Sunday, May 31, 2015

Farm life, Bees, and the Ancient Faith

Hello family, friends, and loved ones,

A couple of weeks ago I shared a link on facebook about why it is hard to become a Catholic from a non-catholic faith background. I fully intend on writing more on why I converted but for the past weeks I've pondered what direction to head as there are so many reasons to give. I wrote an draft post on the reformation dogma of Sola Fida and how it is not scriptural or historically correct. However, in writing that post I got the sense that it was not where I was meant to go as I was drawn more into the depth of the Eucharist and its setting, the Mass. In the weeks following my life as been full of farming and in my spare time delving deep into ancient Christianity and beekeeping.

Farm life in the spring

This spring has been a most marvelous spring both in the beauty of creation and the amount of rain we have received here in Central Texas. On Holy Thursday of Holy week we butchered yearling lamb which for me at least certainly had spiritual significance and I think will be a practice I hope to implement if and when I have my own sheep heard. On the second day of May we had our first spring lamb born.
First lamb of the season. By the end of the first week there were over a dozen and now a month later we have A LOT of lambs running around. 

Sheep in the fore ground with the breed heifer heard in the background watching the antics of the lambs.
This spring we have also been setting eggs and hatching out chickens from our heritage Deleware chicken flock. This is a process in which we collect eggs for a week before placing them in the incubator. There the eggs are kept at around 100.0 degree Fahrenheit and 45-55% humidity for 3 weeks with an increase in humidity during the last week. Around day 10 in the incubator we take the eggs out and "candle" them to check for fertile and infertile eggs as well as for any other defects.

The eggs in the black hatching tray are at 19 days. Jeremiah and I have taken them from the blue trays where they are rotated for the first 18 days as the embryo develops.  

We were running between two to three batches of chicks at a time. The bottom tray will soon be full of cheeping little fluff balls while the eggs above have another week of incubation before hatching. 

Day 10 candling involves putting the egg against the end of a flashlight and observing the contents. When and egg is clear like this one, it means that there is no embryo growing and is an infertile egg. If the bottom of the egg were completely shadowed, then we would have a fertile egg.

The chicks have hatched and are dry! Time to check for defects, count them, out and take them down to the warm dry brooder for their first meal and drink of water.
Spring in Texas is truly a beautiful time of year. The meadows are full of many bright and vibrantly colored wildflowers, Bluebonnets (which are legal to pick), Indian Paintbrush, Crimson Clover, Yellow Clover, wild Mustard, and many many more. However, one of the biggest highlights for me was the discovery of wild blackberries growing along the hedge rows. One afternoon Jeremiah, the other apprentice, and I were out setting up a portable electric fence when I noticed a blackberry growing along the fence line. Later that afternoon we returned and spent several hours picking blackberries until we had filled several bowls to the brim. While picking along the hedge and fence lines we were able to stop and observe the other nuances of the nature that surrounded us.
Bluebonnets at sunset.

Indian Paintbrush in full bloom.

Early results show that there were more berries then we had anticipated
Found this birds nest nestled in a shrub along the fence line.

And then we discovered yet another birds nest. 

Bees  

At the end of April the farm received two nucleus bee colonies from a local beekeeper. In the week or two before the bees arrived Grady and I spent some time in the barn building two Kenyan Top Bar Hives (KTBH) to house the bees. However, the nucleus of bees came in Langstroth frames and brood boxes. You know in pre-school when you learn that you can't put a square peg in a round hole, well this was like putting a rectangular frame into a trapezoid. Needless to say this wasn't going to be an easy transition and so we got creative. Educated with YTO (YouTube Opinion) we placed our Langstroth frames long ways in the KTBH perpendicular to the top bars and took some of the comb out of the frames and wired them onto the top bars and the hopes that the bees would start drawing out more comb on the top bars so that we could eventually remove the frames. In the beekeeping world we don't know how sound this method of ours really is, but it worked! Being fascinated with the bees I began reading lots of online resources about beekeeping as well as downloading podcasts on the subject and listening to hours of bee lectures and talks on YouTube.

The first two KTBH in operation. The mason canning jars on the fronts have sugar water in them to feed the bees and help them trough the poor foraging conditions with all the rain that we have been inundated with this spring.  

KTBH 2.0 Texas Edition - This is actually the third TBH that I built after seeing the first two in action and reading about beekeeping issues here in the hot south. This hive has a removable bottom board which can easily slide in and out and a 1/8" mesh hardware cloth tacked to the bottom to allow better ventilation during the summer while still keeping pests out of the hive. One of the wild hives will be placed in here.

The bees just built this beautiful straight comb on the top bar. Two weeks before there was nothing on this bar. 

Beneath all those bees you can see capped brood. This hive's queen has been busy.


During all this information gathering, Jeremiah discovered two wild beehives on the farm which we began devising plans of trapping and capturing. The first one he discovered living in a smashed up old blue plastic barrel in the woods. The story of how the barrel ended up there in its deformed state I am not sure, but the bees sure didn't mind making it home. Just this last week we captured this feral hive using a home-made bee vacuum. Haha! That is right. A friend who has experience in bee removal and I used a shop vac to vacuum the bees into a 5 gallon bucket as we used garden shears to cut through the plastic barrel exposing the hive. We were able to salvage much of the comb with their food stores and capped brood and wired this said comb onto frames. When we poured the bucket of bees onto a spare bottom board positioned at the entrance of their new home we were very relieved to find the queen alive and well in the midst of the teeming bees.

This is a video of the plastic barrel hive. I have never tried uploading a video before to blogspot, so we shall see if it works.

Caleb and I prepare our equipment and the hive for operation extraction.

With the generator roaring in the background and the whir of  the vacuum we start opening the barrel. Caleb is on the right with the smoker which masks the bees alarm pheromone. The bees were still very unhappy about the whole process.  

Disclaimer: Due to very angry bees, our camera man had to wisely seek refuge in the truck as he had no bee suit on and hence there are no pictures until the end of the evening.
The bee are crawling up into their new home. We placed the hive in the same spot the barrel was in so that any field bees returning would still find a home. In a couple of weeks we will seal the hive up and transport them to the bee yard with the other hives. 
The second feral hive on the farm has taken up residence in a metal fence post made from oilfield tubing. I can't exactly go cutting into this hive without destroying the hive and the fence so instead Jeremiah and I positioned a TBH nucleus box/trap that I made over the hive entrance forcing the bees to go through the trap to access their hive. Since there is very limited space in the fence post we are thinking that the bees will expand into this box. We have yet to see if this will actually happen.
The experimental trap. Instead of trapping a swarm of bees which are looking for a home, we are luring an existing colony into a spacious addition.

Ancient Faith

Since writing about why I became Catholic I came very close to releasing a second part I drafted addressing the issue of the Protestant doctrine of Sola Fida and how this is not what the bible or the earliest Christians teach. However in reflecting on the Eucharist and its setting in the Mass, especial around Easter time I felt my attention and heart being pulled in a much different and much less confrontational direction. The beauty of Divine Liturgy and its declaration of the gospel continue to blow me away and overwhelm me. Much like the bees, I have been reading both books and online articles pertaining to the Catholic faith and spirituality, listening to hours of Catholic and Orthodox podcasts and sermons on a wide range of topics, and watching many YouTube lectures about the faith. Additionally, I have been trying to make it much more consistently to confession now that the church I regularly attend has a time a working person can actually make it too! While at the very first it can seem scary and daunting, this practice is really a gem of the Christian faith.

In beginning to explore the depths and richness of the Catholic Tradition, the first weekend in May I drove up to Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey which is an hour south east of Tulsa Oklahoma. The Abbey is a Benedictine Monastery of Solesmes Congregation. This was not any kind of formal retreat, though I fully intend on returning on a retreat later this fall, Lord willing. I first heard about this Monastery in an article on modern movements in the church in general toward intentional communities in the monastic mode. At Clear Creek, there is a community of lay faithful who have moved from various towns and cities across the US to this rural Oklahoma setting to be fed and nurtured by the monks and nuns and to live out the rule of St. Benedict in their own daily domestic life. After low mass, I was invited over to breakfast by a very dear old women who mostly certainly displayed the hospitality of a benedictine.  

The Church and Residence Hall as they currently stand.

The eventual plan for the abbey once construction is complete
In addition to visiting a Monastery this month, I have also visited an Eastern Rite Catholic Church twice, spurred on by my reading of history, the early church fathers and particularly, the eastern fathers and monastics of the Church whom Catholic and Orthodox hold in common. What is an Eastern Rite Catholic Church? To put it the best I know how, an eastern catholic church is a Uniate Orthodox church. Still don't get it? I didn't at first either. To make a lot of complicated history, theology, cultural, and political events and realities majorly overly simplified, the Eastern Catholics are Orthodox who are in full communion with the Pope of Rome as compared to their schismatic brethern who are not yet. To grow in faith and love, both east and west need each other.

What is coming from this exploring of the Catholic Christian Faith? Hopefully greater love for God and neighbor. If not, then it is all in vain. I am convinced that conversion and repentance which accompanies it is not a one time event, but ever ongoing as we are transformed and restored more and more, and more, and more into the likeness of Him who saves and frees us. The Church since its founding by Christ has 2000 years of history of men and women discovering the unfathomable riches of God showing us with their lives how to grow in faith, hope, and charity. Let us be like the saints and martyrs of old to the present!

Bless the Lord oh my soul! Worship His holy name! Sing like never before! Worship His holy name!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Your thoughts are appreciated. Please post.