I know it’s been a very long time since a blog has been posted. It’s easy to write when things are going great, and great is not a word I would use to describe our last few months of 2016.

We lost the bees to colony collapse disorder. You can look it up if you care to know more about CCD. It was a very hard loss for me to take, as I have become very fascinated and captivated by them. I don’t ever want to be without them again. This is definitely not the first time I’ve had to start over in my life. I don’t give up easy. On the bright side, we harvested a lot of honey & wax this year!

We lost a couple of beloved pets and a few chickens. We’ve had family members with serious illnesses and the local bug getting Sara and I as well. It’s just life happening, I know. The days keep getting longer and we are thankful for what we have.

So, the mourning period is over for me. I’m looking forward to getting more bees in April. We have tomatoes and mandarin oranges flowering in the house. I’ve had to pollinate the tomatoes myself(with a q-tip.) Now I can cross “help tomatoes have sex” off my bucket list. Even I never know what I’m gonna do. Geez. This weird warm spell made the maple trees start to gush. I have a pan of maple sap boiling on the stove as I type. It is very early for this. I have never made syrup in January before. I have found wisdom in the fact that I need to be ready to deal with abnormal weather. I cannot rely on the usual time frames for tapping maples, planting crops, splitting hives, etc. Times they are a changing, for sure.

Home remodeling/maintenance, odd jobs, ebay, firewood splitting, and the farm critters have kept me pretty busy as of late.

Well…now you know a little more about what’s going on. We look forward to the 2017 season and we will keep you updated. Get outside!

-Steve