Bees and Other Beautiful Things

One of my favorite things working on the farm, is the opportunity to work with the honeybees. Harvesting honey (it was delicious!) was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life. Today I worked towards repairing frames by replacing the broken foundations with new ones. (Foundations are waxy sheets that are inserted in a frame, which are placed in a super and added onto the hive. From the foundations the bees build up from the sheet the hexagonal cells which honey is stored and larvae are raised.) It was a nice repetitive task that I was able to perform in the shade listening to WDVX on the radio. There were flies swarming about exploring the repaired frames and some food crumbs left on the table. The smell of the wax was sweet and soothing and before no time at all, I had replaced twenty foundations. Pretty awesome.

Other beautiful things on the farm to mention are the new fall crops which are sprouting up and filling out. Its nice to have new green growth around, as the summer crops have started to dry up and die off. We’ve planted an assortment of greens: collards, kale, spinach, lettuce; and root crops: beets, radishes and carrots. We also planted some early Alaskan Peas. Most of these crops were put into a variety of raised beds, and also in some empty planters which have been moved closer to the entrance. My favorites are the large circular planters, in which seeds were planted in concentric circles. The living mandalas are wonderful to watch grow right before our eyes.

The last area that I would like to mention is our new Mushroom Log Demonstration Area. I thought it would be a great idea to learn more about mushrooms by growing some. Luckily for us, the guys at Everything Mushrooms are friends of the farm and were more than willing to donate not one but FOUR logs! So now we have a lovely area on the north-east corner of the barn were our four logs rest on bricks. We use water from our rainwater collection system to water them daily to keep them moist, as we wait eagerly for our spores to produce beautiful mushrooms!

lots of love -Shelagh

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