For those who were unfamiliar with the bee colony collapse problem, CNN has a story on it today. Thirty-six percent of commercial hives lost since last year.

Cabol told me to go do something while waiting for the furniture to arrive today (it’ll probably coincide with a thunderstorm). So I went down to the beehives, since they are way past due to have their mite medicine removed, and the feeders from the winter taken off.

All three hives seem to have made it through the winter. The one closest to the garden (which blew over in the middle of the winter) still seems the smallest, but there were bees in it, at least. I put a new super on the middle one, and the third one had comb built on about half its top super.

I know a real beekeeper would take the supers off each other and check each one and see how things are going, but I’m too scared of the bees to spend any more time down there than necessary. Maybe if there is no drought this year we’ll get some honey to harvest, although having living hives these days is a feat unto itself.

Anya and I went down to the barn to see how things were going.

Buddy came with us.

Buddy likes Anya.

All the babies were hanging out together.

I think these are Sadie’s.

Well, I’m at home today because Anya is sick, and Cabol said it was my turn to stay home with her. I went down to the barn a little while ago, and little black sheep seems sort of confused on who her mommy is. Her mouth feels warm, and I’ve seen her futzing around under Pearl, so I think she is feeding. But when Pearl went back into the barn to eat, the baby was confused and baaaaaaaing outside and following Sadie around. At one point, she even forced her way through the fence and came after me. I put her back in the barn with Pearl, but it’s still a little worrisome.

Sadie has a pair of toes sticking out of her hoo-hah, so I expect more babies today.

UPDATE: Two more sheep outside with Sadie. A black and a white one. Now that won’t get confusing.

Another hard day of lambing here at the Loafkeeper residence. We wake up, go to work, come back, and find Pearl with these:

The black one seems a little less aggressive than the white one, so I think Cabol will go down later and maybe give her a little nutra-drench. They both appear to be girls.

I think another might soon be on the way, too. Check out Sadie:

The birds are chirping, the bees are buzzing, and we’re staring at sheep backsides. At least this year Andy knows the difference between a sheep pooing and a sheep having a lamb.

This time around we only bred Pearl and Sadie because Pumpernickel and her baby (who sadly still does not have a name) are puny. We don’t need to make more puny sheep. Pearl appears to be getting pretty close to popping. Her uddery bits got a lot bigger this weekend, and today she looked really waddly. Sadie has pretty big uddery bits but not as big as Pearl’s, so I think Sadie has a bit longer to go. Who knows.

I really hope everything goes okay this year, and I don’t have to put on those elbow-length gloves again.

Today, after almost two years of searching, I found our Loafkeeper flag that Cabol’s old coworkers sent us!

It was cleverly hidden on the top shelf in the office the whole time.

Of course, with my amazing only-knowing-one-knot tying skills, I expect it to last about 1 day before the winds here blow it into the trees.

This weekend I finished caulking the trim in the basement room (the trim that is up, anyways) (don’t use the phrase ‘a little caulk’ around Cabol). We moved the bed, which involved a lot of grunting and groaning and Cabol hurting her wrists.

We still need to:

• Finish the pocket door frame
• Finish the room and door trim
• Frame out the little window and put trim on it
• Replace the older outlets, and put face plates on all of them

But hey, we can sleep down there now! And we can move the full bed out of the office and set up the tables to get the seeds started!

Before Andy was struck down by the mighty gods of bronchitis, he put in many hours of sweat and toil in our bedroom. He almost got all the flooring down, and it looks really great. Anya thinks it is pretty nifty, too, and likes how the walls match her outfit.

I think there are about two rows left to go, but they are the most difficult because that side of the room is where the weird angle walls are. We also need to get a threshold to go down between the bedroom and the rest of the basement. Eventually the rest of the basement will have the same flooring, but we won’t put it in until we build the kitty room and get the kitty boxes out of the basement.

Speaking of floors, Anya can now slide around on them a bit. In reverse. She can also do this neat thing where she puts her arms over her head and bounces. I’m not sure why her arms have to be over her head for her to bounce, but it seems to work and helps her move a few inches.

Andy finished repainting our dresser. I’m not sure if he’s going to do the mirror.

With the green walls, I think the room is looking sort of woodsy. Next weekend we hope to get the floors put in and get started on the trim. After that the only thing that really needs to be done is replacing the light fixture, but we aren’t really sure what we’ll put in. I’d love to have a ceiling fan, but the ceiling is sort of low. Another issue is that the current fixture was put in to be centered in the basement as a whole. Now it’s way off to the side in our room. We should probably move the electricity stuff before putting in a new fixture, but I think Andy is sick of messing with drywall for a while.

We’d also like to find some groovy new sheets and a groovy new duvet cover. I think with the woodsy-ness that we have going on, we should try to find some sheets with deer on them. I know they make flannel sheets with deer. Don’t know about regular sheets. Hm. And for the duvet cover, I’m thinking bugs. Like maybe a print with a swarm of japanese beetles on it.