Tuesday, March 31, 2020

This morning we made hot cross buns, hot times buns, hot division buns, hot minus buns, and hot equal buns with the sourdough starter.  They were good.

My husband, Beekeeper Ant, then filled the kitchen with a large tub of honey from a wild hive.  Processing honey is relatively easy from box hives.  The frames from the super (a fancy word for beehive) fit into the hand spinner and centrifugal force extracts the honey.  Wild hives are different because the combs are disorganized, fitting to whatever space the bees found.  They are removed in large chunks.  These big chunks of comb have to be squeezed by hand and extracted by gravity.  That means a lot of strainers and bowls all over the kitchen.  This honey is from eucalyptus. Eucalyptus honey is thick, heavy and bitter.  Ant says it is not his favorite kind of honey.  Did you know that the flavor, quality, thickness, and medicinal properties of honey depend on the flowers the bees forage on?

We have honeybees from outside coming to visit all our honey bowls in the kitchen because they smell the honey.  I wonder where this bee came from?  Honeybees can travel up to 3 miles from their hives in search of nectar. Mosquito and Cob-weaver's fingers are often visiting the honey bowls too.

We mostly get honey from wild hives that people don't want to live with anymore.  Ant moves these unwanted honeybees into supers and takes them to a better life on a farm. We don't keep bees at our house because our neighbors don't like them and Mosquito and Cob-weaver can't walk barefoot when we have a hive in the yard.

After Ant finishes in the kitchen (minus all the bowls everywhere that will take several days to process), he puts the dirty honey and old comb outside to attract a wild swarm to the empty supers.  It's a good time of year to catch a swarm, the swarm season is just starting.

In the afternoon, myself, Beekeeper Ant, Mosquito, and Cob-weaver went to the school garden to check the rain gauge, water, weed the lazy bed and the greenhouse and keep on building the sundial beds for planting the fall harvest.  The rain gauge read 6.2 inches of rain! We finished planting the blackberry bushes and took the rest home to better tend to them.  Its funny because until now, I have always brought things from my home garden to put at school, now I am bringing it all home.  We plan to work there every Tuesday afternoon.  The fava beans, cabbages, kale, and garlic look great, but it will be a few weeks still until harvest.  The artichokes are ready but who will eat them?  The compost looks perfect and full of worms.  It's ready for spreading.  Now I must do it myself.  I really miss all the farmers.

Garden Math: Check the Rainfall Page.  What is the largest rain measurement?  What is the smallest rain measurement? What is the total rainfall so far this school year?  What is the average rainfall (=total rainfall/# of records)?

Cob-weaver and Ant make cookies again tonight.  Cob-weaver divides them equally.  We each get 3.

Garden Math: If there are 4 people and we each get 3, how many total oatmeal cookies do Cob-weaver and Ant make?

Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Makes 4 dozen
From the Quaker Oatmeal box top

1/2 pound butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
3 cups oats
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)
1/2 cup walnuts (optional)

1. Heat oven to 350°F
2. Beat butter and sugars
3. Add eggs and vanilla
4. Add combined flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt and mix well.
5. Stir in oats, raisins, chocolate chips and nuts. Mix well
6. Drop tablespoon fulls onto ungreased cookie sheet.
7. Bake 10-12 minutes

Farmer Ladybug 🐞