Reflection and Planning

      I'm not among the 45% of Americans who make New Year  resolutions, at least not in the traditional sense.  As a person who is vastly aware of his own ignorance, I find that I need to be in a continual state of reflection, evaluation, and planning in order to keep from being held hostage by that ignorance.  For me, setting smaller goals and then taking "bite size" steps, followed by outcome analysis and tweaking the plans accordingly is a more realistic scenario than setting  big goals at the beginning of the year that can't take into account the inevitable contextual changes that will occur.  Perhaps that's the hobo speaking, but I do believe that continual adaptation to the "is" is a better survival technique than a rigid goal set in a context of what you hope "will be".  Putting it in simpler hobo cowboy wisdom - "No matter where you ride to, there you are."
     The beginning of the new year, while not a time of resolutions for me, seems to be a good time for reflection.  This winter I've been pondering my own evolution to beekeeping and farming, wondering why this passion has crept up so late in my life.  There appears to be no straight line connecting the events that have brought me here, nor any single "aha" defining moment.  Farming is a state of consciousness I am gradually evolving into.
     Back in the mid 1980's, when I erroneously thought teaching might ease my restlessness and provide me with stability and a satisfying career, I attended Wayne State University in Detroit for a Masters Degree in teaching.   I did my student teaching at Chippewa Valley High School in Clinton Township, Michigan where I befriended an experienced teacher with over 25 years in the profession.  As I got to know him better, I discovered his first love was not teaching but farming.  He had inherited his family farm in central Michigan and spent his summers farming full time. During the school year he would fly his Cessna Skylane to work the farm on weekends.  He admitted that the farm lost money every year, but that his teaching salary allowed him to keep the losing enterprise alive.  I took what he was telling me at face value - he was doing something he loved in spite of the financial loss.  Most of us have hobbies that we spend money on, not expecting any  financial return - music, model trains, camping, quilting...  Thinking back now I realize I didn't really understand his commitment to farming.  I had no cultural context for understanding his devotion to that way of life.  Few in our modern industrial, high tech society can understand.
     Remember back to your childhood when you were so stoked with anticipation at Christmas of getting that "hoe, rake, and shovel" set that you could hardly breathe?  Or how you and your friends would play "cowboys and sod busters" for hours, often forgetting to come home on time for dinner.  And, remember as a teenager how you felt receiving your first baseball cap with the logo of your favorite seed or tractor company on it and how you couldn't wait to wear it to school with those new overalls and muck boots?
     No?...  Really?  No conversations with your high school guidance counselor about farming as a highly lucrative career and the need to take pre-farming classes at the local community college to make yourself more competitive for the crowded agricultural programs at the university?  Well, perhaps I'm being just a tad facetious, but hopefully with a point.  If you didn't grow up on a farm I imagine the likelihood of choosing farming as a full time career to be very small.  Even then, many farm kids, especially women, choose to seek alternative livelihoods far removed from their childhood experience.  How many people have you met whose goal is to work pre-sunrise to post-sunset, seven days a week?
     Don't get me wrong,  I'm not claiming long hours are my goal either.  But the more I  develop the few acres I have, the more it demands of me in sweat and time.  The peculiar thing is that I find great joy in being absorbed by the land at this time of life, where in my youth it would have been repellent.  Maybe I'm ready for the Geezer Ball - overalls and muck boots required attire.

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     The weather hit the low 60's this past weekend which provided me the opportunity to dig into my hives.  I went into winter with seven hives, having lost the 8th to Colony Collapse Disorder last October, and unfortunately have lost three more.  The three loses are not due to CCD however.  One colony appears to have died due to starvation.  There was no honey to be found on any of the frames.  This is a little curious in that I left the hive two deeps full of honey and one medium which had several frames of honey going into the cold weather.  It is possible that the hive was weak to begin with and other hives robbed it of its honey.  Perhaps I should have reduced the entrance sooner to help prevent robbing.  I found frames filled with honey in the other two hives and so the bees should not have starved to death.  Their demise is a mystery to me.
    I cleaned the dead bees from the three hives and scraped away any burr comb.  All three have mold covering the frames (a result of the inactivity and not the cause) and supposedly when I relocate some bees from the thriving hives into those vacant hives, the new occupants will clean them up nicely.
    The warm weather left the four surviving hives literally buzzing with activity; the bees returning from foraging laden with pollen.  If the dry warming trend continues, I hope to be able to complete a more in depth inspection of the healthy hives in the next two weeks.

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On the "To Do" list:
 * Cut down the row of pines on the south side of my fledgling orchard.  The trees are blocking much needed sunlight from the fruit trees, especially in early spring and late fall.

 * Build the chicken coop and buy and install fencing for same.

 * Build trellises and plant recently acquired old French grapevine cuttings.

 * Enjoy doing all the above. Celebrate accomplishments with home brew.