Welcome!

In February of 2009, my husband and I bought our first home located on a few acres in Johnson, Vermont. We live here with our dog, Ollie, two cats: Elvis and Atticus, six Nigerian Dwarf goats: May, Chutney, Poppy, Juniper, Willow, and Jokers Wild, and about fifteen laying hens. And to top it all off we welcomed our daughter, Isabel, into the world on January 11th, 2011.

We're slowly updating our 1850's farmhouse while steadily working towards a healthy, meaningful, self-sufficient life together.

This blog details our endeavors along with our successes and failures- all in good fun. Thanks for stopping by, hope to see you again soon!

May

May
May and I enjoying some sunshine

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Swarming Season

Lovingly Posted by Melissa Thursday, August 5, 2010

Wowzers.  A few weekends ago, Kyle and I got home from a neighbor's funeral to find a mass of bees flying around the truck.  I was immediately concerned that it was our bees so suited up to check on our hive.  After checking a few frames and being satisfied with what I found on my hive inspection I went back up to the house to enjoy the show.  The sound of tens of thousands of bees flying through the air was amazing.

After just a few more minutes the chaos of flying bees quickly turned into a solid mass that had attached itself to a couple branches in one of the trees next to our house.  I stared up at them and wished that they had landed on a lower branch where we might have been able to transfer them to a second hive (not that we currently HAVE a second hive...but I had plans to whip up a quick Top Bar Hive).  I mean, FREE BEES people!  Seriously!  How could I pass this up?



After a few days of trying to convince Kyle to build this new hive for me he finally began.  The main box was mostly finished, we just needed the top bars for the bees to build their comb on.  Well, the day after this first part was completed the bees had left.  They had found a suitable new home somewhere and were nowhere to be found.  I was seriously bummed.

But last night, Kyle went out to play with Ollie in the back yard and came back into the house to say that there was another swarm of bees in the yard.  This time they are on a smaller tree, and quite low to the ground.  I didn't get a chance to get down there to check it out, but I'm hoping they'll stick around for a few days to allow us time to try to finish the hive.  Then, perhaps I will try to physically move them to their new home.

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