Just another Friday night....

We had big plans to sit around the campfire Friday night and eat, relax, watch the boys play, relax some more, etc.

I was getting supper out to the fire, around 5:00 and Rod tells me to come out back, he heard a noise.  I walked over and from the garage door we could hear our bees in the field out back!  We walked back and thousands of them were circling around and around together right around the corn field behind the hives.  Then they gravitated over to the tree and began to swarm.  Oh shucks, that's not what we want!

In short, bees are programmed to swarm (leave their current hive to find a new home), but it's a bee keepers job to make sure that it doesn't happen.  They swarm for a couple different reasons.  One being if another queen hatched within the hive, the old queen leaves and many follow, causing the swarm.  Another reason is if the hive is too crowded the queen again will leave, causing a swarm.  Their ultimate goal when they swarm is to find a new home.  They would leave this tree within a day and find another home.

Well, once you have bees you feel like they belong to you and you're not willing to let them up and leave.  Well that's my take anyway.  So we captured the swarm, and put them into another hive.  You should never put a swarm back into their original hive.

This was so fascinating!  We called a couple people, got some advice and a friend/fellow beekeeper came over for moral support and to provide us with another hive to put our swarm in.

I operated the backhoe and Rod cut down the branch with the bees on.  They were up pretty high.  They are not angry after swarming because they don't have a home and therefore have nothing to protect.  We walked  them over to their new hive, set them down right at the entrance and they eventually all went in on their own.  Rod did scoop some of them in to get them started.

We looked for the queen, and couldn't find her.

And then I walked over to the tree where they were, and saw the remaining bees that were left behind swarmed again.  This time it was a much smaller ball.  Thinking the queen might still be in that ball of bees, we had to go up and cut the new limb down with the bees on.  This time i went up and got them.

After these bees went in, we felt like we had almost all of them into their new home.  And so far, they are happy in there.  The old hive, hopefully has a new queen in it already, or the workers may be "making" a new one.  If they don't, the bees will all eventually leave that hive.  Every hive needs one queen and they know if she's not there.  To make a queen, the worker bees need to feed a female larva a substance they make called royal jelly, this makes the larva bigger and she hatches out as a queen, vs. a worker.

Such a learning experience with this.  Apparently this is a big year for swarming.  Hoping the other hive doesn't do the same thing.  It's very full of bees!

So our chilling out by the campfire started later then expected :)  the boys camped out in the barn overnight and Rod and i hung out at the campfire from 10:00 on.  better late then never.

You'll never believe this but we had another packed weekend!  interesting thing is we only had one thing planned in advance, but you know how that goes.....


Wednesday a friend of ours from church, 46 years old, died unexpectedly and it effected our church family tremendously.  He was an active part of our church and there will be a noticeable hole now.  He and his wife have 5 children, all still at home.  Rod and I personally enjoyed talking farming and gardening with him, and working together on many pig roasts over the years.  He will be missed by many.  Since they were missionaries at different points in their life, there were people traveling here from all over the country.  We are hosting some folks now from OH and IL.   Most of them have been camping outside, which they are having a blast with.  They leave sometime tomorrow.


Today we sent Adam off to camp for the first time!  It was weird to leave him, but he mentioned several times he's excited for a break from his brothers :)  He always has enjoyed playing with kids older then him.  His bros are younger.  So we'll meet in the middle and put him in with kids his own age for a few days!  I think he will do fine.  I was proud of him for jumping right in, he has never been to this camp before.  I'm praying this will impact him in numerous positive ways!  We've been struggling with his behavior and tendencies for a while now and we're really unsure sometimes how to parent him.  The camp has been posting vidoes on facebook, so we get to see him and what he's doing.  His counselor is fabulous.


We certainly broke the 'anti swimming' mode I was in one of the last times I wrote.  We swam three times last week.  It's fun watching the boys swim and now having to drag them out of the pool verses forcing them in.  It's still not Ben's favorite pasttime, but he never did like water.  Some of you remember his screaming fits during bath time, up until 2.5 years old. 


I don't think we are hosting anything big again until October!  At least nothing is planned at the moment.  So I'm hoping a little family vaca will take place soon.  Probably not until next month though, as July seemed to fill up a little.   But for now, I'm enjoying the moments with the boys, and the garden, canning, get togethers, late nights, and sleeping in!  We also signed up to get a fresh air child this month, so if selected that will happen toward the end of the month.  The boys are very excited about that.  Rod says they act like we're going to be borrowing a puppy or something :)  hopefully it's that sweet of an experience! 

From start to finish

Here's a look into my day today.  Too tired to give details, it's pretty self explanatory :)  By the grace of God the boys had their best day together so far this summer.  That allowed this all to go smooth. 

((Almost lost a couple, had to stop and secure the cardboard))

Home Again

22 chickens in all!  

This week

We came off of a busy weekend, with having 2 events at our place.  We had excellent weather both nights which is the first thing i often pray for when leading up to an event.  Last week we spent most of our spare time gearing up for these events, along with some volunteer work at GAIN warehouse.  The days of prepping for the weekend was worth it, as the reception and fundraiser went smoothly but i was glad to get back to normal people things!!  (i know, we are anything but normal around here!)

This week was basketball camp, mulberry picking, kombucha making, pokemon card burning, lemonade selling, bee inspecting, rails to trails riding, and window cleaning.  That sounds busy too, but it was on our schedule for the most part, and was a more relaxing week.

We STILL haven't swam this summer!!!  except Adam and Clay over father's day just to prove they could.  the water temp was 70.  We have access to neighbors pools, which is a great privilege, but i'm a fair weather swimmer and until i hear about water temps in the 80's, we'll pass.

I wish it could be summer all the time!  I love summers, particularly summer nights around here.  Tonight i watered flowers after 9:00 and lightening bugs galore!  So much of God's creation to take in right now.

Funny Gingrich boy quote:  Brad - "is our new babysitter old?"  Me - "No, she's young"  Brad - "OH GOOD, they look MUCH better when they are young."  baaaahaaaa!

Said babysitter lives on our road, and is such a good fit.  She's home now from missions and hasn't a job.  I may or may not have dropped them off there 3 times over the past week and a half :)  They have cute little dogs and an awesome creek in the backyard.  They love to go there.

Thanks for reading, no pics today.  i'm on the laptop watching the Phillies in extra innings.  Have a happy weekend.

Mini vaca

Finally getting on here to share about our overnighter with Grandma at Grandpa's "north farm" last week. 
We stopped halfway at Lake Tobias, which was so much fun.  what a unique place.  The Safari Tour is great for kids and adults alike.  Then we spent the night at the farm outside Williamsport, and the next day went into Williamsport and took a boat ride on the Susquehanna before wrapping up our little vaca. 
I'm glad we were dealing with drizzly, chilly weather and not the hot stuff!  I was so glad the boys overpacked, like they always do, and thought to bring long sleeves!  I didn't pack any for myself, but mom had an extra jacket for me.
Thanks Grandma for planning and inviting us on this excursion, we made good memories!

Lake Tobias:

Safari tour:

Meet the Zedonk (Zebra/Donkey mix)

Petting Zoo;

Giving gma a hard time..They must have known how she felt about them

Boat ride

Vacation is here

how nice to officially be in summer vacation, we've been in the mode for a while now.  adam had homework the last week of school and I'm pretty sure it didn't get done!  Some of us have already had poison ivy, many ticks, and a head on mini bike collision so we aren't wasting any time on our summer vacation.

Speaking of vacation, our family has not gone away overnight since last August, and I'm really excited to go away with them sometime this summer...to the beach (I hope) and camping.  Tent camping is not my favorite and I totally pretend I love it for the boys sake.  but they don't read my blog so I can say on here that I really don't like it.  The boys and I are also doing an overnight trip with Grandma soon which we are looking forward to.  they tried packing tonight but I said we aren't packing until we at least have it scheduled! 

We had our traditional Sweet Frog ice cream on Friday after the last day.  The last day of school is the only time we go to this place so it's a real treat.  I let them pick 3 toppings.  Rather gross if you ask me, but they don't think so

Some goals of mine for the boys for the summer are to - Read through Matthew together, do a reading program through the library, get into a routine of brain integration therapy (more on that another time), and put some miles on our bikes.  Lately they've been on the motorized toys and not so much bicycles which take actual pedaling.  They are plenty active in other ways, but still nothing like a good ole bike ride.  There are several rails to trails in the area that are nice to ride on.  They are also taking on more responsibility around the property, Rod is able to include them in his projects and routines a little more each year.

Adam finishes up baseball this week.  Mixed feelings about him playing that sport.  He learned a lot and enjoyed the teammates, more than half were from his school, but it was a lot of standing around and with 12 kids on the team, some games he only batted once.  (5 innings per game)  so overall it felt like a waste of time (games were 2 hours) but I am glad he did it. 
I thought he was the cutest player in the league if you don't mind me sayin'

And I must show you the little animals around here.  everything but the cats get butchered.  I promise, we do not butcher cats. 

These kitties are so wild, but they sure are photogenic.

A couple more weeks to go for these guys, who are much less photogenic than the kitties...

Garden is doing so-so this year.  The kale & brocc were a disappointment and my radishes never got big enough to eat before going into seed.  But the boys planted some and they were fine.  Every year there are different challenges with gardening.  i love it though.  the potato beetles are brutal already.  the boys get paid to pick them off and squish them.

The boys garden, they planted extra seeds i had, plus pumpkins and gourds this year.

They are keeping their play area weeded just by playing in it!

Tonight's pretty rainbow

Happy Summer!

Summer service project

About a month ago, Ben heard on WJTL a commercial about raising funds for Bibles to be distributed around the world.  He really wanted to raise money so people in other countries can have a Bible.  So i called WJTL, since i didn't hear this commercial.  And they were no longer promoting this, but gave me the website for the ministry.  I looked it up and thought it looked really neat (www.bibleleague.org)  But wasn't sure how we would go about doing this.  It's been on my list the last month as a reminder to do something for this cause at some point.

Tonight i felt a peace about an idea for them to collect money.  For the past year or more, when the boys catch me doing my habits, cracking knuckles or picking my lip, i have to pay them.  Knuckles is 25 cents and lip picking is $1.00.  And let me tell you Brad is loaded!  This summer, when they catch me, the money will go straight into the jar.  We will collect for the next 2.5 months and send a check for the total amount.

I think they will have fun with it, and do well too, thanks to Brad who watches me like a hawk :)  If you know us and come to our house, feel free to slip some money into our jar!  We may do other things to raise money in addition, like selling produce at the end of the lane.  Eager to see how much they raise!