New Additions to the Family

Hello Family and friends;

Here's a little update about farm life.  We’ve had several new additions since I last wrote, so here is a brief introduction.

 The latest is a little puppy –Lab/Pit Bull/ Shar Pei mix.  We had been thinking we needed another dog for our dog Bear to train.  We didn’t know where to look, so I said a little prayer that a dog would come to us.  A few days later, I was at the farmer’s market in Rockford.  A van pulled up and a really nice family brought out a bunch of puppies that were for sale.  I had a great feeling that this puppy had a nice background and was well-loved and cared for.  One of the other vendors suggested the name Chumley and so he became, with Chum for short.  (I had sold about $36 worth at the market, paid $100 for the dog and then got a ticket for $124 for failing to stop at a stop sign in my hurry to take him home, so it was an expensive day.) 

Another addition is a little goat called Poppy.  He is a wether, so can’t be milked or bred.  We like goat meat, but the lady Ray bought him from insisted that he promise never to kill and eat him.  Ray bought him anyway because he loves his goats. We did kill our turkeys, which was very traumatic.  Ray had fallen in love with them as babies and had them sleeping on his chest on the sofa.  However, they were nice and fat and were only going to get tougher if we waited, so it was done. The cat that we got for free turned out to be a wonderful cat and a fantastic mouser, but she got pregnant almost immediately.  We don’t want an inside cat, so we set her up in the barn in a modified dog house.  However, she decided that it would be safer having her babies in the attic above Ray’s shop.  So there was no chance to socialize the kittens and the three boys were on their way to becoming wild tomcats.





  We absolutely had to tame them.  It has involved a bowl of milk every afternoon with me slowly getting closer and closer and talking to them.  Now I can pet them and even pick them up without getting scratched and clawed.  So now we can actually catch them in order to give them away! Then there are the chickens who are doing very well.  They have all started laying now, and we have three that lay beautiful blue eggs.  At first the eggs were very small and there was a lot of surprised cackling and complaining as they worked hard to push them out.  It becomes easier after a while.  We have one rooster now but our neighbours have extra roosters if we want them.  We do, but it means re-fencing the goat area so that they can stay apart from the other, very possessive rooster. Lastly, we have the bees. 

We are up to five hives now, having lost two over the winter, but catching a swarm and dividing a hive brings us back to where we want it.  Generally they are very passive and friendly, but for some reason, I got chased out of the garden three times yesterday while trying to pick raspberries.  It’s usually one kamekaze bee that comes at you with a high-pitched buzz and will not back off.  The first time, the bee was trying to sting my eye but got my lip instead.  I escaped the next two attacks and finally put on my bee suit and finished picking. So we have lots of responsibilities now and lots of creatures depending on us.  We chose this life and are very content but I figure it’s okay to complain once in a while.
So you're all caught up.  It's super hot today and a good day for staying inside and writing.



Love to all.  Ray and Fern.

Priceless Honey

As everyone who lives in the West knows, this has been a long, cold, wet, miserable Spring.  There was not a single blossom until the middle of May, so the bees had had nothing to eat since last September (except what we fed them).

Finally we have been rewarded with warm weather and lots of beautiful flowers.  The bees have been going crazy.  The queen lays about 5000 eggs a day and, at that rate, they begin to run out of room and sometimes decide to go looking for new quarters.  We caught a swarm from our neighbours but might have lost a swarm or two from our own bees that we didn’t notice.

The other part of this story is that our little hamlet is being torn apart with the unilateral decision taken by our town council to fog the town for mosquitoes (another result of the long wet Spring).  At the last town council meeting, many of us went down to try to change their minds.  There were 3 beekeeper families, an organic farmer, a woman who has acute sensitivity to chemicals and had a stroke last time they sprayed, families with asthmatic children, and others who didn’t appreciate not being consulted.  We all made our case and suggested alternatives to spraying but it made no difference.  I was stunned.  They said it was up to us to protect our bees by covering them on the evening of each weekly spray and the poor stroke-prone woman should just stay indoors.

So, once it was clear the spraying would happen, we decided to harvest the honey without delay.  Last Friday was the day.  Once we started tasting the honey as it was flying out of the frames, we knew we had something special.  Actually, it’s probably the best honey I’ve ever tasted.  It’s very flowery and fragrant.  We only got 35 pounds from the three hives that seemed to be ready for harvesting and I am determined not to let it all slip through my fingers too soon.  We have so many friends, relatives, neighbours and co-workers who want our honey.

When you have something so precious, the only thing to do is give it away rather than sell it.  Last Saturday at the farmer’s market, I offered all of my customers a spoonful of honey so they would know what great honey tastes like. Some of the other people who will get honey: the family that gave us their excess hens and roosters, the lady who gave us exercise balls when she heard of Ray’s back pain, my friend who was the first one in this town to offer me her friendship,  our pastor who let us put a hive on his property, a young farmer who worked long hours to take care of our hay, a neighbour who noticed Ray’s tractor stuck in the muddy field and tactfully offered to pull it out, and others who have been so sweet to us.  How nice it is to have something beautiful to give in return, to surprise people who didn’t expect anything for their kindnesses.  What a lovely way to participate in this little community.  We are grateful.