No frost in the South
We have been particularly lucky to have warmer temperatures, and it looks like spring arrived a little early this year, so we decided to cess the winter activities like cutting wood and drinking spirit, to replace it with long awaited planting, sowing, digging and get a head start.
The hive in action
The bees did not waste any time, and by the first sign of burgeoning they were already at work, I'm happy to see that the Asian hornet did not completely eradicate the local colonies. Last year, our fig trees became nearly unapproachable because of their squatting.
Come to think of it, we only arrived in our farm in July, so we really missed all windows for preparing the harvest for the year. The first thing I did in November, was to clear a big chunk of land to make sure we have enough food for next winter.
Do you even Bee box?
Now that I've seen these workers in action, I'm really thinking of making a hive and our own honey very soon. There's a nice spot south of our land, and just the idea makes me very excited. The amount of flowers in the surrounding would be more than enough nectar for them,.
The task might be a bit scary at first, but it's totally worth a shot, my only concern will be the perpetual battle against the hornets.
I remember watching a documentary on the History Channel few years back called "Live Free or Die", following the lives of homesteaders, trappers, primitive wooden, and it's always been a dream of mine to live this life. Om the show there were a couple Tony and Amelia that owned a small piece of land and they had everything on it: chickens, rabbits, worms, veggies, and bees.
They created this perfect cycle where nothing is thrown away. The rabbits ate the weeds, the worms ate the rabbit poop, the chicken ate the worms, it was so ingenious. Each year, the bee hive was going all "swarmy", meaning it's time for a new queen to set a new hive. They built their own boxes for the hives and in few years had dozens of them. Nothing is never lost, and what they didn't use, they bartered it for something they don't have.
What we're planting in Feb and March
My youngest daughter Mischa is barely a year and a half, but she isn't afraid of work. Always ready to help, she understood that it was time to get the hands in the mud.
We had already sowed broad beans in January that survived the frost, and the plan was to clear the overgrown grass and make more rows with a wire, ensuring we go straight. Why so? Our neighbour got a tractor, which makes our life much easier to harvest. You need to make space between rows for the tires to go through, but it has to be straight.
The local soil is made of clay, but I also saw what sort of yield the neighbors got with their crops and have no fear for the results we can get this year. It's also filled with worms which is always a good sign of an healthy ecosystem.
I purchased from the local store some small onions to plant, Mischa and I spent the afternoon digging and sowing them at 3 cm, she got the hang of it very quickly, even if sometime she wanted to dig them out to eat them. I left a meter from each onions to plant some more in March, just to have them harvested at different intervals.
A key element in the choice of our veggies this year, was to grow what the neighbors don't have, so we can barter. They have butternut, tomatoes, carrots, pumpkins, and many more valuables like stacks of hays and eggs. I also barter my arms and legs, as there are old people around here and do need help for heavy lifting and anything they need.
My next step will be to get a large portion ready for watermelons that tends to spread a bit, I try to do a little bit of work everyday but homeschooling at the same time the 2 others and taking care of the little one is fucking impossible. I don't know how my wife did it, though she never done any handy work, so the tasks were nicely split. I did the handy work and she did the kids.
Now that she has a new job since Monday, I'm busy until 9pm with the kids, and start working on my stuffs after 10, I don't even know when I will have time to work on the next musical post on hive. That's the scary part, but it's all worth it.
Here we go, already bitching 😆
The chickens will arrive in March, it gives me a little bit of time to ensure that they are fenced, and also our dogs depending on plane tickets, so it is important that each animals have their own space. I'm not gonna lie, jacky the husky had a bite of a chicken once☺, so I need to make sure it won't happen again.
I am really looking forward to the next few months, there will be challenging moments, and very little sleep, but building a self sustainable life is the most exciting project of all, something we wanted to do for years.
I would love to do more music, but realistically I will have to be content with an hour or two every day, in recent years I proved to myself how resilient I can be, recording my album while having a day job that I hated.
It won't be that easy for my wife 
There's a part of the barn that is completely empty and I would love to build a little mining right, powered with solar panels that showed lots of promises In recent years.
I purchased many more seeds for the next month to come, I want corn and green beans living in symbiosis, strawberries, potatoes, cabbages, aubergines (brinjaal for the South African🇿🇦) and many more things that I forget right now. The warm weather of the South is ideal for lots of veggies, my dream to plant olive trees will have to wait as they apparently don't grow olives in the region
To all my fellow friends homesteaders, let me know what I should plant on our land, and I will add it to the list. I forced my friend 
I really enjoyed writing this 😇, cheers!
Ed
🌺