Bees!!!

I promised I'd tell, and here it is...  Our new addition to the farm is a beehive!

This is our new Carnation Hive.  It has one deep box (brood/food chamber).  That's the box with the indent.  The light gray-blue box on top of it is the feeding box.  It's two chambers with a slot between for the bees to climb up.  In between the two boxes is a metal slotted panel called a queen excluder.  The size is such that only worker bees can get through.  The queen bee is too large to fit, so there's no chance of her drowning.  The lid is the last thing.  On the bottom of the box is the (clearly lol) bottom board.  Because of where the hive is sitting (on a hill), I've got a 2"x6" board sitting under the front end to keep it at a better level.  The box needs to sit slightly forward, but even side to side.

This is the new Chehalis Hive, the day we brought it home.  What you see are cement blocks that the hive is sitting on, followed by the bottom brood chamber, and the top food chamber, and then a lid.  We have since changed this a bit.  The top lid we have removed, because it is not ideal for a hive.  We have also added the queen excluder, and then added a medium super, which is smaller than a brood box, for honey production.

Stay tuned for a new post about how we extracted honey!

New Pasture!!

Well, it has been a long time coming, but we FINALLY got the pasture set up to where the cows can easily come and go from their stall.  Of course, we had to bring in the horse, because they're buds, and then of course the pig started screaming at us, so my husband let her out... only to have her run about as fast as her little legs would take her straight into a corner that wasn't there yesterday.  Jim though she had knocked herself out, but she managed to get up and get through the fence.  So he had to reinforce it.  Hopefully, now she knows it is there, so won't hurt herself again.  The cows had a great time, running around and kicking as they tend to do the moment they are let out of their pen.  Now that the pasture is connected to their pen, we can leave it open during the day, even when it rains, since they will now have a way to get out of the rain.

The calves are now 7 months old.  They are 2 months away from their projected first heat, and  6 months away from the first breeding of one of them.  We are not planning to breed either calf until 13 months, to give them extra time to grow and fill out before becoming pregnant.  We are planning to breed to a meat cow, so that the subsequent calf will be a good family cow if female (one that doesn't produce way above what a single family would need every day), and good meat if male (dairy cows make good hamburger, but that's about it, so adding in a meat line would up the meat quality).

The pig is now 8 months old, and 1 month away from her projected first heat and breed.  She is large enough that she can comfortably sustain a pregnancy, so we will not be waiting for her first breed.  We have a potential stud in mind, but he may be a tad short still.  We shall see :)

There is a new surprise coming, in the form of a new addition to the farm (not any babies or anything though).  Stay tuned to see what the surprise is :) 

Shenanigans

So.... I decided it was time to muck out stalls, and the calves haven't been out in a while, so I went ahead and let them out to play.  They started bucking and racing around, and Lola (the pig) started screaming to be let out.  So... I went ahead and let her out.  She immediately raced after the cows who were running in huge circles around the property.  At first I thought she had freaked out the cows who started running harder, but then they all just started running around playing.  They took a break and sniffed each other out, and then started running again.  They had a lot of fun before finally settling down to check out the giant poop pile (we have been having horse manure delivered, and the lady dumps it in a big pile).  I finished cleaning out the calves area, and I was trying to decide how I was ever going to be able to catch the pig, when low and behold, she wandered in to the pen to check it out.  I closed it, just in case, and went to clean out her stall.  She rolled around in the mud and got SOOOOO dirty!  But she loved it!  I was able to reach in and drop the lasso around her neck and cinch it up.  I was worried she'd race off without me, but she just hopped around for a bit and barked a few times, and then went back into her stall, where I was able to spray her off with the hose.

As for the calves, they were extremely easy.  They saw me walking into their pen with a pile of hay, and they came racing in.  Good girls :)