The Fresh Squeezed pre-publication special is now a thing of the past. But you can still get in on the fun and win a copy of the eBook version. Grab four of your friends and check out the Fresh Squeezed Facebook page for details.

C’mon, it’ll be fun.

To update those of you who were able to get in on the special collector’s edition and all the swag… It’s coming. You should be receiving your eBook copies by the end of next week. We’ll keep you updated on the printing of the pBook and T-shirt.

Thanks again!

On with the blog.

The news from the micro-farm this week is all bad. Predators lurk everywhere we look. The bees have launched a protest of epic impact. The chickens are getting fat, and, if possible, lazier. None of it is good.

Right now the development phase of the farm-fantasy is sucking the life out of the farm and the farmers. Don’t get me wrong, everything is still on track – sort of – but that thing a ways down that track might be a train coming our way.

It all has to do with cash flow.

Which is going one-hundred percent the wrong way.

I’ve talked about it before; the farm is draining us dry. Money for seeds. Money for bird food, chicken feed, and sugar. Capital expenditures. Out, out, out it goes. And what comes back in?

Bupkis.

First off, the crops of the micro-farm, pitiful as they might be, are under the constant assault of furry friends like the one pictured here. This little fellow is resting about twenty feet away from the nine-thousand volt electric fence through which he just nibbled on some newly sprouted raspberries. He 1) didn’t seem to mind that I was taking his picture from about ten feet away and 2) showed no ill effects from his nutritious encounter with electricity. This is not how it’s supposed to work.

I’m assuming that this little vandal is the same deer that took out the peas a few days earlier. That misadventure resulted in the purchase of “The Scarecrow”, a high tech sprinkler with an electronic motion detector that shoots out a sudden burst of water when something moves across its beam. Judging from the deers’ hoof prints in the newly planted flower bed right in front of The Scarecrow, I’m guessing that the deer are setting it off just for fun. Or maybe they find the gentle spray refreshing. All I know is that the claimed “short but startling burst of water” released when something is detected does not make the “Animals associate this negative experience with the area and avoid your yard in the future.” I think all it does is let the deer know exactly where the good stuff is planted so they can browse on the well-watered crops while being gently misted by a periodic spritz of water.

So much for The Scarecrow, but it’s still fifty bucks out the door.

The upside is that we now have an electronic motion detector. I’m thinking of taking it apart and seeing if it might be able to be connected to something a bit more startling. Like a gun. I’ll just have to remember to approach it only from behind.

One of the beehives is dying. I went in for an inspection last weekend and, where before there were baby bees in all stages of development, I found only empty comb. The hive itself seems to be doing okay, if a little low in population, but there are no replacement bees in the pipeline. This is not a good thing, because it means the queen is dead.

Bees have evolved (or “were designed” if you’re into unrealistic fantasies) to cope with this kind of setback. Typically the loss of a queen will stimulate the remaining bees to raise a new queen by feeding a very young larva the special food that allows her to develop into a queen. The catch is that the larva has to be three days old or less. Our queen seems to have packed it in after ceasing to lay eggs. The hive was left in a situation where, when the queen died, there were no eggs or larvae of the proper age to allow them to replace her.

But I didn’t just want to write off the hive and bear witness to the lingering deaths of the last few bees. So I did what beekeepers have been doing for millennia: I messed with Mother Nature. I stole a frame of eggs and young larvae from our strong hive, and put it into the weak. Bees being what they are will accept the new babies without question and begin to raise their new monarch from eggs laid by the other queen. In theory.

From my point of view as a beekeeper I can enlist the bees of the failing hive to work tirelessly in my effort to remove their genetic mix from the path of evolution (or, well you get the idea). The other hive is great: strong, docile, and productive. By moving those genes into the weak hive I’m hoping to have two such wonderful hives. Again, in theory. The good news is that, as of yesterday, the weak hive was raising a new queen from the babies thoughtfully provided by the strong hive.

But it takes about four weeks for the new queen to hatch out, find her mates, and begin laying eggs. Then it’s another two-and-a-half weeks before the eggs develop into worker bees and can start supporting the hive. Until that happens we’ll probably have to keep putting new bees into the weak hive. Just to keep it going.

If the hive makes it that far, it will be going into winter weak and with no real honey stores to support it. That means more sugar – at least sixty pounds of it – and no guarantee that the hive will survive until spring.

Imagine a room filled with nine two-year-olds. Gimme, gimme, gimme. I want, I want, I want. More, more, more. That’s our chicken coop. Feed, corn, rice – oh yes, they love rice, water, clumps of dirt filled with tasty bugs. They eat, they poop, they sleep. No eggs. And none expected for months. Plus they’re starting to get big, which means the time and money outflow will only increase until the first egg gets broken into the frying pan this fall. An egg that will cost over seven-hundred dollars. Yes, these are the same birds who, just a few weeks ago, were the adorable little puff-balls pictured in that blog.

My, how they’ve grown.

I was grousing about that very issue the other day while I was doing one of the more distasteful jobs on the micro-farm: turning the compost.

Compost, as you are no doubt aware, is the rich bounty of organic material resulting from the aerobic decay of various clippings, trimmings, and leftovers. You start with grass, leaves, and food scraps, and end up with top-notch fertilizer. The key to the creation of compost is the “aerobic” bit. The oxygen allows the creation of the compounds necessary to support the rich community of bugs, worms, and bacteria that create the bio-miracle that is compost. (It’s not really a “miracle” but I wanted to give some non-parenthetical time to the voodoo mysticism set.)

Aerobic requires air, and getting air into the middle of a pile of carbonaceous goo that would turn – eventually – into crude oil if you didn’t get the air inside, requires work. My favorite thing. In between the time when the compost pile is filled with freshly cut vegetation and the time when it is filled with a smaller volume of beautiful, fragrant, crumbly compost; it is nothing more than a dense, smelly, gelatinous pile of crap that is a total bitch to turn over and get air inside of.

The other day while I was doing this disgusting job I was whining to myself about the whole micro-farming experience. I’d stick the pitchfork into the pile and come up with a thirty-pound clump of glop with god-knows-what crawling around the edges and jumping into my boots. Then I’d do it again and again. And again. Two hours later I had an overturned compost pile that was no more aerobic, no more friable, and no more fragrant than the one I started with. My boots squished from the suicidal annelids filling them to my ankles.

This, I thought, is for the birds.

At which point the light went on in my head.

Chickens love bugs. They love worms. They love scratching in the dirt and turning clumps of it into its molecular components. They’ll do it happily for hours. Perfect. Why didn’t I think of this before?

Because you’re an idiot?

Well, there is that, but I learn pretty quickly. So, I turned the compost pile into a chicken forced-labor camp. It’s now roofed with metal wire and the front fence is sealed by two metal clips. There is no way for any predator, airborne or otherwise, to swoop in and steal a chicken. And, more importantly, there is no way for the chickens to get out. We can toss in all nine chickens and then sit back in folding chairs as they keep themselves busy just being chickens.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get them to sing for their supper, but, as I sit lounging with a cocktail in hand, I think watching them meticulously turn over the compost and enjoy every minute of it, might just be enough.