No, really. Does it feel like Spring where you are?

It doesn’t from where I sit.

In case you haven’t heard, this has been a bad Fall and Winter for Oregon. So much so, I’ve entertained the thought of moving back to southern California.

Let’s start off with October.

McMinnville and Salem both set records for the amount of rainfall (many other places too). We live between the two. Talk about depressing. But, it was only October. We still had hopes of staying afloat.

Portland broke the old record of 23 days of measurable rainfall by a five-day jump to 28 days. We also had our year’s worth of rain in about four or five months.

In November, I had a hysterectomy. It was successful but didn’t go as planned. Rather than a couple days to recover I ended up with weeks of recovery. I was feeling pretty well after 3 weeks but then something happened to my left arm. The pain was unbearable, so I just didn’t use my left arm. Finally, I found a doctor to go to and was diagnosed with a Frozen shoulder. As of today, it is so much better.I Still don’t have my full range of motion but it is getting better with each PT appointment. Thank God for that cortisone shot.

Our December and January were FREEZING. Literally.

Our poor goats. They were either pregnant or giving birth in January. So much fun dealing with lows of 14°. Between kidding and the freezing weather, our goats have stayed inside more than they ever have.

Oh, guess what…February of 2017 was the wettest February in Oregon history.

Way to go February. We are so proud of you!

Remember that old saying, “April Showers Bring May Flowers?” I really hope that isn’t the case this year.

Well, I don’t care if it is raining again as I type. This weekend we celebrated spring by bringing our first two BEE HIVES to the farm. I am so excited.

Here is my dear friend Nancy. She actually bought us this hive which kick-started us into getting serious about bees. It is wonderful to have a hive with an established colony. I’ll be forever grateful to her.

She is taking off the top of the hive to see how the bees are doing and to show us the top feeders in this hive.

Here is the hive all put together. See the bees going in and out of their opening at the bottom? We located this one between the garden and the berry vines.

I took an all day Bee class back in March. So much information. Thankfully the new hive I bought came with all the basics including everything we need to start a hive and a DVD and books.

Here is our new hive. We painted it. We still have two more boxes that we don’t need to add yet. They are a pinkish red and a blue. To the right of the hive, you will see a cardboard box. That is our Nuc (Nucleus Hive). That box contains about 5,000 Bees.  I’ll talk about nucs more in another post. 24 hours after setting it up, all the Bees are out of the box now.

Here is a front view. I love seeing the bees accepting their new home. We located this one near the majority of the fruit trees.

Here the bees are enjoying a Pollen Patty. It is important to get them some food right away. Because they are new to this hive we don’t open the hive for a few days so they have a chance to call it home. I also made them a simple syrup with “Honey B Healthy” to stimulate their immune system.

Did you know if you are going to move a hive, you either move it three feet or three miles. Since bees travel two miles out in search of nectar and pollen if you don’t move it far enough, they will keep going back to the place it used to be.

Today we finally got our vegetable seeds started. Michael did all the ones for the big garden and I planted carrots, beets, lettuce, kale and chard in one of our raised beds. Really looking forward to these sprouting up quickly.

We are also going to try to winter over some of the veggies this year.

No matter what, the calendar says it’s Spring. We have bees and the beginning of a garden. That is enough to give me confidence that Summer will roll around one of these days.

Wherever you are, I hope you have a spring in your step in anticipation of SUMMER.