Weekends are too short

Last week G was in Denver for three days.  He tried to cram as much into this weekend as possible, and now he's gone to Missouri for three days.

The ladies inspecting one of the new banty tractors. Always supervising his work...

Girls came all the way over from the palace to help prep some beds for us.

Saturday ended up being 14 degrees! The bees were flying like crazy. You could see them all the way from the house.  I had to give them some pollen patties so just to be safe I used my full bee suit and got my smoker going furiously.  Everything went pretty well, I saw one drone which confuses me, didn't see the queen in either hive but I wasn't pulling many frames and looking for her or for brood, just checking to see how much honey they still had stored so I could judge whether they needed a pail of syrup added.

Hive two.  It was great to be in there watching them again, and hearing that amazing hum when they are just fanning their wings. I noticed a few new behaviours so I need to look into what they mean.  Bee society really is amazing....

Sunday was hailing, then snowing.  G spent as much time as he could in the garden and greenhouse cleaning things up.  I spent most of the day inside watching BBC farming TV while working through some of 2015 harvest.

G started pruning the second apple tree.  It's not been well managed over the years so even has a spot where two thick branches rubbed enough to graft together! A few more important decisions to make on a few more branches.

G tapped our lone silver maple.  We still have syrup from it from last year! It's quite a treat this time of year--in the morning he made butternut squash pancakes with fresh nutmeg, and they went with the mild syrup just perfectly. 

I picked up some extra clover seed this weekend, and G put together our pasture mix so I can go and do some frost seeding while he's away.

This spot below the ash is where we run the sheep at least once a season.  After they go through we overseed any bare spots with a mixture of radish, turnip and kale, and this weekend the ducks found the kale growing back with a vengeance. Next year I will be planting kale everywhere for winter forage especially.

How is it only ~2 months until shearing??