Checking out the ladies...

We checked out the bees today.They looked good. Several frames of brood were capped meaning that new bees are on the way. Since this is our first hive, we don't have a lot of experience, but we think that were not that many bees.

We think that those bees are looking low in number, but as the bees start hatching the numbers will improve. Hopefully, they will increase the number and start building up the colony. Even if we don't get honey this year, we hope that we can at least get the frame built out in the first two boxes.

Anyways, it was exciting and we hope that the bees continue to grow and build.

While we were out there, we checked on the garden. The vegetables look good...can't wait. Have a good weekend.

Happy Farming!

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Congratulations to our contest winner - Bovee Brigade. Thanks to all who responded. We appreciate it.

We were going to check on the bees this evening, but it was a little overcast. We will wait until a sunny day to open up the hive - that way more are out and about.

The garden is looking good. We have blossoms on some of our tomatoes and our beans are growing nice and healthy. Some our peppers and tomatoes are looking rather puny, but hopefully they'll perk up soon.

Looks like some good rain coming in this weekend and then some beautiful, growing, sunny weather.

Happy Farming.

Go Ahead and Try It

We love Fridays - most people do. Perhaps it is because it's the signal of the end of the work week, the start of uninterrupted family time, or a chance to finally get into the garden and get some work done. Whatever the reason, it is here.

We saw our little pea and bean shoots start coming up out of the ground and I started thinking about seeds. Seeds are kind of amazing when you stop and think about it. From a tiny seed, a whole plant is produced - sometimes yielding fruit after fruit full of tiny little seeds to start the process all over. There is something that makes you feel good inside when your little seed becomes a plant.

Now, I know some of you out there are related to us in that you have thought about starting your garden, but just haven't yet. For those of you, we want to offer a little incentive. We have two packs of seeds that will provide you 5 delicious varieties of vegetables that we want to give you. They are both Burpee seed packs. The first one is a four in one pack providing four options in one convenient pack - that way you are not wasting unused seeds. These include: Garden Bean (colorful varieties), Cucumber (bush type), Lettuce (red & green looseleaf), and Squash (Fordhook Zuchini) The second pack is something new - at least to us. It is seed tape. You bake the row, set the tape in place, and cover it up. There is no need to put each seed in individually - all that tedious work is gone. The seed tape is Carrots - Nantes Half Long.

We will send out these seeds to one of our lucky readers.
1. To enter you have to leave a comment. It doesn't have to be specific.

2. Anyone can leave a comment.

3. Be sure we can get in touch with you. Please leave an email address!

4. To enter a second time, make a post on your own blog. Then return and leave a second comment telling us about your blog!

5. The giveaway will end at 6pm (eastern time) on Wednesday, May 13th.

6. We'll pick the winner randomly.

7. We'll contact the winner for shipping info (paid by us, of course).

Let's See the Queen Bee

There's the queen!

After waiting for the longest weekend over to be ever, we finally checked on the queen. We used our smoker to calm the bees and then we pulled out the queen's cage (top picture). It was empty.

Since the cage was empty, we decide to look for the queen on one of the frames. we found her on the second frame. There she is with the big white dot on her back.

The bees have been quite busy the last four days. They have built up some comb on four of the frames. Things are looking good for them.

Our garden is off to a good start. Our plants are still looking healthy, and our bees are doing what they should. We sure can't wait until they can pollinate our vegetables.

Happy Farming!

First Things First

Here it goes.

Welcome to our blog.

One of our goals in life is to have a farm and garden, but at the current time we are "trapped" in suburbia. In order to escape this madness, we have decided to set up a garden and a bee hive in our yard. This is not our first garden, but certainly our first hive. We our truly a Farmer Want to Be, and with bees. Farmerwannabee - get it?

In order to keep you updated, we hope to blog often about our garden, our bees, and our life in general.

So, we finally got the garden planted today. We have been industrious lately. We tilled our whole yard in order to reseed the lawn, and it set us back a little bit in our garden plans - and we may have started everything a bit late.

Our dog has a tendency to eat any growing things, so we had to set up a fence. We used 4 ft. welded wire and T-posts. It actually went along a lot faster than we thought. We were having difficulties with the air stapler, and we were about to switch to an old electric staple gun - luckily we double checked the psi on the compressor and that fixed the problem.

We started peppers (bell, jalapeno, banana), tomatoes (better boy,roma), squash (summer & zucchini), watermelon, and cucumbers inside a few weeks ago - we planted those to start.

Along with that, we planted peas and green beans (pole & bush) from seed, as well as a few plants from a local greenhouse: lemon boy (yellow tomatoes), habaneros, cherry peppers, & cherry tomatoes.

We watered them in and now it is wait and see time.

I will post more about our bees and getting them installed in the hive later.

Happy Farming!