AWOL from the BLOG

I got the funniest email today reminding me that I've not posted in quite awhile so I thought I had best pop in for a minute to say HELLO and let y'all know that I have not fallen off of the planet. We've just been busy and I just plain didn't have the time to post, or read my email, or reply to any email or read other blogs or any of the normal stuff I do. Hopefully things will slow down a tiny bit soon, or I find an extra caffienated brand of coffee that won't kill my grocery budget.

The beekeeping classes are finished now, our last class was this past Thursday evening. The tests are for the next two Thursdays but we have decided to wait and take them next year so that we can attend our church's missions revival meeting this week on Thursday evening. The kids learned so much about keeping bees (me too!!) and we are all really excited about getting started. We should be getting our bees soon, but we still have lots of getting ready work to do before that happens. The kids have to finish building and painting the hives and putting the frames together and we have to clear a space out back for the bees so that they aren't a problem for the many tiny visitors that we have here.

We are also getting some chicken eggs to hatch instead of ordering chicks..... it's much less expensive that way and the real bonus is that the kids are building incubators as a science project. They are excited since these chickens are the buff brahmas that get huge and lay very large brown eggs. The little bantam chickens that we have now are laying really well and trying to hatch every egg they lay!! By this time next year we will have our freezer full of chicken and rabbit meat! The bunnies are almost ready to breed and getting bigger by the day! We need to build a grow out pen for the young bunnies to live in until they are old enough to butcher soon. Later on this week we will be building some chicken tractors so that the little bantam chickens can scratch around in the garden where nothing is planted yet to eat the bugs and weed seeds.

We have planted 19 blueberry bushes so far and have snow peas, english peas, garlic and lettuce producing in the garden. We had a rabbit visitor who ate all of my broccoli plants, cabbage plants, carrots and cauliflower too ! But I did get a flower bed in and some herbs planted and I have some cabbage and broccoli plants to put in the garden. We are hoping for a better garden this year than what we had last year.

Well, I guess that's as caught up as I can get for today. I need to get back outside and take care of some things around here before it's time to go to church.
See ya!