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

Here's why my hens give eggs with such yellow yokes.......

They LOVE eating all my old pumpkins

One Man's Trash.....

is treasured by the hens.

Working on the Wood Pile

Bryce, Mollie Reed's fiance, can do by hand what the older guys need a machine for!

A real piece of work

The wood splitting crew L to R  Charlie, Don, Bryce and Pat

It's going to take all this wood and more to make our syrup

It's a Start!

The new girls are laying eggs! There aren't many, and they aren't big.....but it's a start.

Honey for the Hive

All the honey from summer has been harvested and we were gifted with loads of beautiful goldenrod honey.

All the honey made now is from the white asters....the last of the wildflowers to bloom, and it will be left for the bees to winter over.

Happy In Their New Home

The girls love their new place, and are especially fond of going up and down the ladder

They've hung out their address by the front door.

Movin on Up

Pretty soon the girls will be moving to their new home in the barn.  We're just waiting for the rest of the interior work to be finished, so the saws and hammers don't scare the bejesus out of them when the guys are working.

The inside will have lots more room and lots more roosts than their current digs

And there's a door that opens automatically in the morning to let them out, and closes them in at night when they are all roosted up.

out of them when the guys are working. 

The Girls are Getting Bigger

....and more curious

.......and a little  bossy about what time they want dinner