Where are the Turtles?

Today while walking the trails we've blazed on Die Weide, we came across an empty turtle shell. I decided to write about this as we have seen around a dozen empty turtle shells, two of which I've photographed below.

 This one was located in the northwest corner of the property.

This one was found in a hole in the north-central area.

Almost all of the turtle shells we've found are of this large, mature turtle size. Have the turtles turned our property into turtle graveyards like elephants? Inge and I are wondering why we have never seen a live turtle on the property in all our explorations. It'd seem there ought to be plenty of turtles given all the turtle shells we've found!

Most of the day was spent watering the orchard, the blackberries and raspberries, the grape vines and of course, the garden. Here's this week's garden shot. I hope to take a picture a week to track the growth of the garden.

Cactus Blooms, Bees, and Boon Companions

Inge's donkey, Herbert, is a constant companion on Die Weide. As you can see, when we take a hike, he hikes along too. But before Herbert, there was Penny, and as you see below, she too tags along on our hikes in the woods. However, she has learned to keep a close eye on Herbert as Herbert doesn't allow dogs in close proximity. He is quite quick to charge, nip, kick, or otherwise attack Penny or any of our neighbors dogs. Interestingly, the neighbors dogs haven't come around since Herbert took up residence on Die Weide.

 Last weekend and this weekend, the Prickly Pear Cactus has been blooming with its yellow flowers that start out red and change to yellow as they bloom. Very beautiful blooms! Bees and bugs abound around the blooms.

 Inge took this picture of her Herbie. It has a very nice perspective but there are a couple of asses in the picutre.

 Today's the day we found a home for the beehive. This is the mostly finished top bar hive and I carved a place out of the woods for it in hopes the donkey doesn't knock the hive over. I plan to pound some rebar into the ground next to the legs and bolt the legs to the rebar to keep it from tipping over.

And, just for reference, this is the state of the garden on Die Weide, Apr 22. Last year we planted earlier than this year, but by this time last year the drought had already taken full effect and it wilted away the rest of the year. This year, it looks very healthy, if a bit bug eaten. Due to having to hand water until we get the well drilled, we chose to only plant about half the area we planted last year. The front (bottom left) corner of the picture is the north-east corner of the garden and has watermelon mounds. Next are cantaloupe, then several rows of black-eyed peas, then several rows of corn, which are surrounded by mounds of yellow squash and zucchini.  We're growing tomatoes, peppers, carrots, green beans, cucumbers, leeks, and broccoli in our home raised bed gardens.

Getting ready for new critters

A few months ago Inge and I came across something about bees and decided to research starting a beehive for Die Weide. We bought a book, "Keeping Bees and Making Honey" and found that we really enjoyed the idea of keeping bees to improve the productivity of our orchard and garden and to harvest enough honey for our use and to share with family and neighbors.

Upon further research we decided our first hive would be a Top Bar hive (TBH). Although it requires closer observation and maintenance than Langstrom hives, it allows one to observe the bees more closely and the construction of the hive is simpler and less expensive. So this weekend I bought a bunch of pine planks and built our Top Bar Hive.

As you can see I built the TBH with an observation port which will be covered except when we want to watch the bees in action. Speaking of observation, I have to say observing youtube videos is a wonderful way to learn about virtually any topic. Inge and I watched a lot of beekeeping videos during our research and have to say that one person in particular has some outstanding beekeeping videos. His user name is OutOfaBlueSky and his videos educate on topics as varied as trapping wild bees, to comb management, to hive construction, and of course beekeeping in general. And to top it off, he's from Austin, Texas which is where we live. I sent him email with an offer to buy him a cup of coffee - I hope he takes it up. If you have any interest or curiosity about beekeeping, here's his youtube main page:

learning beekeeping youtube link

It happened that I visited his page before final assembly and learned that in Central Texas the heat can cause comb failure in the standard TBH tall-narrow wedge design and he recommended making a shallower, wider TBH design. Fortunately I was at the assembly stage where I could incorporate those changes in my design.

Next week I need to finish the lid and the view-port cover and paint the exterior. Then we need to order the beekeeping equipment and see about getting some bees to install in the hive. Then we want to see a honeycomb covered in bees like this:

(Picture obtained from learningbeekeeping.com which is the web site for OutOfaBlueSky mentioned above.)

Late Garden Planting - and a new critter picture

This weekend comprises an inventory of our usual weekends of activity laden joy. I complete a weekend like this with the joy of saying, "Life is Good!"

Saturday we spent more than six hours working on Die Weide. It started with my installing the small gate, which wasn't installed last week due to some missing hardware. Then Inge and I fork turned the portion of the garden and prepped the soil for planting. This year we're only using half the space we used last year because we got off to a late gardening start out here. We planted four rows of corn, six rows of black-eyed peas, three watermelon mounds, two cantaloupe mounds, and eight squash and zucchini mounds. Next week I'll add some leek left over from the house garden and a few tomato plants. That will be all we plant in the Weide garden this year. (Our back yard garden's four raised beds are chock full of goodies already.)

After the planting I installed a board with hooks to hang the garden tools while Inge took a walk down to the pond. There she spotted a dark snake laying across the dam. She told me about it and later we took a walk to the pond together and it was then I spotted the snake in the run-off pool below the dam. Inge had her camera and I took this zoomed in picture of the snake, which we have tentatively identified as a young western cottonmouth.

In over two years of wandering through Die Weide, this is only the second snake we've seen, and neither was a rattlesnake. (The first may have been a corn snake.) But it is fascinating to see any critter on Die Weide!

Today we stayed home and worked the home chores. Mowing and hedge trimming topped my early chore list, knocked out quickly because I chose today to begin a new Weide project in my workshop - a Top Bar Beehive! I found several plans online and as usual, picked and chose the bits and pieces I liked from their plans to create my own bee hive. Today was spent sizing and gluing the main components and next week I'll complete the build with some pictures for your pleasure. I hope that within two weeks we can install the beehive, with bees, out on Die Weide. Gotta get some pictures of that!

Long Time no Wreit-e Weide - catch-up-post

Wow!I have neglected writing here for a long, long time. That's not to say we haven't been enjoying Die Weide, because we have been out there way more weekends than not. The drought persisted until January and Die Weide baked to a crisp as the rest of Texas did in the heat. It makes me wonder if this is not something that will become a frequent occurrence with global warming.

Anyway, it has been incredibly busy out there. My brother, and sometimes Inge, and I drilled the well down about 15' deep before we hit a bunch of rocks that broke up into chunks too big for the vacuum to suck up. So Kenny and I built a bigger vacuum, but he went to work in Houston, and Inge worked most weekends since then leaving me without a drilling crew to make further progress. We will make it though. The compressor drill works great except it is pretty slow chewing through limestone and chunks of flint chert.

Two weeks ago Kenny and I enclosed the shed behind the water tank. I was tired of having to lug gardening tools back and forth and it also can serve as an impromptu tent in a pinch. Now we've got shovels, post-hole diggers, rakes, and other gardening tools right there to work with. Next weekend I'll spend some time arranging the storage space in the shed for efficiency.

I went to Die Weide twice last week. The previous Tuesday I went out to meet a field engineer for Bartlett Electric to find out what it would take to drop power service on the property. As I drove out there I was following a widespread rainstorm that we've frequently been blessed with since January. I decieded to see what the natural pond looked like shortly after a heavy rain and picture above is from the natural pond in the woods and it's the first time I've seen the pond full to the point of overflowing the entire width of the dam. It was beautiful to see and hear and I took a video of it too. As soon as I figure posting on youtube out I'll post it for family to enjoy. The field service engineer, Shawn, and I had a great conversation when we both discovered we're Army Vets. He too is looking to pick up property via the Texas Veterans Land Board. My 12 years of cold war service paled compared to his as he is both an Iraq and Afghanistan war vet with some pretty harrowing tales. Anyway, it turns out that it's not too hard or expensive to drop a line on the property, but they only go straight from their pole to just inside my propery line and I have to run line from the service pole (which I have to install) to the cabin site and the shed. Last weekend Kenny and I built a fence around the garden to keep the critters out. I didn't take pictures of that because we were working our butts off.