Capped Honey

The image is a perfect frame of capped honey. As we noted in our newsletter we pulled the honey from the hives on 8-14. My nephew and I removed the honey from the frames and filtered the honey on 8-18 and Jean and I bottled some of the honey on 8-19 for opening day on 8-21. We are very pleased with the quality of the honey this season. As you can see our bee proof screened porch seconds as a honey house.

Garlic harvest begins

We have begun to pull this season's garlic crop. We are about half way complete and expect to finish this weekend. Half the crop is in the barn's loft on our wire curing racks. This time of the year the barn has a wonderful garlic aroma. The image is of the first step in the curing process. In a couple of weeks we will clean the garlic with brushes that will remove layers of garlic wrapping (paper). We will also trim the roots of the garlic. We have been successful in keeping garlic until February and March by following these curing steps. It looks like a really nice corp of China Rose, German Porcelain, Music and Bogatyr garlic.

Bee Swarm

One of our bee hives swarmed last week. Bees swarm for many reasons, but most often because they want more room. The bees raise one or more new queens and take lots of honey and go looking for a new home. They stop outside of their current home while some of the bees go look for a suitable home. We were able to catch the bees before they found a new home and put them in one of our extra hives. They are very calm when they swarm staying clustered around the queen. Jean was taking the pictures, and they are a little blurry....but I was in a bee suit and Jean was in short sleeves.

Soay lamb visit

Our first Soay lambs of the season, both ewes, being visited by our nephews Kevin and Matt. This particular adult ewe, Rachael, is very flighty and usually keeps about 15 feet away from any person. On this day Matt and Kevin were able to pet her and hold the lambs while she looked on.