Weaning Time

I Love Hard Work

Anytime I’m near a honeybee hive, I linger. I can’t seem to help it. Even though my “to do” list is as long as any honeybee’s, I just stand there and gawk. Perhaps it’s the 40 years I’ve spent managing construction sites that has me so enamored. There is no one in charge of the hive, but everything gets done. There are no bees leaning on shovels, drinking coffee, or chatting on their cell phones. The vast majority of the bees in the hive will only live a few weeks - they quite literally work themselves to death. At the hive entrance, there is always an endless torrent of bees coming and going. Most of them are foragers, collecting everything the hive needs to thrive (pollen, nectar, propolis, water). When they return, they are met by “guard bees”. If the guards don’t recognize the smell of an incoming bee – it is either chased away or killed. Once safely past security, the foragers are greeted by specialized worker bees inside the hive that help them unpack their bounty. Pollen is the only source of protein the hive gets and is vital as a food source. Each forager bee will visit only one type of flower on any given foraging journey, and when they return their pollen sacks range in distinct colors from bright yellow, pink or a deep amber color depending on which type of flower they visited. “Nurse bees”, inside the hive, mix the pollen with honey and their enzyme rich saliva to make fermented “bee bread”. The bread is then fed to all the bees in the hive, and any surplus is stored in empty cells for future use. The nurse bees consume more than their share of the bread and in turn produce royal jelly which is fed to developing larvae and the queen. The larvae are fed the jelly for the first 3 days of their life - the queen is fed jelly throughout her life. The foraging bees are fed last and if there isn’t enough left over to feed them their full ration, the foragers get the message that they need to work harder to gather more pollen for the hive. (FYI- this kind of “feedback loop” would NOT work well with me.) Nectar is transferred from the foraging bee to worker bees and the enzymes it is exposed to in the process turns it into diluted honey. Young bees are in charge of storing the watery honey in a comb and fanning it with their wings to evaporate the excess moisture. Once it is the right consistency, they cap the cell with wax. Tree resin is brought back to the hive, mixed with honey and saliva to create propolis. The building crew inside the hive uses the propolis to cover the bottom of an empty cell before the queen lays an egg in it. They also use it to fill in small cracks in the hive, and somewhat ominously, it is also used to encapsulate any intruder that was killed by the guard bees but is too heavy to remove. Propolis is what gives beeswax that wonderful aroma. Without it, the wax has no scent. Water is as essential to bees as it is to humans. Water collector bees work tirelessly bringing water into the hive. The water is used to make bee bread, royal jelly, and to reconstitute stored honey. On hot days it is also sprayed over the surface of empty cells while several thousand young worker bees flap their wings creating a wing powered cooling system not unlike our own air-conditioning systems. By human standards, I’m a pretty industrious being, but I’m sure bees consider me a total slouch. Every time they see me, there I am leaning on a shovel, just watching them. For Christmas, they’ll probably get me a t-shirt that says “I love hard work- I could sit and watch it all day.” Thanks for reading Clatter Ridge Farm! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clatterridgefarm.substack.com [https://clatterridgefarm.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Stacking Hay

I was thinking, that if I was ever told I only had one hour to live, but I could spend it doing anything I wanted, I’d choose stacking 400 bales of hay in our hay loft, on a 97-degree day – because that hour would last an eternity. Normally we wait until the weather turns cooler to get the hay in, but we were worried that the price is going to skyrocket again this year, so we went ahead and ordered it. It was delivered, of course, on what turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year. When the truck arrives, we put our hay “elevator” on the bed of the truck where the driver can load the bales onto the conveyor that transports them up to the loft, where I stand waiting to unload them. The fifty-pound bales come quickly, one after another, and it’s always a struggle just to keep up. I grab each bale as soon as it comes within reach, but before it falls off the end of the conveyor, either dropping back down to the ground - or worse yet, derailing the rest of the load. Once I’ve successfully grabbed the bale, I throw it to the person doing the stacking. Each bale lands with a decisive “thunk”. The interminable mechanical clacking of the hay elevator reminds me incessantly that I forgot to tighten the chain - and the screeching of the gear cogs lets everyone know I also forgot to oil the gears. Unsuccessfully, I try to distract myself by making up lyrics that go with the screech, the clack and the thunk. Here’s the best I could do: The screech of the cog the clack of the chain the thunk of the bale... The screech of the cog the clack of the chain the thunk of the bale... The screech of the cog... I know- it needs a little work. Even in cooler weather it’s a monumental chore to get the hay in. Last year, I was the one stacking the bales, and even though it was a crisp November morning I quickly overheated so I removed my sweatshirt and hung it up inside the loft - promptly forgetting about it until the last bale was unloaded and I started cooling off again. Calculating that the sweatshirt was, at that point, buried about 400 bales in, and we only use 5 bales a day, I probably wouldn’t see it again until sometime in late February. I was extremely pleased, however, to discover that my car keys were not in the sweatshirt pocket, which in itself would have necessitated making the hard choice between re-stacking the 400 bales to retrieve them, or trying to convince Anne it was time to buy a new truck.. Thanks for reading Clatter Ridge Farm! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clatterridgefarm.substack.com [https://clatterridgefarm.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The Gift of Clover

When our sheep first started grazing at Hill-Stead, the pasture consisted of multiflora rose, a few saplings and poison ivy. The brambles were so dense the sheep’s wool would frequently get hopelessly tangled up in the thorns and they’d be completely unable to extricate themselves. I’d rescue them by cutting one thorny branch at a time until they were finally able to yank themselves free – inevitably trailing a branch of thorns which would shred my fingers as they bolted away. Despite its heavenly fragrance, I grew to hate multiflora rose with a passion. We mowed the roses with our “brush hog” and when they tried to regrow, the sheep grazed them down again, and again. After a couple years, the multiflora rose disappeared, but unfortunately, under those massive bushes was bare ground which quickly filled in with poison ivy. After a few more seasons of grazing, that too has pretty much disappeared and has been replaced by a wonderfully tasty assortment of grasses (according to the sheep). This spring, much to our great pleasure, we are beginning to see various clovers starting to grow. I have come to truly love clover if for no other reason than it is a very reliable and abundant source of nectar for honeybees. White Clover blooms early and persists when most other nectar sources wither from the heat. The fact that bees depend on clover is reason enough for me to welcome it to our fields, but there is more – much more! As a proud member of the legume family, clover is high in protein, which our sheep, on their strict vegan diet, have been otherwise lacking. From now on, our flock will benefit greatly from having a healthy dose of clover in every mouthful of grass. And they clearly love it. If the fact that the bees can depend on it, and our sheep love it, isn’t enough, there’s even more! Clover has the ability to draw nitrogen out of thin air and add it to the soil. If that’s not pure magic, I’m not sure what is. It’s a process called nitrogen fixation and scientifically it’s been well studied and understood - but to me it’s simply “a gift”. A well-grazed pasture doesn’t ever need chemical fertilizers. The clover adds enough nitrogen to the soil to encourage all the grasses around it to thrive. I don’t particularly care if our clover has three-leaves or four – I always feel incredibly lucky whenever I see it. Four leaf clovers in our pasture! Thanks for reading Clatter Ridge Farm! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clatterridgefarm.substack.com [https://clatterridgefarm.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

How a Dragon Flies

Early one morning, I found a Green Darner Dragonfly in our pasture. She had beads of dew still visible on her enormous gray eyes. I was completely mesmerized. We stared at each other, and I imagined that each of her 28,000 individual lenses were focused on me. I wondered what she was thinking. Was she as smitten with me as I was with her? Was she contemplating if I was a threat, or just considering if I would be better paired with red wine or would a dry white work just as well? Though completely harmless to a human being today, 300 million years ago running into this lady’s ancestor really would have been a frightening encounter. Pre-dinosaur dragonflies sported two-and-a-half-foot wingspans and with the same voracious appetite they have today, I’m sure she wouldn’t have limited herself to just devouring other insects. Today, the dragonfly’s insatiable appetite for gnats and mosquitoes has earned it the nick name “the mosquito hawk”. They can fly up to 18mph and can operate each of their four wings separately. Such nuanced control enables them to levitate like a helicopter, fly forwards, backwards or sideways on demand, and explains, in large part, their 95 percent success rate while hunting. Like the Monarch Butterfly, Green Darners have a multigenerational migration pattern. My new friend will head south once the temperatures here start to dip into the 50s. She’ll travel up to 87 miles a day to get somewhere warm and complete her journey (and her life) after mating and laying eggs in a pond or lake. Her offspring will hatch quickly but unlike their mother, they won’t migrate. The non-migratory generation will spend its’ entire life in the south, laying eggs and completing its life cycle over the course of a southern winter. The following generation (my friend’s grandchildren) will hatch and travel north again next spring to spend the summer in New England. Because they require clean water with a stable oxygen level to reproduce and survive, the presence of dragonflies is a sign of a healthy ecosystem. For this reason alone, I am proud to host them in our pasture, but even if they weren’t such a positive biomarker, I’d welcome them anyway. We have plenty of mosquitoes and it would just seem rude not to share! Thanks for reading Clatter Ridge Farm! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clatterridgefarm.substack.com [https://clatterridgefarm.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Busy as a Bird

It’s probably best, this time of year, to refrain from complaining about how busy you are to any livestock farmer you might meet – unless of course, you yourself are a livestock farmer – or a bird trying to raise a brood here in New England. I too, try not to whine, at least not out loud, as I rush about my day, trying to get everything done that needs to get done to keep our brand new chicks, lambs, and piglets alive and out of trouble. At first it’s easy - so long as they are warm, fed and safe from predators, keeping everyone alive is a piece of cake. Then they grow, bigger, stronger, louder and braver, testing the fence, the gates, the water trough, the tractor, the laws of gravity, and ultimately my patience. It’s as if the better job I do at keeping them healthy, the more energy they have with which to drive me insane. As I feel my life careening out of control, like a car crash in slow motion, I take great solace knowing that I’m not the only one – that, in fact, every bird I see is feeling pretty much the same. We are all struggling to stay one step ahead of the weather, our growing broods, and the number of hours allotted to us each day. This afternoon, I was installing temporary fencing so I could move the lambs to a new area to graze - just to keep them from breaking out of the old one. I knew full well that moving them wouldn’t solve the problem for long - that as soon as the grass was greener on the other side, these lambs would figure out a way to get back there. Exasperated, I looked up just as a bluejay flew past me with a piece of hay in his beak. He was clearly in a rush and totally focused on getting his mate the building materials she needed for their nest. His work this summer is just beginning, mine at least is partway through. First he would have the mad rush to find all the materials to build a nest so she could lay her eggs. Then as soon as the eggs hatched, he’d be working overtime to keep the hatchlings fed. Not far from the cedar tree that hides the bluejay’s new home, a pair of bluebirds were scouting out the bluebird house that Anne and I made for them a few years back. The male perched outside the house and waved his wing repeatedly. The “wing wave” is the male bluebird’s signal to the female to come and see. It means he’s found a nice spot and wants her approval. Perhaps I’m projecting a bit, but I swear I could see the fatigue in his waving wing. “C’mon this one’s perfect! It has everything you said you wanted! Can we please stop looking now?” Later in the day, while refilling the water trough that the piglets had flipped over (again), I saw a robin swipe a juicy worm from the muddy edges of the pig pasture. Since she didn’t immediately swallow it, I figured she was probably bringing it back to a nest filled with hatchlings. Shutting off the water, I called out “I’m sure they’ll appreciate all you’ve done for them when they have hatchlings of their own!” The chimney swifts chattered as they went frenetically past. If speed is any indication of their productivity, I can’t begin to imagine all that they accomplish in a day. A finch has moved into, and completely remodeled, the old robin’s nest on the transom above our front door. She collected dog hair from the dog bed on the porch, wool from below the skirting table where we sorted last fall’s sheep shearing, and some brilliant blue baling twine I’d discarded by the fence line. There really wasn’t anything wrong with the robin’s old nest but clearly, she wanted to make it her own. When the sun started to set, I checked to make sure all the chickens had returned to the coop and then locked them safely inside. A great horned owl flew off, disappointed, I’m sure, to have seen me coming. As the sky got darker, the swifts started to drop down into our chimney for the night - and some bats emerged from somewhere to take over as their night shift began. The finch on the transom was nestled in with her 3 hatchlings and watched as I called our dogs inside for the night and shut the door. “Sweet dreams” I said switching off the porch light and leaving her in total darkness. “Rest up - tomorrow is another day.” Thanks for reading Clatter Ridge Farm! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clatterridgefarm.substack.com [https://clatterridgefarm.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]