A General Update

Where have we been, what have we been doing... Well here is the exciting recap of life in Card house the past few weeks.

Garden:  Well the garden is booming.  We are getting lots of summer squash, peas, and cucumbers.  The tomatoes are finally turning red and the green beans will the ready to pick in a couple of days.  The only complaints are with home depot.  We bought all of our sprouts from them and now that we have fruit it is obvious some things were mislabeled.  So our cherry tomato bush is some other kind of tomato bush that makes big tomatoes and 2 of our zucchini plants were actually summer squash and yellow crookneck summer squash that looks just like summer squash with a bent neck and lots of bumps but taste like winter squash.  Moral of the story, dont buy your plants at home depot.  I have been blanching and freezing the squash and zucchini and will be doing some pickling and canning soon.

Bees:  Well we have sold all of our honey and are super happy with it.  It taste great!  I still need to deliver some of it, and we still need to collect the money, but it looks like we may break even this year.  We have always successfully grafted queens, they emerged, mated and are now laying eggs in their new hives.  We're conquering the beekeeping world one season at a time.

House:  Construction is common place in our house.  Aaron installed two new ceiling fans in the living room and they make all the difference on these hot days.  Paul has been replacing our old stairs for the past week and half.  They are no longer steep, narrow, railing-less, and broken.  We are worried that we have re-created the problem of not being able to move a bed up/down the stairs.  When Aaron moved in to the house we couldn't fit a queen sized bed up the stairs.  We had to rip out the railing, balusters, the post at the bottom of the stairs, all the trim, and part of the ceiling in order to get the bed up.  When we re-did the upstairs my dad corrected the ceiling so this would not be an issue again.  Well now the new stairs are less steep and come to a landing, making the distance from the floor to the ceiling shorter than Dad had corrected for.  I guess we'll wait till we're moving to worry about this.  We are very excited to have a new big closet under stairs.

Old Stairs

New Stairs (Still in Progress) (Pic is backward)

Health:  Well we stink at dieting.  It turns out carbs are my favorite.  We have been eating alot of PB&Honey sandwiches and fruit loops.  But on a happy note I have been feeling much better this month.  I'm still not pushing it to much, and still have my moments, but overall much much much better. The neurologist is awesome, he is a great doctor and returns my calls in person instead of having a nurse or PA call me.  Friday is my MRI and Aaron is coming for support and to be my driver.  Im very claustrophobic but the neurologist gave me some Valium for the anxiety.  I hate drugs, and I hate feeling out of control, but Im terrified of being in tight places (and not a fan of the IV contrast) so I think I'll take it.  

Honey Extraction!

Much to our surprise we had an early extraction this year.  There was so much honey on the hives that the bees were starting to eat it in order to make more room to lay eggs.  Usually we would just add another hive box to give them more room, but there were already so may hive boxes stacked up that we couldn't reach to add more (never mind take them down once they fill with honey and are 50 lbs).  So we extracted/harvested the honey.  We expect a second extraction in September and hope it yields just as much honey.  This was an all day event.  We started at 8am.  The kitchen had to be cleaned, the equipment had to be cleaned and set up, and the very heavy hive boxes full of honey needed to be brought up from the field.  Aaron had to carry all the 50 lb boxes up to the house, totaling at least 6 trips, maybe 10, but I was to busy cleaning to count.  Once he got all the boxes to the house he had to go through them and sort out which frames we could use.  The bee's had not capped all of the honey (which must happen before people can eat it).  So those frames had to go back down to the hives.  Aaron was not excited to make three trips back down the hill to the hives, especially since the boxes were still heavy.  But we still ended up with 102 lbs and 4 oz of honey bottled.  Finally, we hit the 100 lb mark.

Some of the heavy honey filled boxes Aaron had to carry across the field and up the hill to the house, 1 at a time.

The extraction set up.  The blue bin is a decapping bin.  You use a hot knife to cut the wax caps off the cells full of honey.  The wax and alittle honey fall into the bottom and can be collected later.  The silver machine is the honey extractor, it is a centrifuge that spins the frames and the honey spins out and falls the bottom.  Below the extractor is a bucket with a filter on-top.  The honey is filtered to remove any wax/debris and is stored in the clean bucket until bottling.

Wax and honey in the decapping bucket.

Here comes the honey!  It looks dark in the picture, it isn't that dark and taste yummy!

the solid stuff is wax, but it cant pass through the filter.  We filter our honey through cheese cloth and a steel honey filter which is under the cheese cloth.

The extractor can hold 6 medium frames or 3 large frames.

Aaron trying hard to get all the honey inside because the bees are working hard to steal it and bring it back to their hives.

Bees everywhere, but they dont sting this far from the hive.

Aaron decapping.

Honey!

All our products.  From left to right, 2oz jar of honey (these are what we give our neighbors to keep the peace), 0.5lb jar ($4), 2lb jar ($13), 1lb jar ($7), and a beeswax candle (not sure if we'll sell these yet, does anyone have an interest?).

Correction

aaron's email is:
aaronmcard@hotmail.com

Honey Sales Start Today!

We are extracting honey and officially taking orders.  First come first serve.  1/2 lb = $4, 1lb = $7, 2lb = $13.  We are limiting honey sales to 4lbs per customer.  Thanks!  Orders can be placed on facebook, by email, or by phone.

aaronmcard@hotmail.com
JPease3984@gmail.com
860-986-9608
860-899-4046

Project Update

Garden:
It is really starting to take off.  We have lots of tomatoes (cherry, big boy, and beef stake) but they are all green still.  We also have tiny peppers (bell, and a variety of hots).  There are lot of squash and zucchini, and today we picked out first two summer squash.  Our pickling cucumbers are growing fast and I think I will be able to pick some in the next 2 days.  Our green beans are blossoming and out lettuce finally reared its head.  The peas are growing up the fence, but no blossoms yet.  The egg plant arent growing at all, so I think they are a lost cause.

The garden, it look small and empty in this picture.  It is actually very good sized with  easily 20 tomato plants, 6 pepper plants, a few peas, a bunch of green beans, 6 cucumbers, 6 squash, 3 lettuce that have come up, 2 egg plant, and 6 strawberry plants.

Bees:

We were more successful rearing queens this time.  Now we wait.  Last monday (before the holiday) we made up nucs.  A nuc is a small starter hive.  On that tuesday Aaron put the new queen cells (its a queen that has not emerged/hatched yet) in the nucs.  We have to wait 3 weeks before we can look and see if the queens emerged and are doing well (we have 2 weeks left).  Aaron says if we dont lose any honey that we easily have 150lbs already and that we should be able to meet our goal of 200lbs (last year we got 60lbs).  We are only managing 3 hives for honey, the others are all used to make more bees.  We started the season with 4 hives and now we are up to 11 at the moment.  Aaron says we will finish the season with 8-11 hives depending on how he decides to manage them.  Next year at least 6 hives are being dedicated to honey and the goal is 500lbs.  HONEY COMING LATE AUGUST EARLY SEPTEMBER!

House:

Aaron and I installed half of the living room floor.  Now we need to wait for the stairs to be finished before we continue.  It looks really nice and was super easy to install.  Other than that we are at a temporary stand still with the house.  Once the stairs are done we'll finish the living room and then we'll see how our wallets feel about the kitchen and bathroom.

Other than that we haven't been working on any projects.  Im feeling really good today so I'm excited to work on something.  I asked Aaron if there is anything he would like to me work on he said cleaning the car, so that is on my list.  Aaron is on vacation and he is excited to work on relaxing :)  He needs a real vacation.  Usually on his vacations he works harder than at work and then goes to work drained.  So far this vacation we went to the Cape and he has watched movies, played video games, gone swimming, ate yummy food, bee research, and mostly just relaxed.  But its only wed and he is talking about cleaning the basement, he just isn't good at doing nothing.