Things are hopping at my micro homestead these days. I heaved such a sigh of relief when it rained this weekend!

In past years, we’ve tried to have at least a couple of hives of honeybees. We keep them in the backyard, so they are easy to keep track of. Or, at least that was the plan.

This year, we have six hives, and even though it’s convenient to check on them, things happen fast if you’re not paying attention. I know this, of course, from experience. Ignore the bees for a few weeks and they decide to swarm (and if they swarm, you’re not going to get much honey from them).  The goal this year is no swarms. So far, so good. Now if we just keep getting rain, there will be nectar for them, too.

Meanwhile, in the chicken coop, it’s utter chaos. Of the 12 eggs that hatched from the last incubation, we still have seven chicks (we bartered most of the others for maple syrup) and even though they aren’t big enough to run with the hens, they are too big for their little chick abode, so we find them in odd places lately.

Right after the “littles” hatched, our hen, Coco, went broody. She was determined to sit on eggs and be a mama, and though we tried for over a week to convince her otherwise, we couldn’t. About that time, my partner discovered a whole clutch of eggs behind a bush in the yard. By their size, we knew they were eggs laid by one of our young, shy hens. We didn’t know how long they’d been there. We picked out the best-looking eggs and gave them to Coco to sit on. We didn’t really expect many, if any of them to hatch. But when we opened the coop door a couple of weeks ago, there were five babies peeking out from under Coco.

We’ve been getting great harvests of lettuces and other greens from the garden lately. It’s so wonderful to eat a huge salad of field greens. I’ve pulled a few onions for salads too. The peas should bloom soon, and the beans and cukes are up. I’m starting to see scapes on the garlic, and I finally got the potatoes planted. I have dutifully picked off the blossoms of the strawberries so they put their energy into roots this first year instead. And remember the hideous-looking rhubarb from earlier this year? It’s growing!

But while I’ve been being a beekeeper and beak-keeper, the weeds in the garden have made hay. Actually, they weren’t weeds last year. They were mustard and tatsoi. Apparently I let some of them go to seed — and now I have the best crop ever. At least I always have something to do.

So, what’s still on your to-do list? Or are you all caught up? (And if you are, would you like some chicks?)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 7:45 am and is filed under Bees, Chickens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.