Cosy, November 25th

'Twas a month before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse (I think we got rid of the last of them a couple weeks ago...nothing like a good smear of peanut butter on a trap...), but I digress...oh, I guess I am stirring...and mousing...on my keyboard here!

It's a Thursday evening, dark and chilly outside, cosy by the fire in the wood stove inside. One cat purrs next to me on the arm of my chair, two more are curled up across the room in separate chairs, one is, I think, upstairs in the bedroom. Charlie cat, of course, is out for his night duty, more or less. He still makes himself known at the bedroom window a couple of times through the night, usually once before midnight, then if it's pretty cold, probably around 2:30 or so, after which he may, if we're lucky, sleep inside ‘til 6 or 6:30 am, then meow to get out again for that pre-dawn hunting time....always interrupting that one last sleep cycle at precisely the wrong time. If we're not lucky, he'll be in and out once or twice more before that.

Oh and of course there's Edward, also not stirring, uncharacteristically. He came home after we had a quick bite at the local pub and immediately crashed on the sofa. Must've been some tough ones on the massage table today! Right now he is across from me, lying on his side, cheek smushed against the padded arm of the sofa. His feet are being kept warm by the tail of Angus The Wonder Dog, who now lies snoring, his cheek smushed up on the opposite arm. What a pair. It's a lovely sight with the lights low and the fire crackling away. My chai is simmering on the stove. Life is good!

As for what's been happening on the farm since...uh, September 10th and my last posting, well, we ended up with just the four baby chicks, none of the abandoned eggs hatched. The "kids" were so cute (they are still, sort of, but not like when they were tiny). There is one who is clearly a Rhode Island Red, and three who look like they've split the characteristics of the Plymouth Barred Rock...two are almost pure black, no markings, and the third is mostly white with some black bits, but not at all the usual all-over black-and-white or grey-and-white checks of the Barred Rock.

Button, the Barred Rock mom who hatched three, is the more assertive of the two mother hens, and wasted no time in training them all to be great foragers like her...marching the tiny chicks off to start digging and scratching in the ground. Once they were big enough to be moved back to the main coop with the others, the babies were first out the door in the morning, and while the weather stayed warm enough for foraging in the grass for plants and bugs and worms, these little guys shunned the conventional chicken feed that is always on offer. "No thanks! I'm diggin' for my OWN!" They are such good learners. By day three of their existence, Little Red Hen's blond baby was lying beside her, already taking a dust bath in the dirt, wiggling side to side and flapping it's tiny wings. So sweet.

I finally pruned back the last of the lavender shrubs in the first week of November. I was thankful for the long warm fall and the small extra harvest but was nervous about waiting so long to prune in case a sudden hard frost came soon after. Fortunately they had plenty of time to recover, although apparently they might have been at risk of drowning rather than freezing, since we were inundated with days of exceptionally heavy rain as soon as I had left town on the 5th for a week-long intensive course.

And as for the bees from the "bee tree" which were rescued by Edward following the tree breaking apart in Hurrican Earl, well, they seem not to have thrived in their new digs. Too much upheaval and possibly having their comb inserted rather hastily, they had a hard time getting the lay of the hive. Or, they may have been raided by the dreaded Robber Bees!!

Yes, the robber bees...not a new species (that I know of) but rather a phenomenon (I think). At some point between my last posting and the first of November, my husband was checking on "Hive #1", which had been, two weeks prior, absolutely loaded with honey. As it was late in the season and because Edward is really beekeeping for the bees and not for the honey, he chose not to remove any, leaving it for the bees to feed on through the winter.

When he checked the hive he found, to his horror, virtually NO honey, the combs were there, intact, but empty, literally sucked dry, and the number of bees had been decimated! Apparently it is not uncommon in autumn, when pollen is harder to find and bees seeking to shore up supplies smell honey in another hive. It's survival of the fittest! One of the things you can do in fall is to reduce the size of the hive opening or openings in order to help the residents defend their hive more easily. So he went to the other hives and did this too after this attack, closing them down to a single hole in each, only one "bee space" (yes, that's part of the lingo!) wide.

You can read more about these "home invasions" of the insect world here

One of the things Edward does as do many beekeepers is make a "bee tea" to supplement their natural feeding, especially in the fall, or when a hive is stressed, or when the beekeeper takes honey stores from the hive. It is basically a sugar syrup, but for their nutrition and to attract them he steeps in it some flowers from their favourite herbs, like lavender, chamomile and anise hyssop.

As he would replenish hives he remarked that it seemed the bees knew he was coming, they could smell the bee tea and come to greet him! And indeed it seemed more started hanging around outside the house near the kitchen, the more often he steeped this on the stove.

So one day he was simmering the fragrant syrup and said, "I'm gonna turn on the kitchen exhaust fan over the stove and see if any bees come up to the house." I stood by the doors to the deck outside the kitchen and watched, jaw dropping, as within about 6 seconds a honey bee came up the hill and flew by the window directly towards the fan exhaust. They are amazing little creatures. Hopefully next summer we will be able to enjoy some of their honey. For now we just hope they survive another winter, snug in their hives. I hope they are cosy enough tonight.

Post Script...the next day: It is Friday now, miserably wet with a freezing rain/ice pellet mix. I will have to look up, someday, the difference between freezing rain, hail and ice pellets. And what about sleet? What IS that?

Anyway, it appears there WERE some mice stirring last night, although not in our house that we know of. I had inadvertently left the bucket with some some chicken feed in it outside the coop last night after I spent 20 minutes herding chickens. I normally just wait until the chooks find their own way to the coop at dusk, but lately there have been a couple difficult cases, who linger underneath the coop (it's up a foot or two off the ground) and then once night falls, won't go in unless you can move them or catch them. Once the pitch dark of a November night falls it is hard to find them, and cold, and one doesn't want to be crawling around a muddy chicken yard. 

Although I had asked Angus to "stay!", he decided that he could legitimately chase chickens under the guise of herding them to help me. He has actually been somewhat effective at this on occasion although I did not want him to help this time. One had gotten outside the fence, so I opened the gate wide and was moving around the far side to shoosh her back along the fence then in through the gate when Angus went into gear. He did not, to my relief, try to attack, but actually went and pressed his muzzle on her back to hold her in place, quite gently. I picked her up and put her in the coop but she fell limp on her side. I thought he'd given her a heart attack! I tried to prop her up on the roost, but she wouldn't grab on. "Oh dear!" I thought, as I left for a moment and went around the other side to close one of the hatches to keep the rest of the gang from heading back out.

However once I went back in I saw that she had gotten up and disappeared across the floor and was hiding out behind the nesting boxes. All was well! Meanwhile in the fuss I forgot all about the bucket of chicken "layer mash" that I'd left outside. But it was a welcome surprise to someone at least...when Edward went to feed the chickens this morning he discovered three deer mice in the bucket staring up at him. I take it they were nice and plump by then but perhaps a little stressed. He released them some distance away. Happy US Thanksgiving, little mice!