Lee's Bees

We will soon be adding a Carniolan beehive to Rlittlefarm. It's a bit scary and exciting to purposely bring a bunch of stinging insects to our property. It seems like a natural transition in the amount of plants I grow each season and it makes sense to have a little help in the pollination of all those flowers. I have been prepping the boys in the role honeybees play in the garden. 1 out of every 3 bites of food is created by honeybees pollinating a flower. I hope to have quite the lush garden once they arrive. Naturally I am afraid that they will swarm away or bother my neighbors and visitors, but I have been noticing so many bees lately anyway, without the boys being bothered, that I think they will be fine. Besides, when I really look around my neighborhood, no one is really outside besides us.

We have some piecemeal bee suits for the boys and ourselves - mostly from thrift store finds and items off Ebay. A few items were from China and the Ukraine. I was a bit skeptical that they would arrive but they turned out to be pretty good finds compared to beekeeping suppliers in the US. I hope they last and perform as they are supposed to.

Jason showing off some of the Ebay items

I found the veil and gloves off Ebay and the pants from a thrift store

Poopy and Stud Muffin

This is Poopy, our younger female doe. Poopy was not my choice in names. I would've preferred Honey Bunny but the kids named her.

This is Stud Muffin, our resident rabbit love-maker. He is quite the escape artist. One time, he escaped and my Mother-In-law called us to let us know (we were at a dinner party). When we got home, it was dark. She said Stud Muffin had been very good and just sitting in the corner. She pointed us towards a white shape by the recycling cans. All three of us slowly crept up on it, and just when we were about to get to him, we discovered it was a volleyball! Ha! Stud Muffin was cruising around in the bushes instead.  



The Kits

Kits born on 2-16-2012

Kits one week old         

Two weeks old on 3-2

We have five happy, hopping kits. Ultimately, there were seven born and two didn't make it past the first few days of birth. They were buried and our sons laid some flowers for them in rememberance.

One Big Bunny Family

In late January, we added rabbits to the mix. Our friends gave us rabbits that they needed to re-home. We got two lionheads and two regular probably inbred mutt rabbits. We are not interested in the business of showing rabbits, so their breeds didn't really matter. They needed a home, so we gave them one. We did give one rabbit away to a friend and that rabbit is living a rabbit's dream. That was a good fit and everyone is happy.

Our remaining rabbits are well loved but we try to protect them from predators, our pughuahua dog, or yelling kids. There have been 5 kits born and that has been a great learning experience. In 9 weeks, those bunnies will be dinner. Raising meat rabbits has been our intention however the original rabbits that we kindly received from friends would never see the crock pot. They are going to live out their natural life on our property. Despite the ultimate fate for the babies, they are still treated kindly and with love everyday.   

The Vineyard

In another inspiration, I decided that I wasn't using the front yard to reach its highest potential. Sure I had tirelessly dug out sod from one side of the yard to make a quasi-meadow garden but I wanted it to now produce more than just flowers. It was another area where I can get something back in terms of fruit and food as well.

Last season I painstakenly reconfigured my sprinkler system to a drip irrigation, only to realize that there wasn't enough water going to the many plants I scattered throughout the yard. (I just now reinstalled my popups and the plants are coming back to life). Thankfully Lowe's, Home Depot, and Orchard Supply have their live plant guarantee because I pull out plants barely hanging on to life to return them for new substitutes on a monthly basis. I call it, "My dead plant run" errand. Plus, I usually troll the aisles of those places on a weekly basis anyway, so I don't feel like I am going out of my way to return even the scraggliest of dead plants.

Anyway, I ordered 20 organic wine grapevines from an online source in Grass Valley, CA. Who would have thought that shipping grape vines to California was restricted by county - mostly to protect the wine country, I guess. Well, I wasn't in one of the restricted counties and received my bareroot vines pretty quickly - along with my 5 free organic seed packets with my order....cool! I began digging up the sod from the other half of my front yard. I couldn't even believe the amount of 5 gallon buckets that was used to carry all the sod away. Eventually I got it out and planted the vines in neat little rows. I rearranged all the flowers and moved all the fruit trees into a mini-orchard. Hopefully when these plants get older, I can look out my bedroom window and see grapevines on the trellises and fruit in the trees versus abandoned shopping carts or beat up cars.    

Our Black Copper Marans

Katherine is on the left and Juliet is on the right. They are the only two chickens that actually sleep in the henhouse. The other three hens huddle up on top, even when it is raining. So stupid really but they refuse to be inside at night. They must be part amphibian.

Hens From The Chicken Man

Rick and I finally agreed to expand our chicken  flock. We built a newer and larger coop area so I didn't have to worry about the hens destroying my garden area and leaving tons of poop in our walkway. We liked the eggs on the daily basis, so why not add more chickens? The more the merrier!

I had been searching for chickens and debating on raising them from chicks or just buying some juvenile chickens instead. Although there were several chicken hatcheries available online, we decided to meet someone in our area to buy more pullets. We loaded the boys up, grabbed our animal carrier, and took a short drive to the person's house. When we got there, in this unassuming neighborhood, the man had a large variety of chickens and unfortunately way too many for his yard. There were makeshift cages and fences everywhere. Laundry was hanging and yet there were chickens underneath scratching about. Although we did take home two black copper marans, we felt sorry for the others. Did we just contribute to his continued overpopulated chicken operation or save some birds to give them a better lifestyle and calmer environment?

Either way, they were skitish when they came to our house. Our other hens didn't accept them, so it was a long time to get them accustomed to one another. In our minds, we can just put them into the same hen area and then they would be one happy flock. WRONG! The older hens chased and pulled the tail feathers of the new additions on a daily basis. The new pullets hid in corners and wouldn't come near us. They were shy but we attributed that to their young lives in the chicken man's house. We ended up having to put them in their own coop for about a month, but letting them roam around the yard with the other hens. So much for the notion that you can add new chickens at night to the hen house and the old hens just think that the new chickens have always been there.

In the past 3 months that we have had them, they are finally calming down and all hens are living together in the same pen area. We ultimately had to expand the coop area AGAIN. It's was sink or swim for the new chickens as we needed the pen for our new rabbit additions. Granted there were a lot of squabbles and pecking on the first official merge day, but they are quiet and pretty laid back now. Now, it is just a matter of time before those two marans are old enough to lay eggs...I just hope they are indeed hens!