Bees and more Bees!!!!

 We did pick up the package of bees in Navasota this morning. We had a beautiful drive up there-blue bonnets everywhere! We got back before noon and got to work hiving them right away!

 The queen cage-the workers will eat their way into the box she's in and let her out in the next few days.

 Shaking the 10,000 worker bees into their new home-with Tim's help.

All tucked in and ready for their new lives on Yeager Farm! Sugar water feeder full and hay stuffed into opening to help keep robbing down until they get established and strong!

 Then on to bees #2 for the day. Our county commissioner had let Jeff know several months ago that he'd cut a tree in his pasture that had bees in it-he even captured some and brought them to church in a jar to make sure they were honeybees! So we went over to their house to check on getting them. Our friend Tom, who used to have many, many hives, went along to help out and give MUCH needed advise!! Above is a picture of where they are going in and out of the tree.

 Jeff is beginning to cut away the tree on either side of what they determined to be the hollow part. This is where all the excitement started. Note that he is in t-shirt and cap!

Immediately after taking that picture, the bees went on attack!! I had to get out of there very quickly with Kaytlynn and Jordan. They were all in his hair and did end up stinging him right in the middle of his forehead. Kaytlynn and I didn't get stung, but Mac and Jeff did as well. You have to understand, the bees were very docile up until this moment. We had even been sitting on the log next to the entrance!

 Remember me mentioning the cap and t-shirt? Now notice the longsleeve shirts and bee veils!! LOL! They continued with the cutting and also got out the smoker which REALLY calmed the bees down. Hindsight is 20/20-should have got all the equipment out FIRST!

 Jeff giving Kaytlynn a hunk of honeycomb fresh from the hive-Yummy!

 Jordan got a special treat-a lesson on how to work a backhoe. He was in hog heaven-even after being stung  by a bee! He got to dig a hole-then fill it back in.

Is this not the face of sweet? No, really, she had honey all over her hands and face-it was dripping off her fingers and here we are down in the woods with no water to rinse off with. It's a wonder the bees weren't after her! We keep telling people she's our little bee-charmer. She's never really been scared of them and even when we were trying to make our hasty retreat, the bees weren't after her-only Jordan. She will tell you real fast, though, that one was in her hair!

We left the log in the woods and will go back on Monday evening to try to hive them. They have a plan on what they are going to do, but it will have to wait til nearly dark when most of the bees will be back in the hive and settling down for the night!

Cows, Tractor Dog, and Fruit Trees!

 Oreo and Cocoa pushing each other around-well maybe! The red one sure has been looking more and more like her Dexter parents lately. The BIG bull in the background is the one that keeps jumping the fence. We think he might have bred Oreo and Sugar this last week, so we'll be checking dates in three weeks to see if they come in heat. Jeff and I fed them all bread this morning, and that HUGE puppy just stuck his big head right over the fence, stuck out that LONG tongue, and nearly sucked my arm straight into his mouth! All we could do was break out laughing-something THAT big is So tame.

 We spent most of the Easter weekend cleaning out Mom and Shorty's barn. I took some before pics, but want to wait and post them with some good after ones. We did get a place cleaned out for the rabbits and got them moved in on Saturday evening. And for some reason, Rascal decided she needed to ride the tractor with Jeff. She actually climbed up the steps while we were talking and just settled in. Jeff had to finally make her get down-she was in his way!

 This isn't a good pic-it was cold and windy-but the orange tree we thought was going to die has just been full of blooms! And they smell awesome! The bees think so too!

 And this is one of the lemon trees in bloom-they looked just awful, too, but now are full of blooms.

And the best of all-these are little apples on 1 of our trees-we are SO excited! Hopefully they will make it to ripe, green, tart apples!

We've had another busy week and another cold snap as well. No freezing temps this time, just COLD. We had a wonderful Easter with Sunrise service at 7 am, then breakfast, Sunday School, and a PACKED house for services. The guys had to bring chairs into the center isle, then we had to leave the doors open and people had to sit outside! It was such a great site!

We go in the morning to pick up another package of bees. We haven't had the best of luck lately-until today! The hive we bought from out of Ohio last year didn't make it through the winter and the one Jeff captured from the fallen tree didn't make it either.Shorty's bees swarmed today while Jeff was still there and he was able to capture them!! He cut the limb off the tree they had gathered on and got them installed in the hive! Only problem, he never thought to get the camera! :(   I'll take it with us in the morning and take new pics as we get them into the new hive.

I'm dealing with a pretty good patch of poison ivy on my left arm. The barn had quite a bit of it and I was wearing sandals, so I half expected it on my feet, but not my arm. I mixed up some lavender, tea tree, and peppermint essential oils in a base of vegetable gylercin and have been applying it to the bottoms of my feet twice a day and putting it directly on the blisters. I don't know if its my wishful thinking or not, but it seems to  be clearing up faster than usual. Hopefully it will be my new cure for PO.

Garden Pic #2 and Family Milk Cow!

 Pic #2 of the Garden-things are coming up nicely-despite of the cold weather! Had to cover tomatoes last night-but no freeze-thank you God! Jeff had tilled part of it yesterday-the grass is trying to take over already!

 And meet Lady-or at least that's what I'm calling her at the moment. She's a 3 year old Holstein/Jersey cross due to have her first calf in about 2 months! She's gentle as can be and is bred by Ai to a jersey bull or by the angus bull who jumped the fence. Time-and a calf will tell!

Close up of the developing bag-a good sign of things to come!

Garden, Apple Trees, and Spring Break

OK, I did it again! Let weeks go by without posting, and I even had pictures and stories all ready to go, just couldn't find the time to get it all together. Anyway, here's an update and hopefully I won't leave any important stuff out!?!

 This is a picture of 1 of our 2 Apple trees blooming-is this not just awesome!! And what a beautiful early spring day it was! These are the same trees we got at Lowe's for half price last fall. The bees loved the blossoms and hopefully we'll get a few apples.

 First picture of this years garden-we are doing the most of it at Mom and Shorty's this year so a different look about it. We planted potatoes, corn, peas, green beans, squash, cukes, tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers and jacob's cattle beans. Still have 3 short rows to finish out. Still waiting on things to break the ground and the tomatoes didn't take too well to the transplant so sadly we may have to buy more instead of the ones we started from seed. Jeff and Kaytlynn also planted peas, squash and sunflowers at the house, only to find the garden full of deer tracks the next day-Oh No!!

 Jeff picked up 12 aracauna pullets at the feed store for next year's layers. They are so funny to watch at night catching the bugs attracted to their light! Extra protein for them and for free!

 We went down to Lake Jackson on Monday to visit with Randy and Casey and do a little fishing during our Spring Break. It ended up being too cold the first day and Jeff's cold came back-for the 3rd time-so we kinda just stayed in the hotel. We went and saw their new house on Tuesday-it's beautiful!-went fishing for a little while-didn't catch anything :(- and then went to Alvin to a strawberry farm. We had to wait in line to even park to get in the place! We picked 2 buckets full and had a good time. Got some really good ideas about different ways to plant things, too.

 We took Jordan and Kaytlynn to the Burt's fishing on Friday-they had a blast catching 1 little perch after another. Thanks for letting them come over!

The snow peas I picked this morning and a head of cabbage we cut earlier. I put 2 pints of them in the freezer!

The fruit trees are blooming and the bees are abuzzing here! We've had a week of daily temps getting warmer and warmer. Still had a few cool mornings, but it's in the lower 80's today. Some of the trees seem to be taking longer than usual to  bud out, but they'll be green before we know it. The wind has been blowing alot more than normal though it seems.

Mom is doing SO much better-she nearly worked me into the ground yesterday-gladly!! We worked all day long cleaning out their sewing room-the wind blew the outside door open last Sunday and it rained in and got  lots of stuff wet. I've never seen so much material in my life, though! Mom and I decided it was time to start working on quilts again and soon!

Church is going wonderfully well-we have new members joining almost weekly! And as we are entering into the passover week and onto Easter, it's always so wonderful to see new people visiting and taking part in our little Church and serving our Lord! Our Sunday School lessons have been great-this morning on the Good Samaritan and compassion.

I'm still trying to work with my essential oils, its just hard trying to split my time between 2 houses and get things done at each. There has already been times that I really wished I could have mixed some thing up-like yesterday when I had a migraine! But I'll get to it asap! 

Homemade Laundry Detergent

Thought I'd finally jump back on here and give a much needed update. Boy have things been weird for us the last 2 months! For starters, my mom took a serious turn for the worst, but thanks to God, He is in control and makes all things GOOD. We found that she had been abusing narcartic pain killers-the really bad ones, and now she is all CLEAN! Thanks to God again! All she is on for pain now is extra strength tylenol!

My aunt Linda, mom's sister, was found to have lung cancer and had to have the lower left lobe of her lung removed-thank you God, again!,the cancer was only in the lung-all lymph nodes are clear! She's home from the hospital and recovering and at this time will need no chemo or radiation! Jeff has an uncle who is in hospice and not expected to hold on much longer. Kaytlynn has been sick and a preleminary allergy test shows she's allergic to lots of stuff, including her dog. Jeff will take her and Alana to Tomball on Thursday to see the allergist for more testing. Mom and Shorty-and Jeff-all came down with some cold bug and suffered for nearly a week with Shorty ending up at the doc. We were worried he might have pnemonia-but he felt much better after a few doses of antibiotics. Jeff and I have been spending most of our time living in our camper up at their place trying to help them out as much as possible. Looks like we'll be gardening up there this spring/summer and have already moved the cows up there and hope to soon get a chicken pen built and get the rabbits and pigs moved as well. Ricky, Alana and the kids have been wonderful picking up the slack here, keeping the animals fed and things done here.

I guess the coolest thing going on is I've gotten into working with essential oils. I made up some Lavendar ointment and it really seemed to help mom keep calm when she came home from the hospital. When they all got sick, I made up a couple of batches of a vabor rub type ointment that seemed to keep some of the congestion at bay and Jeff said after using it, his throat wasn't sore anymore! I'm really getting into using these natural ways of healing. There is SO much to learn about them! Another thing I've been checking into is some more natural/frugal ways of doing things. The following is the first thing we've done:

Homemade Laundry Detergent

I tried this at the first of the year and really wondered if it would work. It was way TOO easy and cheap to make for it to actually work! I was wrong! I was worried that it might cause some skin irritations-wrong again! I got the recipe from the internet and after more research, found that most ones were very similiar. Be adventurous and give it a try!

 It starts with just 3 ingredients-Washing soda (not BAKING soda!); Borax; and a bar of either Zote soap or Fels-Naptha soap. Most recipes said you could use a bar of Ivory if you can't find either of them. I found all of them at Wal-Mart. The first batch I made with Zote-the one I made yesterday I used the Fels-Naptha cause they were out of Zote.

Anyway, you start by grating the whole bar of soap into a pot and then cover it with hot water.I use an old saucepan that I don't use for cooking anymore-just a little worried about not being able to get all the soap out of it! Bring the water to a boil and stir until all the soap is melted.

Then add 1/2 cup of each of the washing soda and borax. Stir until completely dissolved. Put it in a 5 gallon bucket (you'll need one with a lid-I bought a 6 gallon one to use for this) and fill it about 3/4 of the way full with hot water. Stir it up good and let it sit over night undisturbed.

The next morning it will be all thick and congealed-kinda like a thick gel. Stir it up-it will be in clumps-we used the hand mixer on ours this morning to make it smooth. 

We poured out enough to fill up an empty plastic ice cream bucket and keep it on the washer to use. It takes about 1/2 to 3/4 cup per load. Now it doesn't suds up like most detergents but it does clean and leaves a nice smell to the laundry. The batch we just made-I added some Lavander to it to see how it will smell. I read somewhere that it will wash about 157 loads of clothes. All I know is we've used it, Alana has used it, and Jeff's mom borrowed enough to do a few loads-so-it will last til nearly the middle of this month with the first batch-3 and a half months! The start up cost is less than $10 and we only have to buy a new bar of soap for each new batch-which is 97 cents in our area. Try some-you might just like it as well! I'll write on some of the other things we're doing as well in a few days-hopefully it won't take 2 months!! Have a great week!

Kaytlynn's Day of Cooking!

 We spent a good part of the day today-COOKING! She had a blast and so did I! We started out with a new bread recipe and moved on to a new pot pie one.

 Kaytlynn learning to knead bread dough

 The bread rising in the loaf pan

 Ready to go into the oven!

 Loaf is done!

 Next-cooking the filling for the pot pie-rabbit-carrots-onions, celery, etc.-She really was enjoying the stirring-despite the look of what seems disgust on her face.

The finished pie-we were so anxious to eat it-I forgot to take a picture of it before we dug in! And boy-was it good-so was the bread! The only thing that would have made it better would have been if we'd have had fresh, homemade butter to go on it instead of store bought.

We still are having cold weather and a little damp-I'm having a hard time getting outside to get anything done. Kaytlynn and I went out for a few minutes this morning-while the  bread was rising-and filled up 2 of the bird feeders and got so cold-we had to come back inside. Jordan worked for a little while taking some of the outside Christmas lights down for me-he came back in after a bit as well. Now if they have a plan of outside play-they'll stay out until noses are red and fingers are hurting. The weather still isn't warming up much-some warm sunshine would sure be nice!

The hens are really putting out the eggs of late-yea! We got 6 yesterday and 7 today-they are so beautiful! We have 2 litters of bunnies due next week-looking forward to new babies.

New Year's Eve

We spent last night at our friends-Alfred & Sheila-cabin on the Trinity River. They offered it to us for the night-and we took them up on the offer! It was so peaceful and such a wonderful evening and it rained most of the night-yeah we need the rain.

 Jeff and Alfred looking out over the river this morning-we still are getting a few rain showers now and then and it is a little cool and windy-note the fire they are keeping warm (an old joke!)

 And did I mention-this cabin has no electricity or running water-another plus for spending some quiet time here! Hence the "necessity" house-yes they have an outhouse.

 And this is our mode of transportation for the day-you can't drive your truck down here-so we have to use our cub cadet. And due to the rain-Jeff had to tie a tarp to it to keep our stuff from getting wet on the way down.

Last but not least-the heater that stands in the middle of the cabin. We cooked deer burgers and sausage on it last night for supper-then eggs and reheated the sausage for breakfast. Needless to say-coffee is always cooking when we are around!

We've had quite a bit of quiet time this morning and time to talk without being interrupted. We don't make new years resolutions-but we are determined to work very hard this year to get ourselves out of debt. This has become a very high priority to us and we feel God is wanting us to do this. There are a few things we want to do this month-getting our concealed handgun licenses is one of them-that we know are going to cost us more money than we currently feel comfortable spending-but we feel that it may be to our best advantage to do so. We'll just have to see where the money comes from to take the class and get an approved pistol. We got out and shot the ones we have yesterday for practice-but they aren't a high enough caliber to take the class with. Just another one of the things we get to do when we are at the cabin on the river.

I also found a website a few days ago with LOTS of recipes and ideas. I printed out lots of ideas from her-recipes for homemade laundry detergent-homemade deoderant-canning homemade chicken broth-and a few other things. I can't wait to get started on these as well-but I only have a few days left of my Christmas break and haven't got much of what I planned to do done. It's just been too cold and miserable outside to get much done out there-and I do have 2 sheds that need MAJOR clean outs-yes I do mean outs-there is too much stuff in them-mostly that doesn't even belong to Jeff & I and we can't use them for what we need to-so some of this stuff has to go! Ok maybe I'll get to it when it warms up a bit.

Have a Happy New Year!