The birds and the bees

We may only have birds and bees as our farm animals, but it feels like we have a lot going on with them this year. We checked on the bees a couple weeks ago. I still get pretty nervous when we open the hive and see thousands of them going about their business.

They are pretty calm though, mostly, especially after we drug them with the smoker. Mike pulled out each frame one by one to see whether the comb was being filled with larvae or honey. We also checked for the queen, because the hive can't function properly if she is dead. We did manage to pick her out of the crowd. The bees seem healthy and productive, but we're still a long way from getting to harvest honey for ourselves. 

The ducklings are still cute and growing up fast. They stick together all the time and like to go swimming in a shallow bowl of water we put out for them. They're pretty disgusting, though. Unlike chickens, their poo is the consistency of mud and smells like a stagnant pond. Paired with lots of rain we've had lately, it made the pen ankle-deep in stinky brown muck. A layer of straw helped the situation a lot, fortunately.

Their chick sibling died a couple weeks ago, apparently squashed in a scuffle inside the coop. But we did just get four new mail-order chicks this spring to help boost our flock size. They're currently growing up a bit in a bin in the garage, just like our first batch of chicks did last year.

Thinking about the eight chicks we were raising this time last year is a bit sad. We were so excited to name them and get to know them, and now only three are still alive, thanks to hawks, coyotes, and a random accident. I never imagined there'd be so much death, considering we aren't raising birds for meat! We've even lost our guinea fowl, although we aren't sure if he's dead. We got him a female companion, Mrs. Guinea, and the first time we let them out of the pen to enjoy a nice afternoon, they flew away. He always stayed close to home with the chickens when he was a single fella, so that hussy must have convinced him to run off. Hopefully they're having a nice honeymoon off in the woods somewhere (but in reality, a predator will likely get them before the month is out). 

Anyway, with our somewhat more practical and jaded mindsets this year, we haven't spent as much time cooing over the chicks or discussing names. But I hope they'll be long-lived residents of our homestead.

Birds of a different feather

Our hen Junebug is the proud mama of a flock of ducklings!

Junebug and some of her adopted babies.

She had gone broody this spring, meaning she was laying on eggs all day trying to hatch out some chicks. The poor dumb bird doesn’t realize that we don’t have a rooster and therefore none of those eggs could become anything but breakfast. Having a broody hen isn’t really a good thing, because she protects the eggs and pecks at us when we try to collect them, and eventually she stops laying new eggs altogether. But we were able to put Junebug’s broodiness to good use: Mike’s mom brought over a pile of recently laid ducks eggs that her friend had obtained. The mother duck had been chased off my a dog and abandoned them. We slipped them underneath Junebug to see if they would hatch, and two days later, we had six cute little ducklings living in the coop! There’s actually one chick in the mix, too. A (fertilized) chicken egg got mixed in somewhere along the duck eggs’ journey. 

One of the bravest ducklings, venturing out of his own to get some grub.

Sadly, there were eight ducklings originally, but it appears that Junebug accidentally suffocated two of them. The nest box is small, and she’s inexperienced at being a mother. We’re really hoping that there are no more casualties.

We’ll keep the ducklings with the chickens and let Junebug raise them until they’re adults. Mike’s mom has done this before, and she said that one day when the ducks are grown up, they all just fly away. But sometimes they stop by again the following year on their migration path.

A new year

A baby can be used as an excuse for nearly anything.: needing to go out, needing to stay in, not getting any sleep, sleeping at all hours of the day, etc. But a baby is my legitimate excuse for not blogging for 4 months. We've been a little preoccupied with preparing for his arrival and then with handling the never-ending demands of a newborn. (It's totally worth it, of course.)

But before he was born, we did manage to finish up the kitchen. Mostly. It could still use some caulk, but at least the walls look way better now.

We really like how the color turned out. Eventually we'll tackle the same wallpaper in the laundry room (seen through the doorway), but that's a bigger room so it will take quite a bit longer. I'm not in a big hurry to start stripping wallpaper again.

And despite being in the midst of the coldest, worst winter I can remember, it's time to plan this year's garden! We are going through seed catalogs and making our choices now, and as soon as seeds arrive it will be time to start some of them inside under grow lights. Last winter we set up our seedlings on shelves in the baby's room, so I'm not sure where they'll go this time around. It's hard to believe when looking at the garden now that we'll be planting things out there in just a couple months.

That large part of a tree hanging out in the garden is a branch that snapped off under the weight of heavy snow in the bitter cold a couple weeks ago. We were already planning to rebuild the fence this spring with wood poles and better wiring, or I'd be really annoyed that the branch was smashing it.

We had some successes last year. Carrots, tomatoes, peppers, and green beans all did well. We had at least that many utter failures, but I think we learned from our mistakes. We don't get nearly enough sun to grow cantaloupe, for instance, and if we want to grow brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts), we need to be aggressive with bug-repelling soap spray or caterpillars will eat literally every plant. 

And in addition to planning better, the conditions should be a little better as well. Under all the snow in the garden beds are cover crops of clover that Mike planted last fall to help restore some nutrients to the soil. And we'll have lots of homemade compost from a year's worth of kitchen scraps, chicken poo, and dead leaves to spread. 

Everything will be a little easier with experience under our belts, but it will also be more complicated to find time to do it all with our little guy added to the mix. And he'll definitely be my excuse for whatever fails or doesn't get done this year!