Not dead, just resting!

Okay, not resting either. Just crazy busy this time of year! My four new beehives are being set up this weekend. I've been painting hive boxes like crazy....

FYI, beehives don't have to be white! I picked the lime green myself, but the sage green was in the sale bin of off-colours at the hardware store. I like to keep the colours light, so that they don't absorb too much heat in summer. But really, you can paint 'em any colour you want. There is one woman  in the US who has a whole honey business centred on her red hives! :)

Oh, and for the record, I did not steal that "stop" sign on the back wall! It was here when we moved in. Just sayin'.

Meanwhile, it has been a whirl of activity behind the barn for several weeks now...

We wanted a wire roof over the duck and chicken run, to keep birds from flying out and getting eaten.

Apparently we now have the poultry Taj Mahal...

That netted fence in front is our temporary electrified wire fencing. I've had it out to get the birds out on the grass while the work is being done. The girl ducks just fly right over it, so they're on lockdown in the barn until this job is done.

We have an excellent carpenter (and former dairy farmer, who still farms cash crops! Can you say hard worker?) who built this to withstand the apocalypse. Well, the main thing is that it withstand huge loads of snow sliding off the barn roof onto it with crushing force. The first eight feet out from the barn will have tin roofing. The rest will be covered in corn crib wiring, the same wiring being used on the sides.

I swear it took them a week just to do the postholes!

I will so glad when this is done and I can stop worrying about birds flying out of their otherwise safe enclosure!

I am starting to think that there's more lumber in this roof than in our entire house.

And I managed to get my vegetable garden all planted, too...

I got the sign from one of my favourite Etsy shops, Bainbridge Farm Goods. They have some really great signs, including lots of chicken and honeybee ones! I'm amassing quite the collection,

I was a bit late planting some of my veggies this year but they should catch up and be fine. 

One of my Facebook buddies asked me what I've planted, so I made a list:

Onions, garlic, potatoes (Yukon Gold, Russian blue, Red Cloud), "Egyptian" onions, beets (red, gold, Chioggia), Swiss chard, many types of pumpkin, butternut squash, blue hubbard squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, tomatillos, ground cherry, carrots, lettuce, mesclun, peppers (Anaheim, jalapeno, Hungarian wax, Jimmy Nardello, Ancho Poblano, Black Hungarian, Sweet chocolate, serrano and Thai chili), summer squash, watermelon, red-seeded citron, three kinds of melon (Charentais, Sugar Baby and Cream of Saskatchewan), sunflowers, soybeans for edamame, green beans, orca beans, four kinds of kale, and I think that's it! The ongoing/perennial stuff is horseradish, salsify, raspberries, blueberries, Saskatoon berries, Haskap berries, Darrow blackberries, loganberries, red currants, black currants, Boysenberry, golden raspberries, asparagus, and strawberries!

Have you heard of haskap berries? I bought a couple of plants last year and am looking forward trying the fruit! The plant is also known as "blue honeysuckle." The fruit resemlbes a pendulous blueberry and some say the taste is a cross between blueberry and raspberry. We shall see!

I love Saskatoon berries, too. They are a bit like a blueberry but I like them even better.

This weekend, my friend Pierre is helping me set up four new beehives (those bee nucs I drove over to his place for queening a few weeks back!) We were going to do it last weekend, but decided to postpone it until the torrential rain stopped.

So it's been a little busy and I'm trying to catch up on my blogging. Hope you've all had a good week!