Our Farm Progress!

Progress at the Myerstown Family Farm has picked up steam since our last update. So much so that this post was originally supposed to just be about the Vineyard addition, but we've had to edit it to cover the broader scope of projects that have exploded!

We picked up 33 Norton grapevines from St. Francois Vineyard mid April and the weeks leading up to, and beyond, we had been working to clear the area for the Vineyard. Trees and brush had to be cleared by hand on the side of the hillside that drops off behind the banjo shop. It's very steep but I believe it's a good use for the land that would go otherwise unused. As with all the Ozarks region, the rocks are ever present and offered plenty of opportunity to sweat while removing them. 

Our original intention was to wait a few years on starting the vineyard, but when a friend began to give us some advice and contacts, we decided to go ahead and try to beat the heat of summer. We got 24 vines in the ground and the bud break percentage was pretty good. We had 22 of 24 come out of dormancy and I replaced the two that did not survive with the extra vines.  With the irrigation lines in and everything growing, I gained some insight on what I will do differently for the next rows I build, but that is for another post. 

Now, with summer getting into the swing of things, we have shifted our focus from the Vineyard to the bee business. The vineyard still needs some finishing up to do, such as surface rocks removed and grass seeded but for now, Bee season is full swing!

We have now done two cutouts and caught three swarms. Two of the three swarms did not stay in the new hive location. But with that said, we are up to 5 hives now. They will take some finesse but they'll do just fine. We have put some effort into learning more advanced propagation methods to help us grow our Apiary in the coming months. We are hopeful to have a little honey this next season if all goes right. 

 

A friend of ours gave us a nuc so we had some eggs for one of the queenless cutouts. We have been building bee equipment like crazy. We made a purchase through the Facebook marketplace that was such a good deal and we ended up with a lot of equipment to work on. Progress continues as of this writing.

These nuc boxes will be the method of how we increase our Apiary quicker.

Jeremy decided that we were going to start another wing of the farm. He has created the HiveTracker: Honeybee Rescue Facebook page to promote his services for removing honeybees from various structures or trees. Please go check it out if you can and select the like and follow button of the page. We need to get the word out about his services. 

A few weeks back, we visited the Ava Farmers Market and while there, a vender let the kids hold some chicks he had for sale. 

We told them we were not ready for chickens yet. However, he eventually just gave each of them one. We gave in and let the kids keep the chicks. Now we've been keeping the chicks in the banjo shop to keep warm, but they have grown so much that we need to get them outside and in a bigger pen. We had intentions to get chickens eventually, but as fate would have it, we are now keeping chickens sooner than planned. 

We have too many stray dogs to let them run free so we will be building a chicken truck that we can move around to various places as needed since we are not really setup for a permanent chicken coop.   It's about time they move out of the banjo shop! 

This little adventure continues on. Please keep track of our progress both here and on our Facebook page where you will get more photos and as it happens information, and soon, we'll have products available for sale.