Now is the time for bees

If you've considered keeping bees, now is the time to make that happen.  The package bee season is in about two weeks, and the cost this year for 3lbs of bees plus a queen is $140 , +-$10. 

i get the plastic pallets for free, and they work well for hive base

nice to see the bees flying on a warm day!

You'll find bee packages advertised in your local craigslist, in the farm and garden section.  You'll need a hive to put them in, and you can find "beginner beekeeper" packages on the web. 

My hives did pretty well this year, compared to previous years.  I had 6 hives going into the winter, with 3 surviving now, for a 50% dieoff.  The hives that died show different patterns.  One hive, full of honey and pollen, is pretty much empty of bees.  Another hive shows what I call a starvation pattern; there is still some honey in the hive, but the bees clustered in the center away from it, and died in a group. 

The third hive that died has some bees, more than the empty hive, but not as many dead bees as the starve off hive. 

Because the hives that died off may have something that is contagious to bees I'll discard the combs and bake the woodware in my oven to sterilize it - the bottom board and the supers themselves.  The hives survived will get new combs to grow into; I'll leave the existing combs there.   

Farmers haven't made a profit in canada since 1986...

Ran across a study that points out that the agribusiness payments made by farmers in Canada have consumed at least 100% of all farm net profit, and in some cases more than 100% - farmers have had
to make pay to keep farming their land after all the profit was gone, between 2006 and 2009. 

Who is taking the farmers money?  Agribusiness.  Those folks who sell you the improved seed and the better-weed-spray and the computerized tractor and all of the other stuff that makes farming easier have figured out how to basically take every cent from the farmers for the last 32 years. 

What do the farmers live on?  Primarly the subsidy offered by the Canadian government.  Without that subsidy these farmers would have been out of business long ago. 

I'm all for progress, and I'm all for efficiency, but I can't pay more than all of my income and still be a farmer.  Could you? 

You'll find the study here: 

Farm spring to-do list

Looking through the seed catalogs now, thinking about what I'm going to plant. 

This is an aerial view of the new farm.  It's 40 acres in a square, and the house and barns are directly in the center, which is actually where I'd put my house if I were to build a new one.  This is an older farm; the barn was built to be hand-worked and shoveled; I'm going to guess 1905 or 1907 based on some deed information, but certainly no later than about 1920.  The house is newer; the previous owners family told me that it was run as a dairy and the house burned down one year, so the farmer rebuilt the house with masonry blocks because of the three little pigs :), so a masonry block house it is. 

The picture is oriented so that north is up.  Along the south edge is a pretty thick stand of young cedar trees; they're not mature enough to be timber,but they'll be there in 20 years or so.  Where the trees are is a steep hill that rises to the south. 

At some point in the past they installed at least two generations of drain tiles; once with clay and cement pipes, and once with plastic corrugated pipe.  Even with that there's still a fair bit of water that flows off the hillside, down past the house and continues to the north property line. 

The ground hasn't been worked in a while, and it's pretty rough and rippled; which isn't a problem if you're grazing cattle, but slows you down when you're harvesting hay or any other crop.   I suspect that the ground fertility and PH isn't where it should be and that I'll have to do something before the final crop is planted.  In this area that usually means a healthy dose of lime (3-6 tons per acre) and then trace minerals (copper, sulfur, selnium, that sort of thing), and then whatever is called for in terms of fertilizers.    I'm going to hold off on making crop choices until I get the soil back, but whatever I do end up with has got to take into account wet feet, at least during the winter; and that limits the choices I can make. 

Speaking of rough; someone at some point took a trackhoe and dug holes in random places around the pasture.  maybe 20 or 30.  They're 4' wide and about 6' deep.  I guess that was to keep  you awake as you drive around on the tractor!

At this point I'm inclined to plow and final-grade the land to get it reasonably flat, and look at the drain tiles to see what shape they're in, how much water they're carrying now, and figure out if I want to do something about them - flush them out, replace them, ignore them.  Not sure at this point. 

In the northwest corner there's a small group of trees.  It looks like that may have been either a barn or a previous house or corral; there's lumber there and some old implements; next to it, to the east, is a small gravel borrow area.  The gravel area fills with water at this time of year; its about a half-acre in size, and would actually make a nice farm pond if it could hold water.  Maybe feed it new water from the drain tiles.  Kinda fun to think about. 

The plowing will have to wait until we've got some drier weather; in the meanttime I can repair the barbed-wire fences there, put in an electric, and graze the cattle on the new growth, particularly in the areas where I'll be working the soil.  No reason not to get some forage off of it before I plow it.