Back?

In a flash of temporary insanity, I decided to revamp the BeeStoic.ca site and start to use it more as a platform for some commentary. There seems to be lots to talk about in the world and all of it crazy.

One of the big things I have learned lately is that if you think you have a better way to do something you are probably wrong. Now this is not always the case. But in the areas of agriculture, sigh, I am beginning to see that it is an uphill battle to succeed. This year has been proof positive of that. 

My spring started off well with my bees making it through the winter very well. Then, things awoke and got hungry. Namely bears.  See the pictures below as to the evidence of a young hungry bear and what they can quickly do to a few unprotected hives.  

Anyway, that was July 4 of 2016. Two weeks earlier,  June 16, a hungry weasel attacked, killing all 60 of my chickens in one blood thirsty night.

What can be learned? Nature will kick you in the ass when you least expect it.  Or we can learn that, what can be taken, will be,  It is the natural law of things. If you have too much. It will be shared. 

Jut this morning I heard on the CBC that there is a surplus of funds in a pension account for the province of Ontario.  Guess what? Natural law states that it must be shared. Guess who gets to share it with the OPSEU members? Big Brother that's who.  Just like nature has the last word, there is no getting away from the Government.  They are counting the surplus there as theirs and are using it to write down the Province's deficit to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars. (source) What??? That does not even include the other 10 billion that the government has been claiming for the past dozen or so years.  Who owns the surplus?  

My stoic lesson for today.  If you have extra - be careful.  You never know who might be lurking out there to take a piece.  

More to come.  Bee Stoic.

Spring Cometh

Well, the weather here in southern Ontario has been extremely eratic this winter. We have had no snow and warm temperatures up until about January 1st. We have gone to -25 degrees Celsius, and -35 degrees Celsius with the wind chill. It has been a crazy winter!

Today is February 21st and while I was in the barn, I decided to check on my 3 hives. I removed some of the winter plastic wrap that I had on them and prayed for good results. I have been counting on the fact that the weather has not been all that cold that all the bees will have survived.

To my great pleasure all three currently look like they have good clusters and are doing well. The one  that had no black plastic wrap for the winter still had sugar sitting on the top board. The other two hives had black plastic wrap for the winter. These ones we're all out of sugar, leading me to believe that the black plastic wrap did have some effect, in that it gave them a greater degree of warmth. This allows the bees to move out of the cluster and up to the cover board and consume the sugar that I had placed there in the fall.

So I quickly ran into the house, grabbed a kilogram of sugar, ran back to the house and fed them. I will check in a few more days and see how they're doing. I am hopeful that this season will be much better than last year and that if I stay on top of them then they will make it through the tumultuous spring weather.

As always, remember to bee stoic!

Then... The wheels fell off

Sometimes life just wants to kick you around.

Hot muggy weather has descended here in Southern Ontario. Perfect weather to go get wood right? Well that's what I thought. Actually I was trying to best the heat and collect a little standing dead wood when the wheels fell off that idea.....literally.

You see I have very little to spend on new equipment for the farm. So I have an old Belarus 2 cylinder diesel tractor. No fancy bucket, no radio, no air conditioning, but it gets into tight areas and pulls a ton of stuff around the farm.

What can be learned? don't be lazy with maintenance. i honestly had no idea this could happen, but you have to be on the alert.

the life on a farm is never easy, never dull, but nothing is more rewarding

Podcast 1 - What the Hell is going on?

Link to podcast #1

Parabel - 6 blind men and the elephant.  If you do not have the correct information you make incorrect assumptions. Stoicism - stay calm and carry on.

1. Why I started this podcast
1. feel slightly isolated
2. I question my own sanity!
3. my friends and family members are sick of hearing from me
4. everything that I thought would happen….didn’t
5. my historical path to this point
1. 2007 CBC show about peak oil - my dad listening across the parking lot
2. 2008 fuel shock
3. Biofuels, Jack Spirko
4. Recession and recovery
5. Lost my way
6. Oh oh happening again
7. endless recession

2. Look around - is the world struggling under the burden that we have created?
3. Are we at peak everything?
1. Consumption - we have a e a society that is consuming more (at least in North America) than the world can keep up with - limits to growth
2. Environmental damage - remains to be seen but think about this logically; can we did up carbon, pump it into the air and not have an effect?  Tonnes a year a being elevated.  
3. Fourth Turning - society has reached a point where we have forgotten the challenges of the previous generations. This is a pattern that repeats, time and time again
4. Financial shenanigans - they are manipulating numbers, publications, markets
4. Why is no one freaking out? - Novel kids
5. What can you do?
1. Bee Stoic - you cannot change or challenge the people around you, let alone the world. Politics?
2. Prepare - do what you can to make sure that you are self sufficient
3. Find your areas of strength and work toward independence. Find the assets that you have and build them up.  Possibly start a business, plant trees, start a garden, learn a new real skill
6. The future - look for more detailed discussions on things that I am doing around the farm and with my life.

The bees runneth over

Well - we have completed a successful season. Our raw honey has been hand extracted, cold filtered and stored.  It was a great season for forage. The wet summer was a boon to a steady flow of nectar.  It did not all come at once but that was ok.

I still need to visit the hives more often as they split on me!  A couple of hives were so productive that they produced multiple queen cells and superseded themselves. Ah well. More work to be done on the methodology.

Hopefully the others have started a successful colony elsewhere and are actively preparing for the winter.

Remember ... winter is coming.

As always bee stoic.

Rupert Is Dead

What a shock. Rupert is dead. the cantankerous old Muscovy duck passed away yesterday. I found him on my way to the barn last night when doing chores. His girl friend might be relieved - Tuffy was hounded by him relentlessly. His daughter, Stubby, was actually being hounded by him as well. Maybe they conspired together and did in Rupert? Even my dog Dixie was acting a little strange when I got home from work yesterday. Did she get rid of him?

So lesson to be learned is that you never know when your time is up. Enjoy the ride. Who knows when the merry-go-round stops. Speaking of music DJ E-Z Rock also passed recently. He was best known for his song "It Takes Two".  Man that is a catchy tune.

I recently read a post by one of my favourite bloggers - Dave Pollard - (How to Save the World blog/website) on how he has decided to give up on trying to change the world when he was reflecting on Earth Day. It was quite interesting to see his comments. I believe he lives in an apartment in Vancouver or Victoria. He talks about enjoying things now and accepting that they cannot continue as they are. He strikes me as a "Prepper" but I am not sure how prepared he might be living in an apartment complex. It is the last place I want to be if things start to come apart.

Me? I am working hard to get everything going in my favour - planting trees. Building garden fertility. Developing food creation skills to support me as I come to retirement (10 years), repairing my cars myself so that I can take care of most repairs and save after tax dollars for other items. Purchasing durable goods that will be with me for my life. Teaching kids the way to freedom is food security and that oil will not be around forever.

This journey we are on is really quite fragile. Enjoy the day. Find beauty in simple things. Rest your head at on your pillow and think about all of the gifts you have, not the woes. It makes everything so much better.

Bee Stoic.

Some things just have to be shared!

Seventeen year old Joe Bush got a high school assignment to make a video 
reproduction. He chose history as a theme and tucked it all into two minutes.
Take pictures from the Internet, add the track Mind Heist by Zack Hemsey (from 
the movie Inception) and then you get something like this.
Hold on tight!

http://marcbrecy.perso.neuf.fr/history.html