Wild Honey

We continue to forage for food for us and the pigs. We have now stopped gathering grass for hay, as it is drying out, and have moved instead to river cane (which the pigs LOVE) and willow branches. We are also starting to collect some of the numerous wild plants that are edible for us, including a big bag of mint.

But, the score of the week has been delicious HONEY. A hive had made itself at home in a meter box type thing for the local water system. We were asked to remove them. Abe opened it up and removed all the brood comb and most of the honey, and placed it inside a bee box we had at the house. He then closed the lid of the manhole and set the box over the hole. He put dirt all around the two, so that the bees would have to go through our box to get out.

We went to check on them after a couple of days, and they seem quite happily moved into their new home. After a while, once they have had chance to clean up, we will move the box away from the manhole.

While Abe was in there though, he took out some of the honey comb for us. We have had such a bad year with water and flowers that we won't be robbing our bees. These guys however have plenty of flowers as they live down at the apple ranch (where we will now be moving all our bees). The honey is dark and wonderful. We removed it from the comb using the sun's heat, so it is still raw, and boy is it good.

for more photos click here.

Apple press

We've been processing a lot of apples, while they're in season, to make them last one way or another all year. Drying, freezing and juicing.

The apple juice is delicious, but won't last long. We've got three gallons in the freezer and the rest we made into cider. The downside however to juice is that it is a time consuming process when you don't have the right equipment, so Abe made us an apple press. The press is useful for all kinds of things, but apple juice was the motivation we needed to make it. It works a treat and allowed us to press the juice out of the ground apples very quickly.

Next piece of equipment we'll need is a grinder. For now, we used our meat grinder after cutting the apples into small pieces, but it was slow. We have plans for a machine that will grind a bushel of whole apples in five minutes, but we couldn't find the parts we needed in time to make it for this year. We aim to make it for next apple season.

For more photos, click here.

Johnson Grass

On one of our foraging expeditions we decided to get a load of Johnson Grass. Abe had been reading online about it, and it turns out that it is farmed as a hay in Europe, from where it originates. We had always assumed that this was an unwanted (and impossible to get rid of) weed, but if you process it correctly it's pretty good, sitting at 13% protein. The issue with it is that it contains a lot of prussic acid, which can be bad for animals in high dosages. However, if you leave it to dry and make hay out of it, all the prussic acid disappears. What's great about it is that there's a a lot of it, no one else wants it, and you can collect a truckload in no time flat. We will definitely be getting more of it to store for winter, alternating it with loads of orchard grass.

Gathering

We have spent several days over the last month gathering food for the animals. We collected a couple of truckloads of Mesquite, which is high in protein and both the pigs and the rabbits love it (we ferment it for the pigs). We will also be grinding some of it up into flour for our own use.

Plus we cut and dried a truckload of alfalfa. A friend of ours has a patch that we can cut in exchange for some rabbit meat. Abe uses the scythe to cut it, I pile it up and load it into the truck, Leo chases frogs, and Nico sleeps (that little one of ours is very lazy!). At home we lay it out in our old driveway to dry and then make little bales by compressing it in our ice chest and tying it up. We will be going and cutting another load this week. We hope to store enough over the summer to last us through winter and dry season.

We give the rabbits and pigs a bucketload of grass and weeds each day from the garden. Even though the pigs can get it for themselves, they still like us to give them some - I guess it makes them feel special.