It’s been an amazing fall so far; rain, rain and more rain and now 75 degree weather – that spells grass growing weather to us.  This week has been a week of assessing everything from the cows with their newly born or still “in the oven” calves to the chickens to the bees and everything in between.  Everybody, including us, needs to be ready for winter. This week we will make a huge leap into the attempt to get the chickens composting enough in the high tunnel to keep the lemon, greens and pomegranates warm enough to make it through the winter without additional heat.  We plan to do with this with at least 2 feet of hay and straw – something the girls are oh so excited about.

chicken pens in fall for web
Today the bees were the topic of conversation and each and every frame was inspected for brood, pollen and nectar for the winter.  We saw plenty of newly laid eggs so we know the queens are still working.  I know that they are trying, I suppose much like we are doing, to assess the hive strategy for going through the winter with the current number of bees.  So with the wisdom of the queens we expect that to decrease as the months march on toward snowy weather. Next year we hope to have ten hives total; so along with the bread baking we can have more honey to sell.   With our lemon trees beginning to bloom I am trying to coax the bees into the high tunnel to get every last blossom pollinated and I’m doing it with honey!

 1020x 500 beauty of the farmb

In other news, Brayden has had a vision!  It includes loads of beautiful ducks, duck eggs, duck fat, Duck a L’orange and duck sausage.  We have a few left in stock and, hopefully, we can get more in the months to come. We expect to have duck eggs to sell some time around March.  Right now, it just lovey time.  It’s hard to get Brayden away from them.

No matter the season, life is always exciting around here as it brims with all types of possibilities.