A Children's Book

Coming November 25th, just in time for Christmas gifts.


A Murder of Crows and Other Woes:

A rhyming story about a little girl who plays with animals, including (but not limited to) such groups of characters as a wisdom of wombats with crazy blue eyes, a band of jays, a tribe of goats, a tower of giraffes, a knot of toads, and naturally, a murder of crows. In this work I shall explore the realm of the unreliable narrator.

Everything will rhyme, in homage to the Doctor of Seuss and the William of Shakespeare.

(I had an epiphany at 5 AM this morning, where it all became clear. Does that ever happen to you? You just think of something, all in one burst, the second you wake up?)

Good morning!

The grey rabbit is named, "Tree." Tree likes me better than Little Z. I think maybe she's just one if those bunnies who doesn't like children.

Trouble Sleeping? I have the cure.

I made this super boring video of the honey extraction. It has some dishwasher sounds in the background- I advise you put it on "repeat" to fall asleep:



By the way- that extra box that was so full of bees? It had the queen in it! So I put it back on the hive. And then realized I put it in the wrong spot, so I took it off again and re-arranged things, and somehow the bees got into my bee keeping hood, and I got 8-12 stings on my head and neck, and went to the doctor, and now I'm on steroids and I'm not going to be a beekeeper anymore.

The end.

A Box Full of Angry Bees

A bee trap is a wonderful thing. You take it and put it underneath the bee box you want to steal (full of honey), and the bees go down through the hole into the bottom, and they can't get back up. Going down is easy, but coming back, you have created a labyrinth. They can't find their way. So, slowly, your top box empties out of bees. You put it out the day before you want to take the honey. It works like a charm... usually.

Yesterday, we put out the bee traps- I got stung at least three times, and was kind of freaking out, and we were out of smoker fuel when we did this one. Today, I went out to get the honey, and I picked up the box- damn, that's heavy! So full of honey! Except, not. It was full of angry bees! We had put the bee trap in the wrong way, so that once they bees went up into the top box, they couldn't get back down. I therefore had maximum number of angry bees in my box.

Well, at least I had the smoker going. I didn't get stung today.

So, yeah, no honey yet.

I taped two of the traps onto the box, one on each side, facing so that the bees can fly out, now, and can't get back in. The box is separate from the bee hive. I'll go back and pick it up tomorrow. 

Update: a lot of honey, actually, from the other hive:

Guinea Hen

While we were away in Europe, this guinea hen moved into our farm. (We had a local teenager feed everyone while we were gone. She says it showed up Week 2.)

The chickens rejected it, at first, but now they have gotten used to it being around.

I don't know where it came from. I'm hoping it's really a female, because they lay good eggs, I hear.

I take it is a good sign that we are doing things right here at the Hammerdown Manor. I'm pretty sure factory farmers don't get wandering stray birds wanting to come live with them. 

This really is a Guinea hen, right?

New Chicks Arrived Today! So Sweet...

Throw Back Thursday

This is an advertisement for my great-great-grandparents' bakery in Irwin, Pennsylvania. Swedish bakers.

Owl Drawing Contest

What do you do when you have no internet, no phone, and you are in a small cabin in the north of Sweden? Well, you have an owl drawing contest, of course. 

In one corner, we have Little Z, with this offering:

And in the other corner, yours truly, with these handsome owls:

The judge, BAH, was clearly biased. He chose hers. Why?

"It has more heart, obviously. And a top hat! It's just clearly the winner. There's no question."

Whatever.

Sign #1

The fourteen year old boy in me thought this was really funny. I know it means, "Speed Bump." Farts Humper????? Ah, Norway. You're a freak of nature but we love you so.

Homemade Watermelon

We haven't had much watermelon in the past, in part due to watermelon thieves. Not only have we been robbed of watermelons in the roadside garden, but the people who lived here before us had teenagers steel their watermelons! Not kale or tomatoes or anything. Just watermelons. We considered doing video surveillance, but that seemed to be too much trouble. The same with a super powerful electric fence. So, this year, I decided to be sneaky. The watermelon garden is hiding behind these tall weeds: