Bees are here!

We decided to get bees nearly 9 months ago which wasn't a good time of year to be starting out with them so it has felt like a long time coming...
Here they are on their special patio below the house.

We have seen them on the valerian outside the kitchen (well we presume it is them as we didn't see honey bees before they arrived)

This one is a bumble bee

We gave the hives to the bee man and he filled them with bees (somehow!). He said we shouldn't look inside for 2 weeks and that looking inside too often is one of the most common beginner mistakes. We are not sure we can wait that long :)
During this time they should be getting in stocks of honey and hopefully when we inspect we will be able to put a super on top which is the part of the hive we will eventually be able to harvest from.

First outing of the roccbox

The weather has been quite variable, but we took an opportunity to fire up the roccbox pizza oven for the first time this year. I had forgotten some tricks so the pizza was a bit smushed but basically ok and v tasty.

Buttercup's calf finally born

We were convinced for a week that she was about to drop her calf ANY MOMENT. 

She finally decided to go in to labour on Friday evening just as we were thinking of setting down for a nice glass of wine.

The weather set in really cold and wet so we moved her to one of the stables with plenty of hay.
She finally finished the job at 2am! We were quite tired by that time but very happy all had gone well.

The calf is a girl called Dorne, though it wasn't actually dawn she was born. We nearly called her Daenerys (Stormborn). You can tell we just re-watched the whole of Game of Thrones and then watched the final series. Overload! She is a cross between Jersey (her mum) and Gasconne which is a small beefy local breed. She is chunkier than full Jersey calves already.

Discovered quickly where food comes from

Here are the rest of the herd lining up to say hi to the new arrival

ORANGE

We have started furnishing the new apartment in Bangneres to get it ready to rent asap.
First item: ORANGE.
It will hopefully be a fashion triumph once we get the rest done to complement it!

Chicks

We have waited later than normal to put eggs in to the incubator as it struggles to keep a constant temperature if the room temperature is too low and we don't have very many heated rooms at the moment.
However one of the chickens has helped us out by hatching 3 chicks. It will be a slight miracle if they survive the kites and other predators, mum is quite stressed about that too!

I have now put some on to incubate though it is possibly still on the coldish side in the room

Piggy Piggy Piggy

Spring is always a hectic time with everything starting to grow and needing cut and mown and whatnot. This year we were worried we might not have enough work with all that and 3 calves (Buttercup is due any moment) so we ordered some pigs and some bees as well.
The piglets are here. They have a huge area, although we started them off in a small area round the house for a couple of days so they could get a little used to us and their new surroundings. They are only two months old and still quite shy. Hopefully they are going to get used to us quickly.

The pig house with hurdles round it and a mini enclosure for their first few days

We picked them up from somewhere 2 hours away. Bit of a long drive but we didn't want the local black pigs as they are too slow growing - we don't want fast growing, just normal!

In their new house with some yummy food with milk in it.

Their area is getting on for a hectare. That is a lot of fence! It has two strands at about 15 and 30cm as they are pretty small at the mo and pigs don't really jump. Things will grow up under this fast and start touching the wire so it takes a fair bit of work to maintain. We have put all the wires on reels now to try to make the strimming easier by making it easy to take a length in. The reels seem a bit crappy though and we might need to replace them (or hopefully return them...)

This is them setting off for their first explore one we removed the mini enclosure round the house. Bye bye piggies (hopefully not!)

We celebrated their arrival with ham hock cooked in milk with Lemon and Thyme. Yum!

Preparing for Bees

We ordered some bees in the Autumn from a beekeeper who lives in Tarbes. They will arrive at the end of May so we have been preparing the spot the hives will sit as well as reading reading - it seems quite hard to keep bees alive.

This is just below the house. We have levelled an area on a track that was already cut in to the hill

We then laid sand and weed block membrane and then some paving stones

It is not the best laid patio as we didn't get the area level enough before starting to lay the paving. Hopefully it will work out well for the bees though. It's main purpose is to keep make it possible to keep the area round the hives and access to the hives free of bracken and brambles.
It was a pretty big job just clearing enough to allow us to reach the spot we wanted to locate the hives as we kind of lost control of this field a couple of years ago! It is also very useful that this clears round a few fruit trees that had been struggling to get established in competition with all the weeds.

The hives have now got to the person we are buying the swarms off and we have to wait a couple of weeks until they are established and have built up a food supply before collecting them.

Exciting and scary!