december beehives

bee cozys wrap the hive http://www.miteaway.com/html/bee_cozy.php

pumpkins

luminas, and some field pumpkins and Atlantic Giants.....largest one is 35 lbs. We gave up the giant pumpkin wish for this year due to a lack of irrigation! Maybe next year! We learned a lot!

honeybee on angel

more views from Sunday, Sept. 29th....warm weather streak is over, and more seasonable temps are here!

pumpkins and melons

fall is here

bottling the honey

raw unprocessed UP honey

I am experimenting with some 4 and 8 oz bottles...with wire and milagros attached!

pumpkins and sunflowers

Cloudy, rainy day here. The bees are beginning treatments for their winter, and the pumpkins and sunflowers are still trucking.

bottled sunshine!

I guess it is lighter than we thought it would be. I will let it set a couple of days before I bottle to let the bubbles out. We think we got between 75 and 100 lbs of honey...we are still waiting for the capping wax to strain out. Bless the BEES!

honey she flows!

Mark and Janelle came up to help and learn from our process!

uncapping and extracting

we used a cold knife to cut the cappings and read that 10% of the harvest is in the capping wax...so we will let it drain out over night! Then, to filter the wax for encaustics!!!

extracting day!

assessing the harvest and getting ready to upcap! Early morning on the 7th of Sept.

bringing in the hives

Saturday, Sept. 6th...used Bee-Go to get the bees off the supers...then we decided to bring in 3 supers and leave one super of uncapped frames on each hive...

rainbow carrots

onions

"You make us cry without hurting us.I have praised everything that exists,but to me, onion, you are more beautiful than a bird of dazzling feathers, heavenly globe, platinum goblet,unmoving dance of the snowy anemone and the fragrance of the earth lives in your crystalline nature."--from "Ode to an Onion" by Pablo Neruda

colorful harvest

I guess there were purple beans! Here are the 2 theories: one is that the magical beans grew the night of the full moon (aug 16th) and the other theory is that I was too enamoured by the flowers and didn't see the beans!

honeybees

beehives

Italians have 2 honey boxes filled and are working on a third...Carniolans are working on a second....Aster and Goldenrod are in bloom now. We will take them off and extract the first week in September or so...

pesto

John making pesto from our basil

peas and beans

lots of peas--we are blanching, vacuum sealing, and freezing.


lovely purple pole bean flowers...but no beans yet!

small pumpkins

not sure, but I think these are the Luminas. We planted a variety of pumpkins

cucumbers and whatnot

cucumbers and me with my super rubber boots by a tomato plant.

tomatoes and peppers

86 tomato plants total...Stupice, early girls, some pear and cherry tomatoes...we could be making lots of salsa!

honeybees in pumpkin flowers

they just dive in there and come out covered with pollen. the bumblebees like them too!