Sciurus carolinensis

Tree

Here's a pic of our homegirl.  Not exactly the pic I wanted to capture, as she usually is facing directly at the window.  This is taken through a double glazed window with the cloud covered sun behind her.

Yes, her, she is a nursing female and the boss of the local squirrel scurry.

The winter of 2018-2019 was a tough one for squirrels.  It was an off year for mast-the oaks dropped no acorns, and the same for the beech.  I got tired of the squirrels hogging all the bird feeders, so I started supplementing small piles of cracked corn spaced out along the hill path to the goats.

There was at least a dozen squirrels that came on a daily basis, usually showing up around 10:30 am  We even had a color mutation we named "Goldie" she had an absence of black coloration and was tawny and white.

My neighbors were not happy with the desperate squirrels-both known to shoot anything that encroaches on their rural properties, and I beeged both groups to "spare Goldie" if they went on a rampage.

I have not seen "Goldie" for over a year, whether she fell victim to a bullet or a bird of prey is unknown.  There is also the possibility that she saw no need to leave her territory last winter,(she was always one of the late arrivals the previous winter) as it was a crackerjack year for both acorns and beechnuts.

I know because I picked up several gallons off the goat path and left them by the back door, playing with the idea of turning them into acorn meal and attempting acorn pancakes.  It is quite a process of soaking, cracking, and shelling and drying and grinding, and I never got around to it.

The few squirrels that showed up in the back yard this winter thought that was the best acorn stash ever and ate most of the bucket.

I wish they had scrounged a little more through the asparagus and perennial beds out back since it took several days of raking and handpicking  MORE acorns unless I wanted to be pulling oak seedlings later in the year.  The ground was literally carpeted with them.

I had intended to use those leaves for garden mulch, but due to the massive amount of acorns I dumped them along the property line at the edge of the woodland.

One year I played with the idea of selling red oak seedlings, and potted up quite a few of them.  I gave some away and kept a few for a potential bonsai project.

We will have to see if acorn production is impacted by weather or is cyclical.  I have heard the term "off year" for fruiting trees-whether that is just the habit of the tree to fruit every other year, or if it depends on the type of weather during flowering season I am unsure.

One thing I am pretty sure on- we won't have a ton of maple keys, or seeds later.  We had that huge wet snow just as the red flower buds were swelling, and it has been cold and wet most of the month-not good conditions for pollination.

I have my beehives set as a swarm trap, but we have yet to see any honeybees.  One sure way I determine how local colonies overwintered is when the pussywillow buds mature, as honeybees cherish that as a pollen source and the small trees are low enough to the ground to inspect visually.

We have seen on or two tri colored bumblebees (Bombus ternarius) already this spring, and I expect to see the first hummingbirds any day.

Almost Thanksgiving

The weather has been rather cold for bees, but at least we don't have 8 feet of snow on the ground, my sympathies and prayers to Buffalo, New York area!

My co-worker and I, the "outside kitties", have been busy readying the ten frame hives for shipment down south for the winter.

We have been averaging about 5o hives a day.  There are four hives to a pallet, and usually about four pallets to a "bee yard".

The town is a rural Maine farming community, must be good dirt up there, lots of farms, lots of owner builder camps.  Being an architect nut, I have been immensely enjoying driving from bee yard to bee yard on the  back roads.

The weather has been surprisingly compliant compared to the rest of the country; most of the bee yard locations are sheltered, and the early winter sun has made the job not as miserable as it could be.  There is still snow in the shady parts of the fields, but basically just crumbs.

We have a nice pace worked out.  We arrive at the yard and J starts hauling boxes of bee candy.  I grab the riobi drill and start shutting the entrance reducers on the first pallet, then move on to cracking the top covers while J moves on to the entrance reducers on the rest of the pallets.

Cracking the top covers is a bit like Christmas-what's under there? Are there a pile of bees on top of a queen excluder, buzzing and perhaps flying right at my face?  Will  I see a few bees? Will they be the bright yellow Italians, or the dark carniolans? Will I be met with dead silence and have to press my ear against the top of the frames and listen to detect a buzz in the lower super, or with a stillness that determines the hive is an "out"?

Depending on what I discover determines my next course of action.  If there is no queen excluder, I am to carefully place one on top of the frames and then two bricks of candy and then replace the cover.  Sometimes the inside of the cover is covered with honeycomb and bees.  Bees make use of available space, and I have just used that space up with candy and have to remove the comb to replace the cover.

Being a softy, I want to save every bee, even though by this point I usually have at least a dozen trying to get me through the gloves, pants, hood, back....

So I shake the cover over the candy, trying to get the bees off.  The owner can do this magically with a flick of the wrist, but either I am lacking in skill or the bees are just more tenacious when the temps are30 or a combinations of both....it just is not that simple.  So sometimes I lean the cover in front of the entrance while I am placing the candy, and then shake, and then thump a corner on the ground to get them in the corner of the cover so I can shake them in, but they are clinging little creatures and this usually involves several thumps and shakes and on a rare occasion results in a clump of bees on the ground near the entrance.

There was one hive today that I kept returning to, scooping up bees off the ground-they ball up when cold- and trying to shake them into the entrance to save them.  My seniors on the job scoff at this behavior, but in my greeness I feel every bee matters and keep returning to try and save every stray bee, knowing that a bee too long outside the hive will just freeze to death.  I have flicked many off my coat that had died in  place.

Sometimes they burrow into the folds of whatever-and hours later come crawling out of what feels like every orifice ....and  I have bees emerging from my clothes in the car, the grocery store, my home...

Because when you are working the whole day outside in these temps, you dress in layers.  I found my bee coat doesn't quite come down over my hoodies.  The first few days this week I left my bee hood off until I had to, and then bees had worked their way inside the hoods of my coats.  I wear a sleeveless tank long enough to tuck in, a long sleeved shirt, a fleece hooded coat, and two hood sweatshirts and then the bee coat.  I wear a pair of sweatpants and a pair of jeans.  I gave up on the leather bee gloves this week-the sleeves are just a pain to get over the bee coat and they get cold wet and slimy-and wear a pair of insulated gloves. The bees haven't managed to sting through them yet, although they have been trying. 

Generally if I get a lively hive that comes at me, I back off and start flicking them off, hoping they haven't suicided on me yet and might get back to their hive before they freeze to death.

So it's been a lively week...

The Firebird is getting enquires from colleges about soccer recruitement, just not the colleges he has applied/been accepted to.  So I hope wheerever he settles he will be able to continue with soccer.

The Willow has had artwork accepted to hang at the capital.

My freezer is filled with turkeys @ 59 cents a pound.

Turkey turkey turkey.

Sundog

Tree2014

Well I have been pretty busy. Here's a pic I took of a sundog on the way home the other day.

The shop bee colonies all headed south this week.  I wanted to take a pic of the truck all loaded up but it was gone by the time I walked from the employee lot to the front door.

That was a lot of hard work.  We had a freak snowstorm that dumped two foot drifts the week we were supposed to be strapping them up, and we had to spend a day shovelling the hives out of snowbanks.  My feet were wet for two days straight.  Apparently my new boots are not entirely waterproof!

After the snow melted, a cold front came through, and the wind was whipping across the fields.

The day of the storm I was working on the goat farm and managed to walk into a barn door and gave myself a bloody nose for two hours.  We lost power for two days at the house.  So that was quite a week!

This week ended on a high note, I finally found a replacement vehicle.  A big SUV-filled it up today and it cost $50!  Ouch!

Our land line has been pretty much out since the storm, along with our dialup internet.  So today I invested in a wifi hotspot and some datacredit and now we have wifi!  Ten years on dialup, three years in the subbie, a big week for change!

This week we have to gather up all the local outlying bee yards and get them ready to ship out.  We spent two days making a pile of "bee candy" sugar and water and pollen substitute.  I really can't stand the smell of the pollen anymore. 

We mix the sugar and water in big enamel canning kettles and then cook it on gas burners in a box truck.  Then my co-worker lugs it out and I wait for it to cool to 180, then add the pollen and mix it.  Then I pour it into molds in another box trailer to make big slabs that go right in the hives.  I don't know how many big kettles worth I poured in two days!

We managed to make it a little more fun by rigging the radio out in the yard and cranking oldies.  The first day it was a balmy sunny 50,  Friday was in the thirties and we had a snow squall.  My co worker took a few pics-I am sure I looked quite happy out there mixing bee candy in a snow squall.

At least the paycheck is being put to good use.  :)

B E E utiful

I have been enriching my pockets and my brain the last few weeks working as an assistant beekeeper.

I have always been interested in beekeeeping, but other things have taken priority and I have never gotten around to  purchasing the hives and bees.

SO when I saw an opportunity to work with one of the largest beekeepers, I went for an interview.

The pay is minimal, but I was intrigued with the opportunity to work in a situation with somone highly experienced in a field with which I have limited knowledge.

I started out in the extracting room, processing hundreds, no thousands, of pounds of honey, super after super, frame after frame.

I had an opportunity to learn about the scourge of beekeeping and the preventative measures, varacoa mites , and followed the beekeeper from hive to hive inserting mites strips in between frames decked out in full bee outfits and marveled at co workers going along in bee coats and no gloves.

I went a few weeks without suffering any stings, but the occasional oops came along here and there, the sting mitigated by promptly scraping the still pumping venom stinger out with a fingernail or other flat object-I found hive tools came in handy.-

Then there was the day I helped unload 5 thousand pounds of honey supers out of the back of the truck back from up north - I disdained bee coat and went with a pair of nitrile gloves, and got stung three times in the back of the neck, once in the thigh, once in the ankle, and once in the hand.  Those were angry bees that day.

I have sorted frames to go south-big commercial operations move the bees south for the winter to get an early start in the spring.  I will stay behind at the shop through the bitter cold building equipment for next season.

I look forward to building nucs in the spring- nuclear hives made up of a queen and workers, brood and frames, a jump start from the typical "package" bees which you basically dunp in a bare hive and start from scratch.

Yesterday I made up "bee feed" different from the bee candy I worked on last week.  This is basically sugar and water, and I mixed 100 gallons of water to a thousand pounds of sugar.  That was into a tank with a small opening which is partially blocked by a large recirculatling hose, so yeah, fun.

Outside with the polite bees and yellow jackets and bald faced hornets all trying to get a sip.

Today we went off to the bee yards and filled the feeders.  Beekeeepers keep their bees all over the place.  We went to three bee yards, they have about thirty or so colonies in each one.  So the beekeeper goes along, opens them up, assesses them like a physician, and we come behind filling the feeders and picking up extraneous equipment,

At one point the beekeeper and I doubled back and started swapping covers around for shipping, so we were pulling the covers off the hives and switching them around.  I picked one up and the bees just boiled out.  Then I realized I had a gap between my coat and glove because the bees started stinging the crap out of my wrist..

So I made a hasty retreat, but the bees came right along with me.  I couldn't take the other glove off to scrape the stings off my wirst, because I was covered in bees.  So I picked up a piece of wood and scratched them out, but my whole wrist is swollen and hurts still.  Those darn bees dove right into the glove I removed  so I was shaking that out and I could feel the stingers scratching me on the back of the bee coat.

The beekeeper tossed me his gloves and went along barehanded-two days out of hernia surgery- in cold sweats- and barked orders at me to gather up the equipment.

Gotta love those tough Mainers.

Paradise

Cold late spring or no, things have finally burst.  We had a long ten day to two week dry spell. I planted a few things around the full moon in April-lettuce,beets, peas, broccoli, radish, turnip green, spinach...then a big dry spell.  Two years ago I was crying because my garden was a swamp this time of year.

The peas were old and one came up out of the whole packet.  I think they were more than three years old.  I used to know a place I could get a grab bag of the previous year's seed for a few bucks. a big bundle of seed, and every year would buy more and never plant the half of it.

One year I forgot my growing stash of seed on the lawn and it got rained on.  I found a couple I peeled apart to plant this year-cukes and tomatoes, so we'll see how they manage.

Other than the peas, the radish came up like gangbusters, neatly spaced so no need for thinning, although a stretch of nothing in the row at one point. Of course, I don't really like radish, but they are fun to pull up.


 Next on the success list was the turnip greens. I don't really like turnip either, but I do like a variety of greens, so maybe this will be nice, since the spinach was a total no show. The lettuce is just starting in the new bed, not great. I think the beets might be coming up. The broccoli was a no show.

Friday on the New moon I planted like a fiend. Snow peas I saved from my own peas last year.  Purple podded saved stock as well.  I found two really old packets of sweet corn, and recalling the pea failure I thought soaking the seed overnight might be helpful, so I did that and carefully planted each seed as it went in the ground.

More lettuce.  Carrots. Green beans a fairly newer old packet (last year bought this year).  Cosmos Marigolds cabbage . Four varieties of tomatoes and peppers in flats.

I planted old collard seeds two years ago and have had it ever since.  The first year a plant actually overwintered.  Then it threw seedlings.  I found about a dozen seedlings growing and sort of divided them up in a chunk of the bed and they are doing well.  I found a couple clumps of garlic that I kept forgetting to dig, and divided that and put it in a row next to the chives, where it is struggling.  I don't think garlic likes chives, because the chives are really kicking butt right now in that rich location.

We had a couple days of light rain since then, and I keep saying, "see those oldtimers knew what they were saying when they said to plant on the New Moon- the weather just cooperates better, nice gentle rain for two days, woo-yea."

you ought to see what the trees and dandelions thought of that, hanging in stasis between growth waiting for the sign, and the New Moon brought that nice soaking rain.  The grass, the weeds, the bleeding heart has gone from ground level to three feet high and covered in blossoms in two weeks.

Siberian Iris are well over a foot, the day liliies are thick and rank, the bee balm looks good-even one of my two rhodedendrons deigned to blossom this year.

The chicks!  I had eight surviving out of 22 eggs.  The goose eggs were a failure.  The length of time I held the eggs before incubation seemed to have no effect on the hatch rate.  The eggs that didn't hatch were those on the side closest to the ventilation holes.  So either they were too cold or too dry or both.  I turned the eggs in place for the most part during incubation, so I am not sure if relocating the holes, or moving the eggs around would get higher hatch rate.

I did have other issues, I had to help most of the chicks from the shell.  I don't think that was me being hasty, because I had several die pipped without me helping.  I lost a couple I tried to help, but I pretty much assisted 7 out of the eight, and a couple were bleeders that I applied yarrow to.

I lost the one with the eggs sack, although that shrunk up and he was flounding around the unhatched eggs when I left that morning-I decided to follow advice and leave him there since he was weak- he was dead when I came home.. and later I found a  chick pipped face down dead, and I am not sure if the other chick's floundering rolled that one over or not.

So, in the future, I would take them right out of the incubator.,

The young barred rock had offspring hatch in the incubator, because I recognized one of her eggs afterwards. 

The Firebird and I both found ticks on us-I really hate ticks. So I seriously started looking at ordering some guinea hens. But most places have a minimum of 15-30 and I didn't want that many.

Lo and behold I stopped off to buy some grain and they had chicks for sale-including pearl guinea keets! So I bought a half a dozen.They are wicked cute, in the chicks brooder location. I moved my babies to the outside brooders and have been worried like an old mother hen, because our nights have been chilly.

****

I have turned into a dandelion fanatic. A few weeks ago I dug a bunch of plants before they flowered and have a dandelion beer fermenting. More of a hedgerow mead, I suppose.

The recipe promised fermentation in three days and drinking in a week. I was sold. I have brewed a number of batches of beer in my ancient history, and have seen plenty of three day fermentations and drinking in two weeks (much better if you can wait, but who can wait when it's that darn good?)

So Like an idiot, I went to all that trouble and then used old brewer's yeast a friend have given me. I pitched it hot, re ptiched it, realized it was probably dead, and sprinkled some fleishman's on top for good measure. LMAO.

I had two airlocks, so I put it up in two gallon water jugs, melting an airlock sized hole in the plastic top with a hot...knife steel.  I actually had to peruse my steel collection, because airlocks have a pretty wide diameter to match to metal.

One of the jugs has had the most faithful fermentation I have ever seen.  It took a couple days to get going, and then blurp, blurp blurp-for the last three weeks.  I really need to rack it.

The other jug I totally screwed with, I was worried about the old brewer's yeast and right after I pitched it I decided to pour it off the sediment in case it gave an off flavor, so I did.  But then it was quite a bit short of a gallon.  I had a bit extra I put in a jelly jar and a beer bottle with muslim and a rubber band on top, so after a couple days when just number two was still quiet, I added the jelly jar hoping the yeast in that would kick-start number two.

About a week after that and it was still quiet, I opened it up and poured a cup of sugar in.  HAHAHAQ Mount dandelion vesuvius! Well that got a response!

Then I made another lid for the airlock, because I was wondering if the seal was bad and it wasn't really an airlock.  So now I am getting the occasional blurp along with jug number one, and  they are starting to clear, so I will probably rack them in a day or two and then see.

Well yesterday I thought I should do something about the undisturbed beer bottled covered with muslin. So I carefully poured it off into a jelly jar. Cloudy. I tasted a teaspoon.  WOW. I thought it had a lot of potential.

I punched a hole in the lid of the jelly jar with a 20D nail and fitted a small diameter hose into it, which I stuck the other end in another jar of water. It's a form of blow off hose, but can be rigged as an airlock in a pinch.  I was scared to bottle the bottle until I knew if it had completely fermented.  I have heard stories of exploding bottles. That's quiet and the sediment is settling.

Well, I had to give dandelion wine another try! Beer is made from the early root because of the sugar starch content, and flowers from the wine...

I decided I was going to pick 5 gallons of blossom. HAHAHA! I asked Bosses if they would mind if I picked some blossoms from their field and they both laughed and said to help myself. SO I had at it.

I picked for an hour. I picked as fast as I could for an hour.  The herd of goats in the field thought I was nuts. The Great Pyranees thought I was nuts.  I was starting to wonder if I was nuts. As I picked, I recalled all my saplings in turn coming to me with the traditional dandelion bouquet as toddlers, "Look mummy I picked yo some fowwers!"

I remembered picking my first dandelions. I remembered the only other time I attempted dandelion wine and picked those flowers, and it seemed a lot faster, dang!

I Picked 7 quarts of blossoms in an hour. Well, that is what they meausured four hours later and you know how fast they wilt. Heck, they were already starting to ferment.

My cute young co-worker turned 21 today. I was telling her that I was going to pick some blossoms later and she told me a bud of hers had given her a book on how to make alcohol out of everykind of plant imaginable-which I thought was totally cool and wish I could remember the title.

But after I finished crawling around the pasture on my hands and knees for an hour, I had to confess that dandelion wine must be a young person's drink, no matter what they say about grandma's recipe, lol.

and, I am sad to report, I did not see ONE bee in the hundreds of blossoms I crawled through today. I saw one tiny deformed looking bumblebee, a couple of ants, and several winged flies. No honey bees. Not one. An organic farm in the middle of nowhere, and no honeybees.