Beekeeping equipment in place and ready!

We set up our new Top Bar Bee Hives today. All we need now is bees!

Here are a few pics of the process. First we had to choose the hives. Since we were at the Mother Earth News Fair to make the decision to go for honey production or not, we spent a fair amount of time learning about the hives, different designs, uses, and approaches. At the end we chose to go with "Top Bar Hives"  because they seemed the most natural for the bees, and the easiest to learn with, although perhaps slightly higher maintenance and slightly lower honey production.  Overall it seemed the best choice.

To save time right now we decided to purchase ready built hives instead of building them myself. The Top bar hives seem easy enough to make, and I probably will in the future for expansion, but we wanted to get started ASAP since it is already late in the season to start bees.  So we chose to buy instead of build.  The next decision was from where.

There are plenty of choices out there for top bar hive designs. All are basically the same with only minor differences here and there. We chose to go with the hives from Bee Thinking in Portland Oregon for the following reasons:

1. Made from cedar - This lessens the need for treating the wood or painting it over time while extending the life. Paint on wood treatments not only add work over time but increase the chance of poisons getting in the honey or damaging hte bees.  I was concerned with cedar itself as a beehive but there seems plenty of evidence that bees do in fact nest in cedar trees in the wild.
2. Hinged top - Top bar hives all have some sort of top covering to protect from the weather. I wanted a solid wood top, and hinging it instead of lifting it certainly sounds attractive!
3. end and middle access holes - These hives are designed with both end and middle access holes, so the choice of building the comb end to middle or middle to end is easy to make any time, and easy to explore options (of course i could just drill a hole in any hive)
4. Solid bottom - I contemplated the screen bottom hives and in the end chose solid bottom for 3 reasons: 1) screen bottoms are mostly useful to check for mite problems. Top Bar hives are not supposed to have mite problems, so the reason is minimized. 2) ventilation may actually be a negative in the summer for my area since bees have natural ways of cooling closed spaces in summer as long as there isn't too much airflow outside of their control. In nature bees prefer closed spaces.  3) bees tend to clean up their own space with a solid bottom, which allows for more natural activity and responsibility.
5. Observation window large enough to watch the bees and progress without disturbing them.
6. Close supplier - I decided against buying hives from out of state because of shipping cost, and also I wanted someone more local to work with in case of problems, someone who knew this area and bees natural ways here.

So, we searched out the top bar hive suppliers along hte route from the fair grounds to our area and found  BeeThinking in Portland. We called him Monday morning and the owner agreed to meet us at his warehouse at noon.  When we arrived and looked at his hives, they matched all the criteria we had set, so we decided to go for it. We purchased 3 hives, a suit, and some basic tools.

Here are the 3 hive bodies strapped to the top of our truck.

The box with all the internal pieces sits on the one spare seat inside, the legs lay across the floorboard in front of the middle seats.

In the back sits the tops to the three hives, they barely fit on top of our luggage for the weekend stay with 4 children.

Here is the completely assembled hive with the top open and all the top bars installed.

Notice the observation door in the front. It will be exciting to see the bees building and working inside without disturbing them.

Here is a quick shot of hte top bars. Notice the ridge across the top where the bees will attach their comb.

And here are all three new hives assembled and each sitting under a tree in the far corner of the front yard.

UPDATE: It appears that there are no bees available for purchase from breeders this time of year, which means that the only option left to populate these hives before winter is catching a wild swarm. Swarms should be plentiful though, as it is the time of year they will naturally be looking for new homes anyway.  Scary but yet exciting!

Winter Vegetable Crops!

Everyone knows that vegetable gardens are a summer event, right? WRONG! WE have recently discovered that this thought is a uniquely American limitation. Other countries grow vegetables year round with great success! (as long as they do not listen to the "wisdom" of American science and universities)

Let me clarify that not all vegetables will grow in the winter, some are genetically predisposed to summer weather, but many are perfectly suitable for life in winter. Am I referring to heated greenhouses consuming disproportionate amounts of heating fuel? NO! These vegetables can be grown in no more than simple shelter without using any heating at all. All they need is basic protection from the wind and harsh weather, but temperatures themselves are not the problem.

We are going to embark on this journey of growing year round without heat. The principles make perfect sense when applied in a synergistic fashion and carefully managed. This will produce yet another speciality income stream for Little Sprouts _ organic vegetables available in the winter FRESH from a local farm. Think about that.. no more need to fall to foreign raised vegetables in the winter. No more need to rely on canned, frozen, or otherwise preserved. While vegetables themselves do not brings in much income... winter vegetables will be more valuable because they are rare.

We are very excited to be venturing into this new product for our customers. It may take a year or two to get it right, but the process has begun! Stay tuned tor updates on how this is going.

Adding Honey Production to our farm

One of the decisions we came to the Mother Earth News Fair to explore was "should we raise our own bees?".  The decision is a resounding YES!

Bees are of course a necessary part of any plant growing operation. You simply cant have productive plants without the helpful work of bees to pollinate. Bees also generate an income stream in the process of doing work.. honey, beeswax, and propolis. Each of these is valuable in the market today, especially if you abandon conventional thinking and follow the practices of sustainable and organic beekeeping.

We will be installing 3 to 5 bee hives this year, and hopefully being in production by next summer (it takes about a year to have sell able products from new bees). Our hive of choice is Top Bar Hives, Kenyan style. These hives are as close to nature as we have today, and allow for mostly unattended, organic, chemical free, disease free, parasite free beekeeping. The health of the bee and hive is preserved through the natural defenses and systems of the bees, by allowing them to do their work their way. As everything else we have learned in farming, the more man has tried to improve on nature, the more delicate and unhealthy the results are. Bees are no exception.

Have you heard of and followed the controversy over Colony Collapse Disorder? ( The recent and disturbing "disappearance" of bee colonies for no apparent reason). Well, while the scientist are scrambling to find the "one reason" for this phenomena, it seem perfectly clear and natural to wise beekeepers what is going on. It is simple, man has corrupted beekeeping in a number of ways in our attempts to increase production and profits, resulting in generations of non-sustainable bees, Much like hte poultry, swine, and cattle industries, the bee industry has fallen prey to nature trying to destroy the defective result of years of man's faulty wisdom. I will be putting more  details on this in the coming days. The bottom line is simply this, there will not be found a single reason behind this, because it is a combination of man's "improvements for selfish gain" that causes the conditions whereby bees can not survive.

So, once again man has corrupted nature in our selfish attempts to improve on it for financial gain. This, in turn, has opened a door for small scale farms to actually benefit both financially and morally by returning to the natural methods to "save the world" and produce a superior product in the process. It is very fulfilling to be part of the segment of society called "sustainable farming" that takes on the mission of fixing what is wrong in the world while others are trying to understand it in their limits model of things. The "niche" market we serve as a small scale farm is actually regular people like you seeking to find decent food that improves health instead of degrades health. Is that a niche? If it is, it will not be for long. More ad more people are learning that their own health and quality of life is directly tied to the foods consumed. And ONLY small scale farmers are capable of producing that food.

Bees are coming to Little Sprouts!

Mother Earth News Fair

We have spent the weekend at the Mother Earth News Fair and had a wonderful time! What a fabulous event it was.

The overall event was extremely well done, nicely laid out at good facilities, manageable schedule, interesting and valuable content, and applicable exhibitors. Rarely have I described an event like this in such glowing terms in the technical industry. This was truly a pleasant surprise! I strongly encourage you to attend the remaining events if one is anywhere close to you.

Another important aspect of the event's success was the child friendliness of it. We traveled with our four young children (ages 7 months to 8 years) and a conventional "no children allowed" approach would have been detrimental at most trade shows, but not here! The Mother Earth News staff and volunteers were very helpful, accommodating, and kind to children. The schedule included plenty of interesting workshops for the little ones and they were well attended ad well managed. This afforded us the opportunity to keep them happily busy while we took moments to devote our full attention to a workshop or two, or have in depth conversations with exhibitors. The classes were even truly educational for children, not just busy work "color inside the lines".  I applaud Mother Earth News for their forethought in setting this up.

We ran into several people at this fair that we have been in contact with previously, which was also a great aspect. The audience and exhibitors were spot on!

The most encouraging aspect of this event is this... we are not alone! Sometimes in our quest for excellence and the necessary "controversy" that being "different" brings, we forget just how big but yet small the world is. Big because there are plenty of other people following exactly the same path, whichever path you choose. Small because you come across those people so easily. At this event we fit in perfectly! All the "controversial" aspects of our life became the norm, the accepted, the expected. Our intense search for true health was the focus of much of the exhibitors and talks. Our commitment to natural and humane animal treatment plus  organic and sustainable farming practices was shared and taught by everyone present. The books and videos available preached the very message that our life follows, and this blog explains. Even homeschooling was not shunned as the "silly practice of anti socials". Yes, it was a refreshing and helpful break from the bulk of hte conventional world that preaches sameness, conformity, and mediocrity in everything.  We came away thinking that there is more hope for America than we imagined. There is a grassroots effort of people, just like us, who are fighting the unseen battle of conventional thought against true wisdom of time.  Even thought we might not agree on the details of practice, we are all moving in the same direction of reconnecting with our past and reimplementing what made America great.

As we head home, our thoughts and hearts are full of encouragement, information, motivation, and validation.  Was it worth an 8 hour drive with 4 young children? you bet it was! I would do it again in a moment!

Picnic for baby chicks

Hunter took his baby chickens out for a picnic. He put an old dog kennel in the grass and set the chicks inside to eat fresh green grass and worms. The turkeys came by to supervise (or perhaps watch out for any stray worms).