Making Friends with the Postal Employees

This time of year I will get the call every month:

"Hi, Kathy. This is the West Omaha Post Office....

We have a live delivery for you."

And every time I come back with:

"YES!!!  Is it the baby I ordered?"

"No ma'am. It is chickens/turkeys/ducks/, etc...."

Today it was bees...20,000 of them!!

"Hi, Kathy.  This is ***** from the West Omaha Post Office.  We have a live delivery here for you."

"AWESOME!!  Is it the baby I ordered?"

"No, ma'am.  It's two boxes of bees and one bee seems to have gotten loose.  We'd like you to come get them as soon as possible."

"I'm on my way right now."

If I hadn't been in the car when I got the call, I totally would have worn my bee suit into the post office.

Last time I received bees, there were 30,000 and I hadn't even put my hives together.  This time I'm still not as prepared as I should be...many of my new hive parts are being shipped....but I'm not scared beyond belief at the constant "humming" from the boxes. 

My job while I wait for my new hive parts  is to feed them a mixture of 50/50 sugar water....

....the same thing I feed Mary Kate:)

I know how to set the queen. I know how to feed the sugar water.  I know how to put on my beekeeper suit.  That's the extent of my knowledge.

My "kill" number for bees is currently holding at.......

30,000, not counting those "farm" bees that land on my kids.

We all have to be good at something.

Feeding the Foxes

My enemy list is growing:

In early April we purchased these five little cuties:

Five ducklings, 3 varieties.  We were all so excited! 

We had one duck named Lucky last year.  She was kind of a "rescue" duck from my city-dwelling sister.  We put her in with the laying hens where she looked like a GIANT!  She quickly became the favorite.

During the winter, Lucky officially changed her name to Unlucky.  The above scoundrel ate her.  

I wanted her replaced because I discovered that when the chickens stop lying in the cold, dark days of winter, ducks do not.  She supplied enough eggs to allow us to get through the winter without buying one single dozen!!  

The new ducklings were raised for about 6 weeks with the new laying hens.  They were growing too big for the small room, the hens were starting to pick on them and we wanted them to be able to have a small pool of water in which to prove their "duckiness".  Those reasons prompted us to to move them outside to the former pig pen.  It was lined with wire panels so they couldn't escape.  

The fox went right over and got all five in one night.  Grrrrr......

Our dedicated farm hand spent the night outside and shot one fox, but we're certain there will be more to follow.  I can only hope we have more bullets than we have foxes.

You killa my ducks, we killa you.

Exercising Patience

Winter is over!  Winter is over!!

I know you are all wondering if I have forgotten about the garden baskets.  Ummm.....NO!!!   

I did take the month of December off from thinking about the garden, but I jumped right back in!!!

I spent January drooling over the seed catalogs, making my wish list.  

After I added it all up I realized I had been a little "over-zealous".  I know, hard to believe, huh?  I cut it down to a reasonable amount (I mean, I probably don't need 10 different varieties of eggplant) and placed my order.   

Shipping takes A LONG TIME.  Like....a WEEK!!!!!  During my long wait we made the binders with the seed separators/labels and sketched the new rotations of plants.  You see, if one rotates the garden every year, it tends to "confuse" many of the pests that bothered the previous crop.  Those of you who have been with me from the beginning know my yearly battle with the squash bug.  Truly, the devil shrunken to the size of a beetle. 

Not this year, my evil, ugly enemy.  Not this year!!!!

February:

Seeds came!  WooHoo!!  I almost kissed the mailman.  We have two....one woman, one ugly....this was "ugly" day.    Again, I almost kissed the mailman!!!!

While I was waiting so patiently, I had an idea.....one that just might work!!!

Y'all know I can never have a garden season where I don't "experiment" with something.  This year I attempted to make my own seed tape.  Anyone who has planted seeds knows what a pain it is.  The seeds always scatter with rain or watering.  The seedlings always emerge like a forest in one area and like a dessert in another.  The market solved this problem by making seed tape.  The seeds are perfectly spaced on long strips of thin paper that eventually disolves into the ground leaving seedlings in a perfect row.  

Genius.  

Expensive!! 

I decided to make my own using 1-ply toilet paper/paper towels and a mixture of flour/water. It looks good, but will it work?  No clue.  I hope so because I did ALL my carrot, radish, beet, spinach, lettuce, greens and green onion seeds that way.  Not some.....all.  

That's me.  Go Big or Go Home.

Who pays the price?  You:) 

Fiddlestix Farms: Chapter III

Even though baskets stopped late October, the garden work did not.  I decided to try an experiment by placing some bales in the garden to see if the winter snow would melt into them making the spring preparation easier.  In the fall, straw is a high-priced commodity because farmers stock it to use as winter bedding for their animals.  I happened to have quite a few moldy bales from our own fields, so I went for the double experiment.....setting HAY bales out in the FALL instead of STRAW bales in the SPRING!!

Oh, I'm so daring and bold!!

I used shredded paper from our clinic and cardboard boxes from everyone I know to line the area between the bales to try to keep the weeds out.  

Fall is the time to put in garlic as well.  I intended to save cloves from the spring to plant, but we ate them all.  It seemed like a great idea right up until October  planting time and I had to spend $90 on starter cloves.  

The garlic/parsley pizza was totally worth it.

I will NOT have the same problem this fall.  I planted about 10 times what I did last fall.  Boom!!

Sneak peek.....it's growing nicely:):)

Start collecting garlic recipes, y'all.  I'm fairly certain you can have as much garlic as you would like this year....except what I'm saving to plant this fall. 

I'm slow, but I do learn.