Blueberries and bee update

The blueberries have come on!

Yay! Now I just have to keep the birds from eating them.

About those beez from yesterday... they flew away. Good thing my husband didn't drop what he was doing and rush home. The beez were gone less than an hour after I took the picture. When he got home, tho, he looked all around for them. Nothing. We think it's kind of a weird time for hives to split but hey - if we can snag some free beez then that's OK with us.

Happy Thursday everyone!  How are your beez and berries?

I didn't think anything interesting would happen today...

..until I almost walked into this SWARM OF BEEZ!

Holy cow! Look at them!

They are in one of the smaller fruit trees in the garden - and wouldn't you know it... My hubs is working today. Drat. I'm going to go and set a nuc box up by them and hope he gets home before they fly away.

Look at that!

And no, I'm not going to capture them. I am not the beekeeper in this family. Mostly my job is to stand on the porch with a can of Raid and yell to my husband, "NO! DO NOT RUN THIS WAY!"

I hope they hang around for a while so he can get them.

Happy Wednesday everyone! Do you expect anything interesting to happen today? How about some free beez?

All our beez died....

So, all our beez died. They didn't make it thru this long and difficult winter. We think that they did OK up until the last polar vortex got us. It had been warm one day then bitterly cold the next - we think that is what did them in. It's very sad.

Back when we had beez and were happy.

We talked to a lady in town who said she knew some folks who moved their hives into their basement on the coldest nites. To tell you the truth I would have never thought of that. I can't imagine that would go well for us. I'm picturing over-interested cats covered in honey, wax, and angry beez.

We did what we could which was to take up most of the honey. We left some of it out there, tho,  in the off chance a swarm is out and about and wants to move right on into our a nice and roomy hive.

Not a bad supper - Honey Soy chicken.

The good news is that the honey is terrific. Last nite we made Honey Soy chicken and it was really good. I can't wait to drizzle some of the honey over goat cheese once the goats ramp up to full production next month.

In the meantime the crazy weather is making us all insane. At this writing (a couple hours before sunrise on Monday) its 73*...but it will snow within 24 hours. It's all a little ridiculous. I'm glad I didn't put any plants out yet and I hope my greenhouse will keep my seedlings from freezing tomorrow morning.

Happy Monday everyone - did your beez make it?

First Buzz

I was outside yesterday getting some happy snaps of our fruit tree blossoms when I saw..... the first buzz!

 How great is this!

I think this is one of our girls....

And who doesn't love a little fuzzy buzzy bee butt?

 

That's our hard workin' beez getting it done!

We are going to have a bang up year for fruit - thanks beez!

Happy First Buzz everyone!

Blooming Buzz and that new thingy on the right

Finally we have our sunny fall! Yesterday the weather broke and we are out of any danger of frost, have clear skies...and sun sun sun!

What the heck is it?

Right now this white fluffy stuff is blooming like mad. The beez cant get enough of it so I'm not even cutting it down or ripping it out. This bloomed after the ragweed started declining. Any body know what it is?

In housekeeping news - see that new gadget on the right under "About Me"? Its a new feature for me. Some folks can't access blogger at work and so here is a way to keep in touch. Get each day's post on your email.  Its easy peasy to do - just enter your email and then verify the subscription by clicking on the link. This is a new feature for me so if anybody wants to give it a test - let me know how it works!

Hope everyone is outside enjoying the sunshine! I'm working on ripping out the rest of the garden and enjoying every sunny minute of it.

Happy Thursday everyone!

A Tale of Two Honeys...and more

Hey! Who turned off the summer!? This morning it was 39* glorious, sunny degrees.... now THAT'S a cool down. I'm enjoying it today..... but any minute now I'll be complaining about the cold and saying "Remember when it was summer and everyone was happy?"

Check it out......

A bottle of this year's and last year's honey. See the difference? This year's honey is darker - its on the left. We aren't sure what the beez were eating to make it darker.. but I sure tasted more "clover" than anything.  As you can see, whats blooming really affects the taste and color of honey.

In other news.......My friend "S" shared this with some of us yesterday. Its a great little short film and a wonderful reminder that a little bit of kindness goes a long way. Don't be afraid to share a little love if you have the chance, friends, sometimes the smallest gesture means the world to the person receiving it.

Happy Friday everyone!

This year's honey

Oh honey! Yep we got our honey harvested this year. Its spectacular!

We think its darker and richer than last year. Its a little hard to tell here - we're getting the weather from TS Lee and we are rainy and drizzly - and so the light isn't the best for a happy snap. But the honey is delicious and we are thrilled.

Unfortunately we didn't get as much as we hoped, only about 20 lbs. But at least all the hives survived and, aside from the swarm that just flew away, we didn't have any losses. We hoped we'd have some to sell but looks like we'll be keeping it all for ourselves. We are also thinking we might have to feed the beez this fall because of the small harvest. Is anyone else doing this?

In other news, we said goodbye to Sunny and took her back to her home herd for the winter. We were so glad to have her this summer and have a fridge full of cheese to prove it. Her herdmaster was thrilled to get her back and was very pleased with her condition. We were glad we met his approval. She'll be bred soon and hopefully will produce another Grand Champ, like she did last year. So now we are one goat short but I have to say I am a little glad to see the milking season winding down.

We started milking really early this year so it seems like we've been at it forever. But don't get me wrong, we love the "free" milk and wow we use every drop. However, I'm starting to look forward to the shorter, less work, fall-evening chores. Right now I'm only milking Nibbles in the morning as her milk production is starting to taper off. I get at least a pint if not more from her daily. I get about a gallon for Debbie as long as I keep Dahlia separated down in the new yard. But, like today with the rain, we'll keep the goaties all together in the main goat/henyard then I really don't have to milk Debbie tonight.

Our tentative plan is to keep milking Nibs and Deb until late October or November and then breed them. This way we'll have milk until November at least - and then start again in April. The ladies are already starting to be in heat and are just nuts so we might not be able to wait that long. Gosh can you believe its fall already?

Happy Tuesday everyone! Hope you had a great holiday weekend - oh yes, we had ribs and they were spectacular.

And then they just flew away.....

Ingrates.

The beez from the green hive swarmed (split) yesterday. We were so excited to get 'free beez' and had a whole new hive all ready for the "new" beez.....

The swarm formed a ball like cluster - its that sock-like thing hanging off that little branch waaaaaaay up there.

...and then... and then.... they all just flew away. Not into their new home - our carefully prepared hive -they just flew away. Sheesh! And no, we couldn't get them because they were about 40 feet up into a tree. We ran thru all the options to try and capture the swarm. But we didn't have a hot air balloon and we couldn't find a trebuchet on such short notice. Bye beez.

Basil, lavender, and rosemary - started from seeds.

In other news... I did a lot of planting and seed starting this weekend. We finally had some dry, warm, sunny days - it was just like summer. I ended up buying some seedlings from a local nursery because everything is getting such a late start. It was barely dry enough to do some tilling but I just couldn't wait any longer.

* Red sweet peppers long fence line in 2nd hillside garden, one Red Oxhart tomato in corner.
* 8 Mountain Gold maters in the next row along walkway, with one more Red Oxhart at the end.
* One Thai pepper, then one Red Oxhart, then 3 Mountain Golds in last year's bean bed. They are next too the row of my-seed-started Romas in front of the Grimes Gold - which has a couple apples on it!
* One Mountain Gold and One Oxhart in the blueberry and herb garden. I know - a weird combination but it just worked out that way.
* Finally, the last couple Mountain Golds and the rest of the Red Oxharts along the fence line near the mailbox tool holder. I'm testing the Mountain Golds in several soil conditions - the hillside was improved with a ton of super-duper-cow-poop...and is still dark and rich. The bean bed was improved with beans and buckwheat last year, and the fence line has the extra rich compost from a friend earlier this spring. I'll be watching to see which grouping/soil condition does the best.
* I planted a package of "half price sale" asparagus roots next to the existing plants. Then I planted a row of the my-seed-started plants. I put up a picket fence panel to keep the dogs out... then realized that I could use it to support some peas on one side and then a row of gladiolas on the other.
* Tilling went pretty well. I mowed down the winter rye in the second bean bed, a new potato place, and then re-tilled a couple other spots.

The only thing I didn't get to was to till in some clover seeds near the fruit tree in the corner. I got done with the planting and then we got the chores finished and now here comes the storm. Wow! The wind is pretty strong - maybe we'll see if the pigz are gonna fly! Yikes!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Moving Beez and Cutting Cheese

At this writing I'm waiting for my curds to settle... I just cut the cheese...curds. And no I'll never get tired of that stupid joke.

Baby grapes

But seriously folks, here's the quick Farm Notes update with some important dates to remember.

 Baby pear

We moved the Upper Beez down by the Lower Beez. And when I say "we" I mean The Big Man did it while I cowered in the house with a can of Raid. The Upper Beez were getting a little aggressive - when both Kai and I were dive bombed and stung on the same day we figured they needed more space.

Bee balm! Its really coming back in a big way.

According to The Big Man you can move hives, you just don't want the beez to get lost or confused and not be able to find their new location. So they are boxed in for a couple days and will remain in the hive. When we let them out we'll take precautions so they don't get turned around and get lost.

 Lovely bleeding hearts.

The flood continues with record breaking rains for April - and May doesn't look much better. To make it worse, we may get a frost tonite. Here's hoping the tender blooms make it!

Potatoes came up in my strawberry patch!

Another casualty of the rains were some of my seed trays. Yesterday I checked them and they were absolutely swamped - even the ones under a row cover "tent." So its not looking good. At this point I need to accept that nothing is going to get planted any time soon.

We'll need to pivot strategies for the most effective use of time and resources to reach our over arching goals of......oh geez, look how fast I slipped into 'corporate speak' - sorry!  Anyway. My point is, that we'll be focusing on infrastructure projects - like fencing and making repairs/improvements to the outbuildings while we wait for the ground to dry out. I'm also considering converting the front porch into a planting studio. It doesn't get enough sunlight to be a green house but if I can keep the chickens out it can be a good workspace.

Beautiful little bloom

And I started another gouda last nite, in fact I need to get it out of the press. I'm starting another one right now but I'm still at the "stir the curds and then let them rest" phase.

Happy Wednesday everyone! And aren't you glad Kendra finally got voted off Dancing with the Stars? Whew.. I can finally watch now.

Whats bloomin' now!

What a bloomin' day!

 Lilacs - can't you just smell them? Wonderful!

For new folks and the curious, I use this blog as my record keeping and one of the things we track is when stuff blooms for our beez. So I took a stroll around today and this is what I saw...

 Blueberries - I can't wait to make a pie for my favorite blueberry kid!

Grapes, one day there will be wine.. oh yes...

Dogwoods....

Dog tails... in the high grass. Actually that's the winter rye I planted. If we ever get some dry days I'll mow it down and till it under. Then 2 to 3 weeks later it will be ready for planting in beans! I managed to get in a few packets of sunflowers but with as wet as it is....its kind of a chance. However I spied some volunteer sunflowers so I figure that nature knows what she is doing.

More apple blossoms.. these are from a Grimes Golden tree. Do you know it? Spectacular apples for cooking. They are yellow and can have a bit of a blush. We just love them.

...and some spices. I can't wait until the lavender blooms. This little cluster of spices is planted near one of the bee hives. We'll be all a-buzz later and I hope it will be a honey of a summer! Or a summer of honey!

Happy Tuesday everyone!

Tree-lets and Apple Blooms

Happy Easter Candy Sale Day! Did everyone rush right out and scoop up the Easter candy that's half off? I sure did! If that doesn't make it a happy Monday I 'll tell you what does....

Apple blooms! This is one of the little trees in the front garden. I'll have to check later this afternoon but I'm pretty sure we have some dogwoods popping as well as the first of the lilacs.

Does everyone know that you can contact your county's Soil and Water Conservation folks for help with in managing your treed land, water drainage questions, and more? In our county they have a tree program - regular people can buy trees in bulk at a good price. This year I ordered 100 whites pines and a "nut tree" package.  I think it was about $60 for the whole thing.

We were so excited to run right down and get our trees! We wondered if we should bring the big truck with all those trees just waiting for us! So we nearly died laughing when they handed us all our trees... in a grocery sack.

What 25 trees looks like.

After we recovered from laughing ourselves sick we got to the business of planting them. Of course,  if you are over run with deer, goats, and dogs who ruin everything you'll need to put your "tree-lets" in a safe place. We decided to pot the nut trees up until they were weaned.. I mean, until they get a little bigger.  As for the bundles of White Pines, I "heeled in" three of them and in the next couple days I'll start digging them in along the property line.

Little nut trees potted up and waiting to be planted

The thing about trees is, don't put off getting them. Even if you don't know the best place to put them, or aren't sure if you'll need them - by the time you've figured it out its been five years and you could be enjoying some fresh fruit or the shade of a fine little tree. Remember my peach pit trees? They are huge now. So we'll get these little tree-lets started and we are one step forward.

Other places to find trees on sale are places like the local Big Lots or Dollar stores, end of season sales (we got some hot bargains last year) at your local nursery, and you'll be surprised what you can find if you check the clearance section at Lowes. The bargains you find might need some lovin'.... but we've overwintered trees here in pots without any problems.

So whatcha waiting for? Go and get some tree-lets and give them a good home!

Happy Monday everyone!

Cheese notes, Bloom buzz, and Farm Friends!

Happy Friday everyone! Tons to take note of so lets launch right into it. New friends, this blog is also my record keeping so this is what's going on down on the farm. The biggest news... the asparagus is up.

That's right. Asparagus. Its here. You know who you are.... I got it. You don't. I'm having it for breakfast.

Cheese Notes:
Tuesday the 12th was an epic cheese making day! Unfortunately I sustained a CRI (Cheese Related Injury) so I'm delayed in getting this in the Cheese Notes. And, apologies, but due to the CRI I can't type enough to go into detail. I'll have another entry just about the events of that day because of its cheese-r-ificness. With pix!
* Started a Roquefort! I got to play with mold - the bacteria. It was amazing. Status: Needs to dry thru Friday then I remove them from the molds - the plastic containers. I'm not sure what happens next but I'm very excited about it.
* Started a Parmesan. It was weird and despite the ridiculous amount of milk - not a huge yield. Status: its brining away happily. Friday I remove it from the brine and start the drying process.
* Continued the fresh neufchatel. One of my fav cheeses for sure and inspired by my far-away-pal, Ken in France. Its sitting happily in a non-heart-shaped mold in the fridge and I'm waiting for it to grow a fuzzy rind. Isn't that cool? I can't wait. Rot, cheese rot! Grow that mold! Whooot!
* It was a feta fete! Wow what a great result! Started a feta and it totally worked. Despite my crass "mold" (coffee can with nail holes. I'm not kidding.) it turned out great. Currently brining on the counter for 3 days then it can age for a good long time in the fridge or be the star of my home made pizza. 
* Worked to right my goudas. They dried beautifully. And prompty started a mold - the gross kind. So I wiped them down with vinegar and cut off the gross part. I'm currently vexed at the 'drying mat' which is the culprit. It shall feel my wrath. And bleach. Mostly bleach. I've moved the gouda and they have to dry again before I can wax them.
* Ate a bunch of fresh chevre which I currently have laying around by the pound. I'm so happy about that!  And yes for breakfast I'm having a fresh egg scramble with asparagus and chevre. A friend who shall remain nameless will be crying over his lack of asparagus. Sorry pal, you cant win them all.

"Thrown away" peach pits become a lovely little tree

The Bloom Buzz
As part of my efforts to keep track of what is bloomin' for the beez I'll been noting what is blooming and when. Today a bunch of stuff popped open!
* First dandelion sighting
* Little apple trees along front garden
* Peach trees in hillside garden - accidentally started by throwing away peach pits!
* Big pear tree in upper garden
* Wild violets (or are they violas?)
* I think this is catmint (Walkers Low if this is what it is...)

 Is this catmint? I think it is... I love the soft little flowers. Hey cats! Get away from that!

And don't forget its Farm Friends Friday! Click along for this fun blog hop - Thanks Verde Farms!  But here is a great Farm Friend Note: We met a great family today and made some new friends. I randomly answered a "compost for sale" ad and was pleased as punch to find out a fine young man was behind this little enterprise. We met he and his dad at their lovely farm and were very glad to make their acquaintance. And it was great to meet more folks like us. They have beez, and clucks, horses, and.... cows. Of course I went gaga for their cows. And we scored a great load of poop expertly scooped. Thanks to our new friends and yay for Farm Friends Friday!

Have a great day!

Beez - they made it!

From yesterday, before all the action with Nibbles and her babies.... the beez made it thru the winter!

The front hive - looks like everyone is as busy as...well.. beez!

Happy Thursday everyone!

Honey Oatmeal Cookies - thanks beez!

Aside from pie and bacon, one of my favorite things is a plate of cookies. But seein' as there is going to be a huge sugar shortage I figured I should learn to bake with all this luscious honey our beez provided last summer. Cookies seemed like a good place to start.

I found this recipe for "Healthy Oatmeal Cookies" and gave it a whirl. They were delicious and using honey worked!

As indicated by the original author, the cookies were not a sweet as "normal cookies" but we really liked being able to taste the oaty goodness.  And I don't mind having less "sweet."

I modified the recipe quite a bit tho. I tossed the idea of spices and raisins because, lets face it... the dough part of any cookie is really just a vehicle for chocolate and/or butterscotch chips. But I imagine this would be a great base recipe for cranberries, apple, dates, or whatever. I like the idea of using applesauce (instead of the oil) and this would make a good apple-y cookie.

My ingredient list ended up being:

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose
3 cups of old fashioned oats - NOT quick oats
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp sea salt  (I liked the extra salt but my hubby did not)
a lot of chocolate chips
a lot of butterscotch chips

1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup butter (but next time I might use lard and butter.)
1 Tablespoon Molasses
1 egg
1 tsp Vanilla

And I skipped chilling the dough. The additional oats made the dough the perfect consistency to scoop onto parchment paper and bake at 325* for about 8 minutes (in my oven). Then remove to a cooling rack.

I learned a couple things about cooking with honey. First, is that there is a scientific method to replace sugar with honey in any recipe. I just chucked that I did what looked right. Next, that the oven needs to be at a lower cooking temperature.

I'm going to take another run at making these again this next week. But this time I'll back off on the salt to 1/2 teaspoon and I may add 1/4 cup brown sugar to see if it improves the caramelization.  And I'll try using some lard.

Now you are ready for the impending sugar crisis. Does everyone know that a lot of the sugar in the grocery store if from sugar beets and not sugar cane? If that doesn't ring your bell you can always check the label for sugar from cane - not beets. And be sure to support local honey. Apparently there has been some "honey-like-product" that comes into this country under dubious circumstances. A local producer is your best bet for real honey. Or just get your own beez and have fun like we do!

Now we just have to worry about the impending chocolate shortage.  I have no idea how to solve that problem.

Last step: Bottling honey

Yesterday we did the last step of our honey processing - we got it all bottled up. Well, some of it. This week we'll have to go and get more jars.

This step really was the easiest. We just set up the bottling bucket, got the jars ready, and filled them.

But based on our low confidence of doing this without covering everything in honey, we decided to do this over the counter and not risk the floor.  We just set the bottling bucket up on a stool (covered of course), positioned the jars with a funnel and opened the valve and...

filled the jars.

We did not have enough jars to finish.  These pint jars turned out to be about a pound and a quarter of honey. Shh.. don't tell our family but this is what they are getting for Christmas!

We'll get smaller jars this week and shoot for one pound units. This will allow us to provide a uniform product - we are hoping one of the old timers we know (with a farm stand) will sell them for us.

The honey is just beautiful - clear and golden.

Thanks, beez!

And thanks for all the interest. We'll do a post on getting set up with beez for all the folks thinking about it. Just like anything - mostly its just work ...and a little bit of hoping that things turn out. We probably won't cover all our set up costs this year. But knowing that we have strong and productive hives gives us a profound sense of satisfaction. We laughed that between the beez and the goats we are truly in The Good Land of Milk and Honey!

Happy Monday!

Oh... Honey!!

This one is for Mimi cuz she's a honey...and really knows how to bake with it. So I thought I'd show her how honey is harvested.

 Here is where all the magic happens.. the secret world of beez.

It all starts with the beez. The beez are out there hard at work - they live in hives that we built or bought. Aside from getting them into the hive and some general maintenance there's not much to do but let them buzz around.  While there is a ton of "futzing" you can do - we don't. This holds to our general rules of "less is more" and "natural is best" so we don't over manage the beez.

Beez hard at work in the hive. 

If you are lucky, and have productive beez, you can get up to three harvests a year in our area. Our hives are new so we had our first harvest this week...and are hoping to harvest after the first frost which will be about mid-October. The beez need something to eat this time of year so we are letting the weeds go wild - especially the ragweed which we are both allergic to and blooms like the dickens this time of year. The honey made with this pollen will help our immune systems next year (hopefully) so we won't be so allergic to it. And frankly, I wasn't looking forward to yanking up all them weeds so it works out very nicely.

Back to the harvest. I stood in the safety of the house while The Big Man suited up and went and got the "supers" which are the parts of the hives that hold the honey. And no, I ain't helping him. Everyone has their limits and this is mine. I stood in the house clutching the dog and my can of Raid just in case any of them beez came for me.

The supers hold the frames which contain the wax structures that house the honey. We have both wood and plastic frames.

These are the wood frames....

And the plastic frames. 

For the other "beeks" (the buzz for "beekeepers") out there, we found that the beez (and us!) preferred the wood frames with wire supports. The plastic ones were hard for us to work with and the beez built the combs between them and in weird structures. We'll get more wood and wire frames for next year.

The first step is to cut the tops of the wax structures off to release the honey.

 See the sealed combs below the knife?

We set up a plastic tub with a wire rack to hold the wax that we cut off. This allowed us to collect any honey that dripped out of the wax caps.

We didn't do a great job with cutting the caps off with the knife. So we used a fork to rake the combs and this worked really well. 

Then the frames went into the extractor - which is really just a tall tub with a salad-spinner-like-thing that flings the honey out of the combs and lets it collect at the bottom of the tub.  We loaded up the frames and...

 Wood frames in the spinner

...just started crankin'...

Folks with lots of hives have power extractors... we just cranked it by hand.

Once we had enough honey in the bottom of the tall tub, we set up the double strainer which removed all of the wax and debris from the honey. We filtered it into a big bucket with a valve on the bottom so it could be easily poured into containers.

See the honey in the bottom of the tub? The valve locks and unlocks easily.

It was so exciting to see all that lovely liquid gold come rushing out!

This was definitely the best part!

And the leftover wax was pretty interesting also...

We collected all the wax - the bits and the bigger chunks of comb to use later.

Altogether we harvested almost 5 gallons of honey from just one hive out of the two "supers" by using the extractor. Then we let the extra wax drain and got even more honey. We'll let the honey set for a couple days to allow all the air bubbles to release and then we'll put it into smaller containers. It's gonna be mighty tasty on home made biscuits!

While we were thrilled with our progress, of course, it turned out to be a big sticky mess. We learned a few things:

1. Doing this outside with a bunch of angry beez probably wasn't the best idea. I finally had to relent and let the stickiness into the kitchen after them beez came lookin' to get their honey back.
2. Working inside with a bunch of over-interested cats wasn't that much better of an idea.
3. Putting the cats up and THEN working inside was the right answer. Several of the cats kinda got stuck together...but then again, so did we! Yikes!

Pretty much everything got sticky...and just when we finished and went to bed promising ourselves we'd clean up the mess the next day... the electric went out for most of that day!

But the house smells heavenly (still) and now that I have the electric back on (finally!) I'm gonna see what I can make with all this honey. My pal, DM, suggested these lovely honey cupcakes...and someone else suggested goat's milk 'n peach 'n honey ice cream... I'm wonderin' if Mimi has something special she can suggest?

Happy honey everyone! Remember that local honey is good for lots of reasons!