Ryan's math class was learning about averages, medians, and modes. The teacher asked the kids to tell her how many pets they each had in their family. Most kids' answers ranged from zero to three. Ryan's answer: 30,018.
Yes, our farm has grown a bit since our last blog posting! We have added 4 new chicks that arrived by mail last week. And in April we welcomed about 30,000 Italian honeybees (2 beehives) to the farm. And of course we still have our 2 dogs, 10 adult hens and 2 goats.
Now I'm not sure that bees qualify as pets, but his teacher was nice enough to humor Ryan and let him use that number. She took it as an opportunity to talk about outliers, because she's awesome.
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Our four new chicks came in the mail from mypetchicken.com. It's a very exciting and worrisome experience to order them by mail. I got an email the day they were hatched and shipped (Monday around 4:00 p.m.) and they arrived at our post office Wednesday at 8:00 a.m. They can survive that day and a half without food or water because they can live off the last of the yolk they ate inside the eggs before they hatched. Pretty amazing. It's funny to see the looks people give you when you tell the postman at the counter that you're here to pick up your chicks, and he hands you a chirping box. The US Mail is the only company who will deliver live animals (FedEx and UPS won't do it.) The guy in line behind me was picking up a package of honeybees. :)
Our four new chicks are doing awesome. They are two weeks old now, and I have to say I think this group is super sweet and personable. They have definitely stolen my heart at this point and so my daily prayer now includes "and please don't let any of them grow up to be roosters." Because, sadly, my gut feeling is that my friendliest chick just might be a rooster. (Its tail feathers are much longer than the other three and it's definitely the most dominant one so far.) I'm trying not to stress about it, as it is way too soon to actually know. Hoping for the best! Time will tell soon enough. Here's what our newest chicks are:
-1 White Leghorn chick named Betty. (Actually, she's now named "Please-Don't-Be-A-Rooster-Betty." She will lay white eggs, if she's not a rooster. (My Minerva Louise is also a white leghorn.)
-1 Brown Leghorn chick named Lucy. She will lay white eggs.
-1 Silver Cuckoo Marans named Chloe. She will lay dark brown eggs.
-1 Olive Egger named Olivia. She will lay dark green eggs.
They are living in their brooder in the tack room for now. Next week I will probably move them into a horse stall next to our goats so they will have more room to run around. And they should be able to move into the chicken coop with the big girls by the end of June. (They have to be full grown to go in with the adult chickens, so they can stand up to the other girls if they need to.)
She fell asleep in my hands. Super sweet...
Ryan bonding with Chloe...
Ben and Ryan picking up chicks...
Oh, Betty...(S)he certainly learned to fly early...
In the big coop: A full house in the nesting boxes.
A double occupancy on the end...
My two people-loving hens: Ruby and Minerva Louise...
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The goats are doing great. They are hilarious and keep us on our toes. Kit Kat is officially an overgrown lap-goat. If you visit her in her stall and squat down, she will crawl into your lap immediately. She doesn't care that she doesn't actually fit in your lap anymore. She is a contact-loving goat. Cream on the other hand, doesn't enjoy full on contact quite as much, however she does love some attention and to be brushed. If you are holding a brush, she will come over for a nice brushing for as long as you're willing.
We love letting these girls out of their pen to run around the farm. Our only trouble is that they are not good at going back into their pen when we need them to. I've decided that they are basically like cats... Super affectionate and love to be around people, but they are definitely independent thinkers. If they don't want to do something (like return to their pen), they just aren't going to do it. For example this morning, I literally had to drag them back into their pen. It was not a pretty sight. Luring them with raisins, my usual trick, was not working today. Cooper and Jessie occasionally recognize my struggle and try to "help" me with the goats, but honestly they usually make the situation worse. I seriously would love to sign my dogs up for herding lessons. I think they could actually be good at it. Or maybe now is the time to jump in and finally get that Border Collie pup I've always dreamed of. (Just what I need...THREE dogs. Right?! So I can have 30,019 creatures to worry about! Probably not a good idea. LOL!)
Cream was ready for her closeup...
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Speaking of dogs, Jessie and Cooper have been busy this spring. Cooper especially, is an amazing protector of our farm animals. He takes his self-appointed job very seriously. We saw a coyote in the woods behind our property recently. This coyote has also left some "messages" around our farm, which is usually their way of communicating about territories. I don't like it one bit. In response, I've been letting my dogs do their "business" wherever they want, and I'm not picking it up, because I don't want to mess with their messages back to the coyote. So if you come visit, watch your step. :) Cooper has seen this coyote as well, and has run through our electric fence to chase it. On the one hand I totally appreciate that he is doing a great job keeping our farm animals safe and I want to praise him for it. On the other hand, I am so frustrated that he's running through the electric fence. I fear for his safety and I hate having him loose in the neighborhood. The other problem is that he'll run through the fence on his way out of the yard, but when it's time to come home, he'll usually sit on the other side of the electric fence and cry/bark/whine until one of us hears him and can help him back over into our yard. The electric fence is turned all the way up at this point (I know because I tested it on myself. I kept thinking, it must not be working! But, yup, it's working.) Although, I think we might need to look into a collar that can deliver a bigger sting for my tough guy, Mr. Cooper.
My livestock guardian dogs on duty...
Always on guard...
Kisses from Cooper...
Group hug in a sunny spot...
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Speaking of stings... We added 30,000 bees to our farm about a month and a half ago. Jonathan was very interested in keeping bees, so we signed up for a 10 week beekeeping class through Norfolk Aggie this winter. Now I like bees, but I wasn't all that interested in them at the start. It was going to be his thing. However I have to say now that they are here, I am really enjoying them. They really are fascinating creatures! Even my boys, who were actually totally against the beehives when we were talking about it, can agree that it's been a great experience so far. They were terrified to have so many bees on the property, but these Italian bees have proven that they really have no interest in hurting people if they don't have to. And I'm so proud of Ben and Ryan with how un-afraid they are of visiting the bee hives.
We have two hives - His and Hers. Mine is a classic Langstroth Hive (the white one) and Jonathan's a Flow Hive (the brown one). (More about the two types of hives in a future blog.) Honestly, they are both Jonathan's hives... He is the head beekeeper and I'm just the helper. But it's fun to have a little healthy competition with our 'his and hers' hives. I have to say that right now, Jonathan's hive is doing much better than mine.
Both hives were off to a rough start when we installed the bee packages and queens back in the first weekend of April... Remember that weekend that it snowed and had freezing temperatures all week? This was our beehive's first morning after being installed...
Yup, we figured our bees weren't going to survive their first 24 hours on Glen Hill Farm, but miraculously they did! Jonathan and I have opened up the hives a few times to check on the bees' progress and it's been amazing to see how quickly they establish their hive. The bees in Jonathan's hive have almost filled all the frames in the first box. (Which means they have filled the frames with honeycomb wax and then the queen has laid eggs in that honeycomb, and the worker bees have filled the rest of the honeycomb with honey, pollen, etc.) It's almost time to add another level to his hive. It's doing great.
This is a picture of one of Jonathan's frames with some capped brood (meaning there are developing larvae in there) towards the bottom...
My hive, on the other hand, has had a set back. I lost my first queen. There was a stretch of time there, that when we went into the hive to check on them, we couldn't find my queen. (The queen comes from the bee supplier marked with a white dot on her back to make her easier to spot.) Can you spot the queen from Jonathan's hive in the picture below? Look for the white dot...
So, my bees started building honeycomb in places that they shouldn't have...inside their top-feeder tray. It's possible that my queen may have gotten killed when we were removing that honeycomb from the feeder area--we may have injured her in the process? Or she may have died naturally for some reason. Not sure exactly what went wrong, but my queen was definitely missing in action for a while. A hive can't survive without a queen, so we contacted a person who was selling queens about an hour away. One road trip later and queen #2 was added to my hive on May 1st. We checked on my new queen's progress last week, and I have to say that I'm a little worried. She's alive and well, but I didn't see any evidence that she's started laying eggs. I'm starting to worry that she may not have mated with any drones (male bees) yet. She may need a chat about "the birds and the bees" if she doesn't figure it out on her own. (Sorry I couldn't resist that one.) We'll give her a little more time to see if she gets the job done, but my hive is definitely falling behind. We're hoping to check in on her again this weekend. Fingers crossed she's figured it all out by then.
Below is a link to a video of us installing my package of bees back in April. Very cool experience! Thank you to Jonathan who coached me through it. So proud of my kids for being a part of it all! And Jonathan installed his bee package without wearing a bee suit... Braver than me (or stupider?) and we got both installations done without anyone being stung. Success!
Click here for the video:
Installing the bees into Maureen's Hive
We're officially beekeepers...
Great job, Ryan & Ben! So glad you participated!...
Head beekeeper...
Looks like spring over here!
New landscaping...
Aaaah spring!...
Beautiful Buttercup...
