Its hard to believe that we are past the mid point in March. The greenhouse is coming along nicely. That will be a great addition. The chickens are some happy hens, and doing their job, laying lots of eggs.
I've been working on my bath bomb technique. and it does take a certain amount of practice to get them to mold up nicely. But its all a learning process and work in progress. I add a bit to this website every day, trying to get it to look good and feel right. You have to keep figuring it all out as you go. It takes a ton of content to make a site suitable and I have to add all the content myself. Go figure.
Bees are ordered....I actually started moving along in this process a couple of years ago. I ordered chicks from a hatchery in MO. I had never kept chickens but I have kept and raised parrots for more than 20 years, how hard can it be? I also bought a couple of bee hives. The chickens were easy, except for the fact EVERYONE tells you not to raise your chickens in the house, which I totally ignored. My utility room was just TOO convenient for me to use to raise my baby chicks, ducks and geese. Its three YEARS later and yes they ALL still will come in the back door and wander into "their" utility room. LOL OTHER THAN THAT.... they were a breeze to raise. And yes I've raised several other batches in my utility room since that first group. And occasionally there MIGHT be a chicken sleeping in the utility room on a perch....that is ALWAYS set up in there. LOL!!!
Bees on the other hand... ON THE OTHER HAND, what a challenge!! Besides the whole intimidation factor of dealing with 10,000 bees in a 3lb package that I ordered over the internet...and having never DONE such a thing before, BESIDES that, let me tell you, bees are amazing but contrary little ladies, and yes a hive consists mostly of all female workers and the queen. So, I get two packages, which amounts to about twenty thousand bees, and the basic instructions are, set up a hive and dump them in the box.
We actually had a couple of good years, even with that inauspicious and rather ignorant beginning, the learning curve is difficult to close on bees, they REFUSE to read the instruction books or watch all those amazing You Tube videos that tell you what bees are SUPPOSED to do... mine didn't do that. Mine rarely did ANYTHING that anyone else's bees did. Last year didn't go so well and I ended up losing my hives, some of it was bad luck, and some of it was owner ignorance, all bee keepers struggle to help their hives survive. It was really discouraging. Its not an inexpensive endeavor and I'm not fond of failure. I let it go through the winter, but I finally anted up again and I have two packages of Buckfast bees that will be here mid May. I'm excited again and have been studying my old notes and some new methods and so we will give this another go. I'll keep you posted. Some of my MOST hilarious stories are bee stories, but we'll save that for another day....
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