Rick and Ellen's Homestead

OlJarhead · July 08, 2013, 02:21:23 PM

I could start them at home and have about 800 sq feet of garden and lots of neighbors have gardens, flowers and fruit trees.

Might have to be more vigilant at getting ride of the wasps though! We fight them every year but I do see bees around.

My thought would be to start them here at home (and since I work from home I'm around to feed them) and then to take them to the cabin when it's warm enough for them at night -- there are LOTS of forest flowers and berry bushes around.

I wouldn't ask that you stopped by this far out of your way! but i appreciate the offer.

I found a site online that sells small starter hives that I found interesting...of course I'd also have to figure out what to do with everything once it was time to harvest! lol

rick91351 · July 08, 2013, 03:04:20 PM

Quote from: OlJarhead on July 08, 2013, 02:21:23 PM
I could start them at home and have about 800 sq feet of garden and lots of neighbors have gardens, flowers and fruit trees.

Might have to be more vigilant at getting ride of the wasps though! We fight them every year but I do see bees around.

My thought would be to start them here at home (and since I work from home I'm around to feed them) and then to take them to the cabin when it's warm enough for them at night -- there are LOTS of forest flowers and berry bushes around.

I wouldn't ask that you stopped by this far out of your way! but i appreciate the offer.

I found a site online that sells small starter hives that I found interesting...of course I'd also have to figure out what to do with everything once it was time to harvest! lol

Hey send a link either here or PM me. Let me see the starter hive before you dive in. Some of those are trash but cost as much as what I can send you the links to. And you will have a lot more luck and be happier.

The Warre Hives would be fun to try as they as they are 100% home made and with your / my wood supply You could be a bee zillionarie in no time....

July 08, 2013, 03:16:21 PM

http://www.dadant.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1255
Had to search my bookmarks for it

rick91351 · July 08, 2013, 03:55:51 PM

Quote from: OlJarhead on July 08, 2013, 03:16:21 PM
http://www.dadant.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1255
Had to search my bookmarks for it

OJ That is exactly where I was going to send you for just that.

You will also need a smoker

http://www.dadant.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=91_103&products_id=44

and a hive tool

http://www.dadant.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=91_29&products_id=1297

The heavy vial and bee suit is really not needed unless you get some real nasty breed of bee. Even the tame ones can get on the fight I got nailed repeatedly last year head and belly one time. I spent several hours sort of wondering 911? I was itchy and sort of just needing to set. It was a cloudy and windy and that is bad. Do not work bees on cloudy or like yesterday here windy days. After church we decided to slip new supper on to a mega hive we have going. Ellen was standing a long ways away minding her own business and a stiff breeze (wind) came up and she got hit on the forearm and she was not even close to me.

The Dadant Store at Chico, Ca. is where we pull in and load up. We get the bees out of Yuba City, Ca. Dadant is a great place to buy from...

OlJarhead · July 08, 2013, 04:22:42 PM

Nice to know!

I'd probably get a suit to start out just so I didn't have to worry about getting stung -- I have tendency to kill things that bight me! lol and I'd rather NOT kill bees!

July 09, 2013, 12:02:38 AM

Now it is time to attach the foundation to the frames.

Foundation comes in two types real and a plastic type. Most of this type has a coating of bees wax applied and a promise that it is good as natural. Lies, lies and more lies. I have hives that have that type of foundations and bees will build on them but 100% bees wax rules. Bees just love the real thing.

If you have hives you can in fact send your waste bees wax in and they will press it in to foundation sheets. You get it back neatly papered and boxed. Or you can buy it out right from the supply houses.

So you draw from the foundation box how many you will need. Do not remove the paper it is important. You will need another jig this one is very simple that allows the frame to lay flat.

With the paper side out and the wax facing toward the wire. Carefully fit the foundation into the grove on the top or the bottom. Then carefully work into the other groove. This has to be done when the foundation is limber. If it is too limber put in the fridge for a short time. If it is to stiff gently warm.

Then lay into the groove with the paper side down and there is a tools that makes this embedding easy. It is like a rowel on a spur. Gently roll the rowel over the wax. Do not press to hard lest you slice the wax.

Pull the frame off the jig remove the paper and seat the wire to the ends of the wax with a little thumb or figure pressure

Then set it aside in a super.

This is a quick check of this hive I have pulled the top off and set it a side and removed the inner cover. I have turned the inner cover over and placed it by the hive entrance. Inner cover and the top is an interesting place. The only thing I can equate it with is a place where some bees hang out. Sort of reminds me of a place where you go you do not want anyone to know. This is a hive that looks out over our orchard and the blue berries and toward a large draw. I put a super on it several weeks ago and checked it. The bees never went up so I called my bee guru and asked what do I do? He drove up and looked it over. He pulled a couple brood frames from below and located them above. He explained he felt is was because of the wax coated plastic foundation. The empties we pulled went down in to the bottom deep super. You can see the two blown out frames center. The bees are starting to populate the top super and they are filling it now.

This is one of those frames and the brood is hatching as you can see. You can see also that they filled around the top corners with honey. Pay no attention to the man behind the veil with the dumb look.

This is inside the bottom super every thing looked good!! You can see the inner cover leaning in to the entrance

This is like a hive on steroids. It has out preformed them all. Even the older hives...... But it is not without problems and the guru again blames it on plastic cell foundation. They want to glue the bottom frames to the top frames. I have had to get in there and scrape them all off several times. We put the super you have seen being made on this hive. But I had to once again tear it apart and scrape it all down again. While I was doing that Ellen was minding her own business and got stung out of the blue. One thing - a wind came up and that is not a good bee time. So that hive now has another super on it.

My bee guru owns these hives here and a few more up here. That is Ellen with the bee suit on after she got stung. My bee guru and I worked at the railroad together for about 30 years. He has put up with my moody times and I put up with his weirdness for a heck of a long time.

He likes to paint and trim his hives with colors. He says it is because the bees id them better coming in with a full load so he says.

OlJarhead · July 09, 2013, 12:00:08 PM

Good stuff! Just makes me more motivated

rick91351 · July 11, 2013, 01:08:03 AM

The last couple nights the dogs have been very up set over something. I went out this evening to put some water on the raspberries. They are on the east end of the orchard next to the fence. I think we have about of 120 feet of them growing right now. And doing very well. Well discounting the fact that there is a drought here and our spring we are watering them from is starting to dwindle. I started the pump and walked up to them and to check and see if the drip hoses were working. I was startled by a couple cow elk grunting back and forth on the other side the fence in some willows and pine trees. But very close. I did not have my camera. I grunted back and they talked back a little. Soon I seen them in the timber on the ridge above the orchard. I went back to the fifth wheel and told Ellen. She grabbed her binoculars and climbed up on the hill above the trailer that looks out that way. When I can back from my other chores she was returning and said she had a great view of them working through the trees and the brush.

After dark Ellen was out on the deck and she said she heard a sort of whistling from up that way. They get very little wolf pressure there. They are sandwiched between several cabin developments, ranches and roads.

OlJarhead · July 11, 2013, 09:26:27 AM

Cool! I was expecting a bear story when I started reading!

July 13, 2013, 08:21:20 AM

Great news came the last couple days.

We are approved for a loan. We really do not need much but enough that I did not want to start the house and come up short and panic. We are now waiting for an appraiser. Sounds as if the one we ended up with is good and fair. Problem is he popular with a lot of places and very busy. He spent this last week in court as an expert witness putting him further behind.

We changed plans and are getting some rebids. With my / our new design the bid on the trusses are almost half as much as the prior bid. Heating and cooling is virtually the same. Plumbing is a little cheaper as we omitted a toilet and shower in the mud room. But opted for a stand alone off the beaten path utility. I felt good enough about the progress I pulled electric and plumbing permits yesterday. I was able to do that over the internet. $455 for the house and the shop that never got wired.

Last week I handed in our plans and engineering and had a meeting with the new building inspector. (Builder Bob is no longer there.) We dropped in to see what the damages were and how many changes the inspector came up with. With no real changes we were handed the form to take over to the highway district for them to sign off on, and then the State Health Department has to sign off on sewer and septic. We have to attach a better sight plan for that as well with a more detailed layout and measurements. The Building Inspectors Clerk 'costed out' the square footage and looks like our building permit will be right at $3,000. But we get $750 back at completion.

rick91351 · July 17, 2013, 12:52:48 AM

Our friend up here that owns saw mill, the logging and road building equipment. Lately I have been doing some flagging for him when he is transporting his big excavator. He just finished up a job for a day light basement and rebuilding about a mile of road that had not been maintained.

He was having to road everything over a mile to get to the transport truck

This is the east side of the mountain our place looks out on. The ranch is over that ridge and in another valley.

The crawler ended up in some timbered cabins above us a couple miles away. I was at his place yesterday, me and Pastor Joseph we were planing some 1X6s Doug Fir for some flooring in our house. We got finished and I took it home and stickered it. I looked up and a fire was kicking up to the west. And I could not tell how close it was. Looked a ways away then it looked close. My friend stopped by on the way up to work on his cat. I told him, "I was going to give you call and have you put on your big disk on my big tractor and I would come over and get it." He has our 150 horse International over at his place right now. As I pointed to the smoke. He took of to work on his crawler. Came back by to get the transport as I was talking to the concrete contractor about our house.

He showed up there at our place again in the evening with his crawler. Unloaded it and took off. He said he would rather have it there than up on the woods and have a fire brake out. Good to have friends like that. But this is that kind of place.

rick91351 · July 19, 2013, 11:54:13 PM

Yesterday we turned in a required heating and cooling engineering litany for the house. We had e-mailed the required res-check. We also had made the tour of the county and state offices from the guy that says it is okay to have our lane there. Like he says he really can not say much because it comes out on a private road then on to a forest service road. And he had - had to sign off on it for the shop and the last years modular that went bust. Then to Southwest Idaho District Health. He also had to had to sign off again for the shop and the last year modular bust as well. We handed it all in and $3000 and we pulled the building permit on the house. We are still waiting on the appraiser! We have been assured this next week.

A couple days ago I received an e-mail from our concrete contractor. A couple years ago he bragged he could not even turn on a computer. Now I received his cut and bend list for the house via e-mail.

Plus a couple bids I had asked for. So this morning at fist light I went over and started pulling all the #4 rebar I can remember hording. I sat up my cutter bender and went to work. End of the day I had cut and bent 135 verticals for the walls. 48 horizontal pieces for the columns on the front and rear porches. 7 48 inch bars for joining the pony wall footings to the main footings as we are going to drop them down to allow for more crawl space. I was short that much 48 inches needed 8 of them. But we have a pile iron.

I thought I was pretty efficient this is the scrap pile.... I will take it down to my friend that owns the lumber yard and he can sell those short pieces.

The weather cooperated so well it was 98 and there is something special about 98 and the mountains. They are advertising red flag conditions tonight and tomorrow on east of here.

Doug fir boards stickered for drying. I have not put a pile top on it yet. Got to remember that

We are going to use this fir for flooring in the house. While this build is not going to be cheap in product and build. We are using as much as we can that we have had stashed and socked away for this occasion......

rick91351 · July 23, 2013, 01:29:26 AM

I noticed one of the bee guru's hives was not acting normal. So I opened it up and one of the foundations he put together and collapsed and folded up in the frame. So I went and got one put a new foundation on a frame and took it up to the hive.

This is the inner cover there is a top and bottom space wise. Hives and bees are very space sensitive.

Take your hive tool and brake the inner cover loose from the top of the hive. Some bees glue everything down real well. When you have it loose prop it up by the entry and the little critters will often times scurry right in. There is usually quite a few hanging on. This is is the collapsed foundation on the frame. Some times so many bees get on them they pull the foundation loose or it was not seeded to the frame wires very well.. This is 100% bees wax.

Here you can see these bees are starting to 'blow out' or make comb on this foundation.

Looking down in to the hive with a frame out....

This hive lost its queen and mother nature took over they raised a new queen as advertised and she is laying eggs now. They are doing remarkable well for a sort of hard luck hive. Hopefully the new queen will work her magic.

Saturday we went out and picked up the rebar for the house. I finished cutting and bending today. The 5/8 ths stuff is a real man killer. I started this morning at first light. Well before it warmed up but I was not quick enough.......

.

rick91351 · July 28, 2013, 01:00:09 AM

I was having a discussion with the Chairman of the local historical society. I have several pieces of old horse drawn equipment he was wondering that I might donate or lend to the local museum they are trying to put together. This discussion led me to wondering about an old hay stacker that my grandfather had. It was drug to its final resting place and left to rot away. It has been there for the last 55 or 60 years I can remember and looked about the same. Though I have not taken time to go take a real hard look but from the road it never changes and then I never change that much either ...... Until I go to do something....

But I told the chairman I would look at restoring it one of these years. We could demo it with several of us men and a team of horses. But first I have to build a house and the hen house still is not done and the wood sheds and the list goes on. The chairman says that he would donate some poles. I will see if he can donate a couple timbers as well. Any thing will help.

Today I went over that way to see if it was still complete so we can take measurements and make a set of working drawings. WOW it was all there. No one has stolen the iron or the pulleys or the springs nor a couple castings. But time is taking a bite and I hope we can get it drawn before a fire comes along this year and destroys it.

It is raspberry season and we have been pouring our short supply of water to them. Ellen this morning went out and picked them clean and this evening she has a lot more ripe.

Lord help us all when these little guys and gals get to be boring and common place.....

Ellen has been trying to get a good photo of a Rufouse Hummingbird

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufous_Hummingbird

He seems to rule the roost

July 29, 2013, 11:51:29 AM

Cool and Cool

Our neighbor has some old buckboard in his yard that looks to be some kind of implement since it has rails in the center and some sort of rake on the back -- I often think about it and wonder if it could be restored.

MikeOnBike · July 29, 2013, 12:39:02 PM

What is a good cutoff date to quit feeding the hummingbirds so they will be sure to migrate? Is it temperature based?

We are trying to decide if it is ok to take a feeder up this next weekend and feed for a few more weeks or a month or so.

rick91351 · July 29, 2013, 01:04:59 PM

Quote from: MikeOnBike on July 29, 2013, 12:39:02 PM
What is a good cutoff date to quit feeding the hummingbirds so they will be sure to migrate? Is it temperature based?

We are trying to decide if it is ok to take a feeder up this next weekend and feed for a few more weeks or a month or so.

Just read that you really do not need to remove feeders. When it is time for them to pull up stakes - they will leave. We always pull them when we notice they are not getting any attention. But the article I read suggests leaving them out another like two weeks in case there are few stragglers. Not what I heard in the past. But I know when we lived in the valley they would just leave one day.

These two feeders we have we should sell tickets. There is like twenty or thirty here in the morning at first light.

Guess it is dry there like here? Knock on wood we have not had much lighting except one night and it rained so hard with it you could not even get a fire started with napalm.

rick91351 · July 29, 2013, 01:07:26 PM

Quote from: OlJarhead on July 29, 2013, 11:51:29 AM
Cool and Cool

Our neighbor has some old buckboard in his yard that looks to be some kind of implement since it has rails in the center and some sort of rake on the back -- I often think about it and wonder if it could be restored.

Send a photo - bet some one here on the forum can figure it out.....

rick91351 · August 05, 2013, 11:02:04 AM

Over the week end we took the clearance for the aforementioned modular that has just sat from last fall to now waiting and waiting

To this clearance that lines up with the new plans we had drawn and the engineering done on.

Tig is still hanging in there as the 'job dog'

A few years ago when we built the shop and she was the official job dog and supervisor

OlJarhead · August 05, 2013, 11:16:27 AM

WhooHoo! underway!

August 15, 2013, 06:46:56 AM

Quick note: We are involved and affected with both the Pony Fire complex to our south. And the Elk Complex that more or less has us in its grip. The two largest fires in America. Both now have tallied up over 260,000 acres of south west Idaho.

We finally got power back on this time after a couple days when hundreds of poles burnt Friday night. Power was restored for about eight hours then it took another run and hooked back and took down hundreds more. Ranchers are out huge counts on their livestock and farmers wheat crops have disappeared in smoke.

Both started by lighting the night we poured the footings for the house.

Personally we have been fighting fire with hand lines and off the fourwheelers. I have been working behind a lot of both private dozers and contracted and putting out spot fires. Yesterday was the first day we worked on our own place to get it ready for what is to come if one of the two or both fires left here turn and make a run for us. The Elk fire made a huge run east but these two fires are left here it left behind refuse to go down. The Pony Complex ran west. We are safe really from the Pony now. We just have there two prongs of the Elk Fire that they can not get out that have remained here. Fixed wing retardant air craft are like non existent after the wings stated falling off a couple years ago. Do not count on them. We have had pretty good support from Sky Cranes and other rotatory aircraft. Today and tomorrow are the most critical for our missed location. Really hope to post some photos that I do not have yet. We have been going and doing to much for photo ops and the camera was not charged so I thought.

For the want to build cabin guys and gals I would really think about an nice large RV that you can hook on and leave after seeing the remains of several cabins and houses. Please do not think it can not happen. I have seen these huge fires here twice. So far both have missed us. 1992 hit the corner of our property. 2013 all I can say it is not over.......

Redoverfarm · August 15, 2013, 07:22:47 AM

Hope you are able to escape both. It looks as if you have a pretty fire free area of the build. Probably be good to keep it that way for future fires.

rick91351 · August 15, 2013, 08:09:24 PM

Quote from: Redoverfarm on August 15, 2013, 07:22:47 AM
Hope you are able to escape both. It looks as if you have a pretty fire free area of the build. Probably be good to keep it that way for future fires.

Thanks John we do not take any chances so to speak. But know things can turn in seconds and they do.

As far as defense of these types of fires you do what you can. But they toss embers and burning bark for miles. Neat and tiddy are the best things you can do.

Today is / was a sort of dead day. I moved the fifthwheel back to the ranch from our escape route. Drained the black water and the gray water and galley tanks. It is not secured by the jacks just plugged in and ready to go by rolling in the slide and hooking up.

The smoke blew away from the mountain just a bit ago. There is about seven or eight Hot Shot crews brushing and hand lining a cat line that mysteriously got punched in from the bottom.

It is where they stopped the '92' fire from going the other way.

A well done back burn from last night but it got freaky windy but all went well

This is just east of where they burnt the canyon last night. The burn was just below those low hills and the first time in a week that there is no smoke from that direction.

One of the heavy choppers that has been working but grounded today because of smoke viability until just a few hours ago

The same fire that was here that made a run at Pine and Featehrville. Twenty some miles away, but started just a few miles southeast of us.

Proof we did get the footing poured.

rich2Vermont · August 16, 2013, 08:17:09 AM

Just wanted to let you know our thoughts are with you guys. I'm an U of I alumnus, though it's been many years since I've been back there, I have warm memories and feelings for that part of the country. I found this current fire map of what I'm assuming is your area.

It's pretty illustrative of just how much you're between an ember and a piece of charcoal. Hoping things improve soon. Cheers, Rich.

rick91351 · August 16, 2013, 10:02:22 AM

Thanks Rich... Go Vandals... We are living the life ..... Some people retire golf and travel, some just sit. We sort of live the life we dreamed of now. So blessed with such a great place and a great bunch of people up here where we are located. Most will grow back and friendships have grown as well.