Updates at the Wolfe House!

We have been a bit disappointed with the garden this year because the soil is really poor.  It's mostly clay with very little organic matter so it is hard as a rock without many nutrients.

Thinking ahead, Jon put a wanted ad on Craigslist for manure.  We quickly received a response...a farmer with 200 cows.  The manure is only 6 weeks old so we will rotor-till about half of it in the garden after the fall harvest; and then in the spring add more before planting.  Some of it will be added around the fruit trees.

For $75.00 we received 5 tons.  I couldn't help but take a deep sniff of this manure...the familiar smell of my childhood where I grew up on a dairy farm.  Cow manure always reminds me of the black rubber boots that fit over my dad's work shoes. 

Jon built a trellis for the tomato plants.

This is an embarrassing picture...these are supposed to be bush beans but they are not very bushy.  The ladybugs finally made camp and helped diminish the aphids that were eating the leaves.  The plants are slowly filling out and surprisingly have a lot of flowers ready to bloom.

This is the solar panel for the electric fence that surrounds the garden, blueberries, and grape vines.  It is 10,000 volts and can charge 30 miles of electric fence.  So far we haven't had any deer problems.  At first the grape vines weren't protected and it only took a week for the tiny leaves to be discovered and nibbled off.  Now that they are enclosed by the fence, the leaves have grown back and the deer haven't bothered them. 

The fruit trees are looking really good.  Out of 11 trees, 1 died, and another one only has growth coming from the very base where the root stock is before the graft.  Does anyone know what that means and if we still have a fruit tree of some sort?

The chickens are thriving!  About every 2 weeks I introduce a wheel barrow full of grass clippings into their outdoor fenced area.  When they aren't in the chicken tractor, they can keep busy scratching and pecking the new grass.

I haven't completed a hive inspection since I introduced the new nuc of bees 2 weeks ago.  With very few flowers out there for nectar, I decided to feed them because they have only a few frames of drawn comb and very little capped honey.  So far I have given them 11 cups water and 11 cups sugar.  In the corners of the vivaldi board you can see clumps of big black ants.  I am not sure if they are a threat so I left them alone. 

Everyday we seem to discover new creatures.  This week it was a gigantic turtle in the front yard coming out of the creek.  The tail is really long and covered in spikes.  We have also seen a blue heron eating fish from the creek.

It may seem busy around here, but we always find time to play!

Bee Arrival: Take 2

About a month ago a nuc was introduced into our apiary.  The first 2 weeks we saw a lot of activity outside the hive and a lot of pollen being brought in.  That activity quickly diminished so I decided to open the hive and take a look.  When I removed the vivaldi board, this is what I saw.  This isn't a good sign because there should be bees on top of the frames.

When I pulled a frame, this is what I saw.  There was no question about it...the hive was queenless.  Not only was the spotty brood pattern a dead giveaway, but there were several small uncapped supercedure cells and most of the capped brood were large, indicating drone cells.  Surprisingly there were a lot of bees so I think the queen has only been gone for a short time.  There weren't any eggs in the cells, only a few larvae and the capped drone cells.

Without hesitation, I called up the beekeeper I purchased the nuc from.  He had no problem swapping my queenless nuc for one of his working nucs.  I remembered my camera this time and took a picture of his apiary.  I really like the colorful hives!

I really like this beekeeper's way of making nucs.  He takes a regular brood box and divides it in half and keeps two separate colonies in the same box.  There is a divider down the middle separating the frames and entrances.  To feed the nucs, he uses mason jars with holes in the lids that he inverts over a piece of plywood with a hole covered with a screen.  He even paints the box in two different colors.  It looks like a really simple design that I may replicate someday when I have a large apiary.

Here is one of the frames he gave me for my new nuc.  The brood looks a bit spotty to me, but I was told that this pattern is characteristic of the VSH (Varroa Sensitive Hygiene) gene.  I had never heard of this, but apparently it's a hygenic trait that helps increase the level of resistance to pests and diseases.  In a hive with the VSH trait, you will find spotty brood because the bees eliminate any brood that may show a defect or mite.  They have been known to detect mites on capped bee larva and they chew through the wax covering and eliminate the larvae before it even has a chance to hatch.  So even though the queen is laying eggs correctly in every cell, the other bees are removing bees which makes the pattern very spotty.  I was also told that over time, as the queen ages, the spotty brood pattern will decrease.  I don't know if this is all a fact, but irregardless, this is the colony I have for now and we hope it lasts through the winter now that the nectar flow is for the most part over for the summer.  Right now our goals are to get more comb drawn and make it through the winter.  Definitely no excess honey this year. 

I managed to get a picture of the queen in my new hive.  She is a bit smaller than we prefer. 

Jon snapped a picture while I was introducing the new nuc into our hive.

New Barn Roof!

Fixing up the barn is one of the two big projects for this summer, next to pumping the septic tank.  It's a small barn that has an insulated woodshop upstairs equipped with an air conditioner, fluorescent lighting, and cable TV.  It was certainly a man cave!  Over the years it had been neglected; as a result, squirrels, mice, snakes, wasps, and ants have made this their home.  Before the roof could be replaced, the plywood and moldy insulation had to be removed because there were some major water leaks.  This was quite the project!  Every time a piece of plywood was removed, nuts and ant eggs and ant larvae would scatter on the floor.  To put it bluntly, the ant colonies were pissed and had a terrible bite!  Thankfully we decimated the wasp population early this spring on cold mornings so  there were only a few wasps to smash before they had a chance to sting.  We weren't surprised to find 2 snake skins in the wall!

Our camera broke the week we started this project so I don't have any of the inside destruction, but we managed to get a camera the day before the roof tear off began.  The picture on the left shows the moldy plywood.  In places the mold was about an inch thick and hung like stalactites.  Because the walls and ceiling were insulated, the water never leaked fully through the plywood so the floor is dry. I think we caught the problem just in time!

The original roof was asphalt shingles, but we decided to put on metal.  It just seems fitting to have a tin roof on a barn.  Jon and I have never replaced a roof, so we leaned on two close friends who drove all the way from Wisconsin Memorial Day weekend to help us with the project!  With their help and expertise, we managed to tear off and put on a new roof within 2 days.  The guys worked hard and did a fabulous job in the 95 degree heat with 35% humidity!

In addition to the roof, we have also replaced some of the rotten siding (see the white squares?).  I hope to give the barn a fresh coat of paint this summer to finish it off.  It is a cute barn and we would like to have it ready for when we decide to have some livestock. 

Here's the first trip to the landfill.  There were 3.5 truck loads.  It was a little sickening to see all the waste. 

Here is a snippet of what it looked like at the landfill.  It was an open pit were we literally drove on a pot-hole ridden path to the top of a hill, dropped our load, and drove away.  

Homemade Chicken Feeder

Somethings just present themselves when you're least expecting it!  Take for instance the god-awful toilet that was in the bathroom in our new house!  I wish I had a picture showing the toilet still hooked up, but the toilet tank was attached to the wall about 8 feet from the floor and you pulled a chain to flush the toilet.  The design was certainly not our style and it used about 3 or so gallons of water each flush and the water ran continuously even after replacing parts.  Finally we decided to get rid of the blasted thing and discovered a new purpose for the box that held the water (of course there was a plastic insert inside the box that was removed).

The box...

The bottom of the box contained holes where the water entered and exited the toilet tank.  We glued boards over the holes to keep mice from entering the box.  

Holes were put in the front so the chicks could access the food. 

Boards were inserted into the box at an angle so the food would flow to the front.  The boards stopped right below the holes. 

A platform was added to the front to catch spillage. 

The feeder is resting on top of a cinder block so it is off the ground and 2 bricks were placed on top to keep the lid from sliding off.  Simple...only 20 minutes to complete, one less thing in the landfill, and money saved from buying a feeder!

Chicken Tractor

At our place, the chickens don't have a secure fenced-in area close to the home so Jon constructed this chicken tractor to give them outdoor access safe from predators.  I looked at many chicken tractor designs but found many of them to be way too elaborate for such a simple purpose.
Dimensions in inches: 36W x 98L x 24H

Supplies: 

-three, 2x4's

-scraps of chipped plywood

-dowel

-chicken wire

-chicken wire staples

-screws

-wheels from an old trike or something

Total construction only took about 2 hours.  The box on the end of the coop provides shade and there is also a removable roosting pole so the chickens can get out of the sun.  Both narrow ends of the coop have doors for entry and exit.  The chicks absolutely love this portable coop!  Every few hours I pick up the coop on one end and roll it to a new section of fresh grass.  When I pick up the coop, the chicks willing follow me like I'm the mother hen.  

This picture was taken before we added the door.  The door allows me to back the coop up to the outdoor run without have the handles in the way that are on the other end.

Toilet Water Conservation With a Milk Jug

When I was in fourth grade I had to do a presentation in front of the class on anything I wanted.  I got my presentation idea from this book, 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth.  I conducted my presentation on how to conserve toilet water without replacing the toilet.  The process is very simple: you fill an empty milk jug with some rocks and water, (to give it some weight) and place it in your toilet tank.  The milk jug is displacing the water so the toilet uses 1 gallon less water each time it is flushed.

Paul enjoyed putting some rocks in the jug when we played in the creek one day. 

This creek is full of life with fish, crayfish, and salamanders!

Bee Arrival!

This past weekend we picked up a nuc of bees from the Killer Bee Farm about 3 miles away.  I wish I had a camera with me to capture the farm's apiary of 60 hives.  Killer Bee had a pretty impressive operation and he raises bees without using synthetic treatments for disease and parasites.  In the picture above you should see my waxed cardboard nuc box nestled under a tarp, wedged between two cinder blocks with bricks on top.  Of course, the morning after we bring the bees home, we had a thunderstorm and torrential downpours.  I wasn't willing to risk the cardboard holding up in the downpours so I covered everything with a tarp to keep everyone dry!

The variety of bees we received from Killer Bee are a hybrid of course because we never really know who the queen mates with, and she mates with about 15 or so drones.  Twenty years ago when Killer Bee started beekeeping, he had all Starline bees with Russian queens.  Starline bees are not sold in the US anymore (go to Canada) but he thinks the genetics are still found in his apiary.  Starline bees have really good genetics and I've been told have a high resistance to mites.  To keep a diverse apiary, Killer Bee introduced bees that he retrieved from a local bee tree this spring!  Someday I hope to discover a bee tree! 

Two days later I transferred the frames into their hive.  I kept the extra set of cinder blocks in place for resting equipment when I am inspecting the hives and for when I get a second hive.  You will probably notice that I have one deep and one shallow compared to the normal 2 deeps.  There are two reasons for this arrangement.  I didn't harvest the 4 frames of capped and partially capped honey from last year and instead saved them for feedings this spring rather than using sugar water.  I also noticed at the Killer Bee farm that he didn't use two deeps, instead he used one deep and one shallow on all of his hives.  I asked him about this and he said that he's had great success keeping bees over the winter with only that much space; he also receives more excess honey from the bees each year because of this system.  I'm thinking I will try this arrangement and see how quickly the bees consume their winter stores and if I will need to supplemental feed this coming winter. 

At the previous home we enjoyed watching the bees from the back patio; at this home, the bees are up on a flat area overseeing the fruit trees and garden.  From the vantage point of the patio where this picture was taken, I can barely see the bees come and go, but I enjoy watching them pollinate the bushes infront of the porch railing.  The hum is so loud that I keep thinking there is a swarm somewhere!

I have been worried all week because I have only seen a few honeybees on the clover in the yard.  There is clover everywhere and we've been delaying the lawn mowing for the bees.  Well, it only took Jon a few minutes to find the bees....they were in the tulip poplar (aka tulip) tree in the side yard!  From what I found doing a simple Google search, is that the tulip tree produces nectar for only a few days but is a high producer of nectar!  The tree has these beautiful yellow and orange tulip flowers; and a mature tree can yield about 2-2.5 pounds of finished honey which is a lot considering how much nectar that is.  

***With all the thunderstorms we've been having, I was thinking about the beehive and the fact that the roof is metal...what would happen if the hive was struck by lightning?  Thoughts anyone?