Honey + Figs = Fig Preserves! Yumm....

We moved into our house about 12 years ago and one of the nice surprises was that we have a very old fig tree growing by the side of our house.  This tree must be at least 40 years old or more since they grow very slowly.

Over the years I've figured out when to harvest the figs from this tree so that I can beat the birds and squirrels to them.  This year we had a great harvest and the figs were amazing.  Since I just finished bottling my honey and there was no way we could eat so many figs before they spoiled, I decided to use the fresh honey to make fig preserves this year.  It's the first time I've made preserves so wasn't sure how they would turn out.  Well to make a long story short, they turned out awesome!

I only had enough figs to make three jars but its amazing!  I will definitely be doing this again next year.  Fig preserves on a cracker with goat cheese and some red wine......Fabulous!!

Yay! Honey!!!

Hello again, it's been awhile since I wrote in my blog.  I was lucky enough to get to spend some time in Berlin and Prague and also some time with my family in Florida but that another blog altogether.  I've just finished harvesting the honey from my bees.  My girls did such a good job this year.  They provided 7 frames of citrus blossom honey for me to harvest.  Here's a sample of the jars that I've filled so far.  Yummm!

Here's my girls at work:

I have to say that I really enjoy beekeeping.  Its really very low maintenance and I love watching the bees.  They are such fascinating little creatures.  I'll just sit on the side and watch them do their little dances.  

I checked the hive yesterday again and found that the super I harvested is already full of honey again and its only been a little over a month since I harvested the last set of frames.   I put another super on to give them more room to store honey and will do another harvest in about a month.

You might be wondering what some of these terms are like 'super' and 'frames'.  Here's a picture of my hive:

The two bottom boxes that are painted white and yellow are the brood boxes.  That's where the queen and workers raise more bees.  The smaller blue box and spotted box on top are the supers.  That's where they store the honey and where I harvest it.  I put frames in the boxes for them to use as a foundation.  Fresh frames look like this.:

With this frame the bees have to work to build out the comb.  Whenever possible I try to furnish my girls with frames of comb that they have already built so that they can use their time in filling the comb with honey instead of spending time building out the comb from a fresh frame.  I take the frames that I have harvested honey from and put them back in the hive.  I have found that I can only put their own comb into a hive as they do not like comb from other hives. 

Here's a picture of a frame that has built out comb from a previous hive I had

Here's a close up of the comb.  You can see how much work goes into building the comb before the bees can even start filling it with honey.  This is why I try to give them their old comb back once I have harvested the honey from it.  It saves them time and it gives me more honey!!

The good news and bad news in urban farming

The bad news.... the bee hive that was exposed from the storm has left the branch.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to find someone to cut down the branch soon enough to harvest the hive.  :(    They hung around for about 3 days then disappeared.  I'm hopeful that they found another tree to live in and didn't just die.   Also when I looked under the sheet where I had covered the limb on the ground it was full of wax moth larvae.   Yuck!!!  If you haven't see wax moth larvae just think of what maggots look like and triple the size.  Wax moths can destroy a hive in record time and they are disgusting.

The good news....The chickens had a feast feeding on the wax moth larvae.

The bad news....Lucy chicken is not getting any better.  She now barely walks at all and I think I'm going to have to be brave and put her down.  Extreme sadness for me....she is such a sweet chicken.  This has to be the part of owning animals that sometimes makes me think that it's just not worth it.  The pain when they die, no matter how, always hurts so bad.  You'd think with as many chickens as I've had that this wouldn't affect me much but it always does.

The good news....well all thats good about this is that Lucy will not longer be in pain anymore.

Wow! What a storm!

We had a huge storm here a couple days ago that blew down a 1 foot in diameter branch from one of our huge oak trees.  I walked out to look at it in the morning and could see why it fell.  The inside of the branch is rotted out and has been occupied by a large bee hive!  I felt so bad for them since half the hive is now on the ground and half is still on whats left of the branch on the tree about 50 ft up.  They are so confused.  I covered the hive on the ground with a sheet to try to keep predators out until my bee expert can get out here to take a look to see if they can be saved.  I'd love to keep them and put them into one of my hives but the branch is hard to get into.  I'm afraid we might end up having to use a chain saw to get it out and that might hurt the hive worse.  What a mess!  Oh and the branch took out half of my 50 yr old fig tree.  Bad news all around!

Pinkie started laying a couple days ago.  She is one confused chicken.   She's decided that her favorite spot to nest is in one of our open shed full of chicken wire, bee equipment, wheelbarrows, etc.  Not a great place for her to go.  When I shoo her out she just puts up such a fuss.  She's persistent though.  She goes back as soon as I leave.  Crazy chicken.

Planting, planting, planting!

Wow, the weather is beautiful today.  After a few days of overcast misty, rainy weather, it's nice to see the sun out again.  Don't get me wrong, I love the rainy days too and so do my plants.  I finished the veggie garden planting,  now just waiting for the results.  Meanwhile I'm busy planting lots of milkweed plants in my garden.  The bees and butterflies are already visiting and I haven't even gotten some of them in the ground yet.  My girls have really been enjoying the days also.  Lucy's leg is still lame unfortunately.  I'm not sure if she'll ever be better.  I have to say that she has figured out how to move pretty fast even with that leg.  In the evening when the other girls have gone into the coop to roost she will stay out with me knowing that I'll be picking her up and bringing her into the house to sleep in the chicken infirmary.  But she still doesn't like to be caught so I end up chasing her all around until I can finally catch her to bring her in.    Peeper is still expecting to come into the house daily to lay her egg.  She always makes her happy sounds when she goes up to her space.  Here's a video with the funny noises she makes when getting settled.

Come on weather....make up your mind!

I've been absent from my blog for a few days....too much to do, too little time!  On Friday, Lucy came out of the coop limping severely.  My poor baby girl.   Her and Roo do not get along and I suspect that he beat her up.  She's staying in my chicken infirmary (actually a cage in my kitchen) for now and I've had to learn how to give her antibiotics.  Shoving a syringe down a chickens throat is not an easy task.  A lot of patience is needed and I'm always scared that it will end up in her windpipe since they are both in the same area.   If I don't do it though, she will for sure not make it.   Since Lucy is out of the coop, Goldie started hanging with Roo.  She's pushed off Pinkie to be Roo's BFF.   Such a follower she is.    I took Lucy out to peck around in the grass when the other chickens were out and Roo again attacked her.   This is not a friendly, "hey, I'm a guy, your a girl, let's get together" type of approach.  He scares the living daylights out of her.   Anyway,  while she is on the mend we have taken Roo to the feed store to be sold.  He's a nice friendly rooster but I cant have him hurting my hens.  It's amazing how the hens have calmed down now that he's gone.

It's been pretty rainy these days.  Cool one day, warm the next.  Typical for Houston in the spring. And spring is definitely here.    All the citrus trees are in bloom and the backyard smells amazing!  My bees are going crazy with all the orange, grapefruit, peach and apple blossoms.  We started planting the vegetable gardens too.   Tomatoes, pepper, yellow squash, zucchini, basil, sage, parsley, fennel, mint, and bush beans so far.  Now let's see how many make it through our summer! These are great days to do that since it's nice and cool.  I bought a flat of milkweed plants for the monarchs who come through every year.  I've created a Monarch butterfly cage to protect the caterpillars until they can become butterflies.

  Every morning I check the milkweed plants for baby caterpillars.  If I find one I put it in the cage so they are not bothered by the multiple predators
that we have around here.  The wasps and lizards are the worst but if I can get out there early enough I can save the baby caterpillars before they get to them.  Last year I was able to release 15 butterflies.  I figure that's 15 more than we would have had otherwise.

There's always a pecking order ...

I currently have 6 chickens.  I say currently because even though we are in the middle of Houston we have a lot of predators that have given me cause for a broken heart over and over again.  Over the years I have learned a lot about the sounds and hunting practices of hawks, raccoons, coyotes, feral cats, and owls.  I’m always on the lookout, especially for hawks.  The picture below show 3 hawks chowing down on a rabbit they caught in my back yard awhile back. They have taken out more of my chickens than I care to remember.  OK so this discussion is depressing me so I’m moving on…. 

 I love watching my crazy crew of animals and how they interact with one another.  They each have their own personality which surprises a lot of people when I talk about them.  Here’s a quick list of my current chicken crew: 

• Marilyn (named after Marilyn Monroe), who is my Welsummer mother hen.  She’s 5 years old and is my oldest which is attributed to her being a really smart chicken.  She’s at the top of the chicken pecking order and very patient with the younger chickens but always puts them in their place if warranted.
• Peeper,  a Barred Rock hen, who is next in the pecking order.  She’s about 3 years old and a little smaller than Marilyn.  She’s the bully of the chicken coop.  I’m sure this is due to the fact that she’s always been on the bottom of the pecking order until the other chickens unfortunate demise occurred.  When the new girls came along she was determined never to be on the bottom again hence the bully reputation.  All the little ones are scared of her and that’s just fine with her.
• Lucy, another Barred Rock hen that I just started raising from a chick about 4 months ago.  Lucy has learned well from Peeper and has made sure she is next in the pecking order by keeping any other smaller chickens in their place with a good peck on the head when they start getting a little uppity.  Lucy’s named after Lucille Ball.  She’s always curious and getting into things. 
• Goldie, she’s my Ameraucana who I raised from a chick with Lucy.  Goldie and Lucy are buddies.  Goldie is barely hanging on as the next in the pecking order which is mainly due to her being buddies with Lucy.  Lucy always has her back and Goldie panics if she can’t find Lucy.  She follows Lucy everywhere.  She now and then tries to play tough but ultimately backs down and runs behind Lucy for protection.
• Then there’s Mr. Roo….this one is a bit of a mistake and I’m not sure he will be around long.  My neighbor had a hen that hatched a bunch of chicks about 2 months ago and asked if we wanted some so we took 3 not knowing what we were getting.  Two of them were hens and one is Roo.  We know this because Roo has just started crowing.  For those of you who have not heard a young rooster crow, it’s a pretty pathetic sounding noise.  He’s working on perfecting it though and as long as he is nice and crows only during the day we might let him hang around.  The jury is still out on that one.  Roo continues to challenge the 4 older hens and continues to get pecked back into place.  These hens don’t take any crap from anyone. Least of all from some little rooster who thinks he’s a big deal!
• Last but not least of my chicks is Pinky so named for the feathers on her hair that looks alot like the singer Pink’s hair style.   Unfortunately for her, she is on the bottom of the pecking order.  She is the youngest hen and has such a sweet disposition.  Roo and Pinky are buddies since they were raised together before going into the coop and are chicken mutts, the result of a Polish hen and a Barred Rock rooster.

As I mentioned earlier, in addition to the chicken clan we also have my peacock gang.  I call them a gang because that is pretty much how they act around the chickens.  We have two peahens, Curly and Larry, and one peacock, Mr. Blue. Yes, he was going to be named Moe but the name Mr. Blue stuck since he’s such a beautiful shade of blue.   Interestingly enough they are also part of the pecking order even though they are not kept in the coop. 

•  Ms Curly is the bully of this group.  She bullies everyone…. chickens, peacocks, squirrels, birds, cats, even hawks… except Mr. Blue and us of course.  She’s smart enough not to bite the hand that feeds her.    You can always tell when she is getting perturbed and is going to go after someone.  She walks up looking sideways at whoever is her next victim.  I’m convinced that that’s where the term ‘looking sideways’ at someone comes from.  
•  Mr. Blue’s next in the pecking order of the gang.  He doesn’t really bother anyone though and spends most of his time showing off his feathers. He only gets cranky when there are treats to be had and someone is too aggressive for his taste.  He’ll give them a good peck to let them know who’s boss and who gets the treats first.   
•  Larry is on the bottom of the peacock pecking order and is even below Ms Marilyn.  She loves hanging with the chickens.  The first year that she started laying she ended up with an egg impacted in her and we had to have her operated on to take it out.  She was relegated to the chicken coop while she recuperated.  From then on she kind of bonded with Marilyn and will hang out by the coop most days.    She gets picked on by Curly on a regular basis.  

 We also have a bee hives in the back of the property.  I just think beekeeping is so neat and watching the bees is so fascinating.  More on this later....