Musical Bees

There was a brief moment yesterday when I thought I was going to die.

Let's back up. Go grab a cup of coffee, this is a long one.

It has been an odd bee season for us, to say the least. Of my two colonies - which we'll now just refer to as Green and White for ease - one made it through the winter and one died. So my brother Kris and I did a split and thought all was grand. Moving on.

Next on the docket, my bro and I installed a package of bees four doors down at the parents' place. It was an odd package that I am 90% certain had an extra rogue queen (it happens, apparently) and those ladies split themselves on day one...wouldn't take to the new hive...half wanted to live in the package box and the other half took up residence in a fence post...I was stung for the first time as a beekeeper and the 2 bees got stuck in my pant fabric, so it was a doozy...and just when we thought we had it all fixed, a mid-May snow storm swooped in and froze them all. Poor ladies didn't stand a chance.

What to do? Why, email Don the Bee Mentor of course! He pulled a Hail Mary late in the bee season and hooked us up with Prairie Wind Bee Supply out of Cheyenne, who happened to have some extra nucs on hand for a May 31 delivery. Winner winner.

Have you ever picked up a nuc, when lots of nucs are being picked up? It's not like your average package bee pickup, with a bunch of bees flying around but all the girls are a little confused and stoned. Nope. This was different. This was thousands of pissed, angry bees flying around defending their 5-frame homes and wondering what the hell just happened as they traveled from Wyoming to Colorado on the back of a flat bed trailer, through crazy rain and killer heat, for a few hours. Add to that a handful of novice beekeepers trying to prove their beekeeper-ness by standing in the middle of all this, not swatting (Just like they were taught! A+, idiots.), and doing their best to hold the panic on the inside.

What did Kris and I do? We got out of the damn way. And still got stung! This was a mad house. The poor guy running the deal was probably stung a dozen times while we were waiting for our bees. It was crazy times. I'm sure he went back to Cheyenne and contemplated a new career...perhaps breeding dogs? Yeah, puppies are a great idea.

FYI - this is what an average bee sting does to my hand. My hand is that thing that looks like a plump, smooth foot. My pinkie finger turned into a baby sausage. I didn't get stung once in the last 2 years, and now I'm two for two on the new hive. Bitches.

But we did it. We got our bees, my brother and I, jumped into my Outback, and started our hour plus drive home.

At first there was only one bee in the back window, where the nuc was.

And then there were four.

And then we hit a bump, and suddenly there were 20 or so. I sent Kris back with the camera phone while I calmly sped along the highway doing 80 mph. This is what he came back with.

Oh shit. Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit. Hey Prairie Wind, maybe next time, don't skimp on the duct tape? Hundreds of bees spilling into the back of the car, half an hour to go, repeating "Bees and dogs smell fear" over and over in my head. Nothing to do but turn up the radio - thank you, Bob Marley - and drive on.

And we did. And we made it. And the bees were housed.

Kris runs that hive, so we'll call all iterations from here on out KBees. They were transferred into their deep, surrounded by friendly scrub oak and pines. They have a running stream in the yard (fake, but it looks real), and plenty of blossoms to nosh on. All was well. We planned to check them in two weeks.

Meanwhile, back on the Pare Down farm...

Something was amiss with the green hive. It went from bustling to dwindling, while the white hive continued to act as the Grand Central Station of bees. A previous bee check a few weeks back looked fine: queen cups in the green hive, eggs and larva (and the old queen) in the white hive. But that new queen was either poorly mated or eaten by a bird, because when we popped the top yesterday all we saw were drones and a scatter shot of drone cells.

Ruh-roh. It was like LoDo on a Friday night. (A little Men-ver humor for you locals.)

Well poop. Suddenly we were back to 2 living colonies. Can we not catch a break, bees?

Then, miracle.

Kris and I went to check on KBees. They were fine that morning. We had an extra super in hand since we're down a deep and need to buy another, and were planning on a quick peek, add the super, call it a day. We were three days past our 2-week inspection deadline. So what did those girls do, only moments before we arrived? They swarmed! Nature called, and 40% of the bees stayed in the hive with the new queen, while roughly 60% of the bees were now bunched around the old queen on a very tall stand of scrub oak in my parents' yard.

Ha! We bounced those drones out of my green hive (sorry fellas) and decided to catch our first swarm. This looks like a promo for a Jackass movie.

Keep in mind throughout this process that my mom ("I never even wanted these bees!") is taking pictures on my iPhone, and my two kids are watching from the balcony of my parents' house. Our plan, since I am short and weak while Kris is big and brave, was to put the deep on the top of the ladder, Kris would climb up while I held everything steady from below, and he'd shake the bees into the box. What could go wrong?

Ready. Steady. Shake down! And bees went into the box according to plan, but the rest of them EXPLODED around us.

This was the death moment. As I felt the nuclear rain of bees upon my whole body I had the slow motion time to consider the following:

"This was a dumb idea. This was your worst fucking idea ever. You are about to be consumed by the sting of a thousand bees while your mom takes pictures and your children watch you die from a safe distance. Save the bees? Save yourself next time, you dumbass."

But we didn't die!

I wish there was video of Kris jumping off the ladder (like a little girl) and me catching it as the whole shebang almost toppled into the bushes before we both fled to safety. This picture does not do it justice. (Run, Forest!)

We (Kris, me, the bees, my mom who thought she would see 2 of her 3 kids die that day) all recovered quickly. The ladies were confused but just as docile as all the blogs of experienced beekeepers claim. And now that we knew what to expect, the process finished up pretty quickly. 2 more rounds of Operation Shakedown resulted in all bees being successfully caught!

And ten minutes later, the newest version of the Green Ladies were at home and happily exploring their new surroundings. This morning, all is well in the bee queendoms.

So what did we learn today, fellow and future beekeepers?

1. Don't beekeep in yoga pants. Yoga pants are for in-home drinking and the occasional bout of actual yoga.
2. Cardboard nuc boxes are lame. 
3. Always have a roll of duct tape on hand. Always. Wear it on your belt if you have to.
4. Don't procrastinate, as bee life waits for no man. But if you do, you may end up with a swarm miracle that fills an empty hive. So...do procrastinate. 
5. Don't do potentially deadly things while your kids watch, even if they are not as deadly as they seem, because your screams of panic will scar your kids regardless of the outcome.
6. Wine is great (duh), but after an exhilarating bee experience, I recommend a small batch gin and some good lemonade. 

Happy beekeeping.

Spring Beekeeping...or, Crazy Little Bug(ger)s!

Bees. I'm finding them to be like children - just when you think you know something they pull the rug out and you're back at square one, doing your best and putting money into the therapy jar for their future.

Remember when I wrote the Cherokee Girls off as dead? Well, somehow they survived the bulk of the winter. Two weeks ago, there were signs of life in the hive, and their fuzzy brown bodies were all over the place. I think that by giving them only one full deep to heat throughout the winter, I inadvertently helped prolong the life of this tiny colony.

So it was with great sadness and dismay that I opened the hive this past weekend only to find the colony clustered in a small, fresh-dead bundle. The most recent freeze did them in.

And I couldn't even steal the remaining honey because the EXPLODING population in the neighboring hive was already busy with the same idea. (Note to self, figure out how to harvest the vast amounts of leftover wax.) We cleaned the hive, and moved on. And by "we," I mean my little brother and beekeeping buddy, Kris.

Next, Kris and I popped the top on the Great Grand hive, and the bees who weren't out foraging for the day filled 3 deeps. It's always been easy to tell the two colonies apart, as the Cherokee Girls were light brown, and the Great Grand Girls have a brighter orange body. And those orange bees were everywhere!

The top deep was 90% full of capped honey. And bees. The second deep had capped honey, larva, and capped drones. And bees. The bottom deep was so packed with bees that we didn't pull any frames. The ladies were calm (initially), but the volume was high with that many residents packed into such a small space.

Next came the tricky, hope I don't regret it, hastily made decision. There were a lot of bees, loads of capped honey, and the nectar flow is officially on. Conditions were ripe for a spring swarm. Why wait and recapture half the colony when I had a perfectly good hive that was now clean and empty? So we did a split. A winging-it, didn't plan it, Googling-as-we-go split. I'd done one before, but that was with Bee Mentor Don and over a year ago.

First, Kris moved the Grand hive over a few inches to confuse the returning bees. Then we set up the vacant hive right next door.

We left the bottom deep on the Grand hive alone, and took most of the second deep - keeping the brood frames in order - and gave them to the split. Honey from the top deep was divided, and a 5 new frames with no honey or drawn comb were divided between them. Why did we not just put the second deep, as is, onto the bottom board of the empty hive and call it good? Well, that's a really good question in hindsight, but the bees were crazy mad, the frames were already out, and shut up. Live and learn.

Finally, since we were still really close to the 7/10 threshold of full frames in both hives' upper deeps, and since there was plenty of honey in both hives, I added excluders and a super to each hive. Maybe a misstep, but one that we risked. This is the year for honey, dammit!

So now we wait. I'll check the ladies in a week or so, weather allowing, to look for signs of queen cells and determine where the resident queen ended up. All things considered, it was a good day. No stings. Potential for a new colony. And the imperfect forgiveness that is nature. Even with all of our blunders, both hives have food, brood and bees. Come on girls, do your thing!

***

Six days later, and things are looking okay from the outside. I am seeing activity in both hives, but the original is definitely busier. I am doing my best to chill out and follow the advice on Honey Bee Suite:

• You can put splits side-by-side, no problem. Just remember that for a long time, the part without a queen will look like no one is home. Gradually, as nurses become foragers, the discrepancy will decrease. Don’t let the number of foragers in the one part freak you out. If the split is raising a queen, everything is working according to plan.

Dead Bees. Damn.

It happens. I know it happens. But the Cherokee Girls (white hive) are on their last legs, and I am deep in mourning for the loss of my industrious little bugs.

The hives. Cherokee on left, Great Grand on right. Giant shadow courtesy of the beekeepers and a late afternoon sun.

I haven't been in the hive for 2 months, but on last inspection they were killing it - brood, bees and honey galore. They have always had a fairly large dead bee yard in comparison with the Great Grand Girls (green hive). And I have noticed fewer bees at the entrance over the last month or so at the Cherokee hive.

Then on Sunday the hive just had a feeling of desolation. It was a warm day and the Great Grand Girls were out and about, and I could see them checking out the Cherokee hive. The GG Girls are more of a vibrant orange color, and the Cherokee Girls are a more subdued brown. I quickly popped the top of the Cherokee hive and there was no sign of life. A quick look into the top of the GG hive and and bees were spilling out of the inner cover. Something was wrong.

Yesterday was what appeared to be the last warm day of this oddly warm fall, so it was time to dig deeper. Kris, brother and bee apprentice extraordinaire, came over and we started our investigation. I still don't know what happened, so I'll lay out the clues to you as we found them and see if anyone in the ether has a better idea of what happened to my lovely bees.

First, a panorama of my bee setup. The hive openings face SE, with a wind block directly behind them. They are surrounded by pines and scrub oak, so they are protected, and receive adequate sun in the mornings. They are shaded in the later part of the afternoon.

And here are the dead bees in front of the hives. First, Cherokee. The bees look as if they have baked in the desert, and this has always been the case. But now, there aren't any bees that look "fresh dead," if you will.

The dead bees at the GG hive are almost alive in contrast. (Poor drones - it's a rough time of year for those fellas.)

When the Cherokee hive was opened, there were no bees in the top deep but it was totally full of honey. When we removed the upper deep, the lower deep looked deserted.

We found tons of honey but didn't hit signs of potential brood, or see the remaining handful of bees, until we arrived at the fifth frame in the center. The bees who are still alive were clustered at the bottom of the frames in the lower left hand corner of this picture. They were lethargic, listless and could have all fit into a large coffee mug.

This was the scene when we popped the top on the GG hive. Very different.

We started digging into the lower Cherokee deep for clues. As a novice beekeeper, I couldn't quite tell what was uncapped honey and what was possibly dead brood. There were random dead baby bees who seemed to be mummified right before they emerged. We did not spot a queen, or recent signs of a queen, on any of the frames.

Gummy brood here on the bottom? There was capped honey at the top of the frame. This frame does not have cell starter, so this is all bee-made honeycomb.

It's hard to see, but there are 4 mummified bees in the chewed out looking holes in the bottom right of the picture. The spotty pattern of the filled cells doesn't look healthy or normal to me. 

I did poke into one of the ambiguously glossy cells and it was a white goo. Not "ropey" as some of the worse foul brood diseases talk of, just mush. You can see it in the destroyed upper left portion of comb. I also popped out one of the mummified bees, which is on the end of the stick. There was no distinctive smell of yeast or rot to the hive or the frames.

And that's where we stand. What happened to my bees? Maybe chilled brood? There are definitely not enough bees to cover a substantial amount of brood. Did the queen die somehow and now we're just watching the remaining bees die of old age? Do the mummified bee remains hint at chalk brood? I just hope it's not something contagious since I added the Cherokee Girls' upper deep of honey to the GG Girls in order to help them through the winter. Whatever the cause of the Cherokee Girls' collapse, the freezing weather this week is sure to finish them off.

Bees. All of the prep. The books. The classes. The care in selecting hive locations and placement. And still I can't control the loss of a colony. It makes me sad. I hope to do better next year.

Testing bees for a mighty mite load

I have reached a new level of weird in my life in that I check my bugs for bugs.

A few weeks ago, my Saturday morning was devoted to learning how to check a bee colony for mite load. It's considered a given that a colony will have varroa mites - disgusting little things that suck their host's blood and can overtake a small or weak colony - and a certain level of mites is considered manageable.

Let's take a moment for a group shudder. I despise parasites like mites and ticks. When our dogs had fleas thanks to a bad boarding experience a few years back I went psycho on my house and disinfected, Boraxed and bleached for weeks. If I ever had bed bugs, I would just have to move and buy all new things. So how is it that this girl now inspects tiny bees for wee little mites? Life. Crazy.

Back to bees.

Don (bee mentor extraordinaire) started our day with a lesson on mite control. He is against the use of miticides, yet another reason we get along so well, as it leads your hives down the terrible pesticide cycle of working...not working as well...needing more poison...working again...well, not so much anymore...etc. The mites that survive the poison are the ones who show a resistance, and these ones are left to breed. Don wants to turn this cycle on itself and instead of breeding stronger mites, skip the poison and breed stronger bees. Darwin say wha???

Rather than using miticides, Don allows for a "survival of the fittest" situation within the bees. If a whole colony is lost to mite load, then it wasn't strong and he starts over. But, if a colony is able to survive with mites, and overcome mites, and shows a resistance to mites and an ability to thrive in their presence, then these bees are able to continue to live and flourish and reproduce. (In my own hives, the Great Grand Girls have a queen who was bred specifically to produce workers with an ability to detect and destroy larval mites in the hive - here's hoping! Colorado residents interested in such a queen should look into Highland Honey Bees.) Don also naturally disrupts the mites' breeding cycles by doing splits, but that is a lesson for another day.

If you aren't planning on using a miticide, then testing for mite load is more a practice in knowing what's happening in your hives and reaping the benefits of that age old axiom of knowledge being power. And, it's kind of grossly fun. We used the Powdered Sugar Test. If more than 10 mites are detected, a serious infestation is present.

First, gather all of your equipment. We used an old light colored dish tub, a makeshift plastic bee funnel (the black plastic thing in the picture), powdered sugar, a 1/2 C measuring cup, a TB measuring spoon, and a Mason jar with a wire mesh lid. And the smoker of course. These are post-Solstice agro bees and we are not crazy people...just odd bee people.

Then we went in to the hives to find a brood frame with a solid amount of bees, but NOT THE QUEEN! It is fairly important that the queen not be a part of this test. A few bees will be lost, and you don't want it to be that one. There are thousands of others to put to the task, so taking the time to ensure the queen isn't on your brood frame of choice is well worth it.

The next steps came really quickly, so line up your supplies and if you can, use a buddy. The bees get super pissed.

Shake the brood frame over the funnel (any long v-shaped piece of plastic or whatnot will suffice) so that a bunch of angry bees fall off. Quickly pour the funnel of bees into the wash tub. Gently scoop a 1/2 cup of bees, pour them into the Mason jar, and put on the lid.

Dump the remaining bees that are left in the washtub away from where you are working so that they find their way back to the hive without deciding to take a detour up your pant leg. Next, add a TB of powdered sugar to the top of your mason jar and gently force it through the screen and in with the bees.

Now, turn the jar on its side and gently roll the bees for the next two minutes. This part is interesting since the sugar makes the bees body temperatures rise (which in turn makes the mites fall off, which is why this works) and it looks like the jar is smoking. Watch the video below and sample a mini lesson from Don as well.

Next, shake the jar over the dish tub. It should fill with powdered sugar and dislodged mites. If this proves slow or annoying, you can do what we did and just pour the bees into the tub.

 

Time to look for the bloodsucking little assholes who are trying to eat your bees alive. It helps to have a magnifying glass on hand to separate the mites from random little specs of dust. In this pic, there is one mite right in the middle, and another on the bottom left.

Don was lucky this day. Of the 3 hives we checked, the highest mite count was 3. His girls seem to be doing quite well without the use of poisons, thankyouverymuch. So make whatever choice you will, but know that good results are possible with minimum interference.

Wondering what we did with the sugary bees after the test? Dumped them back on the top of the hive so that their sisters could lick them clean. Not a bad way to end this day at the fair.

As for me, I did not test my own hives since they are in their inaugural year and I am fairly paranoid about not disturbing my bees if I don't have to. I will do a mite check before and after my 2014 summer splits though, so I'll get my own numbers then. I am more than a little curious to see if my stronger nuc colony (Cherokee Girls) has more or less mites than the package bees with the replacement queen (Great Grand Girls). Assuming they all make it through the winter. Come on girls!!

Grand Girls no more...

The Grand Girls are gone. No, my package colony did not up and die, but as Don the Bee Mentor has taught me, "A queen is a colony and a colony is a queen." Let me explain.

I picked up my package bees - the Grand Girls - from Apis Hive Co. at Denver Urban Homesteading at the beginning of May, and drove home with a buzzing backend and an anxious eye to potential car accidents. The bees of my imagination were suddenly oh so real.

Jude was fascinated and unafraid, which fueled my dreams of a future beekeeper in the making!

These original package bees had a marked queen who was easy to spot with her hot pink dot. When I installed the package I followed the instructions of Apis Hive Co. and removed the cork from the queen box and replaced it with a small marshmallow. The box was inserted into the hive, the bees were shaken over the top, and I utilized a baggie feeder of sugar syrup and an empty deep to ease their transition. Then I left the girls to their own devices for a week to allow the worker bees time to eat through the candy and free their newly accepted queen.

Upon first inspection a week later, there was comb being drawn and the queen was spotted, but the bees were too crowded to see what was happening within the comb itself.

And then came week 2, inspection #2...Bees, comb, pollen...no queen. No eggs. No baby bees. Me, freaking out that I somehow sentenced this colony to an early death with my inept beekeeping skills.

Enter Don the Bee Mentor!

Sidetrack: I must reiterate how wonderful it is to have a flesh and blood human being to turn to in times of bee crisis. And for a new beekeeper, these times are plentiful. I've read a hundred books, blogs and forums but nothing tops a teacher. For novice beekeepers lucky enough to live in the Denver area, Don offers a yearlong mentoring program that will teach everything from routine inspection, to splitting your hives (I can personally attest to the magic and relevance of this particular skill set), to managing varroa mites without pesticides, to harvesting that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, HONEY. For beekeepers outside my area, I urge you to contact your local bee clubs and find a skilled mentor to apprentice yourself to. Bees may not require large amounts of your time, but they require finesse and a vast base knowledge that benefits from hands-on instruction. Back to the original story...

Don talked me off my crazy tangent and let me know that there were a few possible reasons for the loss of the queen and they weren't, as in the case of our poor chicks, a result of me. First, she may not have been mated properly. She may have been released too quickly and killed by the colony. She may have flown off. And finally, she's a bug - maybe she just died.

I had about a week, since the bees had been without a queen for at least 5 days, to get a new queen before a worker started laying drones (bad news) and/or the current colony started dying of old age. This is when Don sent me to Tim Brod of Highland Honey Bees.

Tim, of the "stung on the eyelid" posting of yore, happened to be boxing queens within the next two days. Lucky me! I drove to Boulder on a random afternoon, purchased a queen and received her majesty and a few attendants in a disposable coffee cup, and drove home. Fun drive.

Don and Tim both instructed me on a different, and (spoiler alert!) more successful, way to hive a queen. Keeping the cork intact, I sandwiched the queen box between 2 frames in the hive and left her for 3 days. I checked back in and noticed that the bees were not being particularly gentle with the queen box - attempting to sting it and buzzing at an uncomfortable level while I was inspecting the hive. Playing it safe, I left the queen in the box for another day and then revisited the hive on her 4th morning in residence. What a change! The bees were calm and though they were drawn to the box they were not trying to hurt her. I carefully shook the queen to the bottom of the box, pushed in the cork with a nail, and placed her on top of the frames. She exited immediately and disappeared into the hive.

And now? Well, the Carniolan Grand Girls will help attend to a new line of Carniolan/Italian hybrids that will replace them when they are gone. I inspected the hive yesterday (no pics - I was racing an afternoon thunderstorm) and while I did not see the queen...I did see bee larvae! For the first time, this colony of bees is on its way to being a successful superorganism. Though they are off to a late start, and I don't expect any surplus honey from the ladies this season, I have great expectations of being able to shepherd the bees into a successful survival of winter.

Now, all that is left is the naming of the new colony. Any suggestions?

I'm covered in bees!!!

This is my favorite Eddie Izzard sketch, if you'll take a moment:

And this is me, acting out said sketch in the flesh as I install my first package of bees:

A moment on the bee costume. It is terrible. If you take on the life of a novice beekeeper you'll also look like me. Donning my bee suit, I am the love child of Apple's all-white marketing scheme and a rogue Oompla Loompa. Then as the years go by, maybe you'll end up looking more like my bee mentor, Don Studinski of Honey Bee Keep. The most protection I've ever seen Don wear is a veil...which works as a magical bee repellent when paired with the most spectacular collection of hipster t-shirts west of the Mississippi.

Someday you may decide to interact with your bees wearing the same amount of protection that a trip to the grocery store requires. When I bought a replacement queen for my package bees (more on that later this week), Tim Brod of Highland Honey Bees opened his hive like it was filled with puppies and got stung on the eyelid - the eyelid, people! - and barely took note.

Despite my lame attire and the inherent ouchie factor (Who has toddlers? I do!), I love the bees. Two hives and three weeks in, and I am enamored with their teamwork and sacrifice. Their housekeeping skills would put all but my Grandma to shame. They are fuzzy, industrious, and delightful.

The package bees are on the right and I named them the Grand Girls (from Apis Hive and Honey Co. in Grand Junction), and my Colorado local nuc from Honey Bee Keep came with the name Cherokee 13.1, since the original colony was a captured swarm from Cherokee Street and this is the first 2013 split.

The colonies and my experiences with them are already so different. The Grand Girls, the Cherokee Girls, the chickens and I are going to have an interesting summer to say the least!

Greener Acres

Remember way back to the beginning of this blog, when it was all about simplifying and starting a garden in the suburbs? I was so young. So naive. So unaware that a garden isn't simple and that it would lead me down an increasingly complicated path.

Gardening ignited a compulsion for cooking, and cooking fueled a kitchen-based addiction. My old-timey kitchenware proved to be a gateway appliance that led to a sewing machine. Making things with my hands lit a passion for all things Etsy and Organic and recycled. Which led back to the gardening, but on a more obsessive scale. Then life shifted in a surprising and wonderful direction, and we find ourselves living in the country with 5 acres and bees and chicks arriving in April.

Maybe I got in over my head.

Rachel, of the sage "ounces make pounds" advice from blogs gone by, reacted to this news by asking me if I knew that chickens pooped. A fair enough response from someone who knew me when I used to paint my nails on the weekends and wouldn't go to the grocery store without showering and spackling on a little makeup for show. But that girl is now 2 kids and 2 dogs deep and has dealt with her share of shit. And vomit. And various other messes that would have sent the college me running for the hills with a novel, a thermos of tea, and a picnic quilt in all its picturesque glory. Escapism at its best.

Back here in the real world I am more worried about not getting stung to death. I'm taking a few classes at Denver Urban Homesteading, which has me pretty excited. Honestly, I am in love with the term "Urban Homesteader." My pioneer roots start to throb and I feel the need to chop and cook something. (Truth told, I've got a pot of butternut squash soup in an enameled dutch oven on the stove right now.)

I've been stoking the fire with a bunch of great starter books that I recommend if you are having similar homestead cravings:

Chick Days: An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Raising Chickens from Hatching to Laying
Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer
The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers
The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

These blogs are also pretty fun:
http://ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com/
http://beekeeperlinda.blogspot.com/
http://lazyhomesteader.com/

So, here goes nothing. Our future farmstead site is currently snow covered, but this time next year I'll be wading out into that mess to check the chickens and give sugar water to the bees. Yes, the stuff of Little House on the Prairie-style fantasy will shortly become my reality. I only hope that no one dies of dysentery or gets swept away when we ford that inevitable river...