Honey Badgers eat Local

My kids are obsessed with the Honey Badger. Which isn't really a badger and doesn't actually eat honey. They know this but they still love to pretend to be Honey Badgers whenever a new bottle of honey comes in the house. They eat it on everything. Our recent favorite is organic peanut butter, my chunky pear jam I canned a few weeks ago and Thomas Honey, a locally produced raw honey we can get at the weekly farmers market and True Value.

I have never lived in a place that I can get honey at a hardware store or canning jar lids and tomato plants at the gas station. It's a little surreal at times.

Over the weekend I missed out on yet another bee keeping class. This tallys up to four over the past two years I couldn't make it to. It's a tad bit depressing. As if the Universe just isn't ready for me to be exposed to bees. I'm trying to be patient but my squash is suffering from lack of polinization. I've had to pull off about 5 shriveled squashes so far. Bees would be so welcomed here.

I tried to go out today to hand polinate (which includes muck boots, q-tips and mood music) but it was a bust. You see, zucchini and yellow crookneck squash, the epitome of gardens and summer produce, have both male and female flowers. Both need to be in bloom and have a qualifying polinator to create a vegetable. Today all my female flowers were brightly blooming. I could see them from the porch and yet not a single male flower was even close to opening. I'll try again in a few days time.

Last year I grew only 3 teeny zucchini. I was throughly discouraged. I'm  hoping a little human intervention will help.

Spring Starts

 slowly but steady.

Storm

At five fifty-eight this morning I woke up with one of the children. I got them settled and lay back down hoping to get a little more sleep. A deep rumble sounded in the distance and I hoped for rain. A few minutes later the thunder intesified rolling in hard and fast. I could tell, laying in the dark, this was going to be a doozey.

I love thunderstorms. I love listening to the rolling thunder and patter of the rain on the windows and roof. Rain is important for so many things. But sometimes it gets out of control.

In a sudden rush rain splashed the windows. It sounded like someone outside held a hose full blast to the thin glass. The thunder that had been so distant just moments ago now tumbled in the sky so violently I could feel it quake in my stomach. One rolled into the other and into the next creating a constant deep drum roll. The lightening flashed so quickly it reminded me of my club days. The strobe lighting up the room in fast, bright pulses.

The rain this morning actual made me afraid. I had heard reports from friends that last weeks storms created tornadoes, tearing through landscapes and ruining homes. For some reason storms like this didn't bother me in the city. As closely packed as the houses were and surrounded by century old trees I felt safely snug. Here there is ample area for tornadoes to touch down, the owners of this land felt the need to remove just about every tree. The house sits in the center of a veritable prarie.

It's open, vunerable.

I lay in the dark nearly terrified of the storm waging hell outside. Sometimes grown-ups are scared of thunder, too. I thought about how dependant we are on the weather. How important a good storm is to replenish the watershed. That the plants won't need watering after the .55" we got in a mere hour.

We're at the mercy of Mother Nature. If she withholds the rain the crops will die. If she gives us too much they will drown. If a hard storm rolls in and whips up tornadoes we can die. It's hard feeling powerless like that. So dependent on something we can't do anything about. It's hard to both love something we need so greatly and be afraid of it at the same time. Storms like the one this morning reminds us that life is fragile and the natural world harsh.

Mortality is a hard thing to swallow in the darkness.

New Digs

The three Buff Orpingtons and the Black Maran have moved from the nursery into the A-frame coop with attached run. There were just too many birds getting too big in one smallish area. Also the three Phi Beta girls decided they would stoop to roosting in the larger coop now that a couple roosters are gone. If you can't be 'em, roost with 'em.

These Buffs are six and a half weeks old now, the Maran is supposed to be 9 weeks but I think the chicken guy aged her wrong. She's just so small. Once we dispatch two of the three roosters and the three remaining broilers we'll move these girls in with the big chickens. (We've gotten one chicken being processed and hope to get to the remaning four today.)

I went a little gung-ho buying pullets this year. I had a few reasons

1. Pullets notoriously end up as roosters at our house 

2. A dog has killed one so far and completely free-ranged birds are more suseptable to losses. (though we have Leeloo outside guarding them and mature roosters now plus guard geese brooding)

3. We're not keeping all the chickens as they age

I'm hoping to raise them up to 2-3 months old and then hand pick the chickens I want to keep as laying birds then sell off the remaining. I'd like about 15-20 layers at a time, I have a half dozen more than that now.

I'm still debating what to do with the roosters I'm sure we're bound to get.* We'll either raise them to slaughter size or sell them off at about 4-5 months, when we're for sure they're boys but not before they start with the testosterone nonsense. Or we will build multiple small, movable A-frames and keep the cock with the hens and brood out babies for sale.

I haven't decided yet.

I bought many, many different kinds of chickens because of my lack of being able to have many kinds of animals. I figured if all I can do is poultry this year, well, this year won't go to waste. Plus they're all unique and pretty and I like telling them apart by colorings, giving them names and such.**

My only issue now is that I bought a lot of solid black chickens and now that they've lost their baby colorings I can't tell an Australorp from a Sex Link and they were getting really close in size to the Maran -which is also solid black. At least the Wyandottes have gotten their white colors in and should be marked significantly different from the Barred Rocks.

I might have to have a chicken expert help me identify them later on though.

*Watch in a few months for a post that we got entirely all pullets. I'm convinced Fate laughs hard at me sometimes.

**We have learned to only name chickens we're not going to eat.

Stuck in the Mud

Saturday morning and all is quiet on the farm. The baby rabbits are hopping merrily around their cage, exploring their world, nibbling a tiny blade of hay. The chickens are all free ranging around the barn looking for bugs that washed up to the surface over the past three days of rain. The ducks and geese are the only ones making a sound, greeting me at the barn door with adolescent honks and quacks knowing I come baring treats of chopped up veggies floating in a moat of cool spring water.

I'm quiet today, too.

Inside I feel trapped in sludge, no movement, not even a shallow quake of breath. Today my mind is stuck in the mud. The ooze around me the thoughts of everything I'm still so far from accomplishing.

We moved to the country to be farmers and settled into a home where we're not allowed to. We set up a large garden hinged on the promises the landlord made and in seven months -right when the garden will be exploding in it's second Florida season- we'll have to tear it down if we decide to move on. A move I'm not looking forward to making but we have to if we ever want to have goats or sheep. I feel like we're so far behind where we were this time last year living on a miniscule city plot that we'll never catch up again. That so many things we had hoped for were taken away.

Depressed? Yeah, a little bit.

I'm trying to be grateful for what we do have, the ducks and geese and turkeys. The larger garden. The additional space for the kids. It's hard though, not to look back at decisions made and think Well, that could have been done a bit differently. I wish we had know that beforehand. 

But it is what it is and unfortunately Science hasn't given us time travel yet.

So, I curse Science and try and have a better day. The kids are anxious to go to Pioneer Days the next town over. I need to go braid a yard of hair and put on bonnets and a smile. Even if it doesn't reach my eyes.

A new look

I've added a few new pages to our blog and changed the layout a bit. I'm working on a new banner as well and hope to have it up in a couple days. Please look around and let me know in the comments on this post anything you like or things that can be improved about the new pages!

County Extension People are my new best friends.

Yesterday, after reading Becca's post over at Rabbit Moon Farm, I decided to give my County Extension office a call to see if they can help clarify myriad laws into a succinct list of rules that I will not lose my mind trying to decipher. If the laws were written in heiroglyphs I think I'd have a better time reading them. Fate finally shone on me and when I called they told me about the Farmer's Market seminar (free!) that they were hosting oh, about seven hours later.

Tip of the hat, Becca, I wouldn't have even bothered to call them until your post.

The seminar was really informative though I was coming more for the law breakdown than how to make a pretty display at a market. It's still good information to learn incase we ever do want to branch off from straight farm sales. They did give me some great ideas for the farm though, I'll post more about those later.

And they did have some information about the laws. Apparently they have a guy that is in love with Chapter 500 of the Florida Law and he has created an over six page break down of what I can and cannot do.

He's my new best friend.*

They are also having an entire year program (which I am three months late for) called Living on a Few Acres. It's $10 for the program and comes with a nice large three ring binder that covers all the information in the seminars. And the seminars cover everything from aquaponics to almonds. I think I might be able to sign up for the remaining 9 seminars, too. They also spoke of hosting a Beekeeping Short Course (a one day intensive) soon. Having missed the last four short courses offered in two different parts of the state, I will be on that like a bee to pollen.

The moral of this tale is to not write off -like I did- the Extension Offices nearest you. They have a wealth of information that they want to give to you, for free (mostly). They have lots of programs and know so, so much. They might even be your new best friends.

*He doesn't actually know this. Or me.