The weekend didn’t go, well, smoothly overall. Things I had not intended to do I suddenly was pressed to do, and things I need to do didn’t get done.
A rooster we were holding for our friend Michelle had to go in the pot. Her flock is in no condition to have another bird introduced now that their farm has blown away. Lance needed to take his even though he was not ready. His coop was going to be finished a couple weeks ago. The rooster that “used” to be a hen was now obviously a rooster over at David’s house, and not being a girl was a death sentence.
I started the day with taking Lance’s Partridge Barnvelder out to their farm. He was still not ready for it, but we found an old pigeon cage in his barn, and put it outside, with a sheet of plywood over the top and food and water inside. Lance is putting the finishing touches on the hen house. It is really looking good.
I took some time to check out the garden there. Squashes are setting nicely on the early plants, but my last plantings, about 40 hills, have been cleaned of all vegetation. Annoying and I am not sure what if anything to replant them with at this point of the year. Painted Mountain corn is tasseling, but stunted. I asked around and many of my friends who planted early and had plants germinating in the cold early spring have much the same issue. Curious to see what the ear development is like. Many of the plants are only a few feet tall, which is fine if ear development is good. Every watermelon seedling there has been eaten, though by what I don’t know, and all but two of the muskmelons. Not as though we are going to go short of food, but it is annoying.
Once the rooster was settled, and I had taken Piper and Emmet (Lance’s yellow lab) for a mile long walk through the fields (they put up a big covey of hungarian partridge) I headed home to pick up Michelle’s rooster to take to David’s for butchering. It was much the same as when I did the 6 earlier. Complacent bird acquiesces to being food. I did feel a bit badly about the one that had been at David’s home. He originally went there because we thought he was a hen. He had not developed a comb and waddle yet, and had the same tail feathers as the hens.
Well, that had changed since we had originally taken them there. He had “come into his own” and actually was taking very good care of the hens, herding them here and there, and making sure the coast was clear for them to come out into the open. Like all roosters though, when sunlight would first get down to them he felt the need to announce to the world where he was, who he was, and what he was doing. For better or worse, that was a death sentence.
I spent some time just tending the hens and giving Roger Rooster (as Rebecca had named him) a last meal. David and I rouged out bolting lettuce from his garden, bringing about 10 gallons of greens down to the pen. Initially the hens just scratched and poked around looking for bugs in the leaves. If we held a leaf they would tear it up and eat it, but the bugs were far more intriguing than a bunch of greens.
Last photo of Roger Rooster
The day was soup hot, and I was overheating, so David and I sat in his air conditioned basement for a while drinking ice water and complaining about things in general until I stopped sweating. Afterwards we set up a pallet in his yard for putting a beehive on. The plan is to move one of my hives to his house, and one out to the Ness farm.
Back at home that evening I made a chicken dinner, watered gardens, and broke open the hives to check the honey production. The larger hive has set a good bit of honey, but only capped a few combs of it. The smaller one had set about half as much honey, and capped none of it. These are about as calm as bees can get. I smoked them, but they paid me no mind as I poked and prodded in the hive, and Patti stood next to me, barefoot, in shorts and a tee-shirt, watching what I was doing.
I was just too hot, sweaty, dirty and tired that night to move the smaller hive out to David’s. The rest of the afternoon and evening had been spent hand watering all of my tomato and pepper plants. The heat and lack of rain had things wilting so I hauled enough water to perk all of them up, leaving me soaked with sweat and dizzy with heat.
Sunday was no where near as productive (if Saturday could be considered productive) as my body was still wasted from working in the heat the day before. Literally, all I did was some weeding and watering in my own yard, and I was psyching myself up for moving a hive out to David’s that evening after dark.
Well, regardless of the psyching, moving the hive did not work. It is still where it was. With lightning flashing in the sky to the west I went out to begin the process of loading the hive onto David’s (I borrowed it) truck. I am learning as I go on this and I didn’t ask Roger enough questions apparently. The bees were not in the hive. They were on it, and on the ground and vegetation in front of it. When I applied a little smoke to them, the bees directly on the front of the hive went into it, while the rest buzzed and started flying around. The last thing (or one of the last things) I want is to move a hive and leave behind a few thousand lost and confused bees flying around. After a while I gave up, went inside to cool down (I was all geared up and it was still over 85 degrees) change, and then Claire and I took David his truck back so he could drive to work in the morning.
On the way there a few errant raindrops splashed on the windshield, but it was on the way back that the storm hit. A treetop crashed into the road directly in front of our Explorer on Excelsior Boulevard with the first gust of wind, and we were lucky there were no vehicles in the oncoming lane as I swerved around it (no time to stop) and then the rain hit. Pounding sheets of rain that made seeing difficult even with the wipers on high and crawling along at half the speed limit. We did get home safe, though the 20 foot dash from the vehicle to the house had us both looking like drowned rats.
I talked to Roger about the issue of the bees today while coming home from the office. He said it is too hot to move bees. It needs to be cooler so they are all in the hive, and ideally also a light drizzle so that they WANT to be in the hive. He also told me that I should probably not move the hives myself, as each of the two lower supers, which need to be picked up together, weigh about 80-90 pounds. Not that I cannot life that, but trying it tweaked me a bit. The thought of carrying them the 175 feet from where they are to the driveway is a bit scary.
I did no work at the Ness, Red Wing, or Minnetonka gardens this weekend, and they all desperately need it. Next weekend is my last at home before our one vacation a year. There is a lot I need to get done before I am not around for a couple weekends. Kinda felt like I wasn’t around this last one.
