"The mission of Great Hill Apiary at Bumble Purse Farms is to create a prototype for sustainable living, stewarding our human and natural resources accordingly."
POINTS TOTAL
0
TODAY
0
THIS WEEK
1,406
TOTAL
participant impact
UP TO
1.0
documentary
watched
UP TO
46
meatless or vegan meals
consumed
UP TO
210
minutes
spent learning
UP TO
23
pounds
waste composted
Howard's actions
Wildlife
Research a Wild Animal
I will spend at least 60 minutes learning about a wild animal I find interesting, including their life cycle, habitat, ecosystem functions, and interactions with humans (if any!).
UNCOMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION
Wildlife
Research Benefits of Biodiversity
I will spend at least 60 minutes researching how biodiversity positively impacts our world and how the loss of biodiversity harms it.
COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION
Food
Honeybee colonies
I will tend our 4 honeybee colonies each day to optimize their helath and survivability, monitoring for mites and queen health, feeding during spring konths when flowers are scarce, and continuing to tend them until late fall when we insulate them and close them in with extra food to make it rhough winter.
COMPLETED 0
DAILY ACTIONS
Food
Honeybee meadows
I will create 3 new meadows by converting un-mowed areas on our farm to optimized wildflower meadows to help feed our 4 honeybee colonies that pollinate our vegetable gardens and give us honey.
COMPLETED 0
DAILY ACTIONS
Food
Watch a Documentary about Food Sovereignty
I will watch 2 documentary(ies) about food sovereignty: the right of local peoples to control their own food systems including markets, ecological resources, food cultures and production methods.
COMPLETED
ONE-TIME ACTION
Food
Reduce Animal Products
I will enjoy 2 meatless meal(s) and/or 2 vegan meal(s) each day of the challenge.
COMPLETED 0
DAILY ACTIONS
Food
Vegetable garden
I will create a new vegetable garden to double our capacity to produce our own food during in the time of social distancing. We already tend a 1,000 SF garden at home. I will create, help our family plant, and help our family tend a second 1,000 SF vegetable garden.
COMPLETED 0
DAILY ACTIONS
Food
Compost Food Waste
I will avoid sending up to .69 lbs (.31 kg) of food waste to the landfill each day by composting my food or learning how to.
COMPLETED 0
DAILY ACTIONS
Participant Feed
Reflection, encouragement, and relationship building are all important aspects of getting a new habit to stick.
Share thoughts, encourage others, and reinforce positive new habits on the Feed.
To get started, share “your why.” Why did you join the challenge and choose the actions you did?
Walked in the woods today with a neighbor, appropriately distanced, to recharge our batteries with the beauty and tranquility of nature as it wakes from winter and celebrates life again. Our Labrador, Cyrus, immersed himself in every lake and stream along the way, to make sure that we noticed and appreciated the simple joy of fresh, clean water.
After several days of cold windy rain, today is a great day for our hundreds of seedlings to catch some photons on the porch and get used to the great outdoors. Still too early for planting, yet spring progresses inexorably toward planting days in May, after the last frost. Our honeybees frolic by the hundreds in the nepeta (cat mint) now blooming beside the porch.
Today we were stuck inside all day due to heavy rains so I started 2 seeds in each of 96 cells, representing 5 different kinds of sunflowers from miniature to giant, to add to our starter tables with grow lights where many tiny vegetable plants are sprouting everyday, hopefully to transplant into our pollinator gardens and vegetable gardens 4 weeks from today when the last frost will be behind us in southern New England.
Finished building the beds for our new vegetable garden today just before two days of rain began. Turning lobster compost into the turned and topped 4th bed. Covering with landscape fabric to suppress weeds initially. All done just as rain begins to fall. Just need to plant and erect a deer fence now.
Finished bringing mature honeybee colonies out of winter insulated mode today.
Checked that queens had been released in our 2 new colonies and found they had been released and were working with their new comrades to found new colonies. Still had to peel of the screens off of the queen cases to release other bees that had crawled in there.
We welcomed 2 new honeybee colonies into our apiary yesterday to replace 2 lost this winter. Here is one colony moving down into its new home. Our apiary, with 2 established colonies still in their foil-faced winter insulation and the 2 new colonies at left and right ends.
Drying and sterilizing 4 beehive feeder sections freshly washed from last season's gunk, for installation this weekend. Portable plastic hoop tunnel at right helps vegetable seedlings transition to outside temperatures for planting soon.
