River Ridge Farm

1. Milk the goats
2. Make Chevre cheese (5 quarts warmed milk, 1/2 cup buttermilk, 3 drops rennet, let sit for half a day, drain in pillow case till stops dripping)
3. Mix a pound of Chevre with 1/2 cup homemade raspberry jam and a pinch of salt
4. Chill and enjoy!

I've gotten a lot of calls lately from people with various bee issues.  One guy actually had a swarm!  Swarms in September are almost unheard of, and certainly doomed to die in the dead of winter.  And this swarm of honeybees thought they were yellowjackets--trying to burrow down into a hole!  I had to dig down to get at them all.  Were it not for Scott's wonderful bee vacuum, (I was borrowing it while he was on vacation) I could never have gotten them.  Alas, the bee vacuum was not working properly because it's seals were coming undone.  Finally, the motor quit and I couldn't figure out why (later learned it was because the piece of wood that holds down the safety had snapped in two.)  I had to go home with what I could get. 

My intent was to get them to join with another hive.  With a Langstroth style hive, this is easy.  You just place newspaper between two boxes (one is on top of the other) the two colonies on either side of the paper.  By the time they eat their way through, everyone is good friends and plays nice (hopefully.)   I wasn't sure how to get that to work on my Horizontal Top Bar Hive, and pretty much failed.  The swarm absconded.  :(

There was another call, one from the Mission State Park.  I'd gotten a swarm from them in the late spring, a tiny, puny swarm laying in the grass that wasn't worth spit.  They didn't have the numbers to build a hive.  :(  But they appreciated me moving the menace from the horse trail, and called on me again for this.  They have a rental house in a completely different town from the Park (I dunno why a State Park has rental property, I didn't ask) with a young hive above the garage door.  The house had been unoccupied, but now someone was moving in who was allergic to bees. 

It's a pity you can't see the bees in this photo, this hive was vibrant and active wtih lots of bees coming and going.  This is a good thing!



Today, my sidekick is Porter.  Scott was completely unavailable, and this was a rush-job--had to be done today.  I'm glad, because there's no way Porter would have come otherwise.  He's both fascinated by the whole bee thing and freaked out by it.  This was such a fabulous hive extraction experience (unlike last time), I'm glad he got to share it with me.

We are coming at the hive from its back, inside the garage.  This will make the extraction soooo much easier.  :)  The nice Park Rangers set up a ladder for us, and Porter begins cutting into the sheetrock.


We pulled the sheetrock away, and I was prepared for massive sheets of comb like last time.  But no, here is the cute little nubbin of a hive!  Just getting started!  The new comb is so beautiful and strange.


This is a closeup of the piece of sheetrock we pulled off.  The comb was attached to it, so it tore with some staying on the sheetrock.  Bees cluster on the torn comb.


What a fantastic photo!  Porter remarked at how the natural beehive looks just like the comb on a Horizontal Top Bar Hive.  I nodded and said, "Yeah, that's the point."  ;)  It's like those bees studied Top Bar Hives or sumthin!  This new comb is yellow rather than white like new comb usually is.  I have no idea why.  Maybe because they got started later in the year?  Wax is made out of honey (or rather, nectar), it takes 6 pounds of honey to make a pound of wax.  The later in the year you go, the darker the honey gets.  Maybe that makes yellow comb?


Hive gone!  I was prepared this time.  I brought two clean buckets with lids, one for brood comb, one for honey comb (if there was any--there wasn't.)  This hive was not in a good position to survive the winter.  They're even worse off than my fledgling hives!  If such a thing is possible.  (Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, I dunno.)  Anyway, I made sure to get the bees off the comb, then dropped it into the bucket and CLOSED IT.  We worked quickly and with a will.  But there really wasn't a need to worry, this hive was small and we were enclosed inside a building--like the first extraction.  There was really no danger of robbing.  Plus, when you come at a hive from the back, all the angry guard bees are at the entrance.  All the nice, sweet, naive bees are at the back with no clue what is going on.  Gotcha!



Bees inside the vacuum box.  Hello bees!  I'm going to give you a new home!

My clumsy attempt at attaching comb to top bars.  Rubber bands work with frames OK, but not so well with a bar, where it is too easy for tension to pull it to one side or the other.  I use wire that pierces the comb.  The ones with too much honey are heavier and sometimes tear through.  This comb is new, soft, and weak, and I have to try several times before they stay.  Who knows, they may end up falling later anyway.  :(  If they stay on, the bees will attach them to the bars and repair any damage to the soft comb from fingers pressing into it.  The wire (hopefully) can be pulled out later without too much damage.  I do this work indoors, away from bees that would rob.


A most amazing thing--as I am working on the comb, I watch several newborn bees emerge from their pupas.  When they come out they look all white and powdery.  I hope that is normal.  I noticed that on the other hive extraction too.  I realized I should snap some more photos, so I pause in my work to grab the camera.



Another lovely newborn bee!  Sticky with honey I spilled.  Welcome to the world, little one!

Here is the established hive I am introducing them too.  I removed empty top bars, and replaced them with the comb we extracted today.  I was prepared this time with a false divider wall I cut out of a normal movable wall (important to Horizontal Top Bar Hives) covered with two layers of newspaper.  Hopefully this time will work out much better than the last.  Not only does the new small hive have reason to stay put (their comb is there!) the neighboring hive has motivation to bite through the wall to that intoxicating honey smell!  I needed to leave the new colony's end open so that the stragglers could find their way in.  After that, I need to go back and close it up so they can't be robbed by stronger hives, and they will be motivated to exit through the newspaper and confront the colony they are destined to join with.  They won't have a choice!  Bwhahahah!  The photo doesn't show it well, but the air is full of bees from this new colony.


A bunch of stragglers still hanging out in the vacuum box.  I can only shake so many of them out, the rest will have to find the way on their own. 

This was a fantastic extraction experience.  It went off without a hitch.  I just need some more experience fitting comb onto top bars effectively.  Thrive little bees!  Get every drop of nectar you can out of those Queen Anne's Lace and little yellow flowers I see everywhere.  Hopefully you'll make it through the winter and get the jump on next spring.

I haven't been a very good bee mommy.  This is my first year attempting to keep bees, and I have so much else going on.  I tried to establish four swarms and a package (five hives total), but two failed before they could get strong, and the others appear to have suffered from robbing.  (They have little or no honey stores!)  I blame myself for not taking better care to finish their roofs properly and close their back doors.  

I have, however, gained quite a bit of experience in bee wrangling, between catching swarms and being convinced by my bro-in-law, Scott (who is even more insane than I am) to begin removing established hives from the walls of people's homes.  So first let me tell the tale of our second beehive removal, of which I actually have photo evidence!    This happened in the tail end of August.

Here is me getting in my gear:



Here is the ingenious bee vac that Scott built:



The entry to the hive was in the wall of an abandoned house:



Here Scott has cut away the area beneath the hive opening between two studs with a circular saw.  Lots of bees, lots of brood comb.  Not seeing much honey... yet.  Which one am I?  I'm the cute one wielding the vacuum.  ;)



Closeup of the same pic so you can see how many bees are covering the comb:



You can see in this picture how well the vacuum has sucked the bees away:



The first section was all brood comb, lots of eggs, larva, and pupa with just a little honey and pollen to directly feed them.  But this huge, well-established colony had completely filled the space between these studs and spread to the space on either side for their honey storage. 

Below, you can see the honey storage on the right.  Note how much lighter the color is on the honey comb, especially when capped over with wax (the uncapped areas are slightly darker--the honey there still has to dry more before it is ready for Egyptian-tomb longevity).  Brood comb always gets dark, maybe from bee poop?  I dunno.  Bees are very fastidious, but maybe you just can't get it all out of the wax.



Hey, does this beesuit make my butt look big?

Fabubulous shot of the sheets of honeycomb! 



Below, the brood comb has been cut out and put into frames.  After probing on the far left, we see that we've reached the end of the hive.



Unfortunately, we were inexperienced and unprepared to handle a hive of this size out in the open.  The first extraction we did was from inside an enclosed barn, so the smell of the exposed hive couldn't attract the attention of every hive for miles around.  Also, it was smaller, and Scott had enough frames to fit the comb on.  This time, Scott filled up all the frames he had and then had to assemble more before he could put the comb away.  This was extremely time consuming. 

I had nothing to do with my hands but vacuum bees.  The bees just seemed to keep coming!  We later realized this was because--like blood to sharks--this torn open hive was calling to every bee for miles around.  The air was full of them, and passers-by on the street looked into our alley, and hustled away!  I was sucking up far more than just this hive's bees.  It didn't help that we took too long before beginning to cut and fit the comb at all, acting like we had all the time in the world.  Silly us!  We should have treated it like sensitive open heart surgery--get in, get out, get gone.

I just stood there vacuuming bees off the honeycomb, aware that most of them were "enemy bees" robbing this hive we'd ravished.  I watched many an epic battle as bee grappled bee in vicious attempts to sting, tumbling off the comb to the ground unable to fly.  I couldn't believe how many bees were going in the vacuum, bee after bee after bee.  Maybe a hundred thousand or more.  No joke.  (A hive can easily contain tens of thousands.)  I wondered if I should stop, if maybe this was just too many bees in the vac.  But I couldn't stop--I was defending the honey!   

I idly pulled off a bit of comb and accidentally squashed an unseen bee which stung my finger through the nitrile glove.  That was my one sting of the day, and while the burning faded nicely after a few moments, it itched like the dickens for days afterwards. 

On a side note, being stung doesn't hardly hurt at all.  It's the burning, itching aftermath that is such a bear.  The only other time I've been stung was my second attempt to catch a swarm--the one laying all over the middle of a country dirt road where a car had driven through the middle and crushed the queen.  Those were angry, chaotic bees!  Repeatedly during this hive extraction, bees wandered into my veil from underneath.  I'd just calmly walk away, take off the veil, and shake it out.  No biggie.  :)

By the time we got around to cutting the honey comb, something neither of us had really handled before, we found that our intentions of fitting it in frames was ludicrous.  The stuff was thick and soft and just fell to pieces in our hands.  Don't forget sticky!  Honey was dripping everywhere.  Both of our oldest sons were there as extra hands (and camera-men).  We sent them on an errand to beg clean plastic bags from someone, as we had absolutely nothing to store this sticky, drippy mess in. 

So there I was holding the bag, Scott would remove a handful of comb and try to vacuum the bees off.  The honey was everywhere and the bees were just glued in.  Eventually, we gave up trying to be thourough and were just throwing it into the bag bees and all.  Honey is very, VERY heavy.  The bees were in the bag, around the bag, on me, and it was at this point that I nearly snapped.  I thought, "This is insane!  I can't believe I am doing this!"  And there was Scott, just as cool as a cucumber, holding the course.  I think after that experience, very little about beehandling could freak me out.  

The boys, however, were quite freaked out.  The honey and equipment we were putting in the car attracted the greedy hoards.  Scott drove the van a ways off, but it wasn't long before the bees were there too.  We had to move it a couple times before the boys would actually get in! 

Alas, when we got the bees to Scott's house, he dumped out the box of bees (which had been packed full!) to find most of them quite dead--or nearly so.  This was a crushing blow, as we'd driven a long way, taken many hours, worked hard, and made their family late for their plans for the afternoon.  He really wanted those bees!  But at least he had the honey, which he needed to feed another fledgling hive. 

We split the honey between us, crushing the comb and straining it to get the honey out.  A lot of it wasn't capped, so this honey is thinner than honey should be, possibly prone to fermentation.  (Think mead!)  I haven't gotten around to it yet, but I think I will feed it to my poor, almost honeyless hives myself.  Maybe some of them will actually survive the winter.  :sigh:

More Hive Removal Adventures in Part II....

I've come upon another fit of productiveness on the farm.  I am learning to do lots of stuff that I didn't know how to do before, because if I don't do them, the won't get done and I won't have that! 

We have been here on the farm almost three years now.  There has been a lot of trial and error.  A whole lot of error.  I've been wanting things that sometimes conflict with each other.  For example:

• I want lots of eggs from happy free-range chickens
• I want the chickens to stay out of the garden
• I want the chickens to fertilize the biggest pasture which also has many  brush-eating goats
• I want to breed both Araucanas (blue egg layers) and Rhode Island Reds (awesome layers) to replenish 2 separate flocks
• I want the goats to not destroy their shelter

Earlier this year, I tried putting hoop houses out in the big goat pasture.  It was a disaster!  The goats knew there was tasty chicken feed inside, so they pushed their heads into them and ripped through the plastic chicken fence like it was tissue paper.  I'd lace it up with twine, Porter would shoot them with the airgun to discourage them, but goats are very, very persistent when it comes to food!  Not to mention, the most obnoxious of the young'uns were climbing on top of them and busting up the PVC pipe supports!  I moved the hoop houses to our front and back yard, but we just don't have enough space to handle the amount of poop they make.  They've torn up the grass pretty badly, but boy will the grass that comes back be well fertilized!  Also, the hoop houses were too small.  The chickens stayed out of the garden, but they were miserable. 

The over-crowding was compounded when we took in my sister's chickens (they had a police man come to their door and bully them into getting rid of them!)  They treated each other terribly, pecking out feathers and making sores.  One chicken in particular was so terrorized that she will never fully recover from the trauma.  When you come up to her, she crouches down in fear, doesn't even try to run away.  I just let her go free after awhile, poor thing.

Also, the egg quality decreased significantly.  The vibrant flourescent orange yolks we so prized dulled to grocery-store yellow.  Not the sort of product I want to feed my family nor am I proud to offer it to customers.  We were getting more eggs in the nest boxes (rather than all over tarnation) but the traumatized chickens began eating some of them--a very bad habit that is hard to break.

It was clear that something needed to change.  After having goats escaping frequently and destroying the garden worse than the chickens ever did, we knew we needed a garden fence anyway.  But I had become very attached to the idea of keeping 2 separate flocks that would breed true and perpetuate, and having chickens that would lay eggs in the right place (easy to find, protected from our egg-eating dog), and spend the bulk of their time in the big pasture.  I wanted them to have plenty of space and for me to be able to move easily inside the house, but still have it be strong and light enough to move.  I needed the perfect hoop house.  I needed at least 2 of them.

Ok, so I found the perfect hoop house design from these lovely people.  Truly, I can't express my gratitude enough to them for their genius.  I've been wanting to have these up and running all summer and decided that the good weather wasn't going to last forever, it was now or never.  I was hoping for Porter's help, but he has a honey-do list four miles long plus his own want-to-do list, so I decided I'd just have to do it myself.  So I take great pride in this, not to mention the fact that I made several, ahem, improvements to the design.


Here you can see the basic skeletal design.


Here it has been painted, with nest boxes and roosts added.  These roosts are hanging like "swings".  I thought I'd try it since the wood wasn't long enough.  I later attached them with a second string to stablize them more, since the chickens couldn't balance.

I started building this on Tuesday, before I took any pictures.  I worked all day Wednesday until after dark.  Alas, it was too dark to take pictures of the lovely finished product.  I was so pleased!  And determined to get I dragged the rather hefty finished product at least 200 feet to get it out into the pasture.  No sooner had I done so, than one of our most obnoxious young goats was climbing on the top of the coop.  "Hmph," I thought to myself, "I figured you'd try this, which is why I made this hoop house so strong--you can't break it!  Mwahahaha!"  But as I began gathering sleepy chickens, I saw to my utter horror that THE ENTIRE HERD WAS CLIMBING OVER MY COOP!

One goat, it can handle.  A whole herd, certainly not.  They nearly destroyed it, causing the cattle panels to bend and sink low.  I was livid!!  I grabbed one of our wildest goats by the back hoof (she had no collar) and dragged her, screaming bloody murder, all the way to the back, back buck pen.  I worked one by one, getting all the tamest goats.  Unfortunately, all the goats born this year are quite wild and will run from anyone.  (I haven't done any training with them--too busy.)  I would not be deterred.  By a combination of patience and insane, dogged persistence, I got all but the 4 smallest over.  I decided they weren't heavy enough collectively to cause enough more damage to be worth chasing down. 

Here you can see that the goats snapped the wood support clean in two:



The next morning at first light, I was out to buy everything I needed for the only solution to my problem:

An electric fence.  

It was costly, but I got it up and working that very day.  I bought metal chain collars for each and every goat.  They are choke-chains but I put a cable tie on them to keep them from doing any choking.  The extra chain hangs down, and conveniently conveys a strong shock to the goat when it comes in contact with a hot wire.  I was delighted to discover that they also make handy leashes that make the goats easier to catch and control.  I should have done this long ago!

So here is the finished coop WITH the electric fence.  You can see how the tarps got ripped up by goat feet:


Also, there isn't any protection to one side.  The nest boxes need to be more protected and dark or the hens won't use them.  Also, one of our goats was using them as a hay manger, munching away at the nest bedding!  (In spite of the hot wire right above her head!)

I bought new tarps to put on top properly, and bent the cattle panels more or less back into shape:


Isn't it purdy?  :)


The hard-to-catch perpetrators sporting their new collars:

For several days we just had four hatchlings.  Exciting, but certainly not a good turnout.  I was ready to give up on the eggs when we were surprised by two more hatchlings!  All six seem to be doing fine.

When you are around so many animals, there is always something entertaining going on.  But now that it is rutting season for goats, we have some of nature's finest comedians on display.  For those of you who have never had the privilege of seeing a randy buck woo a doe, here is a special treat:  All the visual and auditory aspects without the accompanying stench! 

Athena's diligence and hard work have paid off! The guinea fowl are beginning to hatch! Only a few at this point, we won't know how many make it for awhile.



Erm, just checked, and one of the cracked egg shells is EMPTY! I worry that it hatched quite a bit earlier, ran off, got itself lost, and chilled to death in some corner! I can't FIND it! :(

OK, so we found those guinea fowl eggs and our daughter Athena has been diligently turning them 3 times a day.  I am really hoping that they hatch after all this, though just last night I discovered that the water pan had gone dry and I don't know how long it had been that way!  These eggs will have to really want to make it, I guess.



So, in addition to this, on Tuesday, in the middle of the heat-wave, I found our expectant mother guinea pig dead, having given birth to 5 babies, 3 of them dead as well.  I had tried to make sure she was hydrated and even sprayed her down with water the day before, but it wasn't enough apparently.  It doesn't help that she was an accidental "back-to-back" breeding.  (We didn't catch her in time to put her in the nursery--she had already given birth and been exposed to a male, so she immediately was pregnant again--a great strain on her body.)  Also, 5 is a lot of babies for a mommy guinea pig. 

Anyway, we had 2 orphans on our hands.  Athena was very willing to take on the responsibility, and has done fantastically well.  She feeds them warmed goat milk through a medicine dropper frequently throughout the day, and even sometimes in the middle of the night if she happens to wake up (she did last night!)  Alas, despite her loving care, the smaller of the two died earlier today.  We were really worried about how she'd take it, and while she was in tears when he was still struggling for life, she seemed at peace when he passed and was buried.  She knows she did all she could, which is easy to see from the living sibling which seems to be thriving.  Death is a part of life, and living on a farm really teaches you that.

So, we have feral cavies on our farm.  It is kind of a long story how this came to be, but we love having them around.  We mostly leave them alone, except when one is near birthing time.  Those we take and put in a hoophouse we call the "nursery" to prevent back-to-back breedings.  Normally,  when a guinea pig gives birth, she is immediately  in heat.  We remove her from the males to keep this from happening--it is too much strain on them.  Also, we remove the young males as soon as they are old enough to impregnate the females they are with, which is pretty young.  We try to make sure they are big enough so the cats will leave them alone.  The cats *will* kill baby guinea pigs.  But we've found that they leave the adults alone.  This allows the young females to get some size on them before *they* can be impregnated.

Anyway, we've found that our cats have accepted the guinea pigs as "friends" in a cat-like manner and seem to enjoy their company.  Here are some photos of Claudia chilling with her cavy buddies.  She watches them, but not in a predator-like fashion.

Our goose, Guenevere, lost her mate in April and in May she failed to hatch out her clutch. (Just a few more days would have done it, but she gave up.) Some geese don't survive the depression that comes with this kind of loss, but she has held on. She's had ducks to hang out with, and strangely enough--adopted a goat.

At first I thought she was biting him, being ornery. But the truth of the matter is, Guenevere hasn't *been* ornery since her sweetheart died. Apparently he was the aggressive one of the pair, egging her on as it were. What's more, when I looked closely, it very much seemed that the goat was enjoying her preening.

Porter was mowing the tall grass around the garden  today and stumbled upon a surprise.  A nest of 56 guinea fowl eggs!  (He accidentally broke two.)  One of the guinea hens had been incubating them, and now there was no way she'd return to her duties.  We could see from the broken eggs that the embryos are indeed vital and growing.  Not exactly eggs we were interested in eating.  ;)

So now what to do?  Well, a couple years back, Porter bought this enormous homemade plywood dehydrator for $5 at a garage sale.  It has a thermostat, fan, heated by lamps, and has dehydrated many a tasty snack.  We always had in the back of our minds that we would try to incubate some eggs in it one of these days.  Eggs need a stable environment where the temperature hovers just under 100 F and there is adequate humidity.  They need to be turned daily or the yolks will stick to the shell and the chicks will be deformed.  We had planned on starting to breed our own Rhode Island Reds and Araucanas later this year, but do a "test run" first so we wouldn't miss our time window. 

This is a perfect opportunity for a test run!  The time is right, we just needed a kick in the pants to get things started.   This is quite a little adventure for us, something we've been wanting to do but just haven't had the time and energy for  yet.  Athena is going to be our prime egg-turner and is looking forward to being a keet-mommy.  She hopes she can get them to bond to her like the geese in the movie "Fly Away Home."  I have no idea if that actually happens or not.

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Update:  The first day of incubation didn't go so well.  We tried using the thermostat, but it wasn't sensitive enough.  We then tried a dimmer switch, which would be fine if the incubator were in a controlled-temp environment!  We had the eggs at 105 F for too much of the day!  Finally switched back to the thermostat, and while the temperature jiggles from 96-103 F, the average is hopefully what matters.  We've decided that whether this works or not, we will definitely be getting a "real" incubator after this.  :)

Our sweet, sweet kitty that we had gotten in Utah at Matt and Holly's place, Kvothe, was hit by a car today and instantly killed.  Our neighbor called us--apparently the lady who hit him went to their house instead of ours (his body lay at the top of our driveway--don't know why she wouldn't come here.  >:( )  

We had just barely gotten him neutered yesterday, so he would still have been in a lot of discomfort and pain.  I can't deny that part of me feels at fault, that Kvothe wasn't completely "himself."  We'd neutered him because we looked forward to him living a good long time with us.  We didn't want him to suffer the same fate as Zig Zag, who started out sweet and loving, but turned into a grumpy, restless, wandering tom.  Kvothe was so patient with Hyrum and Ivy's heavy affection, and often slept in Hyrum's bed.  He was a dear companion that we'd hoped to enjoy for many, many years.  

I must admit that as I carried his limp, soft, still-warm body to where I'd dig his grave, numb with pain, I wondered if getting a kitten would make me feel better.  A selfish though, to be sure.  But I couldn't help feeling that Kvothe can't be replaced, ought not to be replaced.  He was special and unique.  Not only does he deserve to be grieved properly, but a new kitten could never be what Kvothe was to us.  Kvothe, who won our hearts in that Utah park, Kvothe who came home with us on the long drive curled up on Porter's shoulders.  Who when we'd stop along the way, would never think of running away, but seemed to love us as much as we loved him.  Kvothe who was patient through the kid's well-intentioned rough handling, and was nothing but sweet and loving back.  Kvothe of stunning orange eyes, luxurious long creamsicle fur, and the most beautiful kitty-tail ever.  Kvothe, so gentle, meek, mild, playful, yet serene.  I've never known a better cat, but now we have to part ways.

When you lay an animal down in a hole, you can position them just so they look like they are comfortably sleeping.  But it is hard when you start to cover them with dirt.  It is so unlike anything you would do to a living creature, it is almost shocking.  It is easy to feel angry at having something precious suddenly taken away.  Athena cried and cried, pouring out her love and loss.  Ivy was more reserved, but still sad, Hyrum mostly bewildered, still able to touch the warm but non-responsive body.  Sanford was distant, possibly not willing to deal with the whole thing.  I suppose Porter is grieving in his own way, but he tends to be more emotionally disconnected and distant about such things.  Kvothe was special to all of us, and endeared himself to Porter quite a bit.

Goodbye, Kvothe.  I am grateful that we had you in our lives, even for a short time.  I am glad that your death was quick, hopefully without much suffering.  I know that we all die, but it is hard when you are looking forward to a long time together, when you want that very much.  It will take time to get used the hard truth to your absence.

Lizzie really had me guessing.  Her due date was fast approaching and she was showing *no* signs.  I knew she was hypocalcemic, that could explain the lack of udder fullness.  But her ligaments were so tight still!  Then this evening all of the sudden her ligaments were just completely *gone*.  I stuck her in the birthing pen and observed her a bit

I called my friend and milk-customer, Jennifer, who very much wanted to attend the birth no matter the time.  I told her things looked to be moving fast and she should go ahead and come over.  Lizzie was agitated and bleating fairly constantly, wanting my comfort.  I thought it was interesting that once Jennifer arrived, with our low soothing banter, Lizzie quieted down and seemed extremely calm.  Even so, I worried that her birth was not proceeding as quickly as it ought to.  Her last birth went smoothly, so I hoped malpresentation wasn't the issue.  Big baby?  I suspected she only had one in there, and when that happens, they can get really big.  It doesn't help that the daddy is a big 'ol meat goat! 

It took some time, Lizzie was exhausted (falling asleep between contractions!) but she finally got the baby out around 2:30 am.  A big girl with a black head and white body!  So striking.  I asked Jennifer if she would like to name her.  Jennifer admitted that her first thought on seeing the kid was "Pinto bean!"  I seemed a little hesitant on that one, and suggested naming her for a striking brunette with fair skin.  After throwing out a few names, Jennifer suggested Audrey, for Audrey Hepburn.  A classy name for a classy looking doeling. 

.

...roosters do not say "Cockle-doodle-doo."  If you listen, you'll hear quite plainly they are saying, "I am AWESOME!"

While we were away on vacation, I got no less than 7 swarm calls left on our voicemail.  I followed up on all of them, but no leads.  I got a couple of calls that didn't lead to anything, but other than that, nothing. 

Just when I was thinking I wasn't going to get anymore calls, I got a call yesterday for the Willamette Mission State Park.  They had a swarm in the grass next to their horse trail that had been causing people trouble.  It sounded like they'd been there a couple of days, at least, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  We loaded up the family, some food, some frisbees, and took off. 

We arrived after most of the employees had gone home for the day, only the resident hosts were there.  It is a gorgeous park full of old hazelnut groves, other agricultural fields, interspersed with wild open areas.  We got to do all sorts of things that we wouldn't have been allowed to normally, like drive our vehicle all over the bike trails.  We had to go out quite a ways to get to where the horse trail intersected with it.  Then we had to go up the horse trail quite a ways before we found it. 

It was tiny!  I've never seen such a small swarm.  Not that I've seen all that many, mind you.  ^_^  They were nestled down in the grass, so we borrowed the hosts' shovel and literally dug the swarm up off the ground and laid it in the hive box.  The nice thing about that is that there was little doubt that the queen was captured.  Yay!  Then we put the hive box right where the swarm used to be.  Just like magic, the flying bees began entering it.  We left it there and went to the campsite to BBQ the goat ribs we brought.  :grin:  After our dinner, as the light was fading, we returned to the hive to collect it.  This was the first time I was able to leave a hive till dark.  It was fantastic, because I knew that every last living bee of the swarm was in there.  I was so pleased when I checked on them this morning (didn't open, just looked) and saw bees busily coming and going from the little hive box.  We planned to move them to the almost-finished hive still in the shop.

Then I got a call today.  A swarm up in a tree behind the Adam's Rib restaurant in downtown Salem.  At first I wasn't going to bother, since I'd told Porter I didn't require him to build any more hives this year (to spare both of us the time).  But he seemed excited and urged me to jump on the opportunity (as he was perfectly willing to build more) and I knew I had some errands yet to do in that area of Salem.  So I loaded up my very anxious Athena and Hyrum, (someone had to stay at home to receive Ivy from the schoolbus--otherwise we all would've gone as in times past) a bunch of equipment, and off we went!

I'd been told that when you ask "How high is the swarm off the ground?" people *always* underestimate the height.  Alas, I often don't have the wisdom to listen to the advice of others.  They'd said it was about a story up in the air.  Well, if it were, my step ladder would be just fine, thankyouverymuch.  Alas, when I got there, I saw it was hopelessly out of reach.  The ladder maybe reached a third of the way up!  Not to be deterred, I climbed the tree until I could reach the appropriate bough.  The owner of Adam's Rib (Adam himself!) had laid out a nice big tarp underneath.  I shook the bough as hard as I could--and though the bees began flying all around, the main cluster remained firmly attached to the branch.  Darn!

What to do?  The branch was too far out and precarious for me to cut with the equipment I had.  I called Porter and asked if he'd come out with the enormous pole tree pruner (I was kicking myself for not bringing it).  He was willing, but suggested I call my Dad (who was closer) to bring his.  My wonderful Dad dropped everything he was doing, and headed out to help.  By now, a gardening crew was passing by, and begged me to wait till they finished, as some of them were allergic to bee stings.  (Of course, some of them were standing around gawking, and their boss had to keep yelling at them to get back to work!) 

When I climbed most of the way up the ladder, with the pole pruner fully extended, I could just barely reach the branch.  It took *forever* for me to cut through that danged thing, and no one else wanted to be close enough to do it for me.  (Go figure!)  I never did get all the way through, though the bough broke enough to hang.  Adam had a fit of courage and came up amidst all the flying bees (realizing they were really very docile) and helped me yank the branch down.  I was pulling with the pole pruner (which was thoroughly stuck) and the telescoping parts separated leaving half of it way up in the tree!  He got the thing down, though, but by then the swarm had dispersed quite a bit.  I began trying to cut all the unnecessary parts of the branch away, but it was just taking too long.  By this time, quite a crowd had gathered to watch.  (My Dad and kids were inside the cab of the truck.)  Someone noticed that a large number of bees were fanned out all over the curb.  Oh no!  What now?

I knew if I tried to put bees in the box without capturing the queen, they'd just fly out of the box and back to her.  Even so, I began scooping them up and just throwing them in the box.  Then I remembered what I'd read: that a dark enclosure placed above bees will entice them.  I laid the box on its side slightly above the bees and--sure enough!--they began crawling right in.  It was the darndest thing watching thousands of bees slowly march on in.  The people were all duly impressed.  And they got more and more brave as they realized they had nothing to fear from these honey-filled, docile bees.  Adam was helping brush the bees up in as I sprayed smoke-scented water around the outskirts to "herd" them chemically into their new home.  The cute little things began fanning like good little bees, telling all the others, "Come home!  Come home!"  Adam's son, who supposedly is afraid of everything, even got brave enough to (on a dare) stick his hand in the box as everyone took pictures on their cell phones.  Hyrum came out of the car, walked right up to the bees, and began gently poking them with his finger and giggling.

But I wondered, had we gotten the queen?  When most of those bees had marched right up in, there was a cluster of just a few bees, maybe just 7, around something.  A dead, crushed bee.  I picked it up, and in my inexperience, was unsure if it was the queen or not.  But their tender attentions had me worried.  I tossed the body into the box for good measure and began planning how I would help them when I got home.  Would I put the tiny swarm, who had a queen, together with them?  Would I take a comb of brood from our extremely prolific hive (the first swarm I caught) so they could make their own queen from that?  I'd have to wait and "feel out" the situation.

When all was said and done, the wonderful people of Adam's Rib invited us in for refreshment, which we very much enjoyed.  Got home, got the hive set up, put them in, nice as can bee.  (Heehee!)  It began getting windy and rainy, so the rest will have to wait for tomorrow.  Whew!  Not a moment too soon, they were safe in their new hive.  Let it rain!  The garden needs it.  :)

We got to go camping in Southern Utah, visiting our beloved Goblin Valley, as well as the mysterious Arches and the truly awesome Canyonlands, vast beyond the mind's ability to grasp.  The weather was perfect, and the sunset shower we got in Goblin Valley was just enough to be refreshing. 


Nature's playground!  Later on these two climbed up high enough to give some of us severe heart palpitations.


It was fun having Porter's parents along.  Look at the nice stone sofa we found!


Athena leaps to join her siblings.


Me assisting Hyrum to the desired rock.


Hyrum on said rock.  Awww!  :)


Neener, neener!

We adopted a cat in Utah.  It was our last evening there, and we were spending it with my brother Matt and his wife Holly.  The weather was delightful, so we were playing out in the courtyard park.  A most delightful cat kept visiting us and scampering all around.  He was stunningly beautiful with a most fantastic tail.  We had a lot of fun watching him play with our kids and chase a passing bird. 

A neighbor came out and asked us if we'd like to keep him.  They found him just a couple days before and couldn't keep him.  I was loving the idea, but Porter didn't think it wise.  But this cat had such a spark about him, it wasn't long before Porter was seriously considering the idea.  We worried how he would handle the journey or if he would run off during stops, but the way he kept coming back to us was very encouraging.  He seemed to have already adopted us!

We tried many different names, starting with Creamsicle, for the orange and white.  I tend to dislike naming animals for their appearance, though, and decided he must be Kvothe, named for the main character of "The Name of the Wind" one of the best stories I have ever read.  I had finally convinced Porter to muster through the poor quality audiobook, and was delving into it for the second time myself.  

Kvothe was indeed unsettled by the long drive home, but as I felt he would, was bonded enough to us that letting him out on stops was no worry.  He found comfort in a very special nap spot: Porter's shoulders.  This was endearing, but after hours upon hours of returning to this spot and napping, Porter's shoulders were getting pretty stiff and uncomfortable.  When we switched places, Kvothe devotedly returned to Porter's shoulders in the passenger seat.  :)

Here are some photos taken several  hours apart on the journey:







After we got home, not only has he taken to our new place quite well, he has become fast friends with our neighbor's black tom who has been hanging around our place lately.  We've begun calling that one Bast, after Kvothe's fey friend/minion in the story.  (Not to be confused with the Egyptian cat goddess.)

Happy Birthday to the lovely and mysterious marianndashwood !