We recently harvested our first season’s honey, with the help of our good friends Neris, Wendy, and girls. It was a fine excuse to get together and enjoy a lovely afternoon!
The first step in harvesting honey is to prepare yourself some nice, thick smoke (as seen coming from the smoker in the picture below.) As you can imagine, removing frames of honeycomb from the hive tends to upset the little worker bees within, and if you’re not carefull you just might get yourself stung! Smoke helps to disorient the bees, thus making it easier to make off with their summer’s work before they have enough time to get mad.
Mmmmmm Mmmmmm, would you look at that!
Some of the bees will have to be physically brushed away from the honeycomb, now those are some loyal girls I tell ya!
Some people use an extracting machine which spins the frames within a big drum until the honey is extracted and ready to pour into jars. We, on the other hand, ended up extracting our honey the old fashioned way – scrapping it out with a spoon, wax and all.
We scrapped the honey into a fine mesh bag, which we then hung from the side of a big pot to drain for a couple of days.
Eventually the honey drains into the pan and we’re left with a bag of wax and several jars of liquid gold. Mmmmmm Mmmmmm good.
The color of the honey is determined by what is in bloom at the time of production. The honey above is most likely a product of the Japanese Knotweed which has been in bloom most recently. There was also a variety of light colored honey in the hive from earlier in the season, most likely made from the blackberry blossoms and clover of early summer.
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Meet the newest addition to our growing little farm, she was born just hours ago!
Get a load of these peeps my Mr. brought home a couple of weeks ago. He’s got plans… and a couple of them will soon enough be waking us up at the crack of dawn… cockadooduldoooo!
If you build yourself a home out in the sticks and opt not to bury the 1000 feet of cable to ensure yourself any form of modern televised entertainment, don’t be surprised when you start referring to activities such as: competing in huckleberry wars (I never win cause I’d rather eat them than throw them), cheering on the honeybees as they crash-land into their hive because their legs are too heavily laden with pollen, or tweezing your eyebrows into different, random expressions as popular forms of entertainment.
We’ve been craving performances of the theatrical nature lately, so Wendy (my teaching/cooking partner-in-crime) and I printed off some scripts from our study in History, scheduled in a few practice rehearsals, threw in a box of dress-up clothes, and told the kids to have at it. Wow, did they blow our socks off!
Honestly, I’m thinking we’ll survive alright without the cable . Why, can’t you just see it now… Homeschool Idol or how ’bout Homeschool’s Kitchen… maybe Which Denim Jumper Not To Wear…yah, I’m thinking I’ll be just fine out here in the sticks… maybe a little rough around the edges, but I think I’ll make it through.
We begin our Reader’s Theatre with a beautiful, periodic musical interlude ~ ”When Johnny Comes Marching Home”
And the curtains open:
Four score and seven years ago…
Beautiful performance! And now for a delicious homecooked meal, era appropriate, of course! Not only can they act, but they’ve got some mean cooking skills as well!
Can you name that era/war?
His labor is a Chant~
His idleness~ a Tune~
Oh, for a Bee’s experience
Of Clovers, and of Noon!
~Emily Dickinson
The honeybees have finally arrived, yay! They arrived in this box last weekend, and they were feelin’ a bit couped up to say the least. You could hear their buzzing from several yards away!
Transporting these babies from this cardboard chariot to their new home, sweet home required a steady hand. I knew that wouldn’t be mine, so I signed up to take the pictures instead, shutter release buttons don’t sting do they?
Now we watch and wait for these girls to do what they do, my mouth waters with anticipation!
Well, it’s official… I’m a bonefied country girl. I’ve got a horse and some country, what more could you need, right?
Now I just need to get me some riding know-how… ’til then, I reckon I’ll just pretend! (do they have some sort of country DMV where I can get myself a license to operate this fella!)
Well, we brought home a companion for Stanley yesterday. His name is Jake. Another quarter-horse gelding, twice the age of Stanley, and twice the horse. He’s friendly, rides quite nicely, and has enough patience and experience/training to be the example that Stanley needs.
Stanley took to Jake right from the start.
I believe that I’ve taken to Jake as well… I feel that by the end of his acclamation period, I’ll be jumping at the bit to saddle him up! This country girl is ready to have herself a horse that she can ride!
So what do a bunch of country-bumpkins do on a quiet evening, after all the chores have been finished???
Why… we swing from trees… what else?
