New beeginnings*

Things are getting nerdier around here. We're beekeepers now.

Mike's family started beekeeping last summer with great success, and their bees multiplied enough that they were able to divide their hive into three or four hives this spring, one of which they gifted to us. I have no idea how one actually separates one or two thousand bees from the colony and sets them up in a new hive, since my in-laws were kind enough to handle that part for us. On Sunday evening at the Horns' place, all that remained to do was to wait until after dark to seal up the hive box with duct tape and take it with us.

It was past midnight by the time we got home, and the bees had been bounced around in the bed of our truck for a good hour or more, which I don't imagine they liked very much. We put the sealed hive box in its permanent site out in the garden. Then in one of his more dramatic scenes to date, Mike suited up in protective gear, went back out to the hive in the dark -- in an approaching storm, no less -- ripped the duct tape off all the openings of the hive, and sprinted back to the house. Parker had given the comforting warning, "You can't outrun them," so really Mike's only hope was that he could high-tail it out of there before the bees figured out that they now had a target for their irritation. Seeing no reason for two of us to do a job that one could handle, I stayed at the house and crossed my fingers that he wouldn't get stung. (It worked.)

After letting the bees chill out and get used to their new home for a day, we added a second hive box to the setup. Each box is filled with ten frames that the bees build the honeycomb onto and then fill with honey and eggs. I forgot to take a picture of the open hive box, but you can see what frames look like in the picture below.

Placing another hive box on top of the original box means taking off the lid, exposing the many, many bees within, and this time two people would make the job go quicker. To keep them calm, we gave the hive a few puffs from a smoker filled with burning pine needles. The smoke supposedly interferes with their communication and makes them think the hive is on fire, which prompts them to concentrate on eating as much honey as possible before fleeing. Meaning they're too busy eating to care that we're opening up the hive and poking around. (When the smoke fades, the bees put the honey back and go about their day.)

But even after using smoke, there were still a couple dozen bees swarming around us, so I was pretty nervous about taking off the lid. I haven't been stung by a bee in more than a decade, but I still remember how much it hurt. And as you can see in the pictures, we don't have full beekeeper suits, just items that protect our most sensitive/vulnerable parts, which doesn't exactly make me feel confident. In my nervousness, I was in too much of a hurry to take any pictures with the lid of the hive off, so that will have to wait until I'm more comfortable with the routine. But just as we hoped, the bees didn't pay much attention to us, and we pulled off our task without a hitch.

These two boxes, called the hive bodies, are basically the bees' central home. The queen will lay eggs in there, and we'll always leave the honey in them alone so the bees have plenty to eat in winter. Later this spring or summer, we'll add one or two more boxes called supers to the top of the setup. The queen can't get into the supers (she's too big), so they won't get eggs laid in them, and we'll harvest all the honey from them once or possibly twice a year. But we don't need to add supers yet, because the bees have to fill all the space in the hive bodies before they'll be ready to move upward to new space.

And with that, I may have shared 95% of my current beekeeping knowledge. We're learning as we go. From what I've read, beekeeping can be a very complex business, but I'm hoping we can keep things as simple as possible. Bee hive + flowers = honey. Repeat annually.

*Of all the topics that lend themselves to awful puns, beekeeping is one of the most painful. I've had the misfortune of hearing literally dozens of groaners from Mike and the male members of his family during the past few months.

Checking in with the chickens

We've started letting the chickens free range for a few hours at a time, and they seem to love pecking around in the leaves and chasing bugs. They're still cowardly enough to want to stay together in a pack most of the time. It's pretty funny when one chicken chases a bug farther than usual and then panics and sprints back when it realizes that it's 50 feet away from all its friends. They're getting friendlier toward us, though, and come over to check us out when we visit. They're very interested in my toes when I'm in sandals, which makes me pretty nervous because I'm sure they don't know the difference yet between appendages and grubs. But I haven't actually been pecked yet.

The black chicken you can see clearly in this picture is one of the roosters. Both hens and roosters grow combs, the red fleshy part on the forehead, but the roosters are developing them much more quickly. They're also getting to be a little bigger than the other birds. We're trying to make sure the roosters are comfortable with us as they grow up so that they don't become hostile and try to protect the hens from us. When I first went home with Mike back in college, his parents had a crazy old rooster that would attack people, so Mike  had to bring a foam pool noodle outside with us as a defensive weapon in case the rooster was feeling feisty. I don't want that to be necessary here.

The first few evening we let the chickens out, we worried that they didn't yet know to get back into the coop at dusk, so we had some exasperating times chasing them around and trying to herd them inside. But we figured out that if we wait until it's actually dark, they do indeed put themselves to bed where they belong. So far they seem to be ignoring the roost perches I built for them in favor of sleeping in a 1 sq ft area, piled on top of each other. But they're still growing pretty quickly, so that won't be an option much longer.

Trash and treasure

One of the first things we started in preparation for our new life out here was the creation of the "other black gold," compost. While we lived in our last apartment, we kept a couple of smallish plastic bins on the porch and threw in vegetable and fruit scraps as they accrued and mixed in the odd handful of potting soil or dirt to try and keep things covered. These two slightly smelly, drippy bins made the move with us and served as the cornerstone of our great compost heap.

Compost is quite important to our gardening efforts by adding organic material and an array of nutrients to our mostly deficient heavy clay soil that we have to work with. You need moisture, air, and a balanced blend of "greens" and "browns" to create the ideal environment for bacteria/fungi to thrive. The "greens" in the pile are things like food scraps and grass clippings, while the "browns" are straw, paper, and old leaves. Without getting into too much detail, the greens provide a relatively high portion of the nitrogen and the browns provide more of the carbon, the two main determinants of whether the micro-life is happy. With plenty of air in the mix, the pile smells nice and earthy, not bad. Without enough air, this opens the door for anaerobic composting whose byproduct is methane, causing a stink and much messier result (though I've heard some use anaerobic digestion to create gas for heating).

The particular variety of composting we're shooting for is a thermophilic process, meaning that the pile will naturally heat up to at least 160 degrees for a few days to kill off and weed seeds and diseases that might be present. I was pleased to find that after sticking a pitchfork into the compost recently, a great billow of steam rolled out, meaning that things are going well.

We keep a compost bowl in the kitchen to haul out to the pile after it gets full. It gets very little respect, as you will no doubt notice by the heavy abuse on its rim.

In addition to the compost heap, we also keep a worm bin. Worm castings (poop) are an awesome fertilizer, which is one of the reasons why it's great to see them in your garden. The bin is a very simple setup, is smell-free, and will be a source of free fertilizer for us for the foreseeable future. Our worms like old vegetable scraps, and fortunately for them, we tend to eat a lot of vegetables. They have a nice bed made of peat moss and a little sand, and they're covered in a heavy layer of leaves, which serve as their homes and food.

When we add food each week, the worms work their way away from the older stuff, leaving lots of tiny worms behind to finish it off. The juices drain through a length of rope into a jug to make a concentrate for "worm tea," yet another fertilizer that is heavily diluted before use.

Composting is a great way to divert part of the garbage from the landfill to the garden, it doesn't smell, and it's free.

The inside of the bin. Little Javier is journeying his way to the top on a dare from the worms below (not pictured).

They grow up so fast

Our chicks finally graduated today! Using a can of paint we found in the garage, left over from whenever the deck was last painted, we gave the coop a quick coat of paint before storms moved in yesterday. I'm sure paint is supposed to dry for more than 3 hours before it gets drenched, but the weather hasn't given us very many options. Today we furnished the inside with bedding and moved the chickens out of their very cramped quarters in the red bin. They were reluctant to jump out (for once), so Mike had to give them a lift, but then they seemed happy to have 24 whole square feet to explore.

They can all finally get a bite to eat without standing on each other or tipping over the feeder. And we won't have to stand it up and refill it twice a day anymore!

Since they're defenseless still and we don't want them to wander off and get lost, we'll keep them enclosed in the coop for about the next week so they can grow up more and learn that the coop is a safe home. Then we'll start letting them outside for short periods of time when we can watch over them and make sure they don't go too far. Chickens want to roost in a safe place when it gets dark, so they'll willingly go back to the coop and settle in around dusk. Eventually all we'll have to do is open the coop door in the morning to let them out to free range, top off their food and water every couple days, collect eggs, and go back out in the evening to close the door behind them. Overall, they should be pretty low-maintenance contributors to the farm. 

And of course we'll have to clean out the coop occasionally and maintain it so that the hard work we've done on it can last as long as possible. Just in the past couple days, some gaps had widened between boards that let in rain. So after we got the chickens situated, I sealed everything up. I think after one more coat of paint, we'll finally be able to call it finished.

This is what happens when Mike tells me to look cheerful while I work.

Catching up on a month of work

I didn't intend to take a month break from the blog, but as things have picked up speed this spring, I've been a little overwhelmed. We have our hands in a lot of ongoing projects, so this catch-all post covers a lot of ground.

First off: The chicks are doing great. They're pretty ugly now, and quite terrified of us despite us seeing to all their needs for their whole lives, but they're healthy and growing fast.

I set up a pen in the yard one day so they could explore bugs and leaves, but mostly they just cowered along the wall.

They've grown about 7 inches in one month, and their bin is getting pretty crowded. They tip over their food dish and drink (or spill) all the water about twice a day. Good thing their permanent home will be ready soon! The chicken coop is basically done except for a couple coats of paint, and we have to wait on a few dry days before we can take care of that chore. The window shutters and nest boxes came together over the past few weeks and we really like how they look. And best of all, the hasn't been leaking anywhere, despite plenty of rain.

The closed window shutter and storage bin on one side of the coop.

Opening the shutter to show the screen underneath. We'll prop it open in nice weather.

Instead of a storage area, the other side of the coop has nest boxes. The inside of the coop also features lovely linoleum and a small chicken door.

Next weekend we'll be expanding our menagerie to include honey bees. Mike's family had a lot of success with their new hive last year, and they're splitting it and giving us a swarm. We've started building the hives and getting the equipment we need to bee-keep, but it all still needs to be assembled. I've been reading a book on bee-keeping, but mostly we're relying on the Horns' expertise to guide us. With luck, about the same time we start getting eggs from the chickens, we'll also be able to harvest quite a bit of honey.

Our seedlings continue to progress. The brassicas (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and brussels sprouts) that we've transplanted to raised beds are doing very well and haven't been bothered by deer yet. Lettuce, spinach, and kale that we seeded outside are all growing fast, too. The transplanted tomato and onion seedlings are struggling to take off, though. We have bell peppers, jalapenos, cucumber, cantaloupe, and herbs started indoors.

Other projects: In addition to what we're putting in the garden, this year we've planted 75 strawberry plants, 9 raspberry bushes, 3 apple trees, 1 cherry tree, 2 pawpaw trees, 3 hazelnut bushes, 1 gooseberry bush, and about a dozen flowering trees and shrubs including dogwoods, redbuds, and forsythia. Mike did way more of the work than me, though. I hate planting trees. Everywhere you dig around here, you have to chop up tons of roots. It's exhausting. I was dreading the boxes of saplings that kept showing up at the house needing to be planted. But I know I'll be happy to have fruit and flowers for the next couple decades.

Mike also set up mushroom logs. He soaked the logs, drilled holes all over them, and then inserted mushroom spore plugs that we bought from a garden center. He melted wax to seal over the plugs, and then made sure the logs were secure in a shady spot behind the barn where they can stay cool and damp. Now all we have to do is wait about 18 months while the spores slowly grow and take over the logs, and then we'll be able to harvest oyster mushrooms and maitake mushrooms. We've never tried maitakes (also called hen-of-the-woods), but they're supposed to be tasty.

I think that summarizes the bulk of our spring. We'll continue digging raised beds and planting seeds, but I'm optimistic that the hardest work is behind us for the year.