Early June on the Rancho

Here we go, another post without pictures. The other day I ran around looking for the camera since Valerie had her end of the year piano recital (very well done! We are so proud of her!) Naturally, it was nowhere to be found. I was also thinking about taking some pictures of our big ol' turkeys (they are getting laaarge!) And then there was the onion/garlic harvest the other day. I pulled up 45 yellow onions and 40 heads of garlic to dry and cure. Of course I wanted to take a picture of that. Oh, and also my purple jalapenos that are popping out. So many things to see. But, alas, no camera to be found. In the meantime, Michael took off for New York yesterday and I took off to Sacramento for my bee class at the Steiner College. I had a fantastic time and learned so much! I was gone from 7am to 8pm. When I arrived home to find that the house had not been trashed, the babysitter and all the kids were alive and happy, I was thrilled. I went to answer a phone call and looked down on my desk to see what appeared to be remnants of the camera. There were pieces of twisted metal, microchips, a battery and other unidentifiable pieces strewn across my desk. "Guess what? We found the camera!" the kids announced. Well, apparently the neighbor found the camera ... with his LAWN MOWER! Oh, the irony of not being able to take a photo of the crumpled camera parts to show you. I tried to see if the camera card was amongst the pile of twisted metal, but didn't see it. I can't even rescue the old photos. So, today I was feeling inspired to go out and visit the bees and look for larvae and eggs/pollen/honey, etc. I opened up Margaret's hive. As usual, that place was bustling. It is a bee metropolis. They managed to slurp up all their bee tea and build out 3/4 of their box. I was even able to spot larvae in the comb. Good old Margaret! She's awesome. Remembering the sting I received on my lower lip the other day, I still didn't bring out the veil and suit. (Really, what's it going to take? It is just kind of a thrill to go in without too much protection and see and feel the bees). But this time I brought the smoker. I was going to feed them some more tea and put an extra box on top so they could decided to either fill it with brood or honey. I was also going to give them a screened bottom board to replace the solid one they have. This would help with ventilation and also let any mites or other nasty critters drop down and out of the hive. Alas, I could not get the heavy box of brood to sit properly on top of the new bottom board. I figured I was really jostling them too much and my intent was not to upset them and leave them open for too long. So, I had to put my new empty box on the bottom and put their happy brood box on top. I am under the impression that now the queen (Margaret) will drop down into the bottom box and start to lay more brood as her girls draw out more comb. Whereas if I had put the empty box on top, the workers would have decided for themselves whether to make a path for more brood or honey. I hope I didn't screw them up too badly. Well, they now have a lovely double decker bee barn and a fresh batch of bee tea. I'll give them a couple of weeks and check on them again later. Next I opened Elizabeth's hive. While she does have plenty of drawn comb with capped honey and lots of pollen, I didn't notice larvae or new bees. She also had only about half the box drawn out and the girls hadn't finished the bee tea I'd given them the other day. Hmmmmm ... the interesting thing is that I did see Elizabeth. (I hadn't seen Margaret ... just evidence that she was obviously a very busy and productive queen). Eilizabeth had the nice long body and shorter wings. She was on one of the center frames where I expected her to reside. She was surrounded by attendants and being fed by them. But I think she is not a productive queen? I wonder if I should take a frame of brood from Margaret's hive and put it into Elizabeth's? It's possible that the girls will raise a new queen to replace her if she is no good. Poor floundering colony! At the moment I am trying to get the house where I reside all picked up, finish some laundry and render some lard in the crock pot. After we filled our freezer with 27 chickens and 1/4 beef plus all the bones and stock packs, I had to remove the pork fat that was waiting for my attention all winter. So, I put it through the meat grinder this morning and popped it into the crock pot with a little water on low heat. I'm looking forward to nice jars of fresh white lard so I can make some yummy pie crusts and stuff. Animal Count: 10 chickens (about 12 weeks old, that includes one known cockerel happily cockling to make his presence known ... Michael poached the turken cockerel, Harry, on Friday. He's in the freezer now). 9 older hens (some laying, some retired, some broody) 2 new (to us) laying hens from Holly's flock 4 turkeys (3 blue slate crosses that might be toms and one bourbon red hen with a limp) So, that'a a total of 25 birds. We are getting about 5 eggs a day for all that! But I imagine that once the young ones mature, we'll get a ton more. (I hope) Unless we turn out to have more roosters than I thought. I'm sure the boys will be speaking up any day now in order to challenge "Captain Fluffball" as he's been dubbed by the kids. Also, we've ordered some White Orpington Cockerels to be delivered around July 13. Those guys will be slaughtered in November to provide us with our winter meat. I expect we will have eaten through the last batch by then. Okay, I will update more later ... not sure about the camera situation. May have to wait for Mr. iPhone to come home.