Spring is a time for growth. It’s also a time for hard work. Sometimes it makes me think back to our lives before homesteading. You see, before we moved to our forever homestead, we lived in Augusta, Georgia. You could always tell Spring was coming when the traffic got insane, the menu prices went up and the rude people took over town. You guessed it the Masters Tournament began. Nowadays, the Masters doesn’t even hit on our radar. It’s funny how now the only thing that reminds us of the Masters is that our bees usually swarm the same week that the tournament is held.
Speaking of bees…Now that it has been consistently warm, we decided to do our first hive inspection of the year. The girls have been busy collecting pollen. But not busy enough in my opinion (I still have two yellow cars in the driveway). But they have certainly been busy building. In fact, it’s almost time to add our honey supers. Which reminds me, we are going to try something new this year. We are going to install queen excluders. They are supposed to keep the queen from traveling into the honey super. Hopefully, that will mean no larva in the honeycomb. We might even get a small honey harvest this year. It is hard to bee-lieve that these hives were just package bees last year!
Here on the Homestead, we are in full swing. We are going from sun up to sun down. To be honest, the only way I was able to write this blog is because we had issues with the tractor and Blaze is fixing it, which gives me time to catch y’all up. The soft fruit beds are now complete with trellises. They just need to be mulched. If I could just figure out a way to get more spoiled hay back to the homestead. I really don’t think Robyn would go for hauling that in the Prius! God, I miss my truck…
But no point going backward… Spring forward, time for growth, right? Blaze has finished building some new raised beds for our peas this year. So, we will be planting most of the garden this weekend, as long as the weather holds out on us. We will also be adding the tub with worms that we saw on the MI gardener channel on Youtube. Be looking for a video of our own on the subject as well. Spring also means that the Girls have been forging for wild edibles. I don’t dare tell them how much I have enjoyed having those “weeds” in my lunch and evening meals.
If you follow us on Instagram you know we have some new Muscovy ducklings. Usually, we let our animals take care of their babies free range. But this year in the interest of expanding our flock, we are trying a different approach. We moved mama duck and her ducklings into one of the old meat chicken tractors. This way hopefully the ducklings won’t become catfish bait. The key is keeping them dry and warm.
Well, I hear the tractor so that means it’s time for me to get back to work. Hope all is well on your homestead and remember Reuse, Recycle and Repurpose; do your part to live a more sustainable life. Don’t forget to check us out on Youtube. We will see you on the Live Stream!