As I mentioned yesterday, we were supposed to receive some rain late in the afternoon. Well, WE DID! It rained pretty darn hard for a few minutes, and there were also just some nice gentle showers. Pretty much any kind of rainfall you could imagine occurred within a time frame of about two hours. When it stopped raining, we ventured outside to check the rain gauge, and we were really surprised to see that we had received almost an inch and three quarters. The water in the pool rose nicely as well, and I had a brief concern that the pool would overflow. I do not know what I would have done if the pool did overflow, I guess I would just watch it happen and see where all the water would go. Anyway, it did not happen, so that was just one more thing for me to worry about for no reason. I am really good at that.
I did get a couple photos...the first is of the rain gauge with a couple of the neighbors cattle. They are always very curious (I find cattle in general to be very curious) and come over to the fence line to see what we are up to. Then the sun was trying to break out from the cloud cover in the west, so I took the second photo of that. I think it was a pretty view, but we did not have a beautiful sunset that was captured by our friend Blake who lives in Lago Vista. He posted the sunset photo on his FaceBook page, and it was magnificent.It is getting kind of late for a Sunday morning, it is a little after 8 o'clock, and so far none of the people who were supposed to show up (to dig weeds and cut grass) have shown up. No calls either. Typical! I am going to go and feed the cattle in a few minutes, and take a fresh bale of hay out to them. Then it will be time for egg loaf and after that it will be time to go and pick up the bees. I am getting kind of anxious about that, but I am also pretty confident that it will all turn out okay. We shall see...
I took the official cattle count this morning when I was on my way back in for breakfast, and I kept coming up with one extra cow. It seems that Violet had a calf either overnight or this morning, although I suspect it was overnight. The calf still has a little bit of blood on its' cord, but Violet is very perky looking. I will go with overnight, but mark today as the date of birth! Violet was our very first calf when we first started this adventure two years ago (or so). So now, she is having her own calfs! The wheel of life and all that stuff! This new calf is a lighter color than her mom and grandma (Daphne, who we still have). I think the new calf is a heifer, but I won't be certain of that for a week or so. It just depends!
I am also back from picking up the bees, and I have only been stung once, and it was not that terrible. There were lots of bees swarming around all the other bees, and at some point a bee went down the back of my jacket and t-shirt. I could feel it in there, but was trying not to make any sudden moves, but I got stung anyway. Nothing terrible, and it is not swollen up or anything, so that is great. Maybe I am getting a good bit of resistance to the stings. That would be great.
Only one hive (out of the five) was really unhappy about the whole process, and part of that was because it had a different kind of feeder included with it, and it was kind of difficult to separate from the transport case into the brood hive. But, everything seems to be pretty much under control right now, and it was not even necessary to use any of the smoke to calm them down. That one hive did swarm a pretty good bit, but no issues.I think we are going out to dinner tonight, and that will be nice. We did have the guys show up later this morning to cut grass, so they have been busy doing that. Otherwise, it has turned out to be a pretty nice day, although it is not really sunny, just kind of overcast and cloudy, with a nice breeze. Not a bad day for transferring bees all things considered.
Deeds, Actions, Changes, BEES & BABY COWS, Kindnesses, Whirled Peas, FUN!
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