GAINS: 2 Rabbits and 5 more Hives LOSES: 1 Lazy Goose and 14.8lbs
Tag: Farm and Ranch Living
How To Blueprint: 1×4 Deep Beehive Super
If anyone is interested, here is the Blueprint for my 1×4 deep beehive super. “A Goal without a plan is just a wish.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery (That’s is my new favorite quote!) As I mentioned in an earlier blog this super is built with 1×4’s and cost about $9.50 to build. Using nine 1×4’s…
11 Days Until I Murder The Christmas Goose… Maybe?
When I get home from work, I go outside and watch them – it feels perverse. Like I should tell them to rub the lotion on their skin or something.“Killing is not so easy as the innocent believe.” – Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince I’ve said it once but I want to be clear…
13 days Until I Murder the Goose (warning: explicit language)
The reason I bought two geese was so I could kill the mean one for Christmas (which ever that one turned out to be) and still keep the other as a guard-goose for my chickens. However, on releasing the geese into my backyard, all hell broke loose. My chickens hauled ass in every direction and…
14 Days Until I kill the Goose
The goose is an experiment in farming for me. I have chickens and bees but both earn their keep and will eventually die of natural causes and so I have never had to murder an animal. Oh, I’ve hunted plenty but that is far different. In hunting, your interaction with the animal is momentary, distant,…
How To Make Cheaper, Stronger, Easier Beehive
This deep super cost me $5.40 to $9.40 to build (depending on the grade of lumber)! Here’s how I did it: If you’ve read my blog at all, you probably know just how cheap I really am. When I started to rebuild my apiary, I started off repairing old rotted boxes. When I ran out…
How To Prevent Moth and Prepare for Winter
My last preparations before winter: #8 hardware cloth lined with dryer-sheets and covered with cedar chips. The whole feeder cost roughly $6 to build and fill. However, I believe it will prove brilliant on all fronts. The dryer sheets should catch the beetles – the cedar should deter moths – and both should insulate the…
Building A Better Beetle Trap
I truly hope that someone smarter than me is working on eradicating the Small Hive Beetles. “Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson However, until then, this is my latest attempt. I bought Catchmaster Home Pest Traps (glue traps for insects) 12 pack…
The Accidental Split – 2018 Harvest Continues
“We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents” – Bob Ross Last night, Noah and I, attempted (without success) to put the trailer tire back on the rim. I am convinced that someone crept out to my trailer in the middle of the night and put a larger thinner tire on the rim. Perhaps I’m…
My first tomatoes
“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower My Papaw was a carpenter by trade and lived in the suburbs of North Miami. His tiny backyard always had chickens, fruit trees, and a small garden. Slowly, my backyard is beginning…
Wedding at Dr. D’s
My energy is split between what I have to do and what I want to do. However, it is absolutely impossible to devote time to everything. Family, work, and sleep are non-negotiable. So I am left to juggle downtime, beekeeping, writing, and inventing. While it sounds like a rationalization of my shortcomings, the truth is…
2018 The Future Looks Bright
“Never pet a burning dog,” – movie quote from, A Good Year. I do my best to keep this blog purely focused on my beekeeping but something strange happened last week that I don’t want to forget – so indulge me and then I’ll tell about my extraordinary beekeeping year thus far. Or just skip…
Queen Cells: If at first you don’t succeed.
“In our response lies our growth and our freedom,” Victor Frankl Yesterday’s hive inspections couldn’t have been worse (well anything can get worse but it was bad). The sky was sunny but the temperature was a cool 56F degrees with winds around 20mph. The weekend will been even colder and with lots of rain, so…
Checking the Walk-Away Splits
“Success in not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” Winston Churchill Let’s skip the suspense: 13 Healthy Hives but 3 did not make queen cells. All the splits are full of bees. Three made Queen Cells and Three did not. Now last year, I labeled the hives A,B,C,…
2018 First Inspection of Spring
“In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.” – Henry Rollins Is there anything more daunting than the first hive inspections of spring? This was the harshest winter since I started keeping bees. Yet, I am happy to report that I only lost one hive. It was the VSH Hive that was full…
Roasted Honey Mead – AWESOME!
Christmas Day 2016, we tasted my first mead… and it was bad. So while I am an amateur (for now) I am determined to get it right. “The secrete to doing anything is believing that you can do it,” – Bob Ross. If you have followed any of my Mead blogs, then you know that…
Linda Passed Away
“A year from now you may wish you had started today,” Karen Lamb I have been overwhelmed as of late. I can’t put my finger on the exact cause of this feeling but it is there just the same and it has been crushing my productivity. Nonetheless, Monday (12/4/17) I finally managed to winterize my…
Drones at the edge of winter
Link to YouTube Here “Never trust a woman, even though she has given you ten sons,” Chinese Proverb That’s a fitting quote given that my hive is full of sons (drones). This is a heartbreaking event so late in the year. While doing a little winter preparation, I opened up the first hive (Hive-VSH) and…
Predator-Proofing my Chicken Tractor
“Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral,” Frank Lloyd Wright My first three months of chicken husbandry was a lot more work than it needed to be. Taking the chickens outside every day and carrying them back inside every night was a hassle and quite time…
Failure: My First Hive Removal
He looked so happy… He had no idea ofthe carnage to come. My fortune cookie Saturday night read, “Failure is the chance to do better next time.” Saturday, Noah and I performed our first hive removal. While this could prove to be a good little side business, we didn’t charge. One reason that we didn’t…
Honey Homestead 