Thankfully spring and summer are slow times for fleece hat sales.  I have been using these "slow" months to finish building the house and to fulfill my love of farming.  I have been trying to incorporate edible landscaping around the studio-house to eventually provide the majority of our fruits and vegetable needs. 
  Here are a few photos:

Honey Bees
| A recently caught swarm.  The bees are fanning nasanof pheromones to spread the location of their new home to the rest of the colony.	Grafting Queens from a Breeder Colony  Pulling a frame of open "milk" brood from my pol-line x Allegro hygienic Italian breeder colony
NUC mating yard after a spring thunderstorm Spring 2012	Assessing the brood .   Notice 5 frame mating nucs in the background  made to look different for returning queens.
The bees are within a stones throw of the house and gardens.   Some times their afternoon play-flights sound like swarms.  2012	Removing a day old larva with a grafting tool.
Raising NUCs in the late summer 2011	Placing the day old larva into a plastic cell cup to be moved into the cell raising colony.
Late night NUC construction Summer 2011.   Sometimes you need the equipment yesterday!	Frame with earlier grafts that I am about to place the freshly grafted larva bar into.
Inspecting recently capped queen cells	A close up of queen cells in production.   The upper cells are about to hatch and the lower bar are about to be capped.  Watching queen cell development is my favorite part of raising queens.
Nursery bees checking out a freshly transferred swarm queen cell	The queen emerged successfully from the cell on the left while the queen in the right hand cell was killed by another virgin queen.
A virgin Carniolan Queen.   Not the neatest marking job on this one but the irregular markings helps for identification after mating.	Introducing a queen to a colony between two frames of open brood.   The tube in the bottom of the plastic cage is full of queen candy and the cage is suspended by a toothpick...more often or not that is a small twig.
What's that pollen on your bee?
Here is a good Link to learn about beekeeping basics
Garden Photos

The rain garden that is fed by the roof gutters.  The cranberries are underwater at the moment.		The same rain garden in the winter.  You can see one of the sleeping platforms in the distance on the left.
Rain garden in foreground with the garden behind.  The winter cold frames are open on a sunny day.		This giant 8 foot tall mullen formed a perfect question mark the day before.  I missed it but here it is the next day.
Two different cold frame experiments.  The one on the left is a large 4x6 insulated window...very heavy.  The one on the right is made with two grocery store windows.  It worked great for putting out tomatoes in early  April		These were by far the best cold frames for ease of use last winter but not as warm as the glass ones.   The plastic has been replaced with insect cloth to protect greens from summer bugs.
Low cost auto solar food drying.  I have found that If I cut up the tomatoes in the evening and keep a fan on them overnight the next day they will dry completely the next day in the car.  The fan seems to be very important.		Drying more tomatoes in the back of a friend's car.
Garlic Planting fall 2008		Drilling holes in oak logs for shiitake mushroom spawn.  April 2008
Two days of drilling logs can make one trigger happy		The final product.  40 oyster mushroom logs and 100 shiitake logs
Harvesting an extra large flush		Drying mushrooms with a very low fire
Mushrooms set out to clean with pressured air		Mushrooms ready to harvest
Winter 2008-2009 Garden.   Please click on any of these photos to see a much larger image
First fall Broccoli	I left onions and potatoes wintering in the ground under leaves.	Shallots and garlic mulched with leaves.  The shallots almost look like grass in the winter.	Garlic mulched with leaves for the winter.
Lettuce at Christmas under the big glass cold frame. Small seedlings are sprouting up around the lettuce to replace these heads in the spring.  we are also still eating broccoli side shoots from the plant in the upper left.	A sea of experimental cloches and cold frames.  The glass cold frames are far warmer than the arched plastic covered cloche but are not nearly as easy or covenant to move around or open for harvesting.	Fresh baby spinach under a cloche.  I just made these cloches and covered them with waste plastic that my last shipment of fleece.	Spinach mulched with leaves and rainbow chard under a cloche
April 1st 2009 Garden.   Please click on any of these photos to see a much larger image
Happy plants	The Peas are starting to climb.  They are under planted with arugula, mustard, radishes and turnips	Spinach, chard and garlic that over wintered.	The lower garden.  Artichokes, strawberries, lettuce, garlic, bunching onions, fennel, potatoes, broccoli, kale, and still waiting for the asparagus.
For and experiment I put out extra tomatoes under these two cold frames on March 27.	Tomatoes after a 29 degree night!	More tomatoes that survived under a plastic covered cloche.  I did give it an extra blanket	Recently planted potatoes and strawberries
It seems to get more difficult getting out the door in the spring.  In the foreground I am rooting some figs.	After the tomatoes lived thought he cold I got excited.  So I am warming up the ground to put out some extra peppers and eggplants this week under this cold frame	I grafted some pears and apples which recently were transplanted into this nursery.