Mid Summer on the Farm

Yes, they say it is summer but this is one of the wettest and coolest I remember in a long time.  Several days this week we had thick cloud cover, drizzle, and temperatures never reaching 60 degrees.  Thursday was especially bad as I did pruning off the Island all day in heavy rain.  After we completed our evening walk we were treated to one of the most beautiful rainbows I've ever seen - then a second one appeared.  I was about to feed the goats their evening snack and just couldn't break away from looking at the rainbows, when two ravens flew through it.  Oh my, I thought, this makes up for the crappy weather!

Some of our Garlic ready to hang to cure

Pam dug the garlic out - a very good crop this year of large heads.  She'll tie bunches of six heads or so and we'll hang them on the rafters of our front covered porch to cure in the shade for a month or so, then clean them up and store them in mesh bags.  The garlic will last us until the next harvest.

Our Buckwheat Bed with squash and carrots

Pam watering the corn last night

We have two vegetable beds we never planted this year so I planted buckwheat in them.  Buckwheat is a good summer cover crop and the bees will love the flowers.  Speaking of bees, we have another swarm in our garden.  I sure hope it didn't come from our main hive!

Bee Swarm on our Garden Fence

We decided to replace our drake (male duck) named DJ.  I'm going to miss him, he is so mellow but a great rater.  When rats come into the duck house at night to share in their grain, he grabs them and drowns them in the water bucket, either leaving them in there or throwing them out.  Our problem is that two of our female ducks are his daughters and many of their ducklings have died from unknown reasons.  We are guessing that the cause is inbreeding. 

DJ (Don Juan) our Drake

The new chicken house with a chicken starting to lay her egg in the smallest nest - also the most popular!

All of the chickens are now living in the new house now.  I have the old one locked up and when time permits I'll tear it down.  I'm going to keep two of the posts that are set in concrete and turn them into Scarecrows.  Scarecrows have been successful at our farm in protecting our birds from eagles and hawks.

Steam raising from our compost pile behind the fence

Tomorrow we'll be butchering half of our meat birds - all of the males.  We have about 45 in total.  We'll let the hens grow with the boys for two weeks and then process them.  Tonight I'll remove the feed just leaving them water to clean out their intestines.  We did 45 last August and still have nine in the freezer - so this is a good number for us.

The Broilers in their summer home

The Broiler Chicken Yard

We don't use the popular 'Chicken Tractor' concept.  Though the chicken tractor is better than cages, I prefer to let my birds run in the pasture.  Our birds have plenty of space to search for bugs and weeds and get very good exercise.  I've seen other people's chicken tractors and believe they are not much better than living in a small cage.  We lose very few to predators.

Honey Bees

I was in the garden last Thursday watering the bee balm plants and could hear the honey bees  buzzing but couldn't see them.  I thought that was odd and looked up into our apricot tree and saw a swarm of bees hanging.

A Swarm of Honey Bees in our Apricot Tree

I assumed it came from our hive as when honey bees swarm they don't go far at first from the hive and I don't know of any other bee keepers within a mile of our place.  I've been meaning to order new hive boxes as I prefer to have more than one hive but have not done so.  I do have two honey supers in storage that are brand new, so decided I could use them as a temporary home until I order a new set of boxes.

The Swarm of Bees up close

Bees swarm as a natural form of hive splitting and growing.  When the bees in a hive believe they are filling up the space available, the queen starts laying queen eggs.  The worker bees feed these eggs a special food (royal jelly) that will allow these eggs to grow into a fertile female.  Shortly before the new virgin queen emerges from her cell, mama queen flies off with 50 to 60 % of the workers.  They will land on a nearby tree to rest while worker scouts fly off to find a new home.

I got my ladder out, set up the new temporary home, put on my bee suit and climbed the ladder.  I sprayed sugar water on the swarm to calm them, placed a five gallon bucket under the swarm, and shook the branch.  Almost all of the bees fell into the bucket.  The queen is usually in the center of the cluster.  I then pored the bees from the bucket onto the top of the hive and put the lid on.

About five days latter (yesterday) Pam and I were cleaning the goat barn, hauling the spoiled straw and bedding to our compost piles, when we both heard thousands of bees.  I went over to our established hive and saw thousands of bees coming out and flying over to a place in our orchard.  In the orchard they were all gathering, forming a funnel of bees forty to fifty feet high.  Another swarm was forming in front of our eyes!

It's very rare for a hive to have two swarms within a week unless there is something wrong with the existing hive and the bees are all moving out.  I went in my existing hive and all is well.  Our established hive looked very good, with many bees, frames of honey and brood.  My guess now is that the first swarm I caught was from a local wild hive.

I found the swarm in a hemlock tree outside our orchard, took one of the honey suppers and set up another temporary hive, and caught the swarm like before.  Now we have three hives, two in temporary quarters.  July swarms are not known to be strong with little time left to build their winter stores.  I'll help by moving some of the brood frames from the established hive to the new ones, start feeding them sugar syrup, and hope for the best.

Summer on the Farm

My typical summer day starts about 4:30 am when I get up.  I like to run when it is dark out, so three times a week I rise at 4 am to get my run in before starting the farm chores.  5:30 am I'm out working the birds, changing their water, topping off their feed and watering the garden.  I then feed and milk the goats.  I'm usually back in the house with the fresh goat milk by 7 am, strain it and let it set in the sink in an ice bath.  Our goal is to get the milk chilled to about 40 degrees within an hour, then it goes into the refrigerator.

Runner Beans

Potatoes and Sweet Peas

Our garden is doing okay this year, below average.  The runner pole beans are looking very good and we should have a good crop this year.  We grow two beds each year letting the beans mature and save them for the future.  Runner beans are very large and we use them in recipes that call for Lima beans.  Two beds of 8 sets of poles will give us about a gallon of dried beans plus our seed for next year.  The flowers attract humming birds and the honey bees love them.

Corn is way behind this year

Our corn is usually knee high by the 4th of July - today is the 11th of July and they are only half way to my knee.  I fertilized them this morning and watered.  Unless we have a very worm summer I don't believe we'll have fresh corn.  Potatoes are looking very good, as is the garlic.  The garlic will be dug up by the end of this month, tied together in groups of six and hung under our porch to cure.  Sweet peas are late but starting to produce well.

The Meat Birds are doing very well

 

I'm just about done with the inside of the new chicken coop - I still need to put an electrical outlet in the main room so we'll have winter light.  Once the days become shorter I'll put in a timer so the light goes on about 4:30 am until the sun rises.  The idea is to get the chickens to eat more (with the light on they wake up and eat).  The more they eat the more eggs they lay.

Our newest Mother with 12 day old ducklings

Yesterday our newest duck came out with 12 ducklings.  Moved her to the duckling pen where they will grow until feathered out.  We give them free choice grain during this growth period.  We have 26 ducklings living here now and have sold 10.  I have one duck on a nest and one laying eggs in another nest.  The Muscovy will usually set twice during the summer - so we get a lot of ducks!  I will sell all of the females and most of the males - keeping 10 or so males for the freezer.  We sell the day-old ducklings for $5, once they are feathered out the price goes to $7, full grown females are $25.

The New Coop, with siding still to do

The Egg Condo

We bought a new dehydrator, one with a fan and temperature control, and large enough to put my cheese in.  In the past I have been letting the cheese set a warm oven (warm when I first put in the milk) but with the new dehydrator I can set the temperature at 90 degrees and it stays there.  My last two batches of Chevre have been excellent.

Cheese setting in the dehydrator