Katrina Hargis ILC - SPring '24

Every Spring, I like to have the vet out to look at all my animals. Luckily, she’s a good friend of the family, and loves to do it. This week she took a look at the sheep, chickens, barn cats, and dogs.

When she comes and looks at them, it’s all hands on deck.
We wrangle the sheep into the small pen, and we look at their mouths and their weight, we look at their hooves and trim them, we shear the one wool ewe we have, and we worm everyone. Often there are babies to check, but we sold our ram and we don’t have any this year.
Chickens are looked over for ascites (fluid buildup in their abdomen), mites around their feathers, and for weight loss. We also will worm them. There will be a couple weeks of no eggs for us, but luckily the neighbors hens have us covered! We have been so lucky to share with the neighbors.
Barn cats are looked at, wormed and vaccinated. One of our boys had a little bit of his 3rd eyelid showing (a sign they aren’t feeling great) and a little bit of a temperature, so he did get an antibiotics shot. We are fortunate that our barn cats are not totally feral, but they also don’t love being handled, so it’s not feasible to give them meds every single day. The shot works well for us. Their teeth all looked good though, which is awesome! My current oldest girl, Boots, is 5, and in the best health of all of them! Love it.
Dogs are also looked over, wormed, and vaccinated yearly. Our 2 dogs are German Shepherds, but they prefer to be thought of as Livestock Guardians. My old man is 10 this year, and still spends his nights with the flocks over inside on the bed. His little sister Iris is 7 months old, and would love if we’d let her stay out, but we still think she’s too young.

We had a little garden progress done! Got the tilling done, got more plants in, and discovered WEEDS already! The raised bed that I planed early on is already fuuuuuull of weeds.

I’m looking forward to it all looking “Finished” but right now it’s so overwhelming it’s hard to think about. the early spring has always been a fun time for me, but now I’m stressed because I’m so late in starting everything that I don’t know if there’s going to be a full CSA… I’m fortunate to not have collected payment (for this reason) but it is also very distressing that it isn’t panning out the way that I’d hoped. Unfortunately, life has gotten in the way in the form of the new job I wasn’t supposed to have to get. I was hoping to focus more on my farm and rescue this year, but I have been able to spend less and less time on them…

I’ll have better garden post next week. I have high hopes to get it all in!

These letters from a young farmer have been so fun to write. I am still working my way through the book “Letters to a Young Farmer” and writing as I read them. My initial thought was to post them as I go, but I think … I want to compile them all as one and have it as one long post, or maybe many small posts, all in week 10. It’s going to be quite the site. It’s going to be amazing.

BEES!

I did my first hive check this week, and I’m so excited. They’re already building out more comb, and there is capped brood. I was able to find a sort of peace while I was pulling the frames out to look at them. We’re adding a super on top next week at hive check, so that they don’t run out of space for honey and brood. My Mother in law recommended doing it, and then in a couple weeks, slipping the second deep under the queen excluder so they can continue to fill out the brood. I’m going to research this idea a little. I joined like five facebook groups regarding beekeeping in the PNW, so I’ve posted the question in the groups!

Enjoy my bee pictures!

Mushrooms are still growing their culture a little more, but the straw gets soaking on Tuesday, for Wednesday inoculation.

Tuesday was my oldest son, Oliver’s, birthday. We decided to surprise him with a trip to Great wolf lodge on Monday and Tuesday, so there was not a lot of time to get things done! It was a crazy adventure, and the kids had so much fun.

Wednesday was not only my first day back to work after a long weekend, but also the day we decided to try and get a little tilling done, as well as the day that I got the email asking if I could pick up my bees THAT DAY! We worked for a few hours on this and clearing the debris that it kicked up. Hopefully we can get enough of the grass roots out that I won’t have to deal with this again. The tiller will go back with it’s owner when they likely move across the country in the next 6-8 months. We’re going to get it done and then get it loaded back into their trailer. I will deep mulch the beds this winter and keep them covered! I graduate in June, so hopefully I’ll actually have time to keep up on everything. I then managed to get to work on time. Once I was done, I scurried home to switch to my truck and drive the hour and a half to go get my bees. It was 8pm by the time we got there, and almost 10pm by the time we got back. The bees stayed in their nuc overnight.

Thursday morning, I got up and going early, setting up the bee yard. We stacked a couple pallets to keep the beehive off the ground, and give me a little easier access to the hive. I’ll build a stand later this spring for sure. My bee suit hadn’t arrived yet, so I dressed in the most ridiculous of outfits; a sweater underneath a rain jacket, with a tie tied around the bottom just in case they thought about climbing up my coat, my husbands carhartt overalls, and his boots. I looked ridiculous. Luckily my MIL had gloves and a bee bonnet! I got the bees all transferred into the new hive, and only screamed a couple times (I’m actually terrified of bees so this is a big thing for me to undertake!), while my husband and kids sat across the field and took pictures of me and laughed. It took a while, but I did get everyone into the new box, and waited for the weather to warm up. I went to check on them in the evening, and I even saw workers coming back with their pollen sacks full! I positioned them underneath my favorite apple tree, which is in full bloom, so I hope we get their deep brood box full quickly. I left them alone for the rest of the week, and I’ll check on them next week.

I quickly realized I wasn’t 100% prepared for the bees when they arrived and I still had so many questions, so it was back to the research! I wasn’t able to get into the olympia beekepers class, because the money I needed was not available until after it started, so I will just keep doing my youtube videos and such.

The rest of my week/weekend was so busy with work, I used every break and my lunches to do some mapping and reading. I worked from 6-8 every day Friday-Sunday, so it was a very challenging time. I’ll get caught back up on hours in the next week I hope.

This was a weird, weird couple of weeks. It got very nice, and we were able to get outside and play in the soil finally, and then the weather switched up and went all “Washington Spring” on us, and I got some reading and research done!

We got the rest of the raised beds cleared of blackberries. This in itself took so many hours of work between my husband and I it was crazy. I didn’t imagine the blackberries would grow straight up the fence, INTO the apple tree, and down into the raised beds. It had put a bunch of roots out, so I’m hoping that it stays gone with all the work that we did.

I love blackberries, and we always get the nicest berries off the bush we cut back, so it was hard to want to take it out, but it is always causing problems in the perennial garden and raised beds.

Once we got it cleared out, we found some well growing perennials! The chives were HUGE, and we harvested some and ate them with baked potatoes that night. We also found sorrel, which I harvested a little bit of, but it’s sooooo lemony sour, I need to find something to pair it with. Salmon maybe? The echinacea was also popping up, and I can’t wait to see it in it’s full glory in the early summer. I got the raised beds prepped for planting early the next week, but the weather had other ideas. Lovely. Our beds got marked out, and the day that I did the walk through was the most overwhelming of the days yet. I did not get it covered, so the grass grew back. I’m currently wondering how I can get chickens trapped on the space for a few weeks to clear it. It would make planting super late though, so I may just have to till. I really did NOT want to have to till again. Best laid plans. We got some of the spaces cleared, and we finally pulled the landscape fabric out to place in the rows. We will not till the pathways, as we’re leaving them wide enough for the lawn mower to get through.

The tulips are blooming, and I love seeing their colors. I had planned to use them as cut flowers this year, but I’ve decided to let them bloom in ground and dig bulbs later this year. The placement was not ideal, so I’ll be moving them. The Garlic is getting so tall, and I suspect we’ll be seeing some scapes on the hardneck garlic soon.

I started doing a lot of reading, trying to increase my farming information in my brain, as well as reading about my bees who should be arriving at any time now. I’ve been reading the publications on this website: https://ofrf.org/crop-livestock-integration/ as well as reading from https://thebeeconservancy.org/ and https://savethebeesusa.org/

During the rain, we put together our beehive, and got our mushroom supplies! When it warms up again we’re going to bleach buckets and get straw soaking, I’ll take TONS of pictures of this process. It’s my favorite thing to do.

The space for the bees is nearly ready, and I cannot wait to get them here. I hope they get here before the apple blossoms fall. The trees are in full bloom, and absolutely gorgeous. Their native wildflower mix arrived as well, and we’ll get them planted next week!

I’m planning on getting a full start on my letters in week 5, work seems to be calming down some. My sons birthday is on tuesday, and We’re surprising him with a little trip, we’re going to pick him up from school and whisk them away. I should be able to get some reading done while they’re sleeping!