Keith's Kind Hearted Farm

12/05/2024

Thank you for the pumpkins.

11/12/2024

Michelle Killin-Keith Carter was a HUGE help yesterday. Our turkeys not so much...

10/11/2024

Fall Farm House. Trying desperately to hold on to Summertime & embrace the inevitable Fall.

08/19/2024

15 GALLONS of spaghetti sauce 🍝 I'M DONE PUT A FORK IN ME! Too many tomatoes this year!!!! A good problem.

08/18/2024

08/12/2024

Guys! My new farm hack. I have zero idea how long to let them stay in the pot so I'll start with 20 minutes.

08/12/2024

Made spaghetti 🍝 sauce today using the Vitamix recipe (thanks again Annette for leaving me yours). This is the best our garden has done. It's definitely a learning process.

08/10/2024

My mind is blown!

07/26/2024

07/26/2024

Queen Elizabeth is doing great! Queen Mary is doing good.

07/11/2024

6 raised beds of veggies. The wind last night really messed up my tomatoes.

06/27/2024

Look at our baby bees!!!! Only one of my hives is doing well, this one. I shared some brood frames with one that has high #'s but the other one there's no hope for 😭

05/09/2024

80% of beekeepers will quit in the 2nd year. So we've got a 20% success rate and that's not that we're successful, it's that we keep at it and keep learning.

An article I found-
If I get so frustrated, why do I do it?
The other side of beekeeping, the part that keeps me going year after year, catches me unaware. Yesterday I opened a hive only to be overwhelmed by a smell: the damp, oozy, warm odor of brood, pollen, wax, and nectar. I stopped to inhale, mesmerized. Only a beekeeper knows that aroma.

How about the taste of honey straight from the hive? Warm. Viscous. Still tended by bees. Honey the way bears eat it bares no resemblance to honey in a jar. Trust me on this. Unextracted. Unfiltered. Unmixed. Only a beekeeper knows that taste.

Or the sound of a busy hive? I hear a finely tuned engine. A contented kitty. I hear the wind in the desert. Waves on a distant shore. The soft susurration of a sleeping baby. Reliable. Unceasing. Life-affirming. Only a beekeeper knows that sound.

I know of no other hobby that is so tactile. The stickiness of honey. The tackiness of propolis. The silken texture of beeswax. The slippery, mucilaginous feel of royal jelly. The muscle-tearing weight of a full brood box. The burning heat of a sting. Only a beekeeper knows those sensations.

And let’s not forget the sights. To me, nothing comes close to a swarm for pure visual enchantment. Nature choreographed the bees in a way no man could replicate, a visual reminder of the life force. Or how about a lacy festoon of bees, complicit, willful, turning labor into artwork? Only a beekeeper knows those sights.

Overwhelmed by the wonder
So I find myself enslaved by the sheer wonder of honey bees. Persisting another year, I mindlessly scrape one more frame, count one more mite. And I continue to answer the questions of the 20% and the 80% hoping that they, too, will fall under the spell of the honey bee.

Rusty
Honey Bee Suite

04/15/2024

Beyond blessed my friends love my farm as much as I do and send all kinds of funny clothes and accessories 💕 👗 ⛑️🪖 🥻

04/12/2024

These sweet bun buns went on a trip to Mrs. Demaline's kindergarten classroom today. This is the sweetest litter ever!!!!

Mama is a Silver Fox and dad is a mix of Silver Fox and New Zealand.
They are about 8.5 weeks and ready for their forever homes.

Let me know if you're interested in a new sweeter than sweet baby bun bun. Otherwise they'll be meat later on.