It climbed up into the 50's today and the wind settled down a notch or two and was a little on the warmish side coming up out of the Southwest. By noon most of the real chill was banished to the shade and the bees were out flying. All the hives around the Small-Hold showed good activity and coming and going but I didn't drive down the road to check the hives at the orchard.
I was hoping to add the last remains of the Watermelon jelly failure along with some sugar syrup to the outside feeders but the girls were on them thickly I guess getting the last few drops out of em. No big deal as I am pretty sure from the forecast the girls won't be flying tomorrow so I can refill the feeders then. It's been almost a month since I was able to see the girls flying but so far they appear to be all alive and well.
I really wanted to go down and work on the fence some more but with the forecast for the next few days I decided to unload the wood that was in the truck and split another load to stock up. Supposedly tonight around midnight we are getting hit by another Northern clipper pushing down that will dump a couple inches of snow on us and drop the temps once again down around zero. It isn;t suppose to last too long though but we will see. All the major weather stations seem to be only interested in the storm making it's way along the Southeast right now so there hasn't been much hype about this one coming in from the North this time around. I am hoping it stays North of us and doesn't get as cold as they are predicting.
While I was filling up all the water tanks and forking over some extra hay for the sheep, Pantheon the hunter cat was busy tormenting some large rodent he flushed out of the hay field. It was too big for a mouse and didn't have a tail so it wasn't one of the damned fuzzy rats we get occasionally, must have been a big mole or vole or something like that. He had it pretty well under his complete control while I stopped and watched him but it might have escaped after I grew bored with the whole thing. At one point the rodent escaped into a pile of hay but I broke that sanctuary up because well I hate vermin and it needed killin. That's what the cat's around here are suppose to be for anyway although only 1 or 2 seem to have any drive to actually hunt out the varmint-cong and eliminate them.
So I guess we will see. The wood is all under tarps with a small lazy fire currently to keep the coals going and the furnace box heated, extra rations for the sheep along with completely full water tanks and heaters plugged in. Sounds like tomorrow morning is going to reveal an entirely different world out there than the pleasant afternoon we had today.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!!
Fuzzy rats? We have ground squirrels (sage rats) and so many that there is a hunt for them every Spring. They shoot thousands in a weekend. They are a real menace,
ReplyDeleteHeh - No we get these rats sometimes, well I haven't seen one for years now but we used to get some that were sized somewhere in between a mouse and one of those Norway rats. They had fur on them that was more fuzzy than you see on the Norway rats too. I think they were called wood rats but I am not certain. They would make tunnels under the barn but could be occasionally seen out away from the barn. I poisoned the shit out of em back in the late 90's and haven't really seen one since.
DeleteThe head supervisor seems to be the rodent killer around here, she doesn't always eat them but seems to take great joy in playing with them until they break then leaving the carcass laying on a path where every one can see what a good job has been done.
ReplyDeleteSf - y old supervisor Piglet used to do that. She left the bodies right where she knew someone would see em. Made the wife insane telling me where the little corpses were so I would dispose of them. Yesterday the wife was complaining about Pantheon having mouse tar-tar under the front porch when she got home :)
DeleteGood to hear about the bees. I was a little worried about them.
ReplyDeleteTB - Thanks. I will worry about them from November to April usually :)
DeleteDan and I have started studying up on beekeeping. Ours are due for delivery in mid-April. It will be a wonderful addition. I've also read a few sad bee loss stories, so I'm hoping all goes well.
ReplyDeleteLeigh - I have read some loss stories. Lost a few myself back in the Winter of 2012 after the drought we had but I have only lost 1 hive last Winter and so far none this Winter. Losses are going to happen though. Speaking of which it is almost time for my annual survival bee keeping post once again.
DeleteI do hope that storms doesn't hit you, I have friends in South Dakota that are having fun with it. I enjoy reading your farm life, I used to raise Boer Goats on 9 acres in Alabama and I sure do miss that life. I never tried apiary, I was thinking of doing it because I had a small parcel of land that would have been perfect. But, life and a bad gypsy women changed that.
ReplyDeleteCederq - LOL those gypsy Women are bad news all across the board. But fun at first which is the hook that gets ya in trouble ain't it :)
DeleteI lived in South Dakota for a bit over a year. It had it's pluses though. I also thought about goats here but once I started in with the sheep I really enjoyed some of the easy aspects of keeping them over the goats I had way back when.
Thanks for the comment good to hear from folks like you!!
I too lived in South Dakota, in Huron for a number of years, I don't miss the cold, the wind and snow past your naval... The farm I grew up on which was my Grandfather and cousin's had sheep, they were all right until one died in the back pasture and wasn't apparent at first in the summer time and my job was to dig a hole next to it and then roll the body in to bury it... yeah, not the most pleasant of farming.
DeletePP,
ReplyDeleteIt turned out to be relatively nice yesterday afternoon. We all were able to complete several tasks before the winds kicked back up and temperatures changed again. Our winds are about 45 mph, and the temperatures are to drop to 14 and that's not counting the windchill. Snow expected all this weekend. Did your cat find a ground hog??
Sandy - Suppose to get to zero here and the winds were bad last night. I am ready for these frigid storms to go away and some warmer temps soon myself!!!
DeleteNot sure what he found. I think it was some type of vole. Larger than a mouse but it was pretty able to run fast... Was really dark furred too.