Tanglewood Hill | "Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land." ~Aldo Leopold

Two Hives

Posted on May 15, 2011 by Liz

: Hive of the Mound

: Tanglehive East

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If you know me at all, you know I like to do things differently, and I like to do my research before diving into a project. As I began to research chicken feed, I realized that organic, non-medicated chick starter I was hoping to use was not as readily available as I thought it would be. Internet searches for nearby sources lead me to the idea of mixing my own feed. I came across the Greener Pastures Farm Chick Starter Recipe #3. I did some more research and found this recipe is often referenced in the discussion of home made chick starter. There is also lots of discussion regarding the use of soy free and fish meal free feed. This recipe solves these issues by eliminating these ingredients.

We made a trip to Outpost Natural Foods in Wauwatosa and found everything there we need. When it’s time to make their “grown-up” chicken feed I will consult with some nearby natural food stores to see what they can provide.

Here’s my version** of the Greener Pastures Farm Chick Starter Recipe #3:

4 lbs. organic corn meal
4 lbs. hard red wheat
4 lbs. soft white wheat
2 lbs. barley
2 lbs. oat groats (aka whole oats)
2 lbs. shelled sunflower seeds
1 lb. lentils (I used French lentils because they’re smaller)
1 lb. split green peas
2 lbs. millet
1/2 lb. flax seeds
1 lb. kelp granules
garlic (several cloves per gallon of water)
raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar, aka ACV (about 2 Tablespoons per gallon of water)
Daily calcium source = organic milk or yogurt
Daily protein source = freshly dug worms, organic scrambled eggs or dried mealworms

The cost was just under $40, which is about twice as much as pre-made organic chick starter. Accounts from others with experience say that the whole grains last about 5x times longer due to less waste.

**My final quantities are based on the information I read that says the chicks will consume 1lb. of feed per 10 checks per day. I decided to have ~25 lbs. of feed on hand for the chicks’ first 6 weeks. I converted “parts” into pounds and doubled the quantities of the original recipe.

Notes about feeding our chicks:

I soak their grains in milk, yogurt or water. They seem to prefer it and it’s an easy way to get them their calcium.
They get “treats” every day, such as a cabbage wedge or chopped veggies. It keeps them entertained and they really like it. The cabbage is a great calcium source, so I give it instead of dairy some days, and they LOVE it.
For the first 2 weeks I put paper towel on top of pine shavings. It’s easy to change every day and helps keep the shavings out of their food & water.
Giving them fresh worms is highly entertaining!

Posted in Chickens | 2 Comments

Open Source Ecology

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Pat

The Open Source Ecology project (OSE) has ambitious goals of creating a Global Village Construction Set which is 50 different machines that it takes to create a small civilization with modern day comforts. However it is already a terrific resource for farmers with a willingness to build their own machines from scratch. They have prototyped 8 machines and published information for building them in great detail.

The core machine to their plan is the LifeTrac Multi-purpose Tractor (shown above) which would be a welcome tool on any farm and can be built at a fraction of the cost of a similar commercial tractor.

OSE’s main site is at opensourceecology.org and all the details of the various machines can be found at their wiki.

Posted in Hacking, Making, The Farm | Leave a comment

Bee Hacking

Posted on May 3, 2011 by Pat

Bee Hacker best describes their mission below:

BeeHacker.com is devoted to the cross-pollination of beekeeping and technology. At its core are several evolving projects that benefit the honey bee and beekeepers. This is no ivory tower research lab, no secret skunk works, and no private patent mill. Because good science doesn’t depend on sponsorship by vested interests. This website is a collaborative development effort open to all based on open source and creative common technologies for the benefit of all.

The site documents a number of very interesting projects including How to Build a Portable Hive Scale, Brood Chamber & Environmental Monitoring and even the more esoteric topic of Acoustic Analysis of Bee Behavior. BeeHacker.com inspires me to apply some of my seemingly unrelated interests to beekeeping, I expect to return often.

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Late April Snowstorm

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Liz

Posted in Flora, Images, Phenology, seasons, Spring, Weather | Leave a comment

Beekeeping in Northern Climates

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Liz

It’s almost time for beekeeping! Our beehives have arrived (some assembly required), and the bees will be ready for pick-up in late April. We’ve purchased the basic structure for two hives which will be placed in two different locations.

This blogger did a nice job of summarizing the beekeeping method I learned at the University of Minnesota Beekeeping Short Course last spring. The “Horizontal 2-Queen” system was developed by Dr. Basil Furgala at the University of Minnesota:

The goal of this management system is to build a strong “three story” daughter colony for over-wintering that can be split the following spring into 2 units. This system was presented as an effective system of perennial colony management; being geared toward ensuring colonies with young queens survives through winter.

In this system, colonies that over-winter are maintained in three deep brood boxes. The following spring the wintered colony becomes the parent colony. This is divided by removing one of the brood boxes, leaving the queen in the other two. A new queen is then introduced into the divide. The objective is to ensure the new split occupies three deep brood boxes by the following fall, in order that it survives the following winter, and as a result, the parent colony becomes the honey producing colony. This should have a 1-year old queen that came through the previous winter. Once honey is harvested this parent colony is “de-populated”, which is a rather ugly euphemism for being “killed off”…

But why would we do this? Well, there are advantages…

A young vigorous queen is maintained in each colony,

Re-Queening is done at a favourable time,

Swarming problems are negligible,

The productivity per unit is increased,

The honey required for over wintering is halved,

wintering success is significantly increased, and

Repair, recycling and replacement of combs and equipment is possible.

http://honeyhoneydontstop.blogspot.com/2010/02/beekeeping-in-northern-climates.html

Posted in Bees, The Farm | 1 Comment

Promise not to laugh…

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Liz

…but who thinks I can make a (6) chicken coop out of this?

This is the bus house my parents built when we were kids. It was used as a tool shed after we were out of school, but now seems to have seen better days. It’s laying on its back here, roofless. You can see the doorway on top, window on each side. It’s somewhat rotted, but I think with a little creative reconfiguration we can make a 4×8 chicken coop out of it. We’ll see…

Posted in Chickens, Making, The Farm | 5 Comments

Arduino Network Monitor

Posted on February 5, 2011 by Liz

What’s an Arduino you ask? It’s a thingamajig for making electronic doohickeys. Yeah, that. Pat does some tinkering with electronics and his latest creation was featured on the Make: Blog. Here’s Pat’s original post.

I never appreciated my internet connection enough whe
n I lived in the city. Now that I’m a country mouse I think it really IS a series of tubes. Reliable it’s not. So I thought it would be fun to use an Arduino, my BlinkM and a bit of python to create a visual network monitor.

Here are the steps:

1. Plug your BlinkM into analog ports 2-5 (the standard way instructed by ThingM).

2. Load the Communicator sketch from ThingM onto your arduino.

3. Run the python script. This must be run as Administrator on windoze and although I haven’t tried it yet I believe it must be run as root on Linux. The code should be safe, but review it anyway for your own piece of mind.

Here’s the python script, this includes ping.py which is a pure python module I use for ping functionality. I also hacked code from John Tokash for talking to the BlinkM. You will also need the pySerial module installed.

https://github.com/noiseislife/PingduinoM

Note: The BlinkM really needs a diffuser, my short term ghetto solution is a couple layers of tissue paper. I’ll be hacking something a bit better in a future post.