Irrigation, hay and other farming news

Bales that went up into the mow around noontime

As you can see, this week we are in the midst of haying season. Today more loads of alfalfa went up into the barn.

Last week they were baling the wheat (I was wrong they did not make it into silage). It was a bit tricky to bale up, it was slippery and broke a number of bales the first day as the strings were being tied.

Garry will be up and out on the tractor in the morning, raking hay so they they can bale tomorrow.

Garden getting a good soaking

 We have had the sprinkler going on the garden again the last two days, I picked a few Chinese peas pods we ate on Monday, and I should have more to pick and turn into stir fry tomorrow (Wednesday). If you are wondering Maria planted the onion rows in the center of the garden.You can see her six potato plants the regrew after the frost.  We had several rows that finally sprouted beets and carrots after we watered it a week ago.

The water was turned on for the corn field last week. It was not on when we stopped on Sunday but I got a couple photos.

The black things are filters, they are cleaned out everyday. They keep dirt out of the system that could plug them up.

Garry says some of the other corn fields are looking a little wilted since we still have not gotten more than a sprinkle in the last month. It could very well mean that this could be the only corn we harvest this year if it doesn't rain soon.

 Garry wanted to see if the field had gotten wet enough to got more corn to grow in the field and was very pleased to see some more corn has popped up in some of the bare spots in the field. The ground was just too dry to sprout the corn.

Look baby corn up!

The green is the top honey maker now

 Today Victor and Garry tended bees for a while. First they prepared more frames to put in the boxes since they were running low. They have to put new wires in the wooden frames to hold the sheets of beeswax.
I brought their soup outside to eat under the trees, as they were finishing the frames, and we reminisced about how we ate outside all the time the first summer were were here in 2009.

Bee water station

After we ate, I carried stuff inside and they tended the hives. Garry got a bee sting for the second time this spring, a bee got in the glove he was wearing!

They tried to start a new hive today with some not yet hatched frames of workers and a queen from the busy green gang. They also checked the other hives and were happy to report that the bees that Garry and Max caught have settled in and the queen is laying now.

When Victor checked the yellow box that they left, he reported that the new queen is not fertilized and laying eggs yet. He says they will check on them again next week to see how they are progressing.

Garry's own hive and the dark green one they captured