My Bee Keepers

What do you do when you are 8 months pregnant and have 11 hives to feed syrup to everyday?

In my case, I put the younger bee keepers to work! Indiana and Willow are most enthusiastic when it comes to helping me in the apiary.

Indiana has gotten really good at opening the hives and going through frames. Today we took the smaller nuc (shown in front) and placed it into a full hive (the box Indiana is touching).
I made that nuc over a month ago to raise a queen so I could re-queen a certain hive. In the meantime that hive raised its own new queen. This all equates to a new hive for the bee-yard.

Yes, these very lucky bee keepers get to drive a go-kart down to the bee yard. That is one great advantage to having so much room outdoors here.

I see a future in bee keeping for these youngsters!!!!!

lol
sami:-)

Where To Begin...

I have been absent, but only in blogging. I have been here in spirit, hoping to find the motivation to write and take pictures and such.
Tonight I have decided that sometimes you just gotta do it...even if it seems "blah" or if the energy just doesn't seem to be there.
Have I depressed you all yet? Hello? (crickets chirping.....)
I will spare the details and start fresh with new realistic facts that I will be having a baby soon (in about 4 more weeks) and that our school year starts in a week!!!! I am grateful we can start after Labor Day while the government schools started August 4th this year! That is crazy!!
Oh, and the picture above is my dad and Indiana. Precious, yes?

Here is Cricket,our new kitty. I went to the pet store to buy crickets for the bearded dragon and decided to bring this cute guy home. I do things like that, especially when I am pregnant, hormonal, and want to care for every animal in need.

The honeybees are doing great and well I now have 14 hives! See that long looking thing at the bottom of this picture? That is a queen cell. A new queen will emerge from that cell. These frames I like to take and start new hives, and that is why I have so many now. Hopefully I will have so much honey to extract next year that I will complain:-)

I am back and I promise to keep you all filled in on the happenings. It is busy here preparing for a new baby and school. I have been baking and cooking like crazy. My birth kit has been ordered and I have washed baby clothes:-)

Where did the summer go?
lol
sami:-)

The Week In Pictures

We always have interesting weeks around here and with 6 kids and a ton of critters, who's surprised?
I thought I would share some sights from the last few days here. Enjoy (or be scared).

This is Skipper the toad. he lives under the back deck somewhere and comes out every summer night. He has been around a couple of years now.

I suggested Devin build the kids a tree house so he decided to build a castle in the sky. Here he is with a friend lifting the floor joists up....way too high. (sigh)

This little doggie is Jill. She is the very new pet of my mom and dad. She likes to chew on Zeb's pacifiers.

This is Dolly, my mom's other dog. She has a mohawk and she is very sweet. She likes to stay the night and play with the bulldogs.

Speaking of bulldogs, this is Duke sleeping on the couch, which is strictly forbidden. I mean I do not allow any dogs on the couch, ever!

We have also discovered that Zelda can stick her tongue into her nose. How very talented.

Finally, this hive is looking like a hive that is considering a swarm. Tomorrow I will need to pull the honey supers off and go through the hive and see what is going on. It was very hot out today and they could just be cooling off, BUT that's alot of bees.
This was the week. I wonder what the weekend will bring.

Deadlines

This is my latest quilt creation. It is all ready for binding..which I fully intend to complete sometime this month. Whew!
I get like this every time I am pregnant. Why?????? I have started a kazillion sewing projects and am now under pressure to get them all finished before my due date. I think I do this because I know that after this little guy is here I will be through with projects for several months. So I bust my bootie beforehand. (sigh)
And the bees? Well, they are busy and I am almost ready to extract honey for the year. It has been very hot outside (it feels like July and August) so that requires the bee chores to be done early in the morning while it is still only in the 80's out. The hives look great though and I am now ordering more books on raising queens. Next year I hope to venture into that area. Of course it might interfere with my bon-bon eating but that's okay.
Bring it on........ or as Devin would say "grab it and growl!"

Just Say "NO!"

Here lately I have been really hating buying produce at the grocery store. In fact I have waiting for a day such as today when the season is here to grow my own.
Seriously, cucumbers are almost a dollar each at the store! Bell peppers are almost as much....NO WAY!
Well, for the next few months I can say ,"No thanks!" to the grocery store and YES!...to my garden.

The girls wanted to plant carrots this year and they were so happy to pull some up and eat'em today!

Lettuce, anyone? I have actually been harvesting this for a few weeks and it makes a terrific salad.

Now, these potatoes are another item the girls planted all by themselves. They are super easy to grow, super cheap, and tons of fun to harvest. Just pull'em up and grab the potatoes off. We actually got alot of potatoes from only 4 seed potatoes. Don't have a good spot for a garden? You can plant these in a large planter or a sand bucket even. Kids really enjoy them.

For goodness sakes, even Zeb helped us out! I am happy to have some FRESH cucumbers!!!!

Of course it was H-O-T outside today. I think it was 98 with a heat index of 100. Need I mention it was also H-U-M-I-D? We were not able to go work in the garden until 7:30 in the evening, but we loaded up and I must say that I think I need to get the canner ready. The tomato plants are loaded and will be ripening up in a week or so.
Summer at My Barefoot Farm. We are blessed.

Quick PIc

It has been a busy kind of week. Sorry that I only have a picture to share today.
Have a great weekend, ya'll!

Yep, the garden is growing well!

A Dog and His Pie

Okay ya'll, first I want to say that my blog has multiple personalities and cannot decide how it wants to look. You might notice the template changing several times a day, and that is because I am really way too picky. End of story. Please hang in there while I search for the perfect template, hopefully within the next year:-)

Now I want to talk about my dog. Here he is as a new puppy.

 He was a sweet puppy and we got him from Devin's brother who breeds these American Bulldogs. His full name is Duke of Georgia, but we just call him Duke. I was so happy to get a BIG dog to help keep the varmints and coyotes off the farm.

This is Duke now,a year later. He is still a sweet and gentle dog (at 100lbs) but  sometimes he gets into trouble. An example was this week when Zeb threw his soccer ball into the front yard and I forgot to bring it back inside at dinner time.

Duke? What are you doing? Did you do something to that ball like chew it?
**Please note his submissive and innocent manner when questioned**

 Here he is trying to convince me that he was just hanging out and tasting the fresh green grass and the ball just happened to roll into his head.

Upon further inspection, however, I believe I have adequate evidence to the contrary. Poor ball.

Then there was my blueberry pie I baked for dessert, using the last of my blueberry stash from last year.

By the way, this is not my pie....the pie I baked. I could never post a picture of my homemade pies because the crust NEVER looks that perfect. I try and try and make the crust from scratch and it tastes great but NEVER, EVER has it looked like that. It seems simple enough. You know that scene in Snow White when she is singing and making dinner for the 7 dwarfs and she is making little pies? She makes it looks SO simple and yet even after watching her after all these years I cannot make the perfect pie. Okay, moving on....

Well, the other day we were all outside sitting on the front porch sipping sweet tea (that's what you do here in the South) when we heard a crash from inside.

We rushed in to find a busted pie dish and pie all over the floor. This picture is but a glimpse of the mess. I had to wipe down cabinets as well as the floor.
Well, Duke was the only one in the house and yet where was he? Hmmmm. OH! Over there across the kitchen and near the back door. I see him.
"Duke! What happened? Who did this? How did my pie end up all over the floor?"

Well I may not be Sherlock Holmes, but I can figure this one out. Duke, of course, denies any part in the pie crash. I wonder if a mirror would help?
Who knew that dogs liked blueberries? You learn something new everyday here, as well as clean up at least one mess too.

Till next time,
Sami:-)