I
am sorry it has taken me over a week as it seems to get back to writing this
blog. My laptop died a quick and painless death; however it left me in
quite a bind. Without my laptop I have been trying to get my school work
accomplished through various other means. It has been quite frustrating. At one point I was working on an over clocked
486 dx4100…that was fun. I am just glad
that I have a good working knowledge of computers.
I
will be cleaning up the two dead laptops and selling them as parts only, in the
magical world of Ebay. I am sure I will
not get much, but something is better than nothing and as long as they sit
here, I am tempted to re-build boards or have new boards made for them. It was truly a good computer aside from its
little over heating issues. I believe
them to still be quite superior to the one I am using today, or maybe it is
just the madness of windows 8.1 that has me hating it so much. I and DELL are currently having issues as the
people they have working for them, do not speak English as a first langue. I asked them if they had anyone who spoke
French, I figured I could have understood that better then their broken English.
It will be after next week before I can
bear to deal with DELL again.
Aside
from computer issues, I am trying to finish up the last few weeks of school,
again frustrating. I have math to finish
and American History. Now the History
teachers say please write me another paper, this one just two pages about my view
of American history, it is not holds bare and anything goes, really will test
that theory…lol Still have many more
tests to take and one section of math to finish up, I hope to live through it.
Our
last year’s bees arrived on Thursday, Pigeon Mountain sent them and that is
great one less person I have to sue this year.
I have not set up this computer for pictures yet, but once I do, I will
post some nice photos. The bees came
thought the US Postal service, which did a really great job of keeping them
alive for three days as they made their journey from Georgia. They came in a rather small box made of wood
and framed in screen. There were around
10, 000 bees in the box, we had ordered Italian but got Russian bees, but they
are bees so we are happy. They are fun
to get out of the box and since and my husband had never done boxed bees before
we were ill prepared for what followed.
We did watch a very nice video which should a bee keeper and his new boxed
bees. In the video he removes the wooded
cover, removes the can which contains sugar water (food for their trip) and a
queen in a cage. Now he does this no bee
suit on and the bees are all calm and happy, he taps the box and the bees fall
to one side, he dumps them in the hive, and then tap and the rest get poured in
like thick cake batter.
After
watching a few times we feel that we can do this, my husband and I don our bee
suits and I become the living image of the stay-puff-marshmallow man, and we
bravely go to the old hive remove a section of comb with uncapped honey, which
by the way is falling everywhere. First
set of bees toughly mad now, and off to uncap the box containing the new
bees. First we notice that it is a piece
of cake to take the wooden cover off, no so easy to get the metal can out and
lastly the queen cage. Bees are now
flying everywhere; hmmm this is nothing like the calm bees in the video. Michael gives me the queen cage and I have
the tool that the video said I needed, a match.
Well this is not going to work and now bees are everywhere, 10, 000 bees
per three pounds, rolling my eyes and I am looking for a nail, stick anything to
get the cork out of this so the bees can get to the candy and free the queen,
great now I am a part of a living video game, shaking my head. Finally we get the queen in the hive and
start dumping bees in. Michael does a
great job, but the bees are having none of it and may do not want to leave the
nice box and must be forced to leave, they whole time I have been spraying them
with sugar water, so not they are drunk, pissed redneck bees, and just cannot
seem to find their way. In the end only
a few refused to go and we left the box in hopes they would find their own way
to the hive. So we cover the hive of now
drunk bees and went to do other things, now things are calming down and they
seem to like the new hive.
We
get our next bees on the 16th of May, I am ready.
Got
the okra in the ground in a month or two we should be harvesting it, I wanted
to get more tomatoes in, but came upon a nest of spiders so they have to leave
first. Our chines cabbage are just a
week or two out from harvest, they are looking so yummy, I did have to use D.E.
powder on them, I did it very lightly as
to only kill the grass hoppers and not my earthworms or other helpful
bugs. We have started to harvest spinach,
and radishes so far, along with our wild forage. We have picked curly dock, and lambs
quarters, yum, and add them to almost every evening meal. The peas have yet to flower, the corn is
coming along nicely and the test patch of the three sisters keeps growing and
looking good, that garlic, looks great and I have starting picking strawberries,
shhhh, don’t tell my kids, I leave like one or two a day and pick the rest,
clean them, cut them up and freeze them for ice cream and jam. The Jerusalem artichokes are looking good too;
I will be cutting them back and feeding the livestock with them very soon. Oh and the asparagus this year is
wonderful.
As
for the birds on the farm, they are being weird as normal; my pigeons hatched
out two OEG self-blue game birds today, honestly we had the pigeons in with the
chickens and thought nothing of it, so my bad.
The pigeons must have been surprised as well when they hatched out
chickens instead of pigeons…
We have new
brown egg laying chicks for 4-h now as well, 50 or so, what was I thinking,
more birds, oh sometimes, I should say no.
But in for a penny in for a pound I guess.
We are of
course still selling hatching eggs, which is provide a fair source of return on
the dollar, but we will not get rich doing it, farming is not a job, but a life
style, so back to doing art and such after school this term.
So this is a
little bit of what we are up to, I will try to write again very soon.
Be Blessed
Shekhinah
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