Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Friday, March 5, 2010
More Chickens, Coming Up!
It's so hard in the spring, walking into the feed stores and the local Wilco farm store and seeing the big brooders full of cute, fuzzy, peeping chicks. So cute! So tempting! So far, I've resisted the urge to even touch the little balls of fluff, let alone purchase any, but it's like some low-level addiction. I've wanted to increase my flock again anyway...but I'm not sure I want to explain it to my husband.
Well, as is often the way, nature took care of it for me! My game hen cross, who has the not-very-matronly name of Racer X, decided last week that spring had sprung, and that meant she needed to have babies. She stopped laying, started sitting, and is now a big puffed-up ball of hissing feathers whenever I open the coop door. Poor sad little girl keeps switching nests to find the one with the biggest pile of eggs, and I keep stealing the eggs. Right now she's sitting on three golf balls and looking pretty smug about it.
I emailed the gal who gave me Racer X last year, and she brought me half a dozen fertile eggs. Tomorrow we'll reassemble the brooding pen and nest box, install Racer X, and then slip the eggs under her at night. Hopefully in three weeks we'll have a little flock of puffballs running around! The eggs are from a blue cochin father and a buff orpington mother, so I have no idea what they'll look like as chicks or as adults, but they're two of my favorite breeds, so it really doesn't matter!
Well, as is often the way, nature took care of it for me! My game hen cross, who has the not-very-matronly name of Racer X, decided last week that spring had sprung, and that meant she needed to have babies. She stopped laying, started sitting, and is now a big puffed-up ball of hissing feathers whenever I open the coop door. Poor sad little girl keeps switching nests to find the one with the biggest pile of eggs, and I keep stealing the eggs. Right now she's sitting on three golf balls and looking pretty smug about it.
I emailed the gal who gave me Racer X last year, and she brought me half a dozen fertile eggs. Tomorrow we'll reassemble the brooding pen and nest box, install Racer X, and then slip the eggs under her at night. Hopefully in three weeks we'll have a little flock of puffballs running around! The eggs are from a blue cochin father and a buff orpington mother, so I have no idea what they'll look like as chicks or as adults, but they're two of my favorite breeds, so it really doesn't matter!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Midwinter Bee Maintenance
I maintain my one top-bar hive "au natural", meaning that I don't spray for mites or fungus, and I don't give them antibiotics or take their honey away and feed them sugar water throughout the winter. This is my first winter with bees, so the learning curve is pretty steep, but we're getting there.
During the super cold snap we had in December (where it got into single digits overnight and rarely jumped above 25 during the day) I wrapped the hive with some tarping to trap a little more heat for the girls, and I used an entrance reducer to keep in more of their heat. Well, since then I've left both of those winterization bits in place, but the weather has warmed up significantly, to the point where it's been over 50 in the daytime and we haven't had a frost since that cold snap. (Seriously, an entire month with no frost. Weird weather patterns. But that'll be the next post.)
Went out to check on the girls last week, and noticed that not only were the bees out foraging, they were bringing back saddlebags full of yellow pollen from somewhere. I haven't seen a single blooming flower around here, not even my pieris or hellebore is blooming, but the bees are better at finding food than I am at spotting flowers. My guess is perhaps they found a nearby house or houses with primroses or pansies, but maybe there's something else blooming. At any rate, they seemed pretty vigorous.
Went back out yesterday to check on them, and noticed that the front of the hive was smeared with streaks of something. As I contemplated it, I realized what it was: bee poo. The girls have a mild case of dysentery (no, not the human kind, just the bee kind.) Oh dear.
Dysentery can also be caused by the simple conditions of winter weather for bees. If they are feeding on honey with a high proportion of non-digestible material, their guts become laden with waste matter. Usually they take care of that with a "voiding flight", where they fly out and do their business away from the hive. If the weather is below 50 for an extended period, or extremely rainy and windy as it was the past week or so for us, they can't get out for that voiding flight, and eventually they end up having to void in the hive, or just outside on the front of the hive. Given that my hive's case seems pretty mild so far, I suspect that's the problem, rather than a major Nosema infestation, though things can change quickly so I'll just have to keep an eye on it. Apparently hive conditions can also cause issues, especially lack of ventilation and moisture buildup. I noticed a few weeks ago that they were having condensation issues on the inside of the viewing window, so I know the ventilation is pretty low.
Turns out, one of the reasons commercial beekeepers feed their hives sugar water in the winter is to help prevent dysentery. Sugar water, though almost completely lacking in nutritional value, also has almost no non-digestible matter. Bees eating sugar water don't build up waste matter in their guts, and therefore don't have to void inside or outside the hive. I think that's probably penny-wise and pound-foolish, though. Imagine if you were on a "clear liquid" diet where all you were allowed to injest was lemon-lime soda or energy drinks. Sure, you'd have energy, you'd probably continue to function, but you wouldn't be getting any nutrition. Your muscles would atrophy from lack of protein, you would start to suffer from lack of vitamins and trace minerals, and your immune system would be damped down. Similar situation with the bees; honey is a complex food full of enzymes and nutrients, whereas processed sugar isn't. They still have energy, they are getting calories to sustain themselves, but they're not getting actual food. I can't imagine bees would have evolved over millions of years to not be able to digest their own winter food, so I am going to continue to let them eat it and deal with the bathroom breaks as they can.
Jacqueline Freeman, who lives at Friendly Haven Rise Farm and teaches holistic beekeeping classes, also recommended that I give them a weak tea made of nettles, horsetail, and/or chamomile plus some of their own honey and offer it back to them in a dish with moss on top (to prevent drowning). Between that and removing the rain tarp and opening up the entrance reducer to increase ventilation, hopefully I can stop the problem before it gets worse.
During the super cold snap we had in December (where it got into single digits overnight and rarely jumped above 25 during the day) I wrapped the hive with some tarping to trap a little more heat for the girls, and I used an entrance reducer to keep in more of their heat. Well, since then I've left both of those winterization bits in place, but the weather has warmed up significantly, to the point where it's been over 50 in the daytime and we haven't had a frost since that cold snap. (Seriously, an entire month with no frost. Weird weather patterns. But that'll be the next post.)
Went out to check on the girls last week, and noticed that not only were the bees out foraging, they were bringing back saddlebags full of yellow pollen from somewhere. I haven't seen a single blooming flower around here, not even my pieris or hellebore is blooming, but the bees are better at finding food than I am at spotting flowers. My guess is perhaps they found a nearby house or houses with primroses or pansies, but maybe there's something else blooming. At any rate, they seemed pretty vigorous.
Went back out yesterday to check on them, and noticed that the front of the hive was smeared with streaks of something. As I contemplated it, I realized what it was: bee poo. The girls have a mild case of dysentery (no, not the human kind, just the bee kind.) Oh dear.
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Dysentery can also be caused by the simple conditions of winter weather for bees. If they are feeding on honey with a high proportion of non-digestible material, their guts become laden with waste matter. Usually they take care of that with a "voiding flight", where they fly out and do their business away from the hive. If the weather is below 50 for an extended period, or extremely rainy and windy as it was the past week or so for us, they can't get out for that voiding flight, and eventually they end up having to void in the hive, or just outside on the front of the hive. Given that my hive's case seems pretty mild so far, I suspect that's the problem, rather than a major Nosema infestation, though things can change quickly so I'll just have to keep an eye on it. Apparently hive conditions can also cause issues, especially lack of ventilation and moisture buildup. I noticed a few weeks ago that they were having condensation issues on the inside of the viewing window, so I know the ventilation is pretty low.
Turns out, one of the reasons commercial beekeepers feed their hives sugar water in the winter is to help prevent dysentery. Sugar water, though almost completely lacking in nutritional value, also has almost no non-digestible matter. Bees eating sugar water don't build up waste matter in their guts, and therefore don't have to void inside or outside the hive. I think that's probably penny-wise and pound-foolish, though. Imagine if you were on a "clear liquid" diet where all you were allowed to injest was lemon-lime soda or energy drinks. Sure, you'd have energy, you'd probably continue to function, but you wouldn't be getting any nutrition. Your muscles would atrophy from lack of protein, you would start to suffer from lack of vitamins and trace minerals, and your immune system would be damped down. Similar situation with the bees; honey is a complex food full of enzymes and nutrients, whereas processed sugar isn't. They still have energy, they are getting calories to sustain themselves, but they're not getting actual food. I can't imagine bees would have evolved over millions of years to not be able to digest their own winter food, so I am going to continue to let them eat it and deal with the bathroom breaks as they can.
Jacqueline Freeman, who lives at Friendly Haven Rise Farm and teaches holistic beekeeping classes, also recommended that I give them a weak tea made of nettles, horsetail, and/or chamomile plus some of their own honey and offer it back to them in a dish with moss on top (to prevent drowning). Between that and removing the rain tarp and opening up the entrance reducer to increase ventilation, hopefully I can stop the problem before it gets worse.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
New Year, New Goals!
This year I've decided I really want to run a small CSA out of my yard. I have more than enough produce to share, plus I have eggs and honey and herbs, and I'm excited about sharing them.
What's a CSA? It stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it's a model where people buy a "share" at the beginning of the season, and the farmer promises a share of the produce on a preset schedule, whether weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Customers may pick up the produce at the farm, or the farmer may deliver, or they may have a predetermined delivery point for all customers. In general, CSA's charge from $16-$30 per weekly share of produce amounting to a box of various items totalling about a weekly produce allotment for a family of four. By getting the money up front, the farmer gains enough money before the season starts to help with the acquisition of seeds, plants, tools, and other items to grow the food without having to wait until harvest time. Customers share in some of the realistic risks of farming; if wet weather wipes out the tomato crop, or if scorching heat kills the lettuce crop early, there's nothing either the farmer or customer can do about it. In return for shouldering some of the risk, the customer gets absolutely fresh, flavorful local produce from a local farmer with whom they can develop a personal relationship. They also usually get more unusual produce than can be easily found at a grocery story, sometimes get a say in what's planted, and often get recipes for using the current produce. Often customers can visit the farm and see for themselves the methods used for growing their food, and be assured of their good farming practices (often organic, though not always.)
In our part of the country, CSA's are gaining popularity along with backyard poultry and eating locally. I first started hearing about them maybe 10 years ago, in the Puget Sound area. I am not much of a vegetable eater and at the time I lived alone, so I never researched it much or thought about it, but I did hear from friends who had shares and loved it. I'm still not much of a vegetable eater, but I love to grow edibles, so I want to grow and share them with others!
Towards the goal of having a CSA this year, I have signed up for a class at the local Extension office, and I'm extremely excited. It's about the economic and legal realities of farming, from small to large scale. 10 weeks, 3 hours per week, and I'm really pleased that it will be done just about in time for me to start in with my Big Plans. In fact, I should be able to have some of my legal questions answered in the first few weeks and really lay the ground work. The good news is, I know that there are not a lot of issues with selling raw, un-processed produce off my land. I know I can legally sell eggs from my home (not off my property) with no license other than a state business license, which I have. It's about the same thing with un-processed produce, but that I can even take and sell off my property! Sweet! My biggest concerns include making sure I'm jumping through all the legal hoops for the USDA or whomever else might care, and making sure that I'm covered in the unlikely event of someone deciding they need to sue me for something. (I'm pragmatic that way.)
I'm in the process of trying to figure out how many "shares" my property will support. I just learned of a woman who does a 3-share CSA off a city lot, and I know I harvest a lot more than I could off a city lot, so I'm thinking probably 5-8 shares to leave enough for me to give some to the food bank, keep some for processing myself, and give some to my family. I'm also trying to decide what's most worthwhile for planting as annual crops this year; I've decided corn is out and eggplants are in, for example. It's all a big learning process!
I'm also contemplating starting up with the local farmers' market, depending on their requirements and the fees involved. Laying in bed the other night, I was thinking idly about the things my husband and I grow or make that I could sell legally at the market (until I get a commercial kitchen, I cannot sell baked or canned goods, darn it.) Glass and metal jewelry. Aprons. Bird, bat, mason bee, bumblebee, and butterfly houses. Hummingbird, woodpecker, and small bird feeders. Bee hives! Honey and beeswax. Eggs. Ornaments made from eggs! Vegetables of all sorts. Herbs of all sorts. Blueberries, honeyberries, raspberries, boysenberries, marionberries, quince, peaches, apples, almonds, hazelnuts, and cherries all grow in our yard too, though we won't have much yield on most of the trees for a few more years yet. I could start a farm store! Which is kind of odd, since I actually live in town... Looking forward to seeing what this year brings!
What's a CSA? It stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and it's a model where people buy a "share" at the beginning of the season, and the farmer promises a share of the produce on a preset schedule, whether weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Customers may pick up the produce at the farm, or the farmer may deliver, or they may have a predetermined delivery point for all customers. In general, CSA's charge from $16-$30 per weekly share of produce amounting to a box of various items totalling about a weekly produce allotment for a family of four. By getting the money up front, the farmer gains enough money before the season starts to help with the acquisition of seeds, plants, tools, and other items to grow the food without having to wait until harvest time. Customers share in some of the realistic risks of farming; if wet weather wipes out the tomato crop, or if scorching heat kills the lettuce crop early, there's nothing either the farmer or customer can do about it. In return for shouldering some of the risk, the customer gets absolutely fresh, flavorful local produce from a local farmer with whom they can develop a personal relationship. They also usually get more unusual produce than can be easily found at a grocery story, sometimes get a say in what's planted, and often get recipes for using the current produce. Often customers can visit the farm and see for themselves the methods used for growing their food, and be assured of their good farming practices (often organic, though not always.)
In our part of the country, CSA's are gaining popularity along with backyard poultry and eating locally. I first started hearing about them maybe 10 years ago, in the Puget Sound area. I am not much of a vegetable eater and at the time I lived alone, so I never researched it much or thought about it, but I did hear from friends who had shares and loved it. I'm still not much of a vegetable eater, but I love to grow edibles, so I want to grow and share them with others!
Towards the goal of having a CSA this year, I have signed up for a class at the local Extension office, and I'm extremely excited. It's about the economic and legal realities of farming, from small to large scale. 10 weeks, 3 hours per week, and I'm really pleased that it will be done just about in time for me to start in with my Big Plans. In fact, I should be able to have some of my legal questions answered in the first few weeks and really lay the ground work. The good news is, I know that there are not a lot of issues with selling raw, un-processed produce off my land. I know I can legally sell eggs from my home (not off my property) with no license other than a state business license, which I have. It's about the same thing with un-processed produce, but that I can even take and sell off my property! Sweet! My biggest concerns include making sure I'm jumping through all the legal hoops for the USDA or whomever else might care, and making sure that I'm covered in the unlikely event of someone deciding they need to sue me for something. (I'm pragmatic that way.)
I'm in the process of trying to figure out how many "shares" my property will support. I just learned of a woman who does a 3-share CSA off a city lot, and I know I harvest a lot more than I could off a city lot, so I'm thinking probably 5-8 shares to leave enough for me to give some to the food bank, keep some for processing myself, and give some to my family. I'm also trying to decide what's most worthwhile for planting as annual crops this year; I've decided corn is out and eggplants are in, for example. It's all a big learning process!
I'm also contemplating starting up with the local farmers' market, depending on their requirements and the fees involved. Laying in bed the other night, I was thinking idly about the things my husband and I grow or make that I could sell legally at the market (until I get a commercial kitchen, I cannot sell baked or canned goods, darn it.) Glass and metal jewelry. Aprons. Bird, bat, mason bee, bumblebee, and butterfly houses. Hummingbird, woodpecker, and small bird feeders. Bee hives! Honey and beeswax. Eggs. Ornaments made from eggs! Vegetables of all sorts. Herbs of all sorts. Blueberries, honeyberries, raspberries, boysenberries, marionberries, quince, peaches, apples, almonds, hazelnuts, and cherries all grow in our yard too, though we won't have much yield on most of the trees for a few more years yet. I could start a farm store! Which is kind of odd, since I actually live in town... Looking forward to seeing what this year brings!
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