Honey Is Here!

Yes, I have honey! And eggs!
I will be selling the eggs mostly on the weekend and that gives me a few days to collect enough.
The egg of a free-range chicken has more Omega-3 than a serving of salmon. You can tell by the intense color and great flavor. You will be hooked if you haven't had them before.

Are You My Mommy?

We ended up with three roosters, thanks to Chester. And they all looked like this hen. Unfortunately I could not always find the nests in time and out would walk a chicken with 15 babies and half of them looked like this and were non-egg-layers (if you know what I mean). So Chester and his sons went to the feed store to be sold to someone who needed a rooster and we are back to just hens. It is so much calmer around here now.
These babies replaced the roosters and are good layers. But I didn't want to raise them myself. Enter this crazy brooding hen. I snuck out there and distracted her long enough to set the baby next to her and they just instinctively knew to snuggle under her. I took this photo a few minutes later when they came out to explore. I swear this chick was bonding with her. Although a second later the chick pecked the mom in the beak.
This hen couldn't be happier now. She has a job and I don't have to clean up after these little babies. All is well in the coop.

The New Addition

Here is my third hive for this year. We went into the Fall with two hives and lost a queen at a critical juncture. So I put the wild hive with the remaining bees and had a huge group that made it through our very mild winter. That hive was split this Spring and I was lucky enough to find a queen for the split so we are off to a good start.
The hive above is a swarm that came from the Palmer's vineyard a few weeks ago. They are all settled in and working like crazy.
I have a already harvested twice this year and made creamed honey from the first batch. It's phenomenal!
Decided to buy one batch of bees to make sure I had a strong second hive (back before the split) so I will pick those up this weekend. Those will come from BeeKind in Sebastopol.