Bees!

When we moved to our new house we inherited two beehives.  I've had a dream of having our own bees for a while now, and we thought about keeping them.  Bees need to be checked and managed, they are not a set-and-forget project, so in the end we decided that with everything else that requires doing and tending here it was just not practical to become beekeepers right now.  

Enter Scott from our local beekeepers club. He bought the hives from us, but as they were too heavy to move he first harvested some honey from them here at our place before taking the hives away.  What a treat! I find bees so fascinating, and it was fantastic to watch the process of harvesting the honey from the hives.

First up, getting the smoker ready. Time spent setting the smoker going well prevents the disaster of getting part way through and running out of smoke just as the bees are getting agitated.

 All suited up, Scott opened the hive and started pulling out the frames from the top box.

Next,  Scott checks the frame to see if it is ready to harvest.  Unfortunately, these hives were not set up very well. A fundamental aspect is to use a "queen excluder" which keeps the queen bee in the bottom box ("super") of the hive.  This keeps the baby bees, or "brood", down the bottom with the queen, and clean honey in the top super which is the one you harvest from.  Without a queen excluder, there was brood in the frames up the top, making the honey and wax dark rather than clean and clear.

 If the frame was ready to harvest, Scott gently brushed the bees off and placed it in a plastic container.  The container lid was put on to keep the bees from following along to the location where harvesting would take place.

You can see the beeswax capping over the top of the honeycomb in the photo above.  This wax was sliced off to open up the comb to enable the honey to come out.

You can see the honey in the frame after the wax has been sliced off in the photo above.  Below is the beeswax still dripping with honey.  This wax is drained for a couple of days and then can be used to make candles.  This wax may be difficult to turn into candles because of the mixed in brood cells.  You can see that it is dark and dirty looking rather than pale and clean.  We will still attempt to make candles with it-stay tuned for more on that project :)

 Into the centrifuge to spin the honey out.  Scott spun the frames fairly slowly to protect the honeycomb and minimise the amount of repairs to the comb the bees will need to do after the frames are returned to the hives. The more energy the bees need to put into repairing the comb, the less energy they will have for making honey.

 The honey is poured out of the centrifuge and through a fine sieve.

Finally, the honey is poured into jars.  Although we were only able to harvest from four frames, we collected about eight kilograms of honey.

My fascination with bees has increased after watching this process and I think I will keep bees sometime in the distant future.  And of course, the honey tastes superb :)

Another new addition...

Last night we welcomed the newest member of our family..."Spud", a little welsh pony.  This morning he was brushed, washed and fussed over.

Hopefully it is the beginning of a happy partnership and plenty of fun for the girls and their pony :)

Dreams, hopes, adventures and reality...

Long time no post! 

Well, we have done it. Moved house.

We dreamed of a farmhouse with room for veges and fruit trees and ponies and kids adventures.

  With space and opportunity for our own adventures.

 We moved from a new, spacious, insulated, air conditioned home (with a pool, and built in cupboards) to an old, crooked, hot, small farmhouse.

 In the middle of a heat wave. 

The reality set in somewhere around the time that the temperature hit 40+ degrees and we melted in an uninsulated old house and wished for our old pool. And as I was struggling to find a place for all our stuff in a small house with zero storage. When we had a visit from a second brown snake in just a few days. As two different bushfires burned nearby. As I tried to cook in a miniscule kitchen with an oven that turned out to be broken, right next to the dishwasher that is also broken.

 We found a few nasty surprises under the house...

 

Somewhat in shock, we have set out to work hard to turn this place into the gem it has the potential to be.  First up, removing all the many bits of yarding and fencing...

And then the weather cooled, and we all breathed easier.  We relaxed and looked up from this little old house and were reminded of why we came here.  Six and a half acres. Space.  Open skys.

My own horse in my own paddock :))

Then the rain came (lots of it!) and our little creek flowed.  Adventures in swimmers, gumboots and the rain.

As the shock subsides, the dreams and hopes resurface.  There is lots to do here, especially on the house. I suspect this blog will be overtaken by renovation stories now.  We have plans to extend the house, put in a new kitchen and bathroom and generally repaint everything. Fix the floor framing.  Polish the 75 year old floor boards.  I can see in my minds eye how this place will look when we are done, it's just going to take lots of hard work to get there :)

 

Stay tuned :)

 

Digging History!

I do apologise for such a corny post title! I couldn't help but call it that :)

This term we have started the history program The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer. So far we are enjoying it, mainly becuase it is something all the kids do together and because there are lots of hands on activities to do along the way.

It starts with an introduction to history and archaeology.  The kids made a family tree last week and this week we did an archaeological dig.  We talked about what kinds of things we could bury in our archaeological site, and what they would tell people about the way we live now.  

Some of the items the kids chose are shown in the photo below.

 Here's some of our dig tools used to unearth the "artefacts".

 Digging for artefacts...

 

Yay! Found something!

 Brushing off the dirt...

 An unexpected find :) Our dig site was an old vege bed...

Not really enough there for dinner, but these spuds were the find of the day :))

Camping at Dingo Tops

We recently had the pleasure of spending a few days camping at Dingo Tops, which is right next to Tapin Tops National Park north-west of Wingham.  It is a really beautiful area, with lots of towering trees in a semi-rainforest ecosystem.

We camped at Dingo Tops rest area, and were pleased to have the place mostly to ourselves.  

There are a couple of trails leading straight out of the campsite.  There are also some old forestry relics, including a steam engine and a horse drawn grader.

 I took so many photos looking up trying to capture the magnificence of these huge trees, but of course the photos don't really capture their size and beauty sufficiently. 

 This funghi? was growing out of a fallen tree.  It was bigger than a dinner plate and quite hard.  The top was rippled and lined but the underside was super smooth.

 

The 360 degree view at Blue Knob was amazing, and even more stunning from the top of the old fire tower, if you were brave enough to climb the partly broken ladder to get up there.

 It was also quite cold...

 Next we drove across to Ellenborough Falls near Elands.  Once again the photo doesn't do it justice as these falls are very impressive.

 We descended all 641 steps to see the falls from the bottom.  The climb back up was hard work!

 As if our legs hadn't worked hard enough with all those steps at the Falls, the next day we trekked up the steep walk to Rowleys Rock.  The view was just as stunning as at Blue Knob.

 Then a bit of off-road driving to finish off our weekend.