As of this morning we are officially beekeepers! This was one of our goals from last year that never came to pass, so we set it as a goal for this year and ordered two packages of Italian honeybees in February. Two because everything that I’ve read indicates that having two hives gives you a good comparison. We chose Italians since friends had recommended them as the gentlest honeybees. Gentle is good. The packages arrived via postal service early this…
We were recently watching something on television when the word ‘precision’ hit me. It really resonated in the moment that we were watching, because for a long time now we’ve been starting to feel the growing pains of, well, growing. We’ve got things better figured out now, and we’re starting to realize that the way we set things up on our little homestead aren’t quite right. They’re not conducive to day-to-day tasks, to proper use of space, or to just…
This is the time last year we were buying both milk and eggs from the store. This year, Pepper hasn’t dried off yet and has been consistently providing us with a half gallon of milk a day. So we’ve largely avoided having to buy milk this year, and with Peony due to kid any day now having just delivered this evening (!) we will probably not have to buy milk for the foreseeable future. Eggs have been a different story….
Our animals did a good job of disillusioning us of the thought that we were falling into a good rhythm around here. We’d past the point of getting the hang of it, now we were starting to think we might even be (dare I say it) experienced! Yeah, maybe not. Animals can be humbling like that. Pepper is on a milk stand strike. What is a milk stand strike? Why, it’s where a goat refuses to get up on the…
Okay! We started recently with how to tap maple trees and collect sap; now we’re going over burning off. Sap is almost entirely water, so we use the burning off process to evaporate the water and leave behind the sugar syrup. This is something you want to do outside, as it takes something like 30-40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. If you’re doing the math with me that’s a lot of water being released into the…