall health and environment. If one cow here or there doesn’t breed back, it’s an issue with that cow. If it’s more wide spread, it’s an indication that you have a management problem. Either way, nature is saying, whoa, you’ve got a problem here that needs to be addressed before we start adding more stress with a  calf. This is cow breeding and management 101.

Not to compare humans to cows, but I’m a cow farmer. Everything compares to cows in my world. If you are stressed (work, life, in-laws, bills), with a poor diet (fast food, processed food, skipping meals, incomplete nutrition), nature doesn’t want to add new stress to you as well. Eating a proper diet of farm raised healthy products can help, as can spending some time out in the green grass seeing where your food comes from. Also, from personal experience I can say that red wine causes children (3 for 3 on that one!).

We also offer a baby getter-outter service 9 months later which involves bumpy rides in the Gator. We have satisfied customers on that one as well. 🙂

Nearly all of our customers are already parents as feeding their kids a better diet is a primary driver for them. However, we’ve all known people who have struggled with having kids and how heart breaking it is. If a change of diet can help, and you can have eggs and bacon while doing it, then this should be good news for them. Feel free to share this with someone you love and let’s see if we can help them.

Ninja cow beef, drunken cow beef, and fresh pork arriving on Thursday. With the new chicken we have in the freezer I’m pretty sure this is the best stocking level we’ve ever had with a full range of all kinds of meat. We’ve been working hard the past few months to get some of everything in and we’ve finally achieved it!

I’m around some this weekend and hit and miss during the week (I’m delivering meat and doing other farmy stuff). Next week will be tough until Friday but then I’m here through the weekend and into the following week. The weather is beautiful and there is plenty to see with new calves, green grass and all kinds of spring farming going on. Shoot me an email to schedule a time to come by for a tour and to stock up your freezer.

  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeTowUyCXGM

Yep, I’m doing all the cooking. Miguel is nowhere to be found (except just off  frame, doing all the cooking) oh well, at least I stirred the pot.  

 

This video is kind of an intro into what does it mean to be a locavore and what are food miles. Maybe Food Inc brought you here. If so, this is a great video to widen your viewpoint on eating and your impact.

I received a call out of the blue about a month ago while Miguel and I were on the Gator doing something or other. This nice lady on the other end of the phone explained she was a PH.D. student in Boston and was studying wasps. She wanted to know if she could come to our farm and look for wasps. Sure, I hate wasps, maybe she’ll tell me some way to make them not such a problem.

This morning, Julia showed up right on time to do her wasp research.

Mainly we walked around and looked where you would normally see wasps. Under eaves, under stairs, in our head gate, by the fence hot boxes. Julia found 6 nests in the 45 minutes she was here, which she said was pretty good. Of course, that’s six I need to go and murder now before there are a bunch of the things flying around and stinging me when I’m trying to work. Did I mention I hate wasps?

When I was talking to Julia on the phone, she said I’d know it was her by her hair. Ahh college. You just don’t see colors like that in the corporate world. The closest I can come to this is my purple iPhone case. Not exactly stepping out.

“All you need is a plastic bag, forceps, and nerve.” Julia

Yeah right. A wasp had started building a nest inside of our bird feeder. I had planned on getting rid of this wasp myself by simply lighting the entire house on fire and standing in front and pouring gasoline till there was nothing left. Luckily our expert had a less permanent solution. She reached into the feeder with forceps and grabbed the wasp by the leg. She then deftly placed it in the bag and was done. She didn’t find any of the wasps she was looking for unfortunately, but as she said, there is no bad data. The absence of what she was looking for is data itself so she was happy.

Just one more day on the farm.

  

And we have our state flower, the dogwood. In front of our barn we have the biggest dogwood tree I’ve ever seen. In spring it comes alive with white flowers, which I dearly love. After a short period, the flowers fall off and we are left with 50 weeks of green or brown tree but every time I see it, I see the flowers. 

The dogwood is the tree that I can most readily identify, because if you ever cut one down my father would have your rear end before you could blink. Since I spent my fair share of time in the woods clearing areas for him, I learned quickly from experience (and a sore rear end) which trees were not to be touched either by the saw or by falling trees. You would think I wouldn’t like them having to be so careful around them growing up but the opposite is true. Left to my own devices, there would be nothing but dogwoods and azaleas planted everywhere on this farm. 

We have a new worker on the farm. Miguel has been bringing his daughter to work on Saturdays to work with him and to learn what we do on the farm. She is a delight to have here and based on her expression she’s having a lot of fun. I’m not sure what she thinks of the big gringo who keeps joking with her but it’s obvious she enjoys being here with her dad.

Last weekend, after moving some pigs from the barn to the finished pig paddock, I had the opportunity to see them interacting as you see here. They were too cute so I had to snap a picture.

Last week we had a group of home schoolers out for a field trip. We do this type of thing often, averaging about 2-3 tours per week. Being homeschoolers ourselves, I always have a special place for homeschool families. This field trip took a few reschedules due to weather. I also learned that the coordinator had had a new baby TWO WEEKS before she came out and still made the trip and handled all the logistics details before hand.

As I welcomed the different car loads of people, I noted that one of the moms looked familiar. Sure enough, she and her daughter had been to our farm before for their own tour. The daughter, who was so cute I didn’t even think to get her name, had painted the above picture for me when she found out they were coming back. When she hopped out, she handed me the picture you see. I immediately put the picture away safe in my office and I’m finally getting up here to scan it and proudly share it. How cool is that? She took the time to patiently explain to me what everything in the picture was, as if I couldn’t see. I have three kids of my own, you know.

For those of you who can’t see it, it’s a horse running across the pasture. The grass is brown, but when she was here before it was winter and the grass was indeed brown. Behind the lead horse, you can see additional horses artistically represented but not clearly defined. Now at this point you may be saying to yourself, “Self, I don’t recall Dan having any horses on the farm.” Well, you’d be wrong. We had horses here for many years, something I’m sure I talked about on our tour and she remembered. Or maybe she likes horses better than cows so she drew them instead. I don’t care, I love it anyway.

I’ll be finding a good place to hang my picture. I just wish I’d gotten it signed and dated. Hopefully on their return trip.