Friday, November 29, 2013

Thanksgiving and Family

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. Our oldest son and daughter-in-law and two daughters came over this year. We had smoked turkey and ham and wonderful goodies as well. Our daughter in law is a wonderful cook.
 
We got to spend a little time with our granddaughter shooting. This was the first time that she has done any shooting with a large caliber rifle. She is going to be a natural I think.

She was a little nervous at first, at least until grandma shot a couple of times. Then she picked right up on it.

Our son in the meantime, while we were playing, he was working at getting an area leveled out
for the calves that we have and decided to keep.

He spent most of the day today digging and moving dirt and I think it turned out pretty good.

The area in the above picture is where I decided to put the calves shed. Below is where he moved the dirt to create a road and flat area.

What a view they will have with the pond right there next to the area they will be. The best spot on the lot I think.
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Bees, Bees, Bees

What a wonderful sight to see the bees out today. The sun was shinning and the temperature was about 58 degrees in the shade which means it was about 60 to 65 degrees in the sunshine.
 
I had walked by them a little earlier and saw them out and about, flying like crazy gathering pollen that is still available.

I saw some of the bees so full of pollen that they could barely get into the hive through the openings that they have available. The green hive in the middle and the one on the end are regular bees. The one in the middle are Carniolan's and the one on the end are Italian's. Both of these hives are doing very well right now.

The middle hive in the above picture and the hive in the picture below are two hives that we split this summer with two new queens. They are suppose to be the hygienic queens. We are trying to get these hives going to help produce bees that will clean the mites that effect the hives on their own. These two hives are very weak but still doing very well considering they got started late.

I am hoping that all the hives will survive the winter and go great guns next spring. I have them strapped down because we get some pretty strong winds here and I wanted them to be stable.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Hay Storage

Well we got our first load of hay yesterday and I got it put in the new hay storage area that Don and I and our two son's have been working on for about a year now. It is really going to be nice to get the hay out of the area that it is in right now because we have other plans for it. We would like to put some kind of tarp on each end to help keep the deer from having dinner at our expense and also help to keep the rain from getting the ends wet.

 
This was the first time that I moved the hay on pallets with the tractor. Usually Don does it but with his knee he can't right now. Going to have that fixed soon. Yeah.
To the right of the picture you can see some orange color, that is Chicken of the Woods mushrooms. They really like it there, they are also edible. This is a natural habitat for them. They are growing on an old stump which is hard to see in this picture.
 

I also got four bales of hay in the garden shed like I had planned and it is going to be really nice to be in a covered area while filling the horses hay bags this winter when it is raining. It is amazing what little things can make one happy.