Grazing sheep

The sheep have been here for a few weeks grazing our pasture grass down. Financially it worked out to be a much better deal than paying to mow it and we get the added pleasure of watching the sheep. They are quite comical. There are about 30 male sheep of various ages and breeds. They are accompanied by a female guard llama. The Sheep spend their entire time eating grass except when they aren't chasing each other around or mounting each other. We have you even seen most of them up grazing in the middle of the night. The llama does her share of grazing too but remains constantly alert of sounds around her.

 

The kids both really enjoyed having the sheep here. They were contained in a portable electric fence that was moved around every 4-5 days. Over the course of a month they grazed everywhere twice.

 

 It was beautiful to behold such simple animals going about their lives each day. The llama was particularly amusing.

 

 You can see how good of a job they did. On the left side of the road in this picture they were left for 6 full days at one point. They started to get down to just dirt in a few places!

Watchful eye of the beekeeper

This morning I watched Martha, one of our beekeepers, walk out across the pasture and stand about 15 feet from her hives. She, and the other couple that also have hives in our pasture, come and look in on their bees a few times a month. Sometimes they come in with full bee suits and smokers to do seasonal maintenance but mostly, like today, they come in just to observe from a distance. A few days ago she was out to rearrange one of the hives. As I watched her peacefully observe I imagined that she was checking in on them. The moment was so peacefully perfectly still and I couldn't help admiring the beauty of the relationship between the bee and the beekeeper.

While we don't get any honey from these bee hives, they do provide a valuable service by pollinating all of our fruit trees. Really it wouldn't be much of an orchard without them.

There is much that we want to do out here and much that must be done. Having our own beehives is on the list. We'll get to it soon hopefully.

[EDIT: Later in the day after this original post, all three beekeepers showed up to inspect one of the hives. Earlier in the week they split an overpopulated hive into two hives. When they were done they reversed the locations of the two hives so that field bees returning at the end of the day would populate the new hive in the old location and balance out the two hives populations. They came back today to see if the new hive had a queen in it. Despite getting out a magnifying glass they couldn't find her but there are a number of queen eggs, hopefully one will take  up her crown. :)]

Spring musings

The pear trees are unbelievably gorgeous right now. most of them are in full bloom and the bees are loving it. The days have turned mostly warm now but the cool breeze and the occasional rain remind us that we're only just out of winter now. The air is full of bird song, multi layered conversations I'll never understand but am thrilled to hear each and every day.

The grass in the pasture grows again at an alarming rate. Last year we had to have it mowed, all 3 acres of it. At literally 6 feet tall it was quite a fire hazard. This year we have arranged for a shepherd ( sheep owner? livestock guy?)  to bring his flock here to graze it down. His sheep will be here for about a month contained in a portable electric fence that will be moved around to knock down the whole pasture. Clearly addressing the fire hazard is the primary concern. Thankfully this will allow us to do that but turn the resource of the grass into something beneficial for the land in the form of manure.

For now life is good and the weather is beautiful!