Snowy weekend

Well it's been a pretty busy late fall, early winter.  No sooner did I finish bringing in the last of my potatoes and getting my snow moving things ready did it actually start snowing.  Then it snowed more, and then it got really, really windy.  Today has been sort of a long day cooped up inside.  I've seen worse storms in the almost six years that I've lived out here, but this one I actually had nothing better to do.  Usually I have to work or am gone for some reason.  It's sort of fun just to watch the snow blow and listen to the wind howl.

I keep having the feeling that I never have enough time to do all of the things that I want, I keep thinking that there could be something I could cut out of my life to make more time, but I'm not really sure what that is.  On top of that there is even more that I could do that I end up not doing because I simply don't have the time or energy to get them done.  There is a guy from Stewart who keeps coming after me to join the Lions club and while I think this would be a good thing it's just something else I would probably go into and do half assed and probably let down people just because I can't give it my full effort.

About the only thing that I really do now with any sense of accomplishment is my real job.  I go in there and give my best effort every time.  Even that though lately has been tough, my manager has been making it really hard to enjoy my job.  While I could sit here and complain about all the bad choices he's made and the seeming things he does just to piss me off, I really don't want to go down that road.  I only have to see him for a few short hours each week, but then for the rest of the time I'm there I have to listen to all of my co-workers tell me about all the rude things he does to them.

I guess my batteries are probably pretty low right now and I need something to recharge them what that something is though I'm not really sure.  I'll just hang in there and keep writing and hopefully before long the solution will be clear.

I have seen this door look worse, but not a whole lot.  What's funny is that we had 11 inches of fluff on the ground covering everything and the wind blew all that snow away and put it in piles like this one.

Super sunrise!

I guess I'm not much of an early riser, which is probably why I tend to always look at sunsets with much more interest.  I couldn't help but stand in awe for a few minutes before I had to tear out of the house to get the boys to school and get to work on time.  This was taken on 11/1 about 15 minutes BEFORE the sun came up.  I've seen the sun's rays do some pretty amazing things, but usually the sun is already up and shining.  I'm not sure if there is a name for whatever this is, but it's probably something that very few people ever have seen or if they did taken the time to stand and enjoy it.

Also living out in the middle of nothing like I do I get to see things like this.  My wife one night a year or so ago was very concerned one night when she noticed a big red fiery something on the horizon shortly after sunset.  It turned out to be a full moon rising - something she had never seen before living in the city.  She probably will hit me if she reads this, but I had a good laugh about it.  I wouldn't trade the small spot of heaven in Southern MN that I live in for all the tea in China.

Popcorn time!

As promised I took a few pictures today with my vintage corn harvester.  I need to do a little research to figure out exactly how old it is, but they made this model until 1962 so it is at least 48 years old.  It's really a neat machine and these machines were used until the ag industry came up with self propelled machines that would husk and shell the ears all in one.  It can handle two rows at once, but it is made for 56 inch rows and my planter which is only slightly newer than this plants 30 inch rows - therefore I only can use the outside row.

The corn goes in the front and there are two rollers spinning very fast that suck down the stalks.  When the ear of corn hits the rollers it pops off and goes up an elevator into a series of spinning rubber coated rollers which then suck off the husks.  They come out the side as you see below.  The corn then travels up another elevator into a wagon that is pulled behind.  The picture below is taken from the right side of the machine.

 This picture is what all the gears, chains, belts and other dangerous moving parts look like.  This drives all the different moving parts.  This is all driven by the PTO (Power take off)  from the tractor - I would have taken pictures explaining all of these things, but unless you can see these things they probably aren't all that interesting.

I took this last one while I was picking I ended up with a little more than double this amount of popcorn - mostly husked and ready to get shelled and dried.  I walked back through the field after I picked it and only found a few missed ears of corn.  If I would have picked and husked all of this corn by hand it would have taken me at between 8-16 hours of work and I probably would have missed more than this machine did.  This took me about 40 minutes (20 of that was fixing a chain that had jumped off it's sprockets).  I can't wait for 20 years from now when I can afford to buy a machine that was made in the 1980s that does all the husking and shelling in one step!  

I still have two more varieties of popcorn to harvest, I want to get this drying before I do that.  This is some hybrid yellow popcorn.  My favorite will be next - the shaman blue (or purple) and a new variety Lazer - which has red and brown striped kernels.

So I've been thinking I need to keep updating about the fall around here.  I've been more busy than I would have liked to have been this fall.  Still not sure how this keeps happening to me, but I guess for the most part that's OK since it keeps me out of trouble.  I've picked all the Indian Corn (I suppose Native American corn would be more appropriate) and I have never seen such vibrant colors in corn before.  Opening the husk of each ear is like unwrapping a present.  These were my favorites, they almost don't even look real.

What's fun about this is that there is a corn field around my property this year and I peeked at some of the corn there and found some ears here and there that have a spattering of colored kernels.  It's probably not enough for them to notice considering that it is a 155 acre field and if there is a good harvest it will yield about 250 bushels of corn per acre.  A bushel of corn weighs about 70 lbs depending on the moisture content.  So doing that math they will take away 2,712,500 lbs of corn from that field and given that amount of corn a few colored kernels will probably not be noticed - but for those that do I can imagine them wondering where these crazy colored kernels came from.

Next on the harvest agenda will be popcorn.  I think I will do quite well this year.  I plan on getting my harvesting machine all fired up this week and if I can remember I will take a few pictures in action.  I don't think they will do much justice though.  I will try to show how much of a death trap this thing could be.  It's probably about 50 years old and has only minimal safety guards on it.  It's the sort of machine that chops off fingers or rips off arms or other appendages with out even slowing down.  Since I always make sure it isn't running when I am off the tractor there isn't too much to worry about.

I am hoping that after October is done and all the crops are harvested, all the pumpkins are plowed under and the snow starts to fly that I will be able to have some rest.  I sort of doubt it though, my next project could involve more than I have ever taken on before and whether or not I will do it is something I will decide on in the next few weeks.  I want to write more about it, but I am exhausted right now and need some well deserved rest.

Harvest time!

I don't have any pictures to post this time, been too busy to take them lately.   Besides working and trying to be a part time dad I haven't been good about carrying my camera around with me.  Not that there hasn't been things to take pictures of.  Since my last post I've harvested honey two times, been picking Indian corn and popcorn, digging potatoes, carrots and sweet potatoes, canning salsa, pizza sauce, pickles and my fall duty of teaching has started.

In terms of the farming biz, this year has been great.  Just about everything did very well this year and the corn and pumpkins are looking good.   I still have the last sweet corn and I will probably freeze one more batch of that before the 1st frost kills it all off.   It's really satisfying to have a freezer and shelves full of my own produce that I will eat all winter long.  What truly astounds me is how much I could have if I had the time to weed my garden and pick everything before it spoils.  For example - the green beans were very strong and I froze almost 20 quart bags of them - had I kept picking them I could have frozen 20 more.  The same is true of cucumbers, tomatoes and broccoli.  I guess it's probably OK though since I would need to buy a bigger freezer and put up more shelving to hold everything.  Part of me doesn't feel too bad though either since I am not taking as much from the land by leaving some crop behind.

The honey harvest was exceptional this year (for my third year of keeping bees) from the three hives I kept I have well over 100lbs of honey left over from them.  I had sort of bee-keeping emergency - other than the swarming issues I had earlier this summer.  One hive had so many boxes on top that were getting really full of honey and they actually collapsed the base of hive.  Also some animal, possibly a skunk, had been digging around the base and the whole hive was swaying in the wind.  My dad came up to help extract the frames which we then put back on for most of the month of August.

Labor day is the best time to take all of the honey off to help the bees start preparing for winter and I did just that.  The nearly collapsed hive filled half of their frames with honey again and did most of the work this summer.  The other two hives though were new and typically these don't have extra honey to give.

Next year though things should go along better, the odds are in my favor that at least one of the hives will survive the winter.  Even if I loose two of them the one that survives can be divided and a new colony can be established.  

So the harvest and field work will continue into October and I'll try to take more pictures of things along the way.

This is the rest of the barn that I have been working on, I closed off the end of it and put the tin off the part of the building I tore down on the front.  I would have like to have before pictures, but you'll have to trust me if you haven't seen it yourself - it was an ugly barn.

This is the other end which I made into the kennel.  I found some fiberglass panels to put on the end so there would be more light in the kennel.  The whole thing is going to be painted soon - I could stick with white, but barn red sounds like something a little more fun.  I could always paint it orange like a pumpkin, but that may be a little overstated for me.  I am not a flamboyant person, but I do like things to at least look like I'm not the average stiff who lives on a farm that doesn't really "farm". 

This is Pumpkin and her new friend Olivia who we just got today.  I really didn't have a whole lot of advance notice about this new dog.  Apparently her owner's husband was in Iraq when she got him and when he came back he didn't like her because he only liked hunting dogs or something stupid like that.  Well he gave her one week to get rid of the dog and some how found Krista.  This is actually her 3rd home - her 1st home was just outside of Belle Plaine and her 1st set of owners didn't treat her very well either.  I will never understand people who want St. Bernard's that don't live in a home that has some land.  These dogs don't do well if they are tied up all the time and don't get a little space to move around.  Sorry about the rant, but it needed to be said.  It's a little big as far as kennels go, but I figured why not - the space wasn't being used and it was a nice way to reuse a barn that would have otherwise been tore down. 

They seem to be happy in their new home, Olivia was shaved pretty short before she came to us - I hope her coat gets as long and shiny as pumpkins.

Of course I couldn't blog (well I suppose I could) without a sunset picture - I have so many of them from this summer - this one was taken last night while we were out fishing on Clear lake which is just a little bit south of us.

Busy, but not to busy to take a few pictures.

Seems like the summer is just flying by - I had all these intentions to post pictures of plants in various stages of growing and write about bees - so I am going to try and do shorter posts and just try to catch up.  One of my summer projects was tearing down half of an old shed that was used to raise hogs.  It's sort of a worthless shed for anything other than that.  One end is about 7 feet tall and the other is about 5.  It was roughly about 90-100 feet long and there is a series of fences on the open end of it.  A picture wouldn't do it a lot of justice. Well anyway I tore down about half of it and made part into a new kennel for Pumpkin (our dog).  This is pretty much done and I'll try to do that next.

I left behind a skeleton of a small section of the other half and the 1st picture is the mostly completed playhouse that I am building for my boys.

The above is from one side - I'm going to save the front picture until I get it done, it's actually a nifty design if I do say so myself.  I have to do a few minor touch ups and then paint it and it will be the best playhouse two little boys could dream of.

This gives you some idea of what the fenced area looks like.  All these fences and posts are going to disappear as well, so I will be left with a huge slab of concrete which has bumps every 16 feet.  Not exactly sure what I am going to use this for, but I'm thinking that if I can put some holes in it here and there and plant some trees it would cease to look so ugly in a few years.

So this is one of the many things that has kept me out of trouble for the most part this summer.  I've found time to take a few pictures of sunsets that followed storms.  Neither picture really does what I saw a lot of justice, but they both turned out well.  I'll just let them speak for themselves.

Bees and Trees

Although you have to look hard at the picture to see it - right in the middle of the picture there is a dark mass. Sort of a triangle on the bottom.  There - see it?  Ok - what you are looking at is a swarm of honeybees.  I had better pictures which I put on this blog about this time last year.  Today however these guys have a more happy ending.  

I just got back from my 10 day trip to Sweden/Denmark, visiting my homeland and a good friend and have been working to get my lawn tamed again after 2 weeks of rain and now hot weather.   I am having my house painted as well.  The guy painting the house is really nice and just started and he likes to talk so when he came to where I was mowing I didn't think much of it.  He looked very concerned though and I shut the mower down and listened to his story.  He was pounding with a hammer on the house and he heard buzzing - he thought he disturbed a hive of bees living in the siding.

We walked over to where he had been working and saw a cloud of bees in the air.  I knew these were my bees and they were looking for a new home.  They slowly disappeared and we thought they were gone.  We walked around and he was going to start working when I spotted the swarm in the tree.  This time it was much closer to the ground.  I raced to get my bee suit on and a box.  I had read about this, but never had done it.  I took the box under the triangle you see and shook the branch really hard and all the bees fell into the box.  It sounds almost too simple but for the most part they all just fell in!  I then closed the box and walked over to the hive that I knew was the weakest of my three, took the top off and dumped them in.  That didn't go quite as well, but the bees clung to the outside of the hive and after about about 15 minutes they were all inside again.  Pretty slick.

If I wasn't at home and if my painter hadn't been so afraid of a few thousand crazy bees I probably wouldn't have been able to save them, it was quite a rush.  When bees swarm they are leaving a crowed hive and looking for a new home, giving them a place to go usually makes them much happier.  I wish I could have taken more pictures, but from the shake off the branch to the end only took about 30 seconds and I didn't want to stop and fumble with the camera.

The trees part of my title (unless you count that the bees were swarming in a tree) doesn't have anything to do with the above but with something my dad said earlier.  He told me that almost all of my grandpa's apple and fruit trees were dying or being blown down in the wind.  It started about a year before he died - one of his peach trees died.  After he died the other peach tree died within weeks.  This summer will be the 2nd year after he died and out of his 15 or so fruit trees all but two of them are actually alive.  One giant one that was probably 50 years or more old blew down in a storm last week.  Three more died over the winter.  Really strange since my dad has been the one who has been really taking care of them for the last 5 years, pruning, spraying for bugs and doing a lot of the picking.

What got my attention when he was telling me this is something similar I read a while ago about bees.  They wrote that bees usually don't do well or completely fail when their keeper dies.  That made some sense to me at the time, since they are used to being cared for in a certain way.  Why trees though - especially since my dad was the one doing things after my grandpa was no longer able to trim them and pick any fruit higher than he could reach?  

The whole idea of plants being attached to their keepers is something I find fascinating, I don't think people today fully understand the concept of a "green thumb".  For example if I water a plant or you water a plant it still gets water, it's the same either way.  It has to do with the thoughts going through the persons head who is doing the watering, weeding or other thing.  My plants have to be tough or they won't survive.  That's the way I think and they usually respond accordingly.   I don't know if any of that makes sense to anyone looking on with a purely scientific background, but that's the way it is.

Windy Spring

As the farm continues to green up and look more and more like summer is upon us, I have had two trees go down, well half of two trees go down.  It's sort of a reminder of the balance in nature - in order for crops and other plants to grow on the prairie they have to be able to deal with the violent weather changes.  About two weeks ago the wind just blew - no rain or anything along with it, but apparently some gusts up and over 50 mph and a tree that was actually quite protected fell.  When I first moved out the farm another part of that tree fell over that spring as well so it's not got the best of luck going for it.

Last Tuesday though I had half of one of my giant crab apple trees go down in a nasty thunderstorm.  Didn't seem to bother anything else though.  That same storm went on to do a lot of damage south and east of here and some field were completely destroyed.

I haven't decided on whether or not to save the half tree that was left standing.  It seems to have started to lean a little more and it looks like the next gust of wind could just knock it down.  I think I'll try to prop it up and hope that it puts down some new roots and it may look like like a whole tree in a few years.

The good news out of all of this is that I am working on trying to sell the wood from the tree to someone who would use it to smoke meat.  Apparently it is not the easiest or cheapest wood to come by and really gives smoked meat a good flavor.  I then plan on putting the money towards some new trees to replace it.

I would have put some pictures up here to show all of this, but I dropped my camera last week and it is in the shop right now I guess.  It's funny I take a few pictures every week and don't think much about it, but once it is gone it is really noticed.  

There is supposed to be a pretty good chance of heavy rain and possibly strong storms in a few days.  I don't think I am really too worried about things yet, but it might mean more work for my trusty little electric chainsaw.

Plants and change

(I noticed that some of the pictures are a little off after posting them, just click on them to view them full size)

As promised I said I would take some pics of some new plants coming up, I'm sort of curious myself to follow them weekly and watch the changes a little more closely than I have in past years.  What is truly amazing is how they go from little packets of seeds to beautiful plants.  The infinite amount of changes that come from being a dry old seed, to a seedling, to a full grown plant that goes on to flower, produce fruit and then turn ultimately produce seeds that will live on after it.  The first picture I have is of a pumpkin, not sure what kind this one is, but pretty typical pumpkin that's been out of the ground for a few days.

The next pic is of some onions - here I sort of cheat - I plant either live onion plants or just get those little onions that have been started from seed then allowed to dry up for future use.  These are the latter and tend to produce early onions - most often by the end of July (earlier if you don't mind small onions).

Green beans are next - these guys are a little dirty due to the rain we had the night before.  The part of the garden I planted these in the soil tends to get a hard crust on it if it doesn't rain once in a while and had it not rained when it did they would have died in the ground.  They were just starting to push through the day before and we had a nice storm that got them out of the ground quick.

Tonight there was another beautiful sunset - the clouds in the picture are actually back in South Dakota (about 90 miles west of here).  It was also terribly windy today - gust over 50 mph!  I had half of a tree go down right behind my house sometime during supper.  That tree always hit me in the face mowing so I really don't feel too bad about it and the other half of it will stay up.  All that aside the wind was whipping dust in the air which made for a nice red sunset.

The last picture is something I thought would turn out better than it did.  I have more dandelions growning in my lawn than actual grass, but my bees seem to benefit from this, so I just let them be.  While I was starting to mow I had this thought that the dandelions were all super huge and grown up and as big as trees and dwarfed everything around us.  It made me laugh for a while, but I decided I would try to create my own little silly picture of a dandelion forest.  I didn't take any other pictures of my lawn, but if you can imagine such a thing, Krista, the boys and I had a dandelion fight earlier this evening.  It mostly consisted of picking handfuls of the stems and throwing them at each other and rolling around on the grass, but it was fun and it was something that very few people in this world will probably ever do again.

Tomorrow all of these used up flowers will disappear, as much as I really don't care about lawn care, it looks like our farm is partly deserted and that I don't really like.  The clovers in the lawn start blooming next, nothing like the dandelions, more subtle and fragrant.

This time of year there is a vast amount of change here on my little slice of this world, 60 days ago we had 2 feet of snow on the ground and today everyone that came into work was complaining about the heat!  Watching my little seedlings do what they do with only the help of putting them in a favorable place to grow I think helps me understand change better.  If you know my life's story change hasn't been my strong suit in the first 30 years of it.  The last 4 though I have begun to watch all the changes around me with ever increasing interest - the seasons change, plants spring to life from seeds that look dry and dead, plants burst forth flowers, they dry up and product more seeds.

Looking at these changes - none of them are good or bad they just are a flower bursts, dries up and then seeds are produced.  There is no difference when compared with any other species.  What I think people in this day and age have the most trouble with is the seed part of life.  I think they forget that with every end there is a new beginning.  Every where in nature this is true, death is the end of something, but it is the start of something else.  The changes that take place from sprout to the flower are immense, much like our own lives.  

Change in plants and people is inevitable - I understand that now better and in different ways than I did 4 years ago.  It makes my life easier knowing that there is change coming and that I can either accept it when it does happen or be miserable and live in denial.  Somewhere in all of this I am getting to the point I wanted to make, I wish I knew how to make changes in myself have nothing to do with any outside influence.  The way I think for example - how do I stop the little guy in my head that makes the comments about others that inflate my ego, how do I stop my long standing habit of chewing tobacco, how do I make changes in my diet?  The list goes on and on.  

I feel like the answer lies somewhere close and that I am looking right at it,  but I'll be monkey's uncle if I know what that is right now.  

Planting time

I guess with the bee excitement of last week I have neglected to keep everyone up to date on the rest of the farm.  A week ago last Saturday I started planting more than my small "garden."  I planted two kinds of indian corn, sweet corn and giant sunflowers.  Last Thursday I planted three kinds of popcorn and a short little kind of sunflower called baby bear.

Then on Saturday I planted beets, carrots, spinach, green beans, broccoli and a couple kinds of peppers and tomatoes.

All I have left is the vine crops, pumpkins, watermelon, gourds, cantaloupe, and cucumbers.  I guess I would put pictures up, but pictures of dirt and seeds are tough to make interesting.  If I get my act together next week I'll try to take pictures of different things sprouting, that would make for more interesting photos.

I also planted two trees which reminds me that I should get some pictures up of my other project.  I am making a run down old hog barn more useful.  It was a open ended shed 120 feet long and 20 feet wide.  In front of this barn was a series of pens about 32 feet long and 16 feet wide.  I am tearing down half of the barn and reusing the wood and tin to make a new kennel for our dog Pumpkin.  This last spring her kennel was flooded severely and she ended up itching a lot which we blamed on her fur being wet all the time.

After I get that done I'm going to build a play house for the boys with the leftover lumber and tin.  So I get rid of an eyesore and make two more useful buildings.  Just a good all around feeling here on the Berkner farm this spring - plants growing recycling of an old building.  New life growing out of the old.

Bees!!! Part Two

The day has finally come - time to get my new fuzzy little friends.  I had to drive all the way almost to Wisconsin, to Stillwater to get them.  Seeing the familiar sign of Nature's Nectar always makes me smile, every year I have picked up bees this simple sign guides you in and tells you there is someone with a pretty good sense of humor running the show.

You can see in the shed there are stacks and stacks of crates of bees waiting to be picked up.  I figured it out one time - how many packages and then ultimately how many bees are on a truck, etc, but I have since forgotten this useless piece of information.  What I've always wondered is if all the bees flew in the air at the same time how much lighter the truck would become, but I'm going to leave that one to someone smarter than me.

So here are my two little packages, you can't really see from this picture, but in the center is a silver circle which is a can of syrup to feed the bees during their cross country voyage.  Also there is a little metal tab that holds a small wooden box with the queen inside.  All the bees huddle around her and the can of syrup to eat and keep her warm.  They constantly rotate around so they all get to eat and take turns being cold on the outside.  Before I put them in the hive I sprayed them with syrup and water to make them super mellow and happy - mainly so they don't fly all over the place.

This next picture is the two hives I am going to be putting the bees into.  I've taken 4 of the frames out to allow room to dump the bees and have everything all ready to go.  So when I'm ready I'll pry up the syrup can and then pound the cage on the ground so all of them fall down.  Then I slip out the queen...

Here is a picture of the queen in her little cage.  What happened next did not go according to the master plan.

What I was supposed to do was put this right in my pocket, dump the bees in the hive, pull her out of my pocket, put a little piece of marshmallow in place of the cork holding her in and the put her in the hive with the rest of her buddies.

What I did was put a piece of salt water taffy in place of the cork first (I forgot to buy marshmallows and didn't have time to go to the store).  Then put her in my pocket and then dump the bees in the box.  When I went to grab the cage - she was missing.  I said a few four letter words (like golf and Iowa) and looked around for her.  I gave up on that pretty quick and put the cover on and moved on to the other hive.

The other hive I did quite well and they seemed to be doing fine when I left for work.  I sent a few emails and after a call to one of my old pharmacy professors (who happens to keep bees and is a SD state bee inspector - yes there is such a thing).  He told me that I could simply take a frame with fresh eggs out of my strong hive from last year and put it into this new hive.  If there are eggs less than 3 days old they will feed the eggs royal jelly and raise a couple of queens which will then mate and presto-chango I have a hive with a queen in it again. The only difference between a queen and a worker is the food they are fed and the amount of time they take to hatch.  Workers actually take longer to hatch than queens - mainly because of the difference in the food they are fed.

The alternative to do nothing is not a good one though.  If I just let all those workers and drones in the hive go on with out some sort of intervention, a few of the workers (who are all female) will start laying eggs of their own.  This is not a good thing, since they have not mated all their eggs are unfertilized and they will only lay drones.  They will keep doing this until either all the bees die or they decide to move on.  If I let them do this and then try to give them a new queen later they will kill the new queen.

So I will hopefully be able to salvage a situation brought on by my own bonehead blunder.  If this works and they make a queen that goes out and mates I should be able to salvage the package and although it will not likely make any extra honey this year I will have saved them and they will hopefully be strong enough to make it through the winter.

So hopefully I can get my lazy butt out of bed in the morning and do some rearranging.  To be continued...

Bees!!!

I think I need to take a break from the political stuff and the healthcare problems that I have been dealing with lately.   This is supposed to be "Farmer" Dan's blog anyway so as we near the exciting time of spring I will change over to more agricultural related posts for a while.

Two weeks from now I am going to get some more bees!  I ended up losing one hive this winter - not from the dreaded CCD (colony collapse disorder) that has made headlines - but mainly because of a good old fashioned MN winter.  Both hives got buried two times in snowstorms and that didn't help matters.  So on April 21st I am going to Stillwater to pick up two packages of bees.  Above is what a package of bees looks like.  The bee supplier I use gets his bees from California.  All of this starts back in February when the Almond trees bloom in California.  This is such an intense and big bloom that the bees really increase in numbers.  After the bloom is over the beekeepers there begin to divide hives, this involves brushing extra worker bees into a large container and then they get dumped into a box like the above picture.

Then the bees are put into a mini hive or nuc - at the same time larvae are put into incubators in queen cups and then placed into the nucs.  The bees see this and begin to raise this queen as their own.  The only difference between the queens and the workers is that the queens are kept in the cells for a shorter amount of time (you would think longer) and fed a richer food called royal jelly.  After the queens hatch they spend about one week in the hive and then fly out and mate with the drones of other hives.  They mate anywhere from 2-10 times and receive all the sperm they will need to lay thousands and thousands of more bees during these mating flights.  Tragically the drones die after mating, I'm just glad humans don't operate the same way although I have known of a few females who try to operate in the same way.

I don't have any of my own pictures of the above process, but imagine a large area with about 100 of these small mini hives all in rows and millions of bees flying around and you won't be that far off.

After the queens have been mated the beekeepers go back through the nucs, find the queens and put them into little tiny cages, pack them back into a box like above and then more bees are dumped back into the box with them.  They then have a can of sugar syrup put in the top and off they go!

When I get them they have been in the cages for 3 or more days and are pretty hungry so before I put them into their new home I will spray them with a mixture of corn syrup and water.  This also calms them down a little.  The next step is to pound the cage on the ground to knock all the bees down to the bottom of the box, then I will take the can of sugar and the queen box out.  Before the bees realize what has happened they can be essentially poured into their hive.  The queen still in her box gets wedged in between the frames for now.  After a few days I will go back and check on the hive to make sure they haven't gone looking for a new home and at that time I take out the cork keeping the queen in her little cage and change it for a marshmallow.  The bees will take this out in a few minutes and let her out and then she goes to work laying more eggs for the coming summer.

Just for those of you who may be wondering a pound of bees has about 5500 bees in it and when they get dumped into the box the box rests on a scale and for a few seconds before they start flying the boxes are weighed and will either contain 2 or 3 lbs of bees.  A fully functioning hive in the middle of a good nectar flow in the middle of summer can have up to 80,000 bees.

So now I hoped to explain how much work goes into just getting the bees that I keep here in MN.  There are a number of different breeds of the honeybee, what is interesting is that the main bee used in CA is the Italian bee, the bees that do the best in MN are called carnolian.  All of the bees that come in the package are Italian, but the queen is Carnolian so as she lays eggs the bees that she lays are of a different breed and will eventually outnumber the original Italian bees. 

It is just amazing how much effort and time goes into raising bees, I hope I made it somewhat more clear to someone who has little knowledge of bees to understand just how complicated one part of keeping bees is.  It makes me really appreciate my little fuzzy friends and to really cherish their sweet delicious product that they work so hard to make.

The Angry Pharmacist - Part II

I got interviewed by the assistant State Attorney today and also got a letter from the actual Attorney General which was very nice.  To sum up the whole process so far, not really too much is happening yet.  The man I spoke with today could not tell me whether or not there was an actual investigation ongoing from his office or another office, but he did mention several times that his office and several others were very interested in collecting information about CVS/Caremark and their activities.

He mentioned that the whole idea of what they are doing is HUGE, anti-trust Federal and State wise.  The attorney I talked to went to pharmacy school before he went to law school so he quite well understood what I was talking about.

I tried to be as objective as possible in my interview and where I didn't know information 1st hand I told him it was something someone had told me or speculation.  One thing that really interested him above everything else which he probably already knew from other complaints or from reading what news stories are out on the internet is that the main company, 3M, whose employees are currently having the most problems are afraid to file complaints about their medical plan.  It was explained to me by two people that squeaky wheels at 3M have a uncanny knack of getting fired.

The other issue that I brought up to him was that of patient safety, given our widely varying climate controlled temperatures of medicines - especially insulin - is critical to make sure that drugs do not loose potency.  This trust in medicine which is given to patients by pharmacists and doctors could be undermined if they are worried that their medicine got to hot or cold.

After a 45 minute talk with him he told me that I may be contacted by other authorities as he conducts his investigation.  The fact that this person who is not just some schmuck in the office took that much time with me and told me that others may also want to hear from me tells me that CVS/Caremark may have some explaining to do very soon.

It's all been a good experience for me too because I knew very little about the Attorney General office and now understand a little better what they are there for and what they are able to do.  I have some relief now of this issue and now I can relax and wait patiently to see if anything comes of it.

The Angry Pharmacist

 Well I'm not after the title of the blogger who uses that title, but last week I got fed up and decided rather than griping about things I would do something.  I wrote a letter to the State Attorney General in MN about what had gotten me so riled up.

What could possibly remove me from my state of serenity you might be asking?  CVS/Caremark - that's who.  They have instituted a new clause in their insurance that if you sign up for a certain plan that you must use their pharmacy or their mail order services.  Why is this such a big deal - because it is one of the most frustrating things to deal with as a health care giver.  I provide the same services at supposedly the same price and because the insurance company is owned by the pharmacy they use sneaky and underhanded ways to get people to use their pharmacies.  That is not the way insurance really works - even if you have a doctor that you like that is not covered by your plan you are still covered if you want to see them, maybe you pay a little higher copay but it's generally not a big deal.

What is happening with people who have these plans is that their meds now go up in price per month between 10 and 50 (and sometimes more) dollars.  Now if you see your doctor twice a year and your copay goes up 25 dollars each time - not a big deal for most people, but see your doctor 12 times a year for each med that you are on and now you have to come up with some serious cash.

I have had it with this system of health care - as my last post said how on earth did insurance ever get wrapped up in health care?  On top of all this they make the choices on what meds my patients end up on, if they are too expensive, they want cheaper alternatives.  In and of itself I don't have a problem with that, I'm the 1st one to suggest a generic or try to save people some cash, but when it's only due to their deal with some drug company and how big of kick back they get, it's a little different.

So I have an appointment to speak with the Attorney General's office, sort of intimidating, but tonight I did my homework and wrote down everything that I wanted to say.  After my conversation with him, I'm going to put this all out of my mind.  It's the acceptance and letting go that I need to focus on.  I could let this fester and boil because if this hits as hard as it could - it may mean losing a lot of customers and ultimately going out of business and if that were the case it would mean more job losses for a town already reeling from this very problem.

When people who don't work in healthcare get to make all the choice on how the system is run - a pretty crappy system is the result.  It would similar to a bunch of Wall Street floor traders suddenly making the rules for farmers.  Oh wait - that already happened too.  

If the people who actually understand the job they are doing were in charge this country would be doing much better than it is.  I worry about the future and just see everything crashing down as the false front of our strong country gets shattered.  What worries me is that many people are going to be hurt because of greed, ultimately what happens will happen because it needs to.  It will be the end of an era of greed, but on the bright side it will be the start of an era of sanity.

So I'm sorry for the rant, but now I got it out of my system.  I'm not really sure what I've gotten myself into...

I thought I would leave with a little cheap humor and found this picture to try to lighten the mood a bit.

Healthcare reform

I have gone back and forth on this subject in my own head quite a bit in the last few days.  Part of me was waiting for it all to sort out and although I am closer to having some rational thoughts about everything it's still a mind boggling thing for me.

I've read a few articles, looked at people's comments on facebook and talked to customers in my pharmacy about this subject and what is amazing to me is that there are very few individuals who have anything good to say about this new change in policy.  Mainly because the bill itself did absolutely nothing to reform the cost and quality of healthcare.  What it did address was insurance.  To me how insurance ever got involved with health care is a mystery.  I understand car, home, flood, or any type of disaster insurance.   Health and life insurance though have always made me scratch my head.

My head just swims with all the different reasons why our healthcare system is out of control.  Lawsuits, corporate greed, fraud, waste.  Everyone knows that doctors are sued when they make serious errors, but they can also be sued if they miss something.  The system is broken and the insurance system is never going to correct it.  I see 91 year old ladies in nursing homes who are getting cholesterol medications - really?  What a waste of resources, but try and tell their 65 year old son or daughter that you think it should be stopped and you will likely get an earful.  What is the benefit of living so long that someone has to feed you and wipe the drool from your chin?  We all are going to die from something and I for one don't want to have to live the last 5 years of my life having my diapers changed because I can't make it to the bathroom in time.

But I digress - probably another topic for another day in that last paragraph.  The issue is healthcare and politics.  All of what has gone down in the past few weeks has really done some damage to the general mindset of people in this country, it has divided people like nothing before.  If you disagree with someone about this you get a dirty look or a wisecrack.  Why is this?  I wish I could understand it better.  One side wants everyone to be covered, the other says that it's too expensive or that it doesn't go about it in the right way.  The one side thinks that if they come up with a good plan people will vote them back in office and the other side thinks if it opposes the plan they will get voted back.  They use every trick in the book to create a virtual war over the matter and force people to take sides.  Their arguments are all logical and well reasoned, but they make you choose and if you don't there is no other option - just for or against.  It's not so simple though since so much is included in healthcare and it's funding.  The bottom line in all of this is that people are getting the care they need and getting it done for a reasonable price.  Yet I haven't heard that said ONE SINGLE STINKING TIME!  All anyone cares about is whether or not their party is right and that the other one is wrong.

I for one am officially not taking a side.  I will continue to do my pharmacy gig the best I can and help the most people I can in that position.  If this insurance and "healthcare reform" mess all comes crashing down then so be it, then I'll find something else to do where I can help people.

More Crazy Minnesota Weather

It's been an interesting month of March so far - just watching the weather.  We went from cold, to fog, to rain, to no snow, to floods and then back to fog, and now the chance of a major snowstorm in a few days.  I love it, where else could you get such variety.  It officially hit -31 degrees F at my place this winter and by July it might be 100 degrees.  What fun, anyway wanted to share some pictures of what I saw today.

The top picture is the new lake down the road from me, less than a week ago the ground was covered with around 30 inches of snow.  Now it's big ponds.

While I was out snapping a few photos a dark blue cloud came racing in and covered what little sun there was.  This picture doesn't really do it any justice - you could just see it gobbling up the farm places.

By the time I got back to my new lake which has been flooding the road for most of the day (this is a picture of the gravel road if you can't tell) the fog was as white as the inside of a marshmallow.

There is talk about a major snowstorm starting by Friday, but I've heard that all before, for the most part this water should pretty much be gone as it slowly makes it's way to the mighty Minnesota River and as the ground starts to thaw and soak up the water.

As much as this weather has been interesting and fun to watch, I think it's been pretty hard on me this whole spring.  Maybe that's not the entire truth - I think it's more that the weather is mirroring me - the ups and downs, the quick changes.  To most people I probably don't seem all that different, but inside it's all just swirling around.  One minute I'm as peaceful as the big fluffy snowflakes, then a crazy wind blows and gets me all riled up.  The next day, the sun is out as bright and radiant as ever and then the fog comes in and makes my brain feel sluggish.  Part of me has always been this way and I imagine there are many others that would agree.  I've almost always (I can't say never) been able to contain this storm inside and look peaceful on the outside.  Most of the storms fortunately are short lived and blow themselves out quickly.

I do have to say though that in the last 4 years that I've had a lot less days where I have had to act like I wasn't foggy, stormy, cold or hot.  More often than not I am inside and out like those big puffy snowflakes that just look they are having fun falling from the sky.  It just seems like the weather changes happen so suddenly that no weatherman would ever be able to predict them.  That's probably what is bothering more than anything.  I suppose I will just have to learn to enjoy all the changes, just like I enjoy watching the sky change now.

May they rest in peace...

I confirmed my worst fears yesterday - one of my hives is full of dead bees.  They were unusually active when it was really cold and then lately since the weather has been warming up there was much less activity.  So yesterday I pulled off the top for a look.  This first picture you can see some bees with their little bee butts hanging out of the comb.  This is sort of comforting if they had to die this is a sign of starvation and not disease.  They all look healthy - the frames when pulled out one by one almost look like they were frozen in time.  Some walking around others digging deep into empty cells for one last drop of honey and then a bunch of them all clustered in one side.

This next picture also confirms that the numbers of them dwindled and then on one of those last sub-zero nights we had they expired.  The top of the picture is empty cells - the bottom and left side is capped honey.  Generally if things are going well the bees move up and down each frame in a big cluster.  They generate enough heat with their buzzing to thaw the honey and eat it.  This time of year they start laying eggs and the temperature gets up into the 80 degrees to keep the eggs alive.  They usually will start in one area and then bring the honey from another to keep things going.  If their numbers are too low in the rest of the hive and/or it gets too cold they can starve to death very easily, even when food is just 1/2 inch away.

Sort of a grim reminder how close any of us is close to death.  Their fate lies (like ours) largely out of their control, the temperature, how much it rains, disease, how much of their hard earned food some big dumb person decides to take from them largely determines whether they live or die.  In this case there is not likely much that could have been done, I could have tried to feed them crystal sugar in hopes they would have made it, but getting buried by snow drifts two times, lots of cold night and a touch of bee diarrhea all did them in.  It

As soon as the wall of snow surrounding them goes away I will move the hive out and clean out the dead bees and get ready for another try this spring.  I'll keep trying harder to keep those little buggers alive, it makes me sad to see them go and sort of guilty since I'm still enjoying the fruits of their labor.

Ten Things - Neither good or bad

On the advice of a friend I decided to try this out.  Things have been very busy for me lately and even though it's the dead of winter Farmer Dan has been hatching lots of new things out in God's country.   So let's give this a go!

1.  I am seriously considering starting a pharmacy in the great town of Stewart with my wife.  Whether or not it is a good idea is something I really don't know.  I've know of a few pharmacists who have lost their jobs and this would be one way that I would be the one who would be in more control of the situation.  Also it would be fun.

2.  My life is full of ideas that are amazing and for the most part I either jump in with both feet or forget about it after a week.  Also they usually are a lot less work if it's the right thing.

3.  I am question how good of a parent I am sometimes - I feel like I yell all the time at my boys who yell all the time.  It's the whole problem of do as I say and not as I do.

4.  I think I need to get more sleep - I have a hard time waking up in the morning, but my problem is that nights are when I feel most productive and am able to accomplish things - like last night I finished up and filed my taxes.

5.  I need to do more exciting things on weekends besides taxes.

6.  My truck is currently in the shop and getting about 1200$ in repairs done to it.  Brakes, axle bearings and one new axle, oxygen sensor, fuel filter, oil change.  Do I fix all this then get a new truck or settle on the fact that I have a 10 year old truck that takes about 800 dollars a year to keep in good running order as opposed to buying a new or upgrade truck and being out all that money for something that will still likely need work now and then.

7.  The winter here is starting to get long and even though I am starting to tire of moving snow every time the wind blows - I still enjoy the clean whiteness of everything.  I am not crazy however and am still look forward to the green spring.

8.  I am still struggling making lasting changes in my life - for example I haven't been able to stay away from chewing tobacco or pop.  I want to change other things to that I'm not going to get into right now, but it seems like the more effort I put into changing the worse I get.

9.  I feel like I should do more with my friends, but the problem is that a lot of them don't live anywhere near me and it would involve driving and then I wouldn't be at home.  Maybe I need to get some friends who live closer to me.

10.  I don't know what the future will bring in a lot of ways, this is sort of scary to me, but at the same time it's a very good thing since it means that the future is essentially just a blank slate.

That's what's on my mind - no more musing for tonight...

The Great Bee Rescue of 2010

We had a little surprise here on Monday - the weather got a little crazy and over the weekend it rained more than 1/2 inch of rain.  On Sunday it was pretty nice and warm and things were melting.  Then Monday morning the wind started screaming and we got about 1 inch of snow.  Even with all the water frozen by then that little bit of snow started swirling and the wind got stronger and stronger - 50 mph gusts!, which left us in a good old fashioned blizzard.  

For some reason I decided that I needed to drive around that day and only got stuck once.  I couldn't take any pictures that day, but the visibility was awful and at times you couldn't see anything at all.  It wasn't constant, but for 3 seconds the world was white.  The 1st picture is of a drift that was just down the road from me - I know there really isn't any reference there, but it is about 4-5 feet tall and about 30 feet wide.  On each side of the road as you can see the road was completely bare.   What makes this all the more impressive is that it only snowed about one inch of snow.  I haven't figured out how they measure snow when all of it ends up in piles like this, but someone comes up with an official measurement.

I didn't realize it until this morning since I had to work on Tuesday, but buried beneath this drift were my two hives full of my faithful hardworking bees.  This is what I found when I went to see what had happened to them.  Before Monday they were both standing just fine - I put a snow fence to protect them and it had worked beautifully so far this winter.

After about 10 minutes of digging I was able to find them and get them dug out somewhat.  After the blizzard the temperatures have dropped off - it's now down to about 0 and there is a 15 or so mile an hour wind so it's hard to stay outside for any amount of time - so I'll have to try to dig some more tomorrow.

The reason that I need to clear them out is that bees still have to have what they call "cleansing flights" in the winter.  That's a fancy nice way of saying they have to fly around and poop.  Bees won't poop in their hive - they wait until sunny days and then stand on the edge of their opening and poop.  Some of them fly around a little and do their business a little bit away from the hive, some of them die outside, and most of them make it back in.

I lifted up the top of the hive on the right and could still hear faint buzzing so I think they survived, but after this winter of getting buried, -32 F and wind I'm not sure they will be strong enough to make a comeback in the spring.  The time for ordering more bees is rapidly approaching and as much as I thought my hives would do well I think they will need some help from some bee friends.

So as even though I have to sit by the fire tonight to thaw out my toes, thoughts of buzzing bees, flowers, and sweet, sweet honey are not far away.

More Radiant than the Sun

I woke up to find a beautiful morning yesterday and took a few pictures to share (sorry about the finger in the 1st one).  Anyway I walked around my place during a foggy frosty morning and snapped pictures until my fingers were numb.  These pictures don't do what I saw as much justice as what I witnessed, but they do help to illuminate something I've been thinking about lately.

I've been reading Rudolf Steiner lately who was a very interesting many that published mountains of books, gave hundreds of lectures on the spiritual nature of the world.  He stresses over and over the importance of spiritual truths.  How one should think about them, ponder them, make them a part of one's soul.  So that's what I've been doing.  One that he speaks of quite often is as follows:

More radiant than the sun,
Purer than the snow
Subtler than the ether
Is the Self
the Spirit of my heart.
I am this Self
This self am I

It's amazing the amounts of meaning that can be found in this little verse.  What I saw and felt yesterday morning is all summed up in it.  The last picture was something that I only saw for a few minutes - there is some sort of name for the rays of light shining down like they are.  I've seen it once at night with the moon, but the pictures didn't turn out. I guess it is more common in the Arctic regions, but hey this is Minnesota.

Starting the new year off right

I've been thinking a lot lately about all the changes I wanted make in my life or if I should just keep on doing the same old thing.  I know it's the old resolution thing that for whatever reason always gets brought up around this time of year.  Making promises that usually end up broken.  Well I decided to give it a shot this year and tackle one really tough thing that I have been battling for a long time.  Chewing tobacco.  Yep, I chew tobacco or used to - for those that don't know me as well as they think they do, I've done it for a long time.  Since I was 17 pretty much non stop.  I really got bad going to school in South Dakota - even the women chew tobaccy in SD. I'm not really sure why I picked this winter to try, maybe it's all the people I've met and found out had cancer in the last year.  Maybe it's just that I'm sick of being a slave to another habit.  If you haven't read far enough back in my blog or between the lines I happen to also be an addict in recovery.  Just got four years yesterday as a matter of fact!

I am also struggling with a sugar/cola drink addiction which seems to be getting the better of me these days.  I am by no means perfect and think that's probably enough self-degrading talk here.  Bottom line here is that something in my finally got sick of life the way it is and needs change.  I wish there was some way I could harness this feeling and pass it on to others who should change their lives or at least be able to explain it to give someone the motivation to follow through with their own changes.  For me it has been the consciousness of all that goes on around me that I have been waking up to.  The awareness of being a hypocrite is something that I can only deal with for so long.  It's tough to tell people while trying to be a good health professional that they need to loose weight, quit smoking or do things if I can't do things myself.  It's why I wouldn't trust a skinny chef or a fat doctor.

Now I'm no angel unlike my youngest boy, but I am starting to understand that I can do a lot better than I have been doing.  What I am starting to realize though is that the vast majority of change only comes about through pain.  If you tell me that I can't or shouldn't do something it will only make me want to try harder do it.  Why I started chewing tobacco, smoking, drinking, eating too much or whatever bad habit you want to name is not as important as, neither is how it got out of control.   Why wasn't I able to stop until I had something bad happen?  It's simple - I wanted to stop all along but it was more easy to continue doing what I was doing than changing.  It was the actual change, the fear of what would or wouldn't happen when I finally did change. The pain that I ended up suffering due to my choices was the only way I could change because the only way to stop the pain was to change what I was doing.  So no pain, no gain.

So now looking back at my life at the way things played out I can see that there are things like chewing tobacco that are likely to be sources of new pain that I have no desire to endure and I can (hopefully) make the change I need to in order to avoid that pain.  So here I am at the start of something new.

So like Pumpkin my dog here, things can seem a little crazy at times, like waking up to find a snow drift in front of the door.  But it's just snow she's a dog that loves snow, it's hard to describe how much a St. Bernard

loves snow, you just have to witness a dog who while you are shivering is tearing around and bouncing like a rubber ball.  She loves the change that winter brings - mainly because she spends the whole fall growing hair to get ready for it.

This picture would seem unrelated to the topic at hand here, but I think it is a good way to end.  I took this two morning ago.  At the time it was -32 F, there wasn't much wind and I only walked about 100 yards or so to get it.  By the time I got back in the house my hands were completely numb.  This is a sunrise, which I don't usually take the time or am up early enough to take pictures of.  What I see though is the start of a new day, a new year and the very start of the growing/farming season.  Like the dog the earth doesn't just start growing green things in April and May, the preparation starts long before the first bud pops open or green shoot comes from the ground.  It starts at the time of the year when the days are the shortest, the nights are the coldest and when nothing at all would seem to be happening.  The pain of the cold, snow and dark give the earth a chance to rest and as the days get longer it gets ready to spring back into life.

Coming to understand myself in a similar way is helpful, knowing that the end of something is always the start of something new makes changing easier.  Not all the change in my life is going to come about the way an animal grows it's winter coat or the way the earth prepares to spring back to life, but I know that it can happen that way if I prepare.

I wish all of you Farmer Dan reader's a Happy 2010!