Thursday, September 1, 2016
Wednesday, August 31, 2016
Arthur C. Clarke
Weed-eating
The vast majority of our year here is dry, and the land is generally brown. However, once the rains start in June/July, the whole vista undergoes an amazing change. Everything gets green and our property seems to explode with growth. And somehow it always takes us by surprise, year after year.
Each day, we cut weeds for the rabbits, poultry, and pigs, but that doesn't even make a dent. We try and keep on top of the weeding, but we always get behind. So this weekend, we started attacking the weeds with a vengeance. We cut a bunch with a scythe, and all around the paths and road with a weed-eater. It'll take a while to get through it all, but little by little we'll get there.
Some of the weeds are left in place to nourish the soil, some we compost to use in the garden, and then the rest we dry, or chip and turn into silage, for the animals to eat during winter. The amount of biomass that is produced is staggering. In a way, we wish it was like this year-round, but on the other hand, that sounds like a lot of work!
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Weed-eating
Monday, August 29, 2016
Walter Gilbert
Dark Honey
A few years ago, we made a top bar bee hive out of half a 55 gallon barrel, which we called the "Honey Cow". We caught a swarm to inhabit it and the hive is now rocking and rolling. There are an enormous amount of bees, and the barrel is almost completely full of both brood and honey.
This weekend, we decided to rob some honey. We didn't take much, only 8 lb of strained honey. We figure we can always take some more in a month or so if we need to. For us, every drop we get is a bonus, as we do absolutely nothing for the bees (we don't feed them or even check on them that often).
The honey is dark and beautiful, a lot of which is due to oak blossoms. It's said that dark oak honey like this is even better for you than most honey (like we needed an excuse to eat more of it!). You can see the difference in color between ours and store bought stuff from the photo.
The post Dark Honey appeared first on VelaCreations.
Dark Honey