Alright…before you all come after me with pitchforks (in this fantasy, everyone hangs on my every word and yearns for more) for not posting in forever, let me get you up to date on what’s been going on.

With the bees, I have been continuing to monitor them.  We have some that survived the winter. It is pretty rainy here, so I haven’t been able to pull boxes off and do a thorough inspection but things are looking pretty good from what I can tell.  We did lose some hives, so I have started placing the frames in the freezer in preparation for getting our new packages from GloryBee next weekend at their annual Bee Weekend event.  If you haven’t ever been to Bee Weekend I highly recommend it.  They are located just off of Highway 99 and Airport Rd. in Eugene, Oregon.  They do package installation demonstrations, classes with a question and answer period with experienced beekeepers, food carts, and neat little attractions.  Anyway, we should have all of our hives back up and running by next weekend and I’m hoping to have a couple traps out and around the property to increase our apiary size with some feral bees.  We have also decided to put pollen traps on the front this year. A local restaurant is looking at possibly getting some local pollen (maybe from us), so I figured it would be neat to start collecting it and seeing what kind of results we get.  The quilt boxes that we built earlier seemed to do a pretty good job at keeping the moisture levels down inside the hive. I am going to make some modifications to them over the summer (I’ll post pictures or a video) to increase the air flow and make adding fondant easier for us. I think I am also going to build a shelter for our hives to help keep the rain off in the winter.  I will probably postpone that project until late in the summer. In addition to the bee stuff, we have chicken stuff.

The chickens have picked up their egg production from 2-3 eggs a day to about 12 eggs a day.  I expect it to pick up more as the bugs come out and the weather gets warmer.  We have been feeding them natural feed twice a day and “chicken treats” that we throw off of our back porch for them.  They really love the mix Michelle puts together from WinCo.  Basically, we got tired of paying $24 for a small bag of grains and nuts and opted to go get bulk nuts and grains from WinCo for treats. Brutus and Speedy love shelling the peanuts, but the hen’s just wait for them to break them open and steal the nuts. Pretty funny to watch. Brutus, of course, continues to harass Speedy when he tries to get close to the hens.  Speedy is still able to sneak attack a hen and get his groove on every now and then.  Anyway, I am now at the point where I need to build another bank of egg laying boxes in the hen house.  They seem to all like two of the five they have, so I figured I should build more for when the chicks start laying in earnest in about a month or so.  We’ve been selling off the eggs that we are getting pretty regularly.  Thank you to everyone who buys them. It helps supplement their upkeep costs.  Anyone who thinks they are going to turn a profit selling free-range chicken eggs is in for a rude awakening.  Best case scenario for a small scale operation is to break even.  With free range chickens that are only eating natural foods and not being force fed antibiotics, you have a much higher mortality rate than a traditional egg producing company.  It can be due to predation, disease, or a myriad of other reasons so make sure you understand it is more for your entertainment than for profit.  We are currently sitting at twenty-five chickens, two of them being roosters.  Charlie loves to chase them around, but once she catches one she just puts her mouth around it and runs away.  I try to keep on her about not harassing them, but she treats them like they are dogs so I can’t really blame her too much.  As the roosters get older, I feel it is more important to keep them understanding who the boss is around that place. Their spurs continue to get longer and pointier, so when I put them in at night I pick them up and pet them.  They hate it, but it keeps them humble. Lastly, I’ll fill you in on the home remodel project.

We were at a standstill for what seemed like an eternity.  We finished up the insulation and started looking into having the sheetrock installed by someone else.  When I started getting quotes, they were really high and I couldn’t afford that much, so Michelle and I went to work hanging.  Our best friends came and helped when they could and Michelle and I worked nights to get it done.  Once we had finished up all of the sheetrock, we wanted to hire someone to do the finishing work (mud/tape/texture).  The problem was that I called five companies and not a single one called me back.  I had to resort to Craigslist, which I hate.  That guy came out and gave me a bid to do the finishing that was higher than the bid I got to do the hanging and finishing.  He was telling me that all of the “real work” was in the mudding, taping, and texturing.  Then I called a guy to come out and do a bid and he no-call-no-showed on me.  People that know me know that it makes me absolutely bonkers when people aren’t punctual and don’t call if they are running late or not coming.  Even though that guy would probably have been the cheapest, I wasn’t going to grace him with my business if he didn’t respect the business relationship.  I ended up placing a “Recommendation” call on my Facebook account and one of my high school buddies (Kevin) was a drywall guy.  He came out and did the bid last night. He told me the guy that came earlier with the really high bid was bidding it at almost four times the going rate. I hired him on the spot and he starts on Sunday! Once the finishing work is done all I have to do is install the trim and Michelle can move into her new digs.  Once we have moved all of the stuff out of the basement living room, I can go to work removing the old drywall from there and get Kevin back out to hang and finish the dining room and living room.  Then the only thing left to do is the basement bathroom.  I haven’t even re-poured the concrete yet or done any framing, so that is still a little ways off.  The good thing is that there is a doorway between the basement dining room and the basement bathroom, so I can just install the door and close it for now.  We still haven’t figured out what we are going to do for a floor covering, but that isn’t a super important detail right now.  I’ve thought about epoxy, paint, stain, area rugs, laminate shingles, and vinyl shingles.  Still not sure what I want to go with. It is a basement and concrete breathes so I don’t want anything that isn’t at least someone moisture resistant.  We can pretty much do that whenever so I’m holding off on making the decision until the entire basement is ready for flooring.  Once that is complete and I’m not working on the basement anymore, I’ll go back to work on the woodshed.  I still need to insulate, run plug/lighting wires, and install drywall.  It shouldn’t be too bad since it will be mostly full sheets of drywall and long strips of insulation.  It’s basically one huge room. My goal is to have all of this stuff done by early June because my son, Elijah, is getting married on my property at the end of June.

Well, as you can see I have been rather busy.  Hopefully, the home remodeling projects will all slow way down as the summer approaches. That way I can focus back on blacksmithing, bees, and riding my Harley. I hope everyone’s bees made it through the winter.  If not, get back on the horse and try again!  It is a labor of love for us nature enthusiasts. Don’t get discouraged. I believe in you!