At the Ranch - Babies, Critters and Bees! Wednesday and Thursday.....

I went to bed at 10:30 on Tuesday night and didn't get up until after noon on Wednesday!

Plus I took a nap at 3:00!

I walked down to Sherry's after I got up and took a tour of the new babies.

These are two of the chicks that were in my foyer last weekend.

Nothing any more precious than baby chicks.

But baby ducks are pretty cute, too!

My all time favorite critter duty is letting the ducks out in the morning and back in the evening.

They march in and out like little soldiers.

These are not new babies but they are still very young.

Sherry does love the exotic breeds and that fluffy white one is special.

See that golden rooster?

He is mean.

He's pecked Sherry and Dean more than once.

Sherry had two mean ones but - someone wanted one of them - so she's down to one!

One MEAN one, that is.

She says he's mean because they have TOO many roosters.

This is a Naked Neck chicken....

with a naked neck!!

I like the pretty hens that let you pet them!

And the goats!

There's just something about the goats!

This is the 'baby' growing bigger and bigger!

I absolutely love Sherry's clothes line!!

Buttercups and fresh sundried laundry!

That's the country way.....

I was still so tired and so was Sherry after she got off work Wednesday.

Still.....we needed to check our beehives and plan out our bee work for the weekend.

The apiary is in such a beautiful spot on the ranch.

Close to the road and to water. 

It's important to be close to the road because a super full of honey weighs about 70 pounds and you don't want to have to haul that very far come harvest time.

This is such a pretty place.

Here is Dean all suited up and ready to work!

This is the only photo I got of the bees.

I didn't have my gloves on when I took the pictures and bees were crawling all over my hand but didn't sting me at all. Though I was half way hoping they would since bee stings are supposed to help arthritic hands. I will be braver next time we work the bees and keep my gloves off. We checked our five hives and all was well.

The traps for hive beetles needed to be refilled with vegetable oil but other than that, everything looked good. Plenty of bees and brood and nectar and pollen. All of this is evidence of a good queen and a thriving hive.

Then we come to the 'Speaker Box Bees!'

These were rescued back in February and they need to be relocated to a hive box.

Dean brought his power tool down and unscrewed parts of the box so we could see what's going on inside.

Bees can get into the strangest places.

The smoke helps calm the bees down when we do our inspections.

These bees were fairly aggressive.

We saw what we needed to see.

The box is full of bees and the honeycomb is from the top down.

That's good and will be easier to transfer to frames when we put them in a hive box.

And that's what we plan to do on Friday!

Rufus came to visit us when we finished with the bees.

Sherry and Dean brought down baked potatoes and pulled pork for dinner and I was so grateful. It's taken me awhile to rest up and I had to go to bed on the early side Wednesday night.

Thankfully, I woke up back to my usual self this morning!

I did my prayers and quiet time with my coffee and then spent the day doing some writing in my book and later on some art.

Louis Dean gave me a very real gift for my writing today.

If I had stayed married to Jesse, April 26th would have been my 59th wedding anniversary.

Some years I remember and some years I don't.

I remembered this year because I am at the point in my book - September 1983 - that is a difficult part for me to write.

I was talking to Louis Dean after our reading time and he said, "Just tell me what you are writing about." so i did, and he said, "Now go in there and write what you just told me."

Somehow that helped me so much.

I only write one hour at a time. My goal is to write every day but that hasn't really happened yet. Today I wrote the hour and, although it drains me to go back in time and relive a traumatic time, I was satisfied with what I wrote.

He said I should read it to him in the morning and then tell him the next part and go in and write that.

After I get to 1986 I won't have a problem because I have my handwritten diaries.

It's hard to tell your story. Hard to remember the devastating and crippling feelings of so long ago, I'm not the same person now that I was then and Louis Dean told me to remember that and write like I was talking about someone else.

He was such a source of encouragement for me today.

I took these pictures as I sat on the front deck watching him work this late afternoon/early evening.

Just a man....in dirty overalls......looking for a place to plow.

No spot is too small......

any spot will do.

....even around a tree!

I love how he loves to dig in the earth!!!