Afternoon Swarm

Had a great weekend. The Wife organized a surprise dinner for her dads 60th birthday. He's the fifth boy in a group of six rowdy siblings so it was a great night. Neil had said he didn't really want to do much except hang out with close family for his birthday but you could see he was genuinely touched to have a big group of friends and family to help him celebrate.

Brunswick Heads is a great little township for a weekend like that. We had swims, coffee, caught some worms and whiting, I did a few photo walks (more on this later in the week) and the actual birthday dinner was a great feed. I'll put up a post on dinner at Mother Foccacia toomorrow.

So it was good to get home and just chill out. I have given up with my escaping chickens. They are now going to get a highrise, hopefully fox proof chookhouse and they'll just have to take their chances with the snakes. I rarely lose a full grown chicken to a snake anyway. Then I'll fence my veg garden in. I like having the chooks running round anyway. I'll build a smaller everything proof small pen that will be used as a breeding pen and nursery. There is always something to do on a smallholding, as I was about to find out.

I was handmowing around some newly planted fruit trees near the bees as a bit of easy exercise on a lazy Sunday arvo when the bloody bees swarmed. I quickly grabbed The Wife to keep an eye on where they went while I kitted up and grabbed the spare box. Of course the little bastards went right to the top of the fig tree, so it was off to Eric, the magical builder neighbour who has everything, most of which is in, on or around his two shipping containers (lucky bastard). He quickly rigged be up a makeshift pole with a bucket gaffed to the end and I was off.

I managed to tap a few of them into the bucket first go, but the tipped them out on to the ground as the pole was quite a bit bendier than I'd anticipated. Next go more bees and into the empty box. There were bees at the entrance and none on the tree when I went up to check later so I might have a new hive! I hope so or I've lost all those bees.

A bit more exciting end to the day than I thought. Oh well all I have to do now is research herd share agreements, write up dinner at Fat Belly Kat, do a new section for the goats, rebuild the deck..………



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