The trees know. Despite the cold nights, its suddenly getting warmer. An early bird plum is already flowering, and the other trees in the fruit orchard are getting ready to bloom.
Which makes the bee situation suddenly urgent.

There were bees here, previously, but they departed with the owner.

We're on the waiting list for a starter hive from an apiarist, David. But we'll be on that list for months. He doesn't think he'll be able to help until at least October, which is too late for this year's fruit.

So late at night last week ( bees travel at night), David came by with four(!) loaner bee hives. He's parking them here to feed up and get strong, and will take them away when he comes to drop off the starter hive. The next day, as soon as the sun hit the boxes and they warmed up, the bees were out the door and hard at work.

The other exciting thing that has happened in the last week was the discovery that the livestock love olive tree prunings. As I am working my way ever so slowly through the huge task of pruning the olive orchard, I am now transporting the cuttings. The sheep and cows mob the cuttings when they see them, and reduce the volume by more than half.

Its almost becoming a system. I prune the trees, feed the cuttings to the livestock. A day later I turn them all over and they clean the remnant leaves off. Then I have been shredding the leftovers, and then carting the mulched wood to the fruit orchard to mulch the trees in preparation for summer.

Its a lot of work. We don't have an industrial mulcher, so hand-feeding the cuttings from 900 trees through a domestic mulcher might prove to be too much. I asked at the local equipment hire about hiring a commercial mulcher, but they don't carry them. I asked what did everyone else do with their cuttings....."We just burn them."

At the moment buying a commercial mulcher's off the shopping list. The cost is $2k-$3k and we have been getting through our funds a bit too quickly.

Having a gigantic shed is nice, but it had no power or lights. It does now, but the cost was a bit eye-watering.

And this week we are spending a fortune getting some sadly neglected plumbing sorted out. The work needs to be done now, before it gets warm. The couple of warm days we've had have given us a whiff of what is to come. The plumbers are out there now with a mechanical digger making an expensive mess.

The electrical work was a big improvement, and I'm happy with the spend. The plumbing is repairs, unexpected costs, and it will be good when its done, but there'll be nothing to show for it.
Except the absence of a smell. Hard to put a value on that.