Buffalo Dan's Bison

A recent larger than usual snowfall in the eastern US led to an unexpected change of plans last weekend at the ranch. It had snowed, frozen, and, then, started raining when we left for the ranch hauling three 6’ x 8’ steel gates, two extended t-post pounders, and a stump puller I had fabricated at home. We arrived without issue, unloaded the equipment and began working on our projects. Jess’s plan was work on dam repair, which she did quite well. I’ll go into this process in another post. My plan was to work on pulling stumps and dragging the logs and branches out of the way. Pulling stumps moved more slowly than I would have hoped for because it was raining and I was new to it.  Although I had taken photographs of the stump puller in action, I accidentally deleted them before writing this post, so I will have to take more photographs later.    The aftermath of our ordeal about a day later.  By noon, the rain had stopped falling and the sun came out.  The ground be

 I've selected a spot on the property for the new beehives.  It's on the southern side of a gentle hill with plenty of tree protection from the west (assuming that is where the storms will come from).  In the winter, when the sunlight is coming from a lower angle and the trees are bare of leaves, the hives should be able to stay relatively warm.  In the summer, however, the leaves on the surrounding trees should help protect the bees from overheating.  Also the location is about 20 meters from a large pond, but the ground itself is not waterlogged.  It should be perfect for the new hives.  That is, once we are able to clean it up a little.  About 10 or 15 years ago it appears this spot was used as an outdoor housing for dogs.  There are remnants of fencing, kennels and other debris from that time.  I'm not really worried about any of this impacting the bees.  They don't care about these kinds of things, but I will want to eventually clean it up and I thought it wo

Our bison ranch is located several hours from our property in a very rural part of southern Virginia, which poses a bit of a dilemma.  Right now if we need to spend more than one day working on the ranch we have to either spend about half the time driving there and back or try to find a room in the nearest motel, which is 30 minutes away.  What we needed was a small simple trailer that we knew would work for us and last a long time.   Enter the Scamp!  I was first introduced to the Scamp several years ago when my parents purchased a used one on eBay.  Scamps are small to mid-sized trailers produced by a small family owned company in Backus, Minnesota.  Last year my wife and I went camping with my parents in South Dakota and got to spend some time in their Scamp.  We loved it so much that when it came time to deciding what to do about finding a place to sleep at the ranch, a Scamp was one of the first things we thought of. Currently, Scamps are in such high demand that there are ve

 This post is a continuation of my previous bee blog which can be found here .  Going forward any new bee related entries will be posted here.  The one surviving queen from last year appears to have died along with her entire colony.  It's hard to know exactly what killed them, though, I see no obvious signs of disease and the state they were in when they died seems to be consistent with freezing caused by an inability to maintain cluster temperature. Over time, different bee species have developed different strategies for dealing with the winter season.  For instance, each spring a young bumblebee queen will awaken from hibernation and begin building a new colony, which will grow from one bee (her) to an entire colony.  This colony will grow throughout the summer and will be maintained and fed by the queen's female offspring.  Just as with a honeybee colony, these female worker bees will be sterile.  However, at the end of the summer, a new generation of young