seasons shifting

things are getting very autumnal around here. the nights are cooler and cloudy and the skies are grey. the greenhouse is full of onions and here and there are trees full of orange leaves. fall raspberries are getting ripe and winter crops are being seeded.

but there's still touches of warm weather and summer, like this awesome cherry bomb pepper

and its tasty companions

which emi and I turned into an excellent dinner.

in other news, yesterday the dairy team plus jaclyn took a field trip to surprise lake camp and eden village camp to pick up our goats that spent the summer at camp, gizmo being one of them. I'm so excited that she's home. with seven more kids and two adults, the barnyard's definitely fuller and there's been some headbutting as pecking orders are re-established.

here's emi and vivian on the ride home

we stopped to get fries.

so now everyone's home again, including this kid we call evilface, because, well

I mean, c'mon, look at that mug. and down in the corner is gizmo. gosh I love that goat.

honey!

ok. I fully admit that I am terrible at this blogging thing. let's just move on, shall we?

I went home to california for a few weeks, which is partially why I haven't been updating, and upon my return to the farm felt a little touch of malaise, but luckily cool things have been happening to remind me why I live here, like: honey!

we've got a colony that overwintered on beebe and yesterday jaimie decided that it was time to extract. I wasn't there for the actual extraction, so I have few details on that, but many details on the uncapping and spinning (and clandestine finger licking).

to start at the beginning, here are the bees in their happy bee life on beebe hill:

they forage all around, but over this spring and summer they've especially been buzzing in the buckwheat that was planted as a cover crop around the raspberries. since honey is named after the pollen the bees collect while they make the honey, that would make this (mostly) buckwheat honey.

so jaimie, along with the able assistance of some adamanikkim, opened up the hives and removed the supers which the bees had been stockpiling honey on.

the supers are wooden frames with a plastic insert to help the bees know where to start making the honey. the bees make the hexagonal cells, fill them with honey, and then cap them with beeswax. our job yesterday was to uncap the comb and extract the honey, which we did with the help of a heated knife and a honey spinner.

the layer of beeswax is very thin, so the goal is to tread lightly and try not to scrape any of the honey off with the wax.

the heated knife is slightly controversial, since the ideal is raw honey and the knife does slightly heat the honey, but it sure makes it a lot easier to uncap the comb.

lots of combs to uncap. everyone got a turn.

then the spinning, which yonah is a total pro at.

the inside of the extractor has a metal mesh cage with space for two supers to stand upright facing each other. the centrifugal force sends the honey flying out towards the walls, where it eventually drips down to the bottom to form a delicious pool.

here's nachshon and bonnie showing off a uncapped super with the honey spun out of it. you can see the comb shapes and the plastic interior.

then after all the uncapping, spinning, and general stickiness, the honey was free flowing.

we got almost two gallons, not bad for one hive and a late harvest - the first one since 2006.

yum.