Balancing act

One week to go until shearing now. All our sheep are in full fleece and on the warm sunny days try to rub it off on the nearest solid object. We helped out in the beautiful old stone barn of a friend yesterday when she had the shearer in for a date with her coloured Corriedales. It was a warm sunny day and they were looking forward to casting aside their woolly winter gear. We had a half hour drive to get there and noted all through the hills sheep were yarded ready for shearing. Everyone was trying to get it done while the weather held.
Mid spring here can be warm and sunny bordering on hot but it occasionally has a tantrum and throws a thunderstorm. Rain was due today and down it came. It's beautiful and will fill the tanks again before the summer starts but a sudden cold change can be lethal for unprepared stock. This is what happened last year when a rainstorm came through the week after shearing:

We yarded the sheep out of the wind but they had a group shivering fit for a while anyway. Eventually the sun came out and warmed them up. Sheep have a reputation for being quite tough but the week after shearing is a critical time for them. Until they can grow a light covering of wool again they are actually as naked as we are. Just like we hunch up when cold, they stand like triangles and tuck up their tummies.

They also get very sunburnt without their wool, especially the white ones with pink skin. This is another reason we keep them sheltered for that first week post disrobing. Otherwise we'd use buckets of sunblock lotion.

Beehive yourself

The stock population of Celestequest has increased by an estimated 50,000 in one day today. It was an epic undertaking and is only half complete, but it seems successful so far. When we took on half a dozen old beehives and started to do them up recently the grapevine, or rather the beehive, got buzzing and it was only a short time until our farrier discovered an unloved wild beehive free to a good home quite near our place. At the home of a very old friend in fact, where it bothered him whilst he shod horses. Very convenient. Almost unnervingly convenient for smallholders, but anyway we packed up tools, pressed a beekeeping friend into helper service and set off one fine, sunny day to see what we could see.

What we could see was a beehive in an old upturned whelping box in the loft of a very old pioneer barn. The rotten floorboards, the wave-like floor surface and the instructions not to touch the walls should they fall down only added to the excitement. As did the actual holes in the floor. Carting all the boxes, smokers and miscellaneous stuff up the fruit picking ladder now used as access was also interesting.
More interesting still was what, exactly, the new beekeepers would find in the whelping box. It was possible that it would be too heavy with honeycomb. There was only one thing for it. With the application of a lot of smoke, the lads gingerly turned the whole thing over. Contrary to expectations the air did not erupt in a storm of angry bees. They were not chased by annoyed little workers, nor was their an exodus of insects away from the site of destruction. It seems this swarm is a naturally docile one, and the whelping box, whilst beautifully decorated with fragrant folds of honeycomb, was not completely full of it. A sack of chaff left inside it several years ago had limited their building space.

Beekeepers extraordinaires set to work to fill frames with honeycomb and encourage all the various types of bee (brood, workers, drones and hopefully the queen) to inhabit a standard domesticated beehive which, given that they'd nested in a white wooden box before, was not the huge leap that, say, tree-dwelling bees would have to make.

The careful transfer of comb, bees and honey took about an hour. Work has to be smooth and steady with bees - no sudden movements, rushing or too much sweating. On a sunny day up in the loft of an iron-clad barn clothed in nylon bee proof hoods this last part is not so easy. Plenty of looking and learning was also accomplished. My job was to fetch and carry, hand things over surgery-style when asked and provide helpful suggestions from a safe distance.
The rails in the whelping box, installed to keep the doggy mothers away from the walls and prevent puppy-smothering, were now a problem for honeycomb removal as the bees had found them a useful girder-like structure to build around. It was a healthy hive with a strong population a lot of whom were now returning laden with pollen and finding their commune torn apart by dome-headed white bears. As the afternoon wore on they added to the confused mass of bees on the wire, the floor, the tools, the whelping box and the new hives. For there ended up being three hives, to accommodate the sheer mass of honeycomb and bees. The designated beekeepers for the day put brood cells in each one and hopefully the workers will look after them all. The bees in the boxes who didn't score the queen should feed the brood royal jelly and make new queens. That is the plan. We're not sure if the bees are clear on the plan, but they got instructions.

Excess comb was hoarded in food-grade plastic buckets with sealable lids to keep out the bees cheekily trying to steal back their own honey. Even so, when we got the buckets home to extract the honey there were quite a few hitchhikers inside. We also ran short of box lids, not expecting to use so many base boxes, so one was improvised with a car mat from the floor of the trusty ute. We'll replace it with a proper one when next we check the bees. Given a few sunny days to assess the damage, organise work teams, remove the dead, start rebuilding and doing all the normal disaster-zone management things much better than humans could ever do, the bees should settle down. The next step will be to move the new hives around the tortuous hill routes to home, but we'll think about that tomorrow.

Anonymous lamb

This small chap doesn't have a name yet and possibly never will. He was left behind in a paddock by his flock. He was probably the weaker of twins, but couldn't keep up with his athletic comrades. Thankfully our kindly lamb-raising neighbour found him before he became supper for foxes. She and her husband had been raising him on a bottle for a few weeks and, due to the vagaries of shift roster timing, found themselves without someone there to feed him recently. This is the first year we have not had a bottle fed lamb, so we could easily take on lamb catering for a day.
He has astonishing fashion sense. We still have quite cold nights here so he wears a dog coat. Yes, that's a fur collar. He is shut away under cover overnight and when no-one can watch for dogs or foxes in a chicken house with a dozen rescued battery hens and some female ducks who were being persecuted. Hopefully he won't grow up thinking other sheep have a few straggly feathers and like to dip their heads under water. He's let out to run around as often as possible, but always seems to want to get back to his poultry friends. It's as if he feels he has to look after them.

Tractor power rules

In a country plagued by drought we rarely complain about rain. It's always welcome but the wet start to spring had its drawbacks. The Pear Tree Paddock had been used exclusively by horses last autumn, to its detriment and our shame. Attempts at reseeding were less than successful. If only there was a world market for capeweed. With the volunteer capeweed crop now flowering we had very limited time to stop it seeding and going exponential. It would take forever with a hired garden cultivator and it's rather heavy clay anyway. Dragging an old gate around with the ute had done nothing but annoy the bees. It would have to be mowed. Our cheerful neighbour on top of the hill came to our rescue on his trusty grey steed.

Its an old Ferguson, a beautiful piece of machinery with no roll bar, no aircon, no dust shields, not even a seat cushion and it does it's job perfectly, in this case slashing the pretty yellow flowers. My father had a tractor like this when he and his father before him had a serious farm in the Mallee outback of South Australia. He cleared land and built roads with his. They are indestructible.
Our cheery neighbour's vintage tractor chugged round and round, groaning a bit in the heavy wet at the bottom of the hill but working away nonetheless. The various animals in the adjacent free range gullies didn't turn a hair. It was sunny. There was serious grazing to be done and they just assumed this loud grey beastie was grazing too, albeit in a rather logical square pattern. And rather indiscriminately, eating all in its path.

The very nice chap doing the steering had earplugs in, (goodness knows why, it was only really, really loud, not deafening) so comments and conversation were kept to a minimum - being a mixture of shouts and sign language.

It was a very short part of a lovely morning later when the Fergie and its rider mowed the last strip, then chugged off down the road to do their own work, having cheerfully taken nothing but a glass of water in return for their efforts. All done with a friendly wave. Whenever I lose faith in human nature I only need to recall our neighbours' unquestioning help to us. And their enormous smiles.