Garden, Bees, and Baby Turkeys!!

 This week's pic of the garden-we now have Jacob's Cattle beans that are about 5inches long! The green beans are blooming like crazy, the corn is coming right along, and so are the cucumbers! A few of the tomatoes are blooming in the raised beds up next to the house-and the comfrey is growing beautifully as well! We've had just enough rain to keep things growing-we did water a little on Wednesday-the cukes were looking a little droopy-but then we got nearly 2 inches of rain on Friday-thank you Lord!

 Jeff opened up the bee hive after Church today-and what a wonderful surprise! The bees have drawn out about 6 frames of foundation-and some are capped off! So all is progressing as should be. His second hive is due in this Friday from an apiary in Ohio-hopefully they will adjust and do as well as these have so far!

 First look into the hive in 2 weeks-surprise-they are building comb just like they should!

 And on Friday-the turkey hen hatched her eggs! She hatched 11 of the 12 she was sitting on-the 12th one she had pushed from the nest earlier in the week-guess she knew more than we did!

We've been having trouble keeping them in the pen with her-they go right through the wire on her pen. When we came in from Church today-she had flown out and was keeping up with them in the pasture. She even flew into the face of one of the cows who got a little to close! Now we have to decide whether to put her up-then pen the babies under a light in a cage-or just let her try to raise them on her on. I'm just scared the dogs will get them-or a night time visitor!
OK-I got a shock when I tried to log into the blog today-some of you already know-they changed the format-so it may take me a little while to get used to the change-but I did like the way they changed the picture downloads. I don't know how many times I've waited for pics to download-only to find I'd clicked on the wrong ones. Now we can see them ahead of time-YEAH!
The hummingbirds are finally showing up-we have at least 2 that are making an appearance-they were pretty busy this morning. We also weaned the calves today-it will be fairly noisy around here for the next few days until they get over not being with momma!
Have a great week!

My Tulip Tree is Blooming!

My tulip tree finally bloomed! I bought the tree nearly 10 years ago when I was delivering mail with some money I had received. An elderly neighbor of ours when I was growing up planted one and we watched it grow as we did. One day she called by Mom-all excited-her tulip tree was finally blooming! Today I finally understand her joy! I can only see 2 blooms at the moment-and they are really up high. When we added on to the porch last year-Jeff wanted to cut it down-but I talked him into just kinda building around it-so far so good! Now it might just get to stay!!

Newest pic of the garden-although it was taken on 4/5. We are due some really tough weather here shortly-and we fertilized and plowed them for the 2nd time yesterday-so I'll try and remember to take a new pic in a few days! Everything is growing like weeds this year-we are SO very thankful to God! We tend to get a little tickled at each other-we'll walk down and check on it in the morning (I'm still in fear the deer will find it and wipe us out like they did last year!)-when we check again in the evening-we can see the growth from earlier in the day! It really is amazing! Kaytlynn & Mady played in the corn yesterday-just running up and down the rows. I can't wait for it to be taller than them and really watch them play in it. We kept catching Kaytlynn just laying out in the rows-staring up at the sky-oh the days of being young!!

Bees are Here!

Well-we finally got to pick up Jeff's bees in Navasota yesterday! Here he is getting ready to put them in the truck for the trip home-they rode up front with us all the way home! 3,000-5,000 honey bees with 1 queen!

Getting the queen out of the main package-she's in the small box with the orange tag.

Queen cage with a few workers protecting her.

Jeff's got the queen in the frames and the workers are going in!

These bees are busy(hehe!) It only took a couple of hours and they were about their business-coming and going-it was amazing! He'll take the lid off tomorrow to make sure the queen is out and everything looks fine-then it stays closed for 2 weeks. Then open it up to make sure the queen is laying-then let them do their job!

Nothing has hatched yet in the incubator-doesn't look good. Don't know what went wrong-but better luck next time I guess. The garden on the other hand looks wonderful! I took a pic the other day-I'll try to get it posted asap.

We had a great Easter-started with Sonrise service @ 7am-then breakfast-then normal services. Had lunch at Jeff's mom's and lots of family! Was a long day-but good! The kids enjoyed the Easter egg hunt as well.

Have a great week!