I could have done better.

April 26, 2016

So the other day I split my bee hives into three nucleus colonies. The weather was perfect and all seemed to go very well. I had a little screw-up with one of the boxes being damaged an the bees were able to enter and come and go as they pleased through the 1/2" gap. But with that rectified with a little red tuck tape, a Bee Keepers best friend, all was well....until the weather turned.

Since I split the bees, we have had some very unsettled weather. The actual split occurred on Sunday, and on Monday we had snow! Yes snow on April 24th. April 25th! I awoke to a slight rainy drizzle, and small ice like pellets were landing on my windshield as I drove to work. Today April 26 we had......more snow.

As I was reflecting on the poor bees and their meager clusters,  I thought there must be a better way to keep them warm and yet keep them secure in one deep Langstroth hivebox. The idea came to me that I could use rigid foam insulation to sandwich the bees in their cluster. The reflective insulation packed either side of the bees and across the top to act as an inner cover, would be perfect to keep them warm on cold days like this. As the weather breaks and they're able to relax and not have to worry about keeping the brood warm, I could remove the insulation panels and move them out towards the outside edges if the hive.

This follows the idea of a follower board that is used in the horizontal hive system. Follower boards keep all the bees in one place and not growing too far horizontally away from the brood chamber thus stranding the brood on a cold night. 

Oh well live and learn. As with all things, I have heard Joel Salatin say if it's worth doing it's worth doing again. What a crappy saying! But true. I will definitely try this next season when I split the hives again.

Great fun on the farm hope you can stop by and visit us sometime. The bees are out on the front driveway with hazelnut bushes planted around each one. Come have a look.

Bee Stoic!

Bees, Queens, Trees, and Snow.

March 15, 2016

What a crazy week this has been. Weather wise it was bizarre. Snow several days now and finally we have the sun breaking out on Tuesday afternoon. I am so busy this week (and so it seems every week) that I do not know which end is up!

I have queens arriving to install in nucleus boxes. Trees arriving to be planted in my wind break. Snow to shovel?  What 

Bee stoic. hmph

What a day!

March 12, 2016

Spring has finally arrived. Even though it was s mild winter, we still ran through 6 cords of wood. And as usual, I am behind on getting it cured for next winter! Oh well one year I will be ahead. But today was magnificent! Sun and warm temperatures. It felt great to make some vitamin d.

I checked on the progress of the tree nursery and the humidity is dipping as it warms up and dries out. I really need to get on top of that. But with no rain expected all week and lots of sun forecast, I need to work on alternatives to buckets and rain catchment.

I have installed several new sites for the hazelnuts expected this spring. They are going to form a dual purpose actually tri-purpose role for me here on the farm. Number one they will act as a snow fence that I will not have to maintain, repair, take up, and put down each year. Secondly, they will act as a windbreak to my bees and also serve as a potential spot for them to rest, or collect pollen. Thirdly we will generate a nut harvest in three to five years. This eventually will be to feed hogs, or for sale. So you can see that when you layer and stack functions it's an absolutely fantastic way to prepare your farm for a future. This process can be applied to almost anything in life, if you find something that serves more than one purpose I feel you've doubled its value. I'm trying to look at things more from that angle as I move into the world of permaculture and intelligent design.

For example the manure from my horses was always a source of irritation for me; cleaning out the stalls. Now I see it almost joyfully as a source of nutrients. We buy hay from other farmers as well as take some off of our property here. That function is actually a nutrient input into the farm. Eventually I want to have the fields managed with cattle and intensive daily rotation type system as outlined by Mark Sheppard Allen Savoy and many others. That is a long way off as cattle are very expensive and require much more in the way of infrastructure.

The manure actually acts as a nutrient bank for the farm currently. I am piling it very high into a hot composting method to generate an enormous amount of usable compost for my gardens this summer, and into the fall.

Additionally, the manure can be placed as a winter mulch over your gardens. It breaks down slowly over time and the worms, grubs, insects, microorganisms and all the other flora and fauna start to decompose the manure and deconstruct into its basic minerals and compounds. That is another benefit. The only problem with this is weed seeds. Horse manure is not processed very long in the stomach of equine animals. Therefore you need to do something to germinate those seeds and get them to pop out of dormancy early so that you can clear them out and plant your annuals later. More on that in another post later.

Lastly the manure is also used when combined with wood chips from the farm and other places, into a woodpile that was generating heat for my Greenhouse; recycling the heat out of the pile into my Greenhouse using PVC tubing. It was marginally successful as the temperatures do tend to drop off rather quickly after about a month. The initial heat it produces is quite astounding as the pile was over a hundred and sixty degrees Fahrenheit for at least 30 days. This kind of heat is unfathomable. It is enough to heat your hot water tank and actually require the temperature to be dropped somewhat as that is too hot for humans to have on their skin.

So by finding multiple uses for the same product you really do increase your value of each item.

Have a great day and Bee Stoic!

Bees are doing well

I was out to see the bees last week. The temperature has been quite mild for March and I've been able to open up the hives and see what's going on. The bees have consumed all of the white granulated sugar that I put on top of their inner cover, and are hungry for more. With the warm weather, it's kind of a dilemma because they are out and active but there is no pollen available for them to pick up. I do hope the weather remains constant so that the early blooming plants start to produce pollen for them.

I'm expanding, and hopefully will get to about 10 hives this year. I'm purchasing two nucleus hives for June, and 3 new Queens for the beginning of May. With that, I should be at 8 hives,  all of them basically nucleus hives.

If I play my cards correctly, and feed them aggressively, I may be able to split three more hives before the fall. I'm working with a gentleman named Terry Langford on his hives, and I'm seeing how he is doing with them. He is a much bigger deal than I am, but focuses more on producing nucleus hives for sale. I would like to work on selling honey, until I get my number of hives up to the level where I can start to sell nucs.

On another front my green house is coming along well. I'm putting some finishing touches on it this week, and I'm looking forward to germinating some vegetables for myself, and using the greenhouse to help further the tree nursery stock.

Much of the work around the farm is going to be automated using Arduino, or Raspberry Pi technology. I'm excited about this opportunity and I look forward to sharing some of the results with you in the future.

Yellow Door Farm is waking up!

Yummy Honey!

Yum yum. The honey has been extracted and is bottled up and ready to go! What an amazing treat to have fresh honey right off the hive and unpasteurized. It is an unparalleled taste experience!

The warm sunny weather has given the bees some extra time to gather nectar and prepare for winter. It has been over 30 degrees celsius each day for a week. My beekeeping neighbour down the road has estimated that this week alone has given the bees a chance to produce an extra 30 pounds of honey per hive. Tremendous!

I hope El Nino is good to us here in the only cold region of North America last winter!

Spring Has Sprung!

Today the first day of spring. I've begun preparations in earnest for the development of Yellow Door Farm. 

Generating heat and compost using the Jean Pain Method

The compost pile has been a successful edition in the barn. I do hope that it takes off and does the triple function of a keeping the day old chicks warm when they arrive in April 29th, but also to supply supplemental heat to the greenhouse that I'm building on the south side of the barn, and provide soil for some mushrooms to grow later on in the summer, lastly to provide me with excellent compost to be used in the greenhouse when the cycle starts all over again.

A new tool addition to the farm this season is a brand new Wood Chipper. It really is a tool that closes the loop on the farm.  Taking the remnants of wood clearing and making them so useful.

 

I started the compost pile about four days ago. I used horse manure from the stall each day, and wood chips from the chipper soiled water from the horse and chickens.  I turned the pile today as I came in and I wanted to see how it was doing. It was extremely odiferous as well as there was steam rising from the pile. From that I made the assumption that I should move it over to the corner of the pile is already getting pretty large and I couldn't get the wheelbarrow in. So as I moved the pile the steam that arose filled the entire barn and made it difficult to see from one end to the other. That is only a distance of 27 feet! A day later I brought my digital temperature reader and it stated the pile (inside a few inches) was at 59 (about 138 degrees Fahrenheit according to Goolge) degrees Celsius.  I also added a coil of perforated drainage tile to allow for oxygen to enter the pile underneath.  It should really get cooking soon and I am a little worried that I started a little early. I did not expect it to take off so quickly. From the literature that I have read (The Compost Powered Water Heater by Gaelen Brown and  Resilient Farm and Homestead by Ben Falk)  it seems that the pile should go for at least 6 months at about the same temperature. 

New Greenhouse under construction

I have started the greenhouse as the picture above attest. I will be moving on to developing a circulating water system into the compost heap to provide supplemental heat to the young plants in the greenhouse through the evening the cool evenings.

I reread, with great interest, Eliot Coleman's The Winter Harvest Handbook this morning. I scanned through and made some notes that were relevant to my particular situation. I would love to eventually expand into movable green houses along the west side of the house. Using supplemental heat from an outdoor wood boiler, I think it would be extremely valuable. That is a plan for much later down the road currently I'm going to focus on the small greenhouse some hoop houses to the south of the barn as well as expanding our garden and food for us at the front of the house. Corn squash and some other high demand crops will be planted along the septic tank to take advantage of water as well as the extra fertility.

The maple syrup has not been running terribly while we have had several days at work in the negatives. Today it is - 10 and the weather is predicting that it won't get much above 1 or 2 degrees. Yesterday it was beautifully sunny, however the temperature did not climb above 1 or 2 degrees Celsius. This is making it rather awkward to collect the sap. Unfortunately as I was building the greenhouse I had a boil over on the maple sap and I was not paying close enough attention. As a result we have some extra dark slightly smoky flavored maple syrup in the freezer.

I have also reviewed Mel Bartholomew square foot gardening book. Though I find that he is quite repetitive and there is very little actual new information,  it does give you an idea on how to prepare small garden plots around the house. I am going to be building square foot garden soil on the edge of the deck to add extra insulation to the house as well as to take advantage of the solar gain from the thermal mass of the house as well as the proximity and ease with which we can harvest vegetables. The square foot gardens should cover approximately 125 square feet of vegetables. This should produce quite a bit for us to eat. The next large challenge will be trying to figure out how to store all of the goods I have purchased a pressure canner and some other equipment to help me prepare jars and bottling to collect all of the summer's harvest. 

It is beginning to look like the world will not be frozen forever! Take heart the sun has crossed the mid point and days will all be longer than nights for a time.  Enjoy the rebirth of the Northern Hemisphere!

Hello

Well this is the start of a journey for myself and my family. We are working to create a business out of our small farm in rural Ontario.  My long term goals are vast and far reaching. I am extremely interested in permaculture and the implications for a safe future for our children. It is something I am investigating going forward for the next few years.  I am retiring from teaching in 10 years and want to have all of my systems and operations in place by then.

Big ideas are as follows:

• Create several home-based businesses to support my family and generate more income.
• Develop a small sized apiary - called Bee Stoic Apiary
• Terra form the property to create swales that will capture water on the landscape and make it more productive long term. References: Geoff Lawton, Sepp Holtzer
• Integrate animals into the landscape to fertilize the land, cultivate, and harvest and help hold back invasive plants that are not productive for ruminants or humans. Reference: Joel Salatin, Sepp Holtzer, Masanobu Fukuoka, Ben Falk, 
• Grow my own vegetables and possibly sell the extras: Masanobu Fukuoka, Elliot Cloeman,  Jean-Martin Fortier, Cam Mather
• Become as energy efficient as possible. I am investigating the capture of heat energy from the sun and will be integrating that into my household hot water this summer in phase 1 of my expansion. References: Jean Pain Hot Compost Pile, Solar Ideas, Driving Smaller Cars and utilizing trailers more
• Be aware of collapsing economic circumstances as Western Civilization may have peaked as net energy extracted has peaked. References: Richard Heinberg, Peak Prosperity, James Howard Kunstler,