The Barn
This is probably the biggest news. I won't say it's finished but it's finished enough for now. It's actually still getting some final touches before the winter rains arrived. Will is sealing the barn doors and I've been putting on some last coats but the exterior is essentially done.
Chickens
We still have seven. Some of them finally started laying but it doesn't seem that all of them are. We're only getting two to three eggs a day. It could be that the days are already shortening or some just haven't started yet. Two to three are plenty, though, and beyond that we'll have to sell or trade them.
Bees
My bees are doing great. I hosted a couple bee classes at the finca for BioFuel Oasis and learned a lot about testing for mites. My hive actually had a lot of mites and I had to treat it with Mite-Away, which seemed to do the trick. There's also quite a bit of honey and I was thinking of harvesting this fall but I'll just leave it for the bees to eat over the winter and then add a couple supers pretty quickly in the early spring and plan on doing a big harvest in the later spring.
My friends' hive that I'm hosting is not doing so well. It appears that when they went into the hive earlier in the summer they killed off all the queen cells to prevent further swarming but it ended up being that a queen had just left with the previous swarm and it hadn't been replaced yet. We tried all dropping in frames of brood from my hive and other hives in the hopes that the bees would make a queen but last time I took a look for them, there wasn't any brood. The hive won't last much longer.
Water Tank
I have not hooked this up yet but I prepped the side of the carriage house with weed barrier and gravel and actually got it moved into place. Now I just need to run pipes from the downspouts and provide a first flush diverter. Since it could fill in one good storm I can take some time getting it hooked up.
Garden
Not much to share. I had another quasi-successful year with the SFG. I'll be adding a second bed for next spring. We got a bunch of apricots this year and made jam. The fig tree did okay but didn't produce that many ripe figs. The plum tree produced but wasn't as prolific as last year. It also got a lot of aphids at the ends of branches. I did some pruning that will hopefully do it some good. The persimmon hasn't produced but it's still growing and I'm still training it horizontally. I planted the pomegranate in the ground but not soon enough for it to flourish right away. I'm hoping it recovers in the spring. I planted a passion fruit vine that I'm hoping does well. It has amazing flowers and I lover the fruit. Our friend Ayse gave us some passion fruit jelly that was delicious plus it also makes good juice. Oh, and the avocado. The branches are turning brownish so I'm hoping it's not diseased. I'll keep my fingers crossed. And then there's the Fuji apple out front that produced a ton of apples this year. I think I'm letting it produce too many because the tree itself isn't growing much. I'll thin it out a bit more next time.
