Christmas Shopping

All set up and ready to sell to the folks coming to The Richmond Holiday Market on Saturday, December 3rd.  It was such a busy day, that this is the only photo I was able to take.  After the doors opened, people were coming by, tasting syrup, inquiring about the honey comb, buying presents, and just enjoying the holiday market.  Outside were roaming carolers, draft horse drawn wagon rides, and lots of food and music and plenty of snow flakes.  It was a fun and lucrative day and it felt great to know some syrup and honey were going to make their way into Christmas stockings and under trees.  Merry Christmas!

ALL TUCKED IN

The honey they could spare has been extracted, the rest left to feed the dormant foragers through their long winter indoors.  Then the hives were wrapped  and insulated to help them keep as warm as possible.  See you in the spring, bees!

 

Maple Syrup Seasons Starts Now

....with having to build up your wood supply in fall
to fire that evaporator once the sap starts to flow next spring.

First you cut the dead trees out of the woods

Then you cut the tree into manageable sizes

After which you use your winch to drag it out so the tractor can take it to the sugar house for splitting

Before splitting you cut the tree into sizes that fit into the splitter

Finally, it gets split into chunks that will fit into the evaporator

He wasn't a whole lotta help

What the Hay!?

Don decided if he had to mow the fields anyway, he might as well make hay. He tracked down lots of used equipment, talked to local farmers on 'how-to' and then went to making hay.  His first hay sale was to a mother-of-the-bride, who wanted hay bales for hay rides at the wedding!  That sounds like a pretty fun start to the haying business.

This attachment spreads the cut  grasses out to dry

An 'all in one' attachment collects the grasses, packs it into a tight square, wraps it in baling twine, and spits it out.

Neat bales, all in a row

Getting Acquainted

Ivy, the Corgi pup and the new farm creature added to the menagerie, gets an up close introduction to the baby chicks that she's been hired to care for when she's old enough for the job.  

 

Less Wood, More Syrup

Letting Off Steam

There's nothing like bright sunshine and sweet smelling steam to warm up a late winter day.

When they heard 'waffles' even the chickens wanted into the sugar house.

Waffles are our preferred vehicle of syrup administration

Sap Time

The trees are tapped and we're ready for the sap

 

Better Than Drugs!

In case you need to justify your habit....

Sugaring Season Starts for Sherman Hollow

With this unusual winter weather, lots of sugar makers have already been making syrup.  But due to Florida trips and other interferences, we've put off our season until now.  This weekend Pat and Don cleaned up the vacuum house for sap collection, and converted the Chevy Truck for the sap tank that moves sap from the vacuum house to the sugar house.

Removing the cap to make room for the tank

Prepping the bed for the tail gate

Loading the sap tank onto the tractor

Getting it all lined up

And putting it in place

Checking to make sure it's clean and ready for sap.

We've got Wax!

All those wax caps, that held the honey tight in the honey comb, were melted off, solidifed, then saved in plastic bags.  Finally there was enough collected, that Don decided it was time to purify it so we might be able to make some candles, or lip balm, or maybe some salve.  
The process to clean up the wax was a multi-step process that involved a few trips to the kitchen supply store to get pots and sieves and cheesecloth and more.

The collected wax caps

 

 

 

Don started by melting down the wax caps, in a big kettle.  You can see the caps had lots of bee debris that needed to be cleaned out.

After taking out lots of dead bees and other solids, the wax was allowed to solidify into a large disk

The disk was broken up, put into a double boiled and melted down to get poured through some cheese cloth to take out the final debris.

Some nice clean wax, ready to turn into candles and more.

Are the Hives Alive?

Don checks for activity in the hives, then gets a second opinion from Pat.  The prognosis is good!

Banana Honey Tea Loaf

This recipe comes from the 1976 American Honey Queen http://www.abfnet.org/?12, Tammy Jo Inman .  That's got to be way better than being Miss America don't you think?  Anyway, you have to trust a banana bread recipe made with honey coming from such a credible source as a Honey Queen.  I tried it, and it was so good, that is rose to the top of my list of all other 20 recipes I have in my recipe box for banana bread, and even the recipe marked in The Joy of Cooking.  Here it is if you want to try it.

Banana Honey Tea Loaf

3 medium ripe bananas

1/2 cup light oil

1/3 cup honey

2 eggs well beaten

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup wheat germ

1 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

2/3 cup chopped walnuts

·      Mash the bananas in your mixing bowl

·      Add the honey, oil, vanilla, and eggs

·      In a separate bowl stir together the dry ingredients

·      Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir until just mixed

·      Pour into greased loaf pan (s) and bake @ 350F for 45 to 50 minutes depending on your pan size