The bees, the mice, the squirrels, and the goats

One of the primary chores I wanted to get done this weekend was to look into the hives to see if the bees had made any progress on the honey supers. So, after I went to get feed for our animals, I got suited up to have a look. What I saw was a little more encouraging than a week ago. In one hive we have four frames full of honey but some of it has not been capped. Meaning that the honey is still too high in moisture content to seal off. The bees know how much moisture the honey can have in order for it to keep from fermenting. How they know this is beyond me. They know because God taught them to know, but how they determine that the honey is dry enough to seal off for later use is a mystery. When the moisture content is low enough, the honey will keep for years.

That uncapped honey should be ready in a week or so. In the other three hives, there is noticeable progress in the supers. The bees are starting to draw out the comb so the honey can be made and stored. Whether or not they will make enough in the weeks to come to allow us to harvest the honey remains to be seen. At the very least, we will get a couple quarts of honey from the hives. If there is not enough to harvest, I will leave the honey in the hive so the bees can feed on it this winter. Once the harvest time is over the process of treating the hives for mites and getting the bees ready for the colder months that are coming will be the goal of our continued care. Hoping for the hives to survive over the winter and come back strong in the spring.

The mice this year are invading to an extent to we have not seen before. Nothing I have tried to control, to catch, or to dispatch them is working effectively. This morning Victoria was freaked out by a mouse jumping out of her sock drawer as she opened her dresser. We routinely hear them scratching and munching in locations we are not able to clearly identify. When we investigate and get close enough to open a cabinet door or pull out a drawer where we think they might be, we rarely see anything except the mess that is left behind. So, unlike Victoria, we are not often able to see them. We will continue to try to get rid of them, but I am exasperated at the lack of success so far. Mama would rather have a snake in the house than to have mice to deal with, but we have not elected to let a snake loose in our house yet.

Meanwhile, on the outside of the house we are battling the squirrels. Although they are fun animals to watch in their playful antics, I worry when they get too comfortable with the house because it will not be long before they decide to take up residence in the attic. That is always disastrous. So, I routinely set out live traps to catch them. Once caught in those traps the squirrels are dispatched and fed to the coyotes. The few I remove from the property every year do not seem to negatively impact the overall population, so mama and I do not worry about negatively impacting the squirrel’s ecosphere. Yesterday, I caught one in a trap I had intended to reposition. It is set up on the front porch of the house. That is too close for comfort when they are investigating that close and the dogs are not bothered by their presence. That squirrel will no longer bother us, and I will set up the trap for the next curious uninvited visitor.  

Our little goats are growing quickly. They are such fun at this age. The scamper around as quick as a rabbit. Hurling themselves from the barn to the rock pile, shooting up and over the rocks. Taking Mama’s breath away as they frighten her with their antics. Our little injured male is trying to keep up with his sisters but falls behind quickly because of the cast on his leg. He seems to be adjusting well to the limited use of that appendage, but it does put him at a disadvantage. Hopefully, he will be well enough to have the cast removed by the first week of August. Mama is taking him for a follow up appointment Wednesday to see if the leg is mending properly, but the expectation is that the cast will remain for another two weeks at a minimum.

I will be teaching classes on my normal Tuesday and Thursday schedule this week. Next week will be on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Those are busy weeks. Tomorrow’s class is internal, so it will be a lot less formal and hopefully a lot more interactive. It is only a four-hour class – typically. When I present the class to our folks, there tends to be a lot more discussion which can push the class into the afternoon, but that does not happen every time.

We will see how it plays out tomorrow and go with the flow.

Investing, a look ahead

Yesterday, I spent the evening with a friend discussing real estate. His main question was how borrowing and the leverage it produces within real estate investment is the right way to go. We talked about owning and mortgaging as the two primary options for investing and the pros and cons involved with each strategy. I have used both and have not operated at a large enough volume in rental properties to know for certain which is the better strategy in the long run. I do know that if an investor is heavily mortgaged (borrowing money from the bank and making mortgage payments on the rental property) the time the property sits vacant is a hardship on the investor since he is still responsible to make the mortgage payments even though no rent is coming it.

But the investor that owns his properties outright has tied up a lot of money in the property. Money which will not be available for future investing. If you have plenty of cash on hand and a good supply of cash coming in, owning properties outright is a pretty sure thing. If you have just enough cash to get by, borrowing on the equity of the property is a prudent option. He is not a fan of owing anyone anything, but he wanted to know at least what I could tell him from my point of view. We ended up talking for several hours. Mama, who did not go with me, ended up texting his wife to ask if I was being held hostage. It really helped me to talk it through.

This weekend we have a lot to do but nothing that is a huge task. Just the farm chores that come up on a recurring basis. I will be on my own for most of those chores since Mama is still feeling poorly. For the most part, I am on my own for anything that falls outside of the house and the yards at the house. I do not mind. It gives me time to work, to think and to pray. I am working on clearing the fence lines along the road and will move to the back of the property when I get those done. Clearing the fences will help me make the repairs needed to the fences. Right now, I am hard-pressed to see where the breaches are that allowed our calf onto the neighbor’s property. Once identified, I can make the upgrades and repairs needed, but it is a lot of work.

I cut fifteen little trees out of a portion of fence at the far end of our property in just a small space. Once the heavy stuff is cut and pulled from the fence, I can go back and trim the weeds and thorns from the fence area where the big stuff was removed. It is a several step process to get the fence exposed. Largely, the fence is a barbed wire fence with some woven wore fencing attached to the lower portion of the fence. I assume that helped keep the hogs off the property I the beginning, but the wiring of both types is in less than fair condition. Much will need to be replaced. As I clear it for inspection, I will be able to see just how much new will be required. If I stay with the project, I might finish by the end of summer. That is a lofty goal. I can only work on the fence for a couple hours at a time before the heat wears me down.

We have a group of twenty leaving for Nazlini, AZ to help with a Vacation Bible School at the Navajo reservation there. Our church does this every year. I have thought about going several times but have not been able to follow through. One day I will. Our church members will put on the VBS Sunday through Thursday evening while having games and activities, crafts and Bible lessons through the day at the church on the reservation. They always have a great time. They always come home worn out but excited about what the Lord did during the week. Some of the young people going have made the trip for several years running and have developed friendships with the children on the reservation. For them, it is like a family reunion. Two of the return volunteers are children of the man I was visiting with yesterday evening.

I hope to take my little craft onto the lake this evening to tomorrow evening to check out the changes I made. That will determine if I keep the craft or sell it and outfit the Jon boat I have with some sort of wheeled transport system. Hopefully, the winds will die down to the point that I can make the test run. Mama and I are enjoying the fish I am able to catch from the lakes. We ate some last night.

Fish, is seems is the only beneficial “meat” for my blood type. That works for me.  

Otherwise occupied, sickly, invaders

This has been a week full of classes for me. Monday and Wednesday were online and in-person classes respectively, while Tuesday was a day in the office preparing for the class I presented yesterday. That is not a heavy load, but the time away from the computer takes the time I would ordinarily spend writing this blog. Yesterday was an interesting class because it was mostly my coworkers who attended the class. There were two participant who were from client companies, but neither of them had yet taken on the responsibilities the class teaches about. That leveled the playing field, so to speak, across the class and gave me the opportunity to start the newbies out right when they are required to do those activities at some future date. It was a little longer than usual class because there was a great deal of discussion. I welcome that. No one was in a particular hurry to leave the class when we were done so we got the chance to continue our informal discussions after the class. It is always amazing to see how everyone relaxes once the test is over. I was pretty tired when I finally got home. Not only from the hours spent talking and standing, but from a very poor night’s sleep the night before.

After Mama and I took care of the evening feeding, I took a short nap before getting ready for church. Mama stayed home since she was not feeling well – an ongoing cough has her feeling puny. We had a missionary on deputation headed to Nigeria last night. He was delightful. He preached about the disciple’s reaction to Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well. Not only was she a woman, but she was a despised Samaritan. When Jesus told the disciples to look on the fields which were white unto harvest, perhaps Jesus was seeing the many persons responding to the woman’s testimony of her conversation with Jesus as they came out of the city to see for themselves. His question was, do the differences you see in someone else hinder you from sharing the Gospel with that person? How big do those differences have to be to cause you to stay uninvolved? It was a great message.

I was given the liberty to work from home this morning because I have fulfilled my obligation to spend two days in the office by teaching two classes already this week. There are actually a few things I could do at the office that I cannot do from home, but I will catch up to those administrative tasks at a later date. Mama needed my help with the morning chores here at the farm while she tries to rest and recuperate. On the very sad side of this illness, she refuses to kiss me while she is sick. We will catch up at some later point, but I am not used to being so avoided.

This morning we had the house sprayed for insects. Our focus is on fleas, but the organic recipe used by the man doing to treatments offers a broader protection against multiple invaders. Although the smell from the treatment is not overpowering, it is definitely noticeable. With the cough Mama is dealing with, the addition of the vapors of the treatment to the air we are breathing is not a pleasant combination. It could be worse. The treatment is made from crushed chrysanthemums. Not wholly unpleasant, but we will need to light a few candles as well as opening the windows. Right now, the outside temperature is 81° F. also not unpleasant.

On the funny-how-things-happen side of life, when Mama opened a window in the kitchen, she did so by lowering the top windowpane. When she did we discovered that wood ants were starting to invade our house. Since the man was in the house to apply his treatment for bugs, he was able to identify the invasive species, spray and kill them and let us know what to do if they come back. Now if we could discover a workable way to keep the wasps from building their nests everywhere, I would feel like we were making headway against our insect invaders.

Speaking of invaders, mice are really bad this year as well. Since we are focused on protecting the chickens and the dogs, it is proving difficult to get ahead of the mice. We cannot set out poison. We have to use sticky traps. So far, those have proved minimally effective against mice although we have caught a chicken, multitudes of grasshoppers and a poisonous snake. We have eliminated only four mice with the traps. I can safely assume our population of mice is significantly higher than that.

So, the fight goes on.

Workshops, disappointing discovery, Mama’s meetings

 

Saturday, I attended a workshop for our beekeeping club. There were about thirty in attendance. The workshop was set up in a large barn, so we were out of the sun, but it was still very hot. We learned about treatment techniques for parasites and other invaders in the beehives, about labeling laws, about extracting honey and how to process it after it is taken from the comb. We spent over an hour in an apiary looking into six hives, finding the queens, looking at the frames of brood and checking for Varroa mites in three of the hives. We watched the beekeeper who manages those hives treat the hives for mites and saw a little of the evidence that would lead us to conclude that the mites are an issue in the hives. They fed us lunch between the morning and afternoon sessions. It was a good deal of information which I am still processing, but the time in the hives was the most enlightening for me.

On a humorous note, the veteran beekeeper who was providing the demos in the hives for us had to take off his bee suit at one point to let a bee out of his hood. It seems the bee found an opening in the sleeve where the elastic at the cuff of the sleeve was loose enough to allow the bee access inside the suit. It eventually worked its way up to the hood of the suit and had to be dealt with. Once it was let out, it went back to the hive where it had come from. Neither the beekeeper nor the bee were injured in the incident, but it provided a moment of levity and helped us all to realize, we are not that far apart in our abilities to care for our bees.

Charged up from the workshop, I looked into our hives once I was back home. I have hesitated to open the hives while there was a chance there was honey being made but had been assured that that was a good thing to do. So, I put my bee suit back on and looked into all four of our hives. What I found disappointed me as far as honey production was concerned. In three of the hives there is no honey in the honey supers. In the fourth, the bees have filled about four frames and are working their way outward. We will be able to get some of that honey in a few weeks. For the other three hives I looked over the additional boxes that were added a month ago and removed the additional box from one of the hives. They had not started work in the box at all. I left the additional boxes on the other two hives because the bees had begun working to draw out those boxes, but they were focused there and not on honey.

Hopefully, on the one I took the box away from, that will motivate the bees to start working on the honey super. The real issue is that there is not much nectar for them to draw from right now. So, we may have to start feeding the bees just to keep them healthy. The concern is disturbing the hives often distracts the bees from their honey production and puts them in a defense mode. Using in-hive feeders definitely disturbs the bees. At any rate, we will give the bees until the end of August to get the honey produced, remove the honey supers from all the hives and we will harvest what we can. As soon as the honey supers are removed from the hives I will treat for mites and begin feeding the bees with the candy boards I used last year. It seems there is a long learning curve in beekeeping.

While I was at the workshop, Mama was at a gathering of some of the local Color Street leaders attending their conference virtually. She had spent the better part of Friday watching presentations from the same conference from the comfort of home, but the get together Saturday added a little more personality to the day’s activities as they participated from afar. She came away very excited about what is going on in Color Street – opening up sales in Canada, providing websites and materials in Spanish, developing new convenient ways to pay stylists, etc. She spent the better part of Monday making contacts with her group and reaching out to potential recruits. She is pretty excited.

All our baby goats are doing well – even out little injured male. He is becoming more used to his cast and is beginning to paly as best he can with his siblings, hopping, jumping and running about on the rock pile that is the focus of all the little ones we have born on the farm. We will take him back to the vet next week to evaluate the break, but our expectation is that he will need to be in the cast for at least a month.

I have to teach a face-to-face class tomorrow. I do not get that opportunity often, so I am looking froward to it.

 

Kid updates, new glasses, the weekend

On Wednesday Mama took our little boy goat to the vet to see if they could identify the issue he was having with his leg. By x-ray they were able to see that the tibia in his lower leg had been broken. We were told it was a clean break and that the prognosis is that he will be fine once the leg mends. To aid in that mending, the leg was splinted and wrapped. That bandaging will have to be on his leg for at least a month. The issue is that the wrapping makes that wounded appendage longer than his other three legs, requiring him to drag that leg about as he struggles to move.

While he was able to hold the broken leg off the ground when it was bare, he is now forced to allow constant contact with the ground as he stands and moves. For that reason, his movements are limited. I cannot imagine how much pain that is causing him. Mama and I are a little concerned about him being able to access his mama when feeding time is announced, but for the moment, he appears to be doing well. We will have to be very vigilant to ensure he gets enough milk to stay healthy while he drags himself about as he heals, but that healing is a fair stretch of time away from where we are now. Meanwhile, his sisters are doing excellently.

Nate, Cori and the kids have been helping with a medical team at the surgical center in Honduras this week. The team is doing eye exams and outfitting, as they are able, those patients with glasses. All the glasses have been donated to the Medical Missions Outreach group for just such opportunities. Cori was telling Mama how incredible it is to see the joy of those who are able to get proper glasses when those glasses are put on and they are able to see clearly. As a wearer of glasses, I can sympathize with that elation. What is a simple expectation to us in our culture is a gift of immense value to those patients.

Cori, who has not been feeling well was thrilled to be able to fully translate for the mission’s team. That is no small feat to master the language to that proficiency and interpret on the fly for someone who does not understand how the English words they pick can affect the fluidity of translating those words into workable Spanish conversational vocabulary. Cori also shared with us that Mykenzie was able to help translate for the group. Mama and I were as thrilled to hear that as her proud mommy was to share it. As the clinic wound down yesterday, Cori sent us a picture of the new glasses she and Savanna were fitted for. Cori was obviously far more excited than Savanna.

Mama and I went to our beekeepers meeting yesterday evening and were reminded of a clinic that is going on tomorrow. I need to attend because they are going to be talking about harvesting honey as well as how to label the jars of honey for sale. There is a legally required verbiage for the labels and Mama and I need to adhere to those legal obligations.  Since I have no idea what the requirements are, it will be nice to learn. We will be spending time in hives at the farm where the clinic is being put on, so I am excited about getting the opportunity to see what is needed for Mama and I to get our honey from the hives and into the jars. I have all the equipment at the ready, so this is the final information I need to get the work done. I have been neglectful of the hives for a several weeks, so I need the gentle push to get me doing the maintenance that the hives require. So, tomorrow will be all about the bees.

Mama will be attending a conference for Color Street today and tomorrow so she will not be going to the bee clinic with me. Today, she will attend online from the house. Tomorrow she will meet with a small local group to attend the conference – still virtually – but in a group setting. The actual conference is happening in Orlando, FL. Which, by the way, is where Grandma and Grandpa are at the moment. (Be praying for them. Their situation is not good.) I think Mama is looking froward to the conference. She, like me, needs a gentle push now and then to keep moving on this business. Like al true growth opportunities, it is outside her comfort zone.

Next week I have classes on Monday and Wednesday, so it will be an off week for me. As I tabulated the numbers for the classes taught over the past quarter (April-June), we taught 24 classes. I taught 18 of those classes in the twelve weeks of that quarter.

No wonder I felt like I was constantly busy.

New arrivals, Mama home, fishing

It has been some time since I last updated this blog, so let me catch you up. I worked only one day from home last week, Thursday. Other than that, I was at the office. This week is a little more standard fare with the exception that Monday was holiday. The one day I was able to be home last week, Lilly delivered three healthy kids.

Two girls and one little boy. At least that is what I thought until I went back out later to check on any cleanup that needed to be done and found a very small little boy that had been stillborn. It was the last of the kids to be delivered. Since Mama was with the girls in New Jersey, I recorded a couple of short videos to show her and the girls the new babies.

Unfortunately, I am not able to figure out how to include those videos in this blog. As I write this the three are doing well but the little boy has a displaced hip from some rough treatment from Lilly shortly after birth. Mama and I will get him to the vet to get that corrected as soon as we can, but he should be fine.

Friday, I taught a class but, in the evening, I took my little pontoon craft out onto the quarry lake and tried it out. It did not work out as well as I had hoped because I did not have it balanced out right. For my weight, the trolling motor and the battery to be supported properly I discovered that the seat was too far to the back of the rack it sits on, making the back of the craft too heavy. I also had not inflated the pontoons sufficiently for the weight I expected it to support. I was able to fish for a bit before deciding to get off the water. No sooner had I left the lake when a thunderstorm rolled over us and the winds were over forty miles per hour. It was only the Lord that got me off the water before that happened.

Saturday, I worked around the farm doing a lot of little things. It was brutally hot, so I limited my time on each chore to keep from getting overheated. Victoria went to a party at one of her coworkers homes that evening and I went to pick up Mama at the airport. I arrived at the airport only a few minutes before her flight landed and I was certain I was at the right baggage claim for her flight, but I started to doubt myself as I watched passengers accumulate around the already moving baggage claim with Mama yet to arrive. So, as I waited, I watched the door all the passengers had come through and the luggage being sent for pickup. I spotted her suitcase and retrieved it from the belt a few minutes before Mama came through the doors to the baggage claim area but at least I had confirmed I was in the right area. I had to have her soften her embrace because I was very swollen from the extraction of the tooth that had happened Thursday. (By the way, that went well after seven shots to numb the jaw.)

Sunday was wonderful and Monday was a holiday. I got started on clearing the fence lines Monday. I lasted only a couple hours mostly because within that time I had broken the weed eater, the chainsaw and the string trimmer. So, I packed everything in the bucket of the tractor and did a few rounds of mowing with the brush hog before hauling the equipment back to the shop for repairs.

Later that evening, Mama and I went fishing in the smaller upper lake. It was an absolutely beautiful evening. On her first cast she caught a whopper. The picture we took shows me with the fish because Mama does not handle the fish, she only hooks them. All together, we caught two very large bass and five smaller bass in a little over an hour.

Since my outing on Friday evening, I have not been able to get my little craft back onto the water. The winds have been too high. I am looking forward to checking out the changes I made to the seat and pontoons to see if it makes a difference. If not, I will sell the craft and make an attachment for the aluminum Jon boat I have here at the farm to mount a wheeled attachment to it so I can transport it more easily to the water from where I park the truck. Without that help, I am not able to maneuver the boat to the water without hurting myself. It is not very heavy, but it is very awkward.

Tomorrow I teach a class. It is a 4-hour class, so it will go quickly. Next week I have classes on Monday and Wednesday. Mama and I might go to Victoria, TX for Lillianna’s wedding next weekend but we are not sur if we are invited yet. Lillianna is Joshua’s eldest stepchild. Our oldest grandchild.

Other than that, life seems pretty much back to normal here at the farm.  

Classes, safe travel, homecoming

This has been an unusual and busy week. I typically teach two classes per week however, this week I was scheduled to teach three classes as well as participate in a team building activity at the HQ house. That required me to be at the HQ house for the first three days of this week. Not a bad thing, just unusual. So, today, when I would normally be required to be in the office, I am working from home for the only day this week – and that for only a half day. I will be heading to a dental office this afternoon to have a problematic tooth pulled. Tomorrow I will be teaching the third class of the week. It will be a small class, but sometimes that is better because there is no ability on the part of the few participants to avoid participating during the class. Hopefully, the extraction will not interfere with my ability to talk as I present the 8-hour class.

To keep things going on the farm I have been going out to open up the chickens and ensure waterers and feeders were full before I left for the office each morning. The chickens are a little put off by the change in routine, but they adapt. During the current time arrangement, it is getting light as I am getting ready to go to work, so there is enough light in the early hours as I have been ensuring the chickens are set for the day. This morning, I was a little later than the 6:15 time I had opened the coop doors on the previous three mornings and the chickens were upset with me for the late arrival. As for the goats, I have only been feeding them in the evening versus trying to get that done in the limited time I have before leaving for work. It not only stretches out the feed, but it saves me a good bit of time. They are no worse off for the single feeding since they tend to not eat as heavily during the hot days. But that does not stop them from fussing at me as I open up the chickens each morning. So far, we have no kids born to our nanny goats, but it cannot be very much longer before we see out little ones arrive.

Mama and company arrived in New Jersey safely on Tuesday evening. Yesterday Brittany and Andrew were able to close on the house and because of the expense and disappointments with the hotels in the area, they may stay the next several nights in the empty house. It would definitely save Brittany and Andrew a lot of money, but it will be very difficult for Mama without a proper bed to sleep in and nowhere to sit through the hours not spent in errands and sleeping. Mama is obviously distraught with the decision, but it is probably the right one for the situation. At any rate, Mama will be flying home Saturday evening. So, the inconvenience of staying in an empty house will only last a couple days. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. The great news is that all the miles that were covered in the days of travel from Kansas to New Jersey did not present any problems to our travelers while providing Mama with an unusual opportunity to spend a lot of time with the girls.

Mama was able to go to Somerset Bible Baptist Church last night. She was warmly received. Especially by the now grown-up children in the church that we taught in Children’s Church through their three- to five-year-old years. To see some of them now, almost twenty years later is a blessing for us. To know we had a part in their Spiritual development as young children and to see where they are now is a great reminder of the how the Lord can use us to influence the next generation. It makes me miss having those opportunities in our present church to work with the children, but others have taken on that ministry and are doing a fantastic job in doing so.

I am looking froward to a long weekend. We are off on the 5^th, and I am hoping the extra times allows me to get to the work I need to accomplish with the bees. I have not been able to look into the hives to check the progress of the honey production because of daily rain showers. I can assume from the activity at each hive that things are okay, but I am very curious. I have bought an extractor and the buckets to collect and strain the honey I am expecting to process. So, I feel like w are ready to collect our first crop of honey.

All my coworkers are ready to but as much as Mama and I are willing to sell.