BeeKeeping - Rough and Ready Grange

This past week, Rough and Ready Grange hosted a Beekeeping Seminar.  Dan Wheat of the Nevada Co Beekeeper Assoc and (A to Z Hardware) squeezed a seven hour introduction into 45 minutes; complete with photos of anatomy, diseases and a bee house.  He told us for both commercial and personal use, what behaviors to expect from "happy bees". 
A young man from the ridge area, Neal Sullivan presented his adventures in beekeeping and spoke more to the native "permaculture" and environmental factors effecting bees.  Both speakers gave different slants on how to care for bees, what to watch for, how to develop and enlarge your hives.  Absolutely fascinating stuff.  Stay tuned for more to come from Rough and Ready Grange.

Hunt for lost Treasure

Easter is here and we were so lucky to have everyone who lives in the state and their friends here for some happy times.  The weather cooperated wonderfully and we thank our friend Summer for giving us the digital photo record of a great time.  We had a hunt for treasure, the kids had to use the clues and the signs to find the hidden gems.  I'll bet the parents will not be in favor of making the clues so the kids ran back and forth, because we were all following to take pictures, help with clues and ensure safety.  By the end of the day, kids were fine, parents were zombies.  We had a hay wagon ride pulled by the blue tract around the circular road in front.  We started with a farm breakfast of biscuits and gravy.  Could not have been anymore fun.

Rainy Days and Nights

Getting ready for dry weather, always planning for the next season.  We make weather work and do the inside projects like hooking up the irrigation pump, Cliff drained it and secured it last winter, after NID stopped flowing.  The pump worked fine but the pressure gauge is broken, although testing confirmed the shut off sensor was working - it's a confidence problem now.  Don't want to burn out that, not even a year old, pump.  This was item number 3 on the 6 item weekly list and now it's Saturday.Remember the rains last December.

Yep that's a tree on our Brand new tractor barn.  It's cut up now, the building was a stud, not even a leak, just a few wrinkles to break 'er in.  As soon as the weather permits, we'll put the ladder up on the roof and drag off the remaining limbs on top.

And while we wait this planted irrigated pasture continues to flourish with the warm weather and spring rains.  Whoopee!!

Fodder Growing on Salad Bar Farm

We have been experimenting, building and re-building, refining, re-doing and re-thinking our green farm, growing micro-nutrient feed system, these days called fodder.  Much like their sprouting counter parts for the sandwich sprouts we love to eat, they don't take alot of skill to produce.  Clean water, clean implements, 70 degree environment, dark first then add light.  We started with one tray in the bath tub before deciding this was a super method of feeding animals on a small farm.

We have some pasture, both irrigated and dry but not enough to produce sufficient nutrition all year long.  The more we read and researched the greater we found the advantages of using 50 pounds of barley seed to grow approximately 375 pounds of feed at a cost of $20.

The best news about this green stuff is that my piggers are loving it.  We've just put unit 2 into operation so that we can take 30 lbs each day, which is way more than 3 little pigs will eat, but we like making sure they have plenty.  We hand feed three times each day, because we enjoy talking with the happy little fellas and because we want to have first hand knowledge of health or emotional stress.  You never know when a water line will be clogged, or the weather turns warm  warm they need a good shower to cool off, then of course, the big one - TIGERS, LIONS OR BEARS.

Growing Piggers on Farm Fresh Fodder

The piggers have been here since March 16 and we fed one full week of starter since that's what they were on.  Then we switched to 1 full week of grower and threw in some of the fodder, which they weren't too interested in.  They have been kept on full feed, anytime for the first two weeks.  We are now well into the third week and was so bold as to let them run out of the grower grain.  Not real interested in the fodder until the second day - then there was a feeding frenzy, alot of pushing and shoving and growling at each other.  The third little pig always lost out.  So at 3 1/2 weeks we are feeding only fodder in the morning, but in two different places, so they all eat.  They are devouring it.  We feed half a biscuit at 800am and the other half at 12noon, in the evening we just feed 3 lbs of starter grain.  We don't want them to be stressed and hungry.