Busy as a bee

... Or should that be "bees?" Specifically, I'm talking about my newest endeavor. I am becoming a beekeeper (or beek). Thanks to my loving wife, I have a very pretty 8-frame English Garden Hive. The boxes are cypress and the roof is copper clad. If nothing else, I'm sure the bees will appreciate their top quality, split level home in the high rent district.

It's strange. Keeping chickens seems like a much more intuitive task. You shelter them, feed them and water them and they give you eggs. Bees, on the other hand, are more self sufficient. You dump them in a box, give them a little sugar water to get started and walk away. Typical advice suggests that you inspect their hive every couple weeks. From what I've read, though, there isn't much you can do but hope for the best.

That just seems foreign to me. I pay a couple hundred bucks, then 6-18 months later, I get 50-200 lbs. of honey. It almost feels like planting a fruit tree. I feel like I should have to earn my reward. Maybe there is more to it that I don't see yet. Only time will tell.

So why would I start keeping bees? Well, I really like the prospect of increased crop yields from my yard/gardens. I suppose the honey will make nice Xmas presents too. Mostly, though, I can't help but feel that my kids are missing something I got as a kid. I remember going out to the crab apple tree in my parent's yard with a baby food jar. I would see how many bees I could catch. Usually I would only get 3 or 4. One time, I managed to get 11 in a peanut butter jar. When I look at my back yard fruits, all I see are carpenter bees, mason bees and other tiny bees, flies, etc. I rarely see a honeybee. My kids need the option of catching bees in jars. It just seems to make the world a more magical place.

Where to next?

We've been back from our vacation for a couple weeks. It was our first real vacation since Dec. 2004. Recently, I've been thinking about my long term travel plans. I have this idea that I will hit all the major countries of the world, plus a bunch of smaller ones. I have an amorphous priority list of where I want to go. I also have a couple different categories of destination.

In my mind, there are major once-in-a-lifetime destinations. These would be places like China, Egypt, Kenya, etc. They are so totally different from my daily life that they represent a unique experience. Usually, they represent a significant amount of travel time, and consequently, a significant financial investment. Destinations in this category require a trip duration of no less than 2 weeks, preferably 3.

The next category of destination is more common. Places in this category typically represent a significant cultural or historic value. Italy, Japan, and Spain are examples. I want to go to these places, but they aren't my dream destinations. I could go to them without fear that they will be unreachable in the future. I would still want to spend 1-2 weeks in a given place, but places like Paris or London could be covered in a long weekend. One hindrance to choosing one of these destinations is that my wife has already been to many of the places I would consider my top choices. While she would always accept a vacation, I'm sure she would prefer to go someplace new instead of someplace she lived for years.

The last category is the generic destinations. This covers places that I would like to go for one reason or another, but I could just a easily go tomorrow as I could 20 years from now. Most of these destinations consist of states in the continental US, the Caribbean, Canada and Mexico. Some could be longer trips, but most could be covered in a week or a long weekend.

So, right now, my top destination choices are:
Category 1: Kenya, Australia, and Greece.
Category 2: Spain, Paris, and Italy
Category 3: Grand Canyon, Alaska, Florida, Northern California and St. Lucia

So, which would you choose? I'm thinking Florida would make a nice Sat. - Sat. vacation next Christmas. The kids would be a perfect age for the theme parks and my wife likes to go someplace warm. I also think we might try to do a mommy-daddy weekend in Paris sometime when we find cheap airfare, but I'm not too keen on the French based on my personal experiences. I think Greece will be the next big vacation, but given past experience, that won't be until 2016-2017.

Let it snow; Let it snow; Let it snow.

What's that you say? Christmas is over? And you other people say that you wish I were dead for being so cheerful about the snow? Well, excuuusssseee me!

I can't help being cheerful. I love the change of seasons. When we're in the middle of any given season, I want it to exemplify that season. That means I want it bright and damp in Spring, hot and humid in Summer, brisk and breezy in Fall and cold and snowy in Winter. Sure, shoveling gets tedious, but it is good exercise. If I wanted to see green all the time, I would move someplace closer to the equator. I love my Southern New England home.

Playing with electricity

In the past couple weeks, I have had cause to play with electricity twice (and plan to do it one more time). The simple project was rewiring a Xmas snowflake. While easy, it was mind numbingly tedious. I got this big light-up snowflake that looked perfect hung over our front door roof. The second year, it still looked perfect, but there were a couple (non-replaceable) lights out. Then, I forgot to take it down... For 2 years. Needless to say, it looked terrible. The clear vinyl rope light that it was constructed with was now an opaque, yellowish brown color. None of the lights lit, even replacing the fuse. Well, I looked around for a replacement to no avail. Ideally, I wanted the same look in an LED device for the energy savings and long life. My sister found a giant LED snowflake at Target which looked nice and worked well enough, but it just wasn't the same. Well, since I never throw certain things away, I still had the old snowflake hanging around the attic. Well, I decided it was worth a shot to try to replace it. Here are the results:

Project number two has far less interest to the general public, but was a lot more fun and useful for me.Also, it was a nice learning experience which is always a plus. At 32 degrees, water freezes. In winter, temperatures are routinely at or below 32 degrees. All life (as we know it) needs water to live. Chickens are alive. Therefore, chickens need water which isn't frozen solid into a block of ice. More specifically, I paid $40 for a nice galvanized chicken waterer and I really don't want to to warp or break from freezing. Also, I don't want to have to deal with a frozen waterer when I'm trying to get out the door to work and whatnot. After a bunch of research, I decided I didn't want to pay the $60 for a heated waterer base. I picked up a water heater thermostat switch for $8 and a strand of C-7 Xmas lights for $6. Everything else I had on hand. Here is what I started with:

On the left is the water heater thermostat. It's a simple switching device. When desired the temperature (set by a small screw) is reached, the circuit is switched off. The middle is a piece of scrap wood with an outlet box nailed onto it. On the right is a large square cookie tin with a set of clear C-7 Xmas lights inside. Also included in the photo are my trusty quick wire strippers (much better than my teeth) and a standard power cord. Ideally, I would have liked to use a higher gauge 3-pronged plug, but I didn't want to destroy any of my long cords. I cut the outlet end off the cord. The white wire is wired to the white side of the outlet. The black wire (yes, it's a white cord, so both wires are white) runs to a screw on the thermostat switch. Another black wire jumps from the other screw on the thermostat to the black side of the outlet. The outlet was stuffed into the box, and the thermostat was attached to the piece of wood in an orientation so that it would read the temperature of the inside of the cookie tin instead of the surface or the air or the bottom. The lights were plugged into the outlet and the end of the cord was secured to the wood with wire staples. It was all stuffed inside the cookie tin and plugged in. It was then that I realized that I didn't buy a rubber grommet... Or drill a hole for the grommet... Or run the wires through the grommet / hole so I could close the box. Crap! Here it is at that stage:

 OK, well a few days later, I swung by the hardware store and got a box of grommets. I drilled a hole, unwired, rewired through the hole, realized I forgot to run the wire through the grommet, unwired again, rewired through the grommet AND the hole, set the grommet in the hole, arranged everything in the tin and plugged it in. It worked like a charm. I put the lid on and left it for a couple hours. Initially, I had it set at 90 degrees. Inside the box, it may have been 90, but it was barely even warm to the touch. I bumped it up to 125 and it seemed to be noticeably warm but not even close to hot. It seems to be working. I have had it out in the coop for the past week and yesterday it was 22 in the coop and the water was still liquid. I don't have a picture, of the finished product, but if you use your imagination, it looks like a cookie tin with an electrical cord hanging out the side.I think the next project is going to be a variation on this to warm up the coop a bit. It's not supposed to be 19 degrees here in early December and I really don't want my chickens to get frostbite. Supposedly, they can handle down to single digit temps just fine, but I don't want them to be miserable. Also, most importantly, I want them to be able to do their job (lay eggs). If it gets too cold for too long, they may slow down laying. I really don't want to pay to feed them if they aren't returning on my investment.

Gardening: What To Plant?

I have been thinking about next spring and gardening already. Most years I have so much going on that I don't think about it until January and then get an itchy trigger finger to start planting with cheap poor quality but expensive seeds. I'm rewarded with poor germination, slow, leggy growth and usually fungus or insect damage before they reach the outside air.

I have had pretty good luck with perennials and want to expand my flower gardens significantly so I know I want some of those. The only problem is I really want all of those. I'm not so much of a landscaper as I am a plant collector. My gardens typically end up with one or two of everything. Plants are too expensive so I get one, plant it and plan to divide it in a few years. So far, I haven't had to do much dividing, so that doesn't work out that well. There are a few favorites of mine which I don't have. Chief among them is oriental poppy. I don't know why, but I can't seem to get them to germinate. So I have a few plants to start, but I really want some unusual plants. Also, I need to find some more things that work in my front yard. That ideal poses a significant challenge because very little grows well in the deep shade of the North side of a house.

Moving on to the vegetables, I have had disappointing tomatoes since I move into this house. The first few years, blame fell mostly on the soil. I made new gardens directly in the ground which even had a hard time growing grass. The tomatoes were totally flavorless and few. I made a raised bed on top of one of the gardens and got decent flavor and production one year, but every year after that the weather has been highly uncooperative. We started getting a blight or two which are manageable unless you have cold, rainy years like we did last year. This year was almost a total loss. We had several problems but the biggest issue was that the fruit never ripened. It only started turning red when it started rotting on the vine.

Finally, I have been looking into forage for the chickens. I want at least 3 seasons of forage which I can plant, successively after the chickens decimate an area. I plan to double their run and then divide it with bird netting so I can replant.That way, they will always have an area of dirt to scratch and bathe in and an area of fresh foliage to eat. Looking at my options, it seems that I have taking on a somewhat challenging effort. There are mixes that I could get, but most are constructed for grazing animals. Right now, I'm leaning towards making my own mix, but that adds a whole lot more guess work into the equation. The area gets partial sun and is a moderate slope. Right now, I'm leaning towards a mix of clover, peas, mustard, and turnips. I might mix in some carrots and salad greens and possibly some mangel (which is apparently, a beet). I figure the partial sun will only be an issue for production of fruit, which isn't an issue if I plan to let the chickens decimate them in their vegetative growth stage.

So, what does all this come down to? Right now, I'm planning on installing the third raised bed to grow tomatoes. I'm hoping that will take care of the disease problems for at least one year. I'm thinking about solarizing one or both of the other beds to try to kill off some bad stuff. Finally, I'm going to have to put together a list of seeds to order from someplace that sells high quality seeds. Maybe I'll think about doing that in January.

Politics: Will RI Wake Up?

If I was a betting man, I would guess not. The residents of the state are all too happy to keep feeding at the trough. Meanwhile, the bill for the feast keeps being passed along to their children. Inevitably, the loan sharks will come looking for their money. Who do you think will pay it? The top of the economic food chain has already left. The upper middle class are on their way out now.

Actually, unless something changes, state bankruptcy and liquidation are in our future. When the rest of the world is back out of severe recession, we will still be limping along. I know nothing will really change after next week's election. Even if every elected position in the state goes as good as possible, we're still in for at least a decade or two of pain.

My only real hope is that Bob Healey will win the L.G. office. I would take that as a sign that the state isn't entirely lost. The position of L.G. in this state is a joke. Bob Healey is the only one who has the balls to say that.

Aside from Bob Healey, I really hope we don't end up with Linc Chafee as our Governor. I don't know if the man is clueless, a complete idiot or actually mentally handicapped. He really seems like all of the above, yet because of his last name, he has a pretty good chance of being our next Gov. How does one promise to raise taxes in the state with the highest taxes already? Even still, he's leading in the polls. The results of this election may cause us to seriously consider moving out of state.

Livestock: Chicken Thoughts

Winter is fast approaching. This has me considering how the chickens will fare in the coming winter. Generally, Rhode Island Reds are supposed to be pretty hardy. That said, the laws of nature still hold true in my yard, despite my best efforts. I've also got a two week vacation set squarely in the middle of winter which has me thinking of "automation." Lastly, I've been thinking forward to next spring and beyond.

Automation and winter go together. Partly, I can see water changes, feeding, etc. will be less than enjoyable at 20 degrees with high winds. Ideally, I would have a hopper feeder which can hold several weeks of food. Water is a huge concern for me. I've read stories of chickens dying from dehydration in a little more than a day. Plus, the engineer in me wants a level.of redundancy. Right now, I'm thinking of a heater under the existing waterer plus a heated dog dish plus some sort of coop heating. Then, I will have someone come by twice a day to check on them when I am away. Still, it would be nice to have a multi-day supply just in case. Maybe I'm making too big a deal of this.

Beyond water, I was thinking about automation of coop opening and closing. If I could automate the opening there would only be one daily task to offload, when needed.

Totally unrelated to winter, I've been thinking of the future. Specifically, I've been thinking about sustainability and forage management. The current plan is to shift around the run fencing to provide new forage while letting other areas regrow. I figure that I can rotate their run continuously so they have fresh greens all the time. In order to do that, I have to come up with a 3+ season pasture management plan which I can use on a 30'x15' area for 6 chickens. What was that about over thinking things?