Wild Flower Bombs for Easter - Helping the bees

Do you ever wonder why planting wild flowers is important? Or why our bottom field by the river is always full of goldenrod and poppies? Because we plant for diversity to increase the food nd habitat for our pollinators. Our success as farmers is largely dependent on having our flowers pollinated and then harvesting the resulting fruits and veggies. As a planet, we can't afford to lose a third of our food production if bees and other wild pollinators fail to thrive. So each year we take a few hours and make wild seed bombs and spread them over the wild spaces on our property. We use native flowers, weeds to many people, and we also plant domestic flowers for their beauty too. It's a beautiful way to brighten up your yard too. 

Seed Bomb Recipe:

3 packages of wild flower seeds

10 litres topsoil (potting soil is too fluffy)

2 litres of well aged manure 

Add enough water to the soil and manure to make a sticky mix that will keep its shape if rolled into egg sized balls. Mix in the seeds. Roll into golf ball or egg sized balls and you're ready to go. Keep the balls covered so they don't dry out completely and use within two days. 

I've recently seen a video where coloured paper was ripped up into pieces, soaked in water for 15 minutes then put through a food processor until smooth. They squeezed out the excess water (it sort of looks like putty) put it into a shaped mold, sprinkled in seeds and then more paper mush on top. This made cute shaped seed bombs. Due to the seeds getting wet you'd still have to use within a couple of days but might make a good Easter craft. 

To use the seed bombs just plan to throw them out into your open spaces before a few days of wet weather. The soil and manure (or paper) will help to retain moisture as the seeds germinate and provide some nutrients. If you choose varieties that will self seed then you'll be starting a wild flower garden that will last for many years to come. 

https://www.facebook.com/LifeMadeDelicious/videos/10153644704948952/

Chicken Days (Or the End of Days)

 Butchering Chickens. Yes, that's what we spent the day doing in the sweltering heat which went well above 30 again today. Well not the whole day because of course we had church this morning. But we met with our chicken guy Tim at 3pm and he quickly got set up. 2 big tanks of cold water for cooling the finished birds, a burner and pot for heating water to dip the birds prior to plucking (it loosens the feathers), a plucker and his work table. He did a good job and was pleasant to hang out with.The finished birds are clean and bagged ready for the freezer. Here's some of the equipment he brought with him. 2 barrels which were very clean inside, for filling with cold water and placing the cleaned chickens in to cool quickly. I promise, there are no graphic pics to follow. All the chickens had a good life outdoors until moments before they died and are now resting comfortably.

 This nifty little device turns and the black rubber 'fingers' pluck the feathers out of a scalded chicken in a minute or so. A very great labour saving device and this one just plugs in to an electrical cord.

This is Tim being thoughtful.  Or taking a rest after doing all out chickens, we're not sure which.  It's hard work in such hot weather! His contact info is listed below, just say Elizabeth Faires sent you and that you were reading the blog.

 These are our 8-9 week old chickens

BEFORE.......

 And these are some chickens...3 roosters we culled,

    AFTER!

Here's My faithful assistants (aka. chicken wranglers) waiting for their turn to get to work, Pete our friend who is letting us use his yard and of course Stephen my husband in the blue shirt. The process is quite quick. The chicken is killed quickly and then left to bleed out for a minute or two. It's dunked into hot water to loosen the feathers and then plucked using the plucking machine.It could also be done by hand. After that it's cleaned and trimmed and put into a big barrel of cold water to cool down. Then it's bagged up and ready for the freezer! Easy! Well Tim makes it look easy. He charges $3.50 per bird and does all the work. He'll take care of all the killing we need from lambs, to cows and pigs at what we think are good prices. And he's conscientious. He keeps a clean work area (not that you can tell from the pics) and gave us some nice table ready chickens. I'll add his contact details later on as I know he'd appreciate the business. In the end we had 14 meat birds, 3 roosters, and  nice pile of feathers and left over bits for the compost pile.

 Chris was helping out with the bees in the early evening. Well, actually he was hanging out learning to tell the difference between grubs, workers and drones and he's brave, not at all afraid of bees. We had some of our comb collapse last week, I don't know if it's the heat or what. But Steve salvaged what he could and let the bees clean up most of the mess. However it looks like we'll be having a new queen as there are lots of queen cells all of a sudden so we wondered if she was a squashing victim when a comb collapsed. Either way, it looks like the bees are happily re-queening their hive. We took advantage of this and removed 4 frames of brood and honey to make our own nuc and start a new hive. The parent hive is building up nicely and with so many queen cells I'm sure they'll have a new queen up and running in no time, and removing this nuc should stop them getting any ideas about swarming too. Here's a beautiful piece of natural comb our bees made this week and it's already being filled with capped brood and honey. The beeshere in town certainly seem to be doing well and storing lots of honey while still increasing their numbers.
I'm hoping that is we get some rain this week the weeds and grass will all flower and we'll have some more happy bees. My friends Sarah, Russ and Gail said I can put a hive out at their lake side cottage so maybe that's a good place for this new hive. Steve better get building, or I'll make a Warre hive this week.

Here's the Info for butchering:

Tim's Mobile Butchering 902 765-4016

He serves a large part of the Annapolis Valley and does poultry, game and livestock. All you have to do is take your sides to your favourite butcher for cutting.

FYI, Chickens are $3.50 each complete and he'll charge $1 for cutting a whole chicken up into parts.Now that we have a much better idea what we're doing we might do our own butchering in the fall.

Bees : Just How Clever Are They?

Bees obviously have a complex social structure, but how much of that is instinct and how much is active intelligence that can learn, recognize, adapt and create? If this is something that you've ever wondered about or if it sounds interesting then I'd invite you to listen to this edition of Ideas from the CBC. It's the better part of an hour so make yourself comfy. It's called Dancing In The Dark: The Intelligence of Bees. You'll learn a lot about how bees perceive their world, and lots of other interesting things. Well worth a listen. If you weren't fascinated with bees before, I promise you will be after listening!

And if you wanted to learn about bee sting therapy there's another 6 minute report here. Ouch!

Busy as a Bee: Todays Work in the Garden

Well, it's a hot sunny day with a light breeze blowing. Perfect for working on my sunburn! Actually I've got the worst of it covered up today in an effort to not look like a cooked lobster. And since it's the middle of the day, I'm inside having a glss of water and avoiding the sun altogether. Chris will be home from school in a half an hour and we'll head back out then to finish the tilling and rake out as much crab grass as we can so that we can begin planting.

We have a small garden at the house in Greenwood here. The soil's very sandy, ant ridden and dry at the moment but we've mixed in lots of manure and are hoping to at least be able to get some tomatoes, squash, beans, peas and salad veggies off it, especially if I can control the ants. Our main garden is at a friend's place in Wilmot, about 10 minutes away from our house, and the same place we keep our hens and chickens. We've got it tilled over several times but it's chock full of crab grass so we've cut it down and now we're pulling out endless roots. But the more we can get out now, the better it will be as far as weeding goes later in the season. Weeding...it's never ending!

The plan for today is to finish tilling the main garden over once again, this will be the 7th or 8th time I think, pull out as much crab grass root as we can and then get some rows of peas, beans, tomatoes and corn into the ground as a main crop. The greenhouse will be planted with tomatoes and cucumbers to start and then a crop of peas and salad greens for the fall. We'll also be planting our winter veggies in there if all goes as planned. But for now the main thing to do is to get planting started for staples that we can freeze, can and store. The sooner we can get things in the ground the better. We're looking at having a cooler and maybe wet day tomorrow so that'll be my main planting day unless my friend Jennie goes on to have her baby that day.

The bees have settled in and are building new comb on the top bars. The main problem at this point is that the original 4 combs that came with our bees are spaced too far apart as seen above and so the bees have built bracing comb (like little bridges) between them, making them very difficult to remove. We can fix it but it would mean destroying some of the grubs and we want the hive to build up a nice healthy population and getting in supplies so they will overwinter well. Above is a pic of Meghan in my veil ($6 from eBay) and to the left is Steve is his gloves and veil (no bee suit this time) checking out the top bars. It's a strip of wood with a groove on the underside for the bees to start building comb on. Eventually it will be a full-sized rounded comb and there will be others beside it, all with the correct spacing. At this point we will let the bees do their thing and put a new box underneath this one in the Warre method so that this eventually becomes a honey box and we can remove the braced comb when it's not being used as a nursery. We're going to split the colony in the Spring and make our own nuc and set up a Warre hive then. I'm still hoping to get bees from Roger Morash this year too and Steve's built me a couple of other boxes ready for when that happens. I'm also going to get some lemongrass oil, set it inside a closed and empty hive and see if I can't attract a swarm of my own that way.

Well, I should get back out to the garden. I've had a break now. The girls have their youth group tonight too at church. Will write soon. Elizabeth

Queen of the Sun: A fantastic movie about bees

The boys and I are going to build some bee boxes over the weekend, and Steve has diagnosed the ignition coil as the reason the tiller won't run, so maybe we can get that fixed too. Sounds like we're going to be busy as bees! Our bees should be here within 2 weeks now that the apple trees and blueberries are pollinated and beekeepers will be splitting nucs (frames of brood plus a queen) from their existing hives. We're also making a couple of extras in the hope that we might catch a swarm or two. So if you see a swarm of bees clinging to a branch or other location in the Annapolis Valley (it can look like the picture) don't worry. They're not aggressive, and we'll be happy to remove them to a new home. Bees that swarm are simply hanging out waiting for their scouts to find a suitable new home. The swarm will attach itself to all sorts of places, like walls, trees, I've seen one on a bicycle, but it doesn't matter, in a few hours or a day or two, the scouts will return with a new home location and the swarm will leave. But Stephen or I would be very happy to come and remove them for you! If you want to know more about hives, search Warre hives on my blog and you'll get a great article including links to plans so you can build your own.

If you've ever wanted to know more about bees and their importance then take a little time and watch this video.

Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us? - Official Theatrical Trailer (HD) from Taggart Siegel on Vimeo.

Bees, Blossoms and Shad Fishing

 Chris and I spent some time along the fence line planting both blackberry and raspberry canes in a nice, almost straight row. The idea being to fill in some of the gaps between the lilac and apple trees that already exist along the fence line beside the cemetery. It's a pretty view, but it's also practical to use the space that's available and out of the main traffic and construction areas to plant permanent fruit bushes. We planted them by simply cutting a slit in the earth through the grass, placing a bare root in and then stepping on the sides to close the soil around the roots. The ground is damp but not soggy from the recent rain and the canes will be fairly easy to keep watered for the next few weeks.

Closer inspection of the apple trees along the roadside revealed a multitude of honey bees going about their business so if we are spared a hail storm we should have a good crop of apples come fall. It will be great to see if we can figure out the variety or if they are just a crab apples. Either way, they're useful and delicious.

Tonight we tried a different type of fishing. Shad are currently running in from the sea and into the rivers to spawn upstream, much like salmon do. The difference is that Shad are a very bony fish and that puts a lot of people off eating them. We caught a couple, especially after losing our shad darts (lures) in lots of snags under the water and we lost a few other fish too. In the end, after breaking my line a few times and running out of darts, I just threw on a trout fly with a spoon that was in my tackle box and it got a few nibbles too. I broke my line landing the one in the video, time for something a little stronger I think because these are fun to catch! Currently I'm using my trout rod and 4 lb line which is not meant for such a spunky fish as a Shad. Meghan had her line snap also and it was 6lb. Don't believe me? Here's proof! And special thanks go to Danny for taking us out, sharing a beautiful spot with us, and helping us un-snag line, hooks and land fish. You're a real gem my friend!

Queen of the Sun - Explaining Colony Collapse Disorder and Man's Dependance on Bees

Bees are as Amazing as they are Beautiful! Don't you agree?

As some of you know, there's a great film out at the moment that recently won 10 IFF Awards. It's a fantastic documentary about bees from the same director who brought you The Real Dirt On Farmer John. I'll include the trailer and some stills that came with my press kit though. If you are interested in watching it, and I hope you are, it's available as a DVD or for instant watch here. To download is about $15 but you can rent it on vudu for as little as $4.

For anyone interested in bees, pollinators in general or colony collapse disorder, this is a must watch. It's certainly not all gloom and doom either. Some of the people you'll meet are funny and quite optimistic that things can be improved. Briefly, it a look at man's relationship with bees over the past 10,000 years from humble beginnings to commercial operations and back to individual beekeepers. The focus isn't just on the US either but takes a look at how bees work to preserve an ecological balance all over the world. It explores, sympathetically, how large scale operations are coping with the losses of so many colonies each year and how small organic farmers are maintaining their hives while still dealing with the threats of pesticides, disease and parasites. Everything from alternative hive styles to natural parasite control. There really is a rich and seldom appreciated work going on by bees the world over and this movie will open your eyes. Highly recommended.

Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us? - Official Theatrical Trailer (HD) from Taggart Siegel on Vimeo.

The Bees Knees - A Warre Hive

Keeping Bees in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Well, the bees are ordered and should be ready for us to pick up in May from a local supplier here in Nova Scotia. The province does not allow any importation of bees except for queens from Hawaii, NZ and Australia so all new hives here are started from locally raised nucs. Even bees and equipment from other areas of Canada are not allowed so as to help stop the spread of diseases and pests. A nuc (nucleus) is basically 4 frames of comb with brood (bee larvae) that are growing plus some honey stores, pollen and several hundred worker bees to look after it all. If a queen is not included in the nuc she'll be in a little cage attached to one side where the bees can smell her and are getting used to her. This is a good start for any hive. Bees will release the queen from her cage by eating her out (the cage has a candy plug) or if it's a plastic cage then the beekeeper lets her out. She quickly begins laying new eggs and the population of bees can take off like crazy. A young queen can lay upto 2000 eggs per day, that's an amazing number and usually happens during the spring build-up where a hive can increase in number from your nuc of several hundred to over 60,000 in the space of just 6 or 8 weeks. It does depend on the quality of your queen, availability of food and the available space within the hive, but you'll know as soon as the brood are hatching because your hive will suddenly get much busier. If the bees are hungry they'll raise less brood. If they're short of space then they'll likely think about swarming. So it's a delicate balance. This (top right) is a Warre hive with the 2 winter boxes and 2 summer boxes all stacked together to form a beautiful and practical hive.

Don't panic if this all seems like a foreign language to you. All this basic beekeeping wisdom can be learned from reading and there are some good books out there. And joining your local club can be terrific too. Once you've got your book knowledge, bought or made your equipment, registered as a beekeeper with your province, state or county, and ordered your first bees...there's nothing else to do but learn from hands on experience and from observing your bees. We've found that you can learn a lot about what's going on inside the hive just by watching the bees as they come and go from the entrance. But we're by no means experts...and I myself am particularly nosy, so when we built our hive last time we included an observation window. Then I can peek to my hearts content without really disturbing the bees or taking the hive apart.

If you've followed our blog for a while you know that In BC we used both Langstroth and top bar hives. But now we're in Nova Scotia where the weather is different, hotter in summer and much colder in winter. So we're re-evaluating the benefits of both styles. Personally I like the natural approach to beekeeping that's favoured by the top bar hive but a horizontal hive won't make it easy for the bees to cluster or get their honey stores when the weather is very cold. So we've decided on a compromise...the Warre hive. The Warre hive is pictured at the top of this post. At the left we can see a Langstroth hive super (box) containing the frames upon which the bees draw out the comb and store honey and raise brood. 10 Frames fit snugly in a super with enough room for the bees to climb around between and do their work. But if left alone to build naturally, bees will make their own combs without any help from humans and they'll make this same space called the 'bee space' between their combs whether built in a hive, a tree or a skep.

The Warre hive is a very low maintenance hive consisting of boxes that use top bars in place of frames. The basic principal is that since bees build new comb downwards, you place your new boxes on the bottom of the existing hive in the spring and then in the summer after the main honey flow you remove the top box or two that's full of honey. The advantages are that you are removing older comb from the top of the hive and so removing any build up of pesticides contained in the wax, the bees raise larvae on the newer comb near the bottom so the top boxes should not have any larvae in them at all, you don't have to move and jostle the brood combs so you disturb the bees far less, the hive maintains it's own smell and is in a more natural environment (simulating the inside of a hollow tree). I like this idea because it's easy to build but also, unlike a Kenyan (horizontal) top bar hive, the bees should be able to form a tight cluster and overwinter better due to easier access to their food and an insulated 'blanket' layer on the hive and the fact that heat rises and the bees can cluster in a smaller space at the top of the hive. I know that some beekeepers do wrap their hives in insulating blankets but that can cause problems with moisture building up in the hive so it's never fool proof. Ventilation is really important. In an ideal world Steve and I would move all our hives to a central location for the winter such as an unheated garage that would still allow the bees to be cool enough to hibernate but out of the wind and wet and away from marauding bears.

There are lots of free plans for making your own Warre hive including these ones. And while you're there at the Bee Space website, check out the original book written by Abbe Warre about his experimentation and study of different beekeeping hives and methods. There is a lot of good info about using Warre hives both as a hobbyist and commercially so be sure to follow our progress this coming year. We think that this allows for the bees to build their combs naturally and yet at the same time offers ease of management and a natural environment for them. After all ... mother nature never intended for bees to be making rectangular combs or eating white sugar syrup during the winter. Oh yes that's one good thing to point out...if you do have to feed a new or starving colony syrup, use only white granulated sugar. Don't use brown sugar.

Here's some basic info on how a top bar hive works, hope it's helpful. Please feel free to leave a message or comment with any questions you have about bees or keeping bees in Nova Scotia and I'll be happy to point you in the right direction. A lot of management styles are personal preference of course so whatever works for you is what you should stick with. Keeping bees is really interesting and can be very rewarding too, but we enjoy watching them pollinate our flowers and the neighbourhood trees and gardens so we know they are helping out our food security too. It's a win win situation. And if we're lucky, maybe this summer we can catch a swarm of bees and add to our apiary naturally. If you are in the Annapolis Valley and happen to see a big ball of bees hanging off a tree branch we'll be more than happy to come get the girls and give them a new home! Swarms may sound scary but they're docile and just looking for a new place to live. They won't hurt you if you just leave them alone.

Summer Solstice

So there you have it...a little bit from each of the kids. It's not quite what I expected but makes for humorous reading anyways.

How are you this fine morning? I was awoken before 5 by an almighty racket coming from the ducks and geese in the barn. So I pulled a cardigan over my t-shirt and went out to check. It's a lovely morning and everything smells clean and damp because a very heavy dew settled in the night. We noticed it before going to bed because Steve and I were out looking at the satellites and stars and admiring the shortest night of the year. It wasn't full dark even at 11pm with a tinge of daylight on the northern horizon.

It's amazing how many constellations we've managed to forget over the years. Some stars are easy to find, Arcturus, Polaris and some constellations including Cassiopeia, and the big dipper.

Speaking of Polaris, the North Star. Can you find it? Right there off the end of the big dipper....It's a very useful star in finding North and also estimating your latitude based upon it's height in the sky. But did you know that Polaris has not always been the north star? As the stars move in the sky (Polaris is a fixed star and so moves very very slowly over thousands of years) the star best representing north changes. Did you know that? Vega was the pole star in 12000BC and faint Alrai will be nearer north than Polaris by 3000AD. Here's the wiki link.

While we are travelling we'll get to see 2 meteor showers, the Delta Aquarids and the Perseids. We'll be reaching some nice dark country by the time the Perseids peak on August 12th and 13th but alas, the moon will also be full and so obscure any but the brightest meteors. The perseids are my favourite shower of the year and having it occur in the middle of summer means you can lie out in a field while camping and watch the spectacular show above you. Want to know what's coming up in your sky? Here's a link to EarthSky Definitely worth a poke around.

The summer solstice has come and gone for the year. Midsummer, or the solstice, is approximately half way through the growing season in the northern hemisphere. And there are many religious holidays surrounding this peak of the suns height in the sky, some representing fertility, some the harvest, and some we do not understand though evidence left in places like Stonehenge show us that the ancient peoples were aware of the significant dates of the calendar and marked them accordingly. Weddings and "June" brides were traditional in many countries as was the 'Honey Moon'. Tradition tells us that the first or only full moon in June is the best time to take honey from the hives. And there is some basis of fact in this. Taking honey now gives the bees plenty of time to build reserves to last them through the inevitable winter to come. We never take all the honey. If you did, what are they supposed to eat if the weather turns wet, or conversely hot and dry killing off the flowers? We're supposed to work 'with' the bees and not to just rob them blind. Part of good beekeeping is knowing how to balance your need to take honey out and the bees need to keep honey in for winter.

Well I should be getting the kids lunches made and getting a start on my day. Enjoy yours and remember that even if things don't go well, nobody can make you have a 'bad' day. It's your attitude that counts and you control that 100%.

I thought it was "March" winds....

Today it seems we're getting both the March winds and the April showers. Good for the ground moisture I guess, but frustrating for a farmer who wants to be out in the sunshine planting...maybe tomorrow the clouds will break.

The animals are all cozied up in their homes watching the rain with the exception of a few intrepid lambs on the lookout for some nice juicy grass. I can hardly believe how big they're getting! Katahdins really are great sheep!

The goats are looking decidedly chunky and are ready to kid (have goat babies) between the end of the month and the middle of April.

We have a new queen and bees coming from Chile this week so expect pictures soon!

Gotta run and plant seedlings, also we're trying to put a poly cover on the greenhouse, in the rain and wind no less, I'll let you know how it goes!

John our son is out in the wet and cold converting his enormous blue bus into a cozy home for his family. I tell you, that takes dedication in weather like this when it's raining and the wind is whistling through the windows. I personally would rather sit back in front of the woodstove with a good book! The cat has the right idea, she's all curled up basking in the glow of the firelight.

We still have 8 full shares available for the 2010 growing season so please let us know if you're interested. I'll explain CSA shares in a future post.

Oh, we started a lacto-bacilli culture for making our own root beer (soda). Ours will actually be more like gingerale when we're done. The culture takes a week to grow and then the soda takes another 2 or 3 days to become carbonated after it's bottled. I'll let you know how it turns out.

We also have 2 chicks out of our incubator who are growing well under a heat lamp in our laundry room, one escaped today and was nearly eaten by the cat, at least that's the story the kids are telling. We parents are smart and slept in until 7 as it's Good Friday today and therefore a holiday.

Elizabeth