Honey Spring 2017

   Our bees made it through the winter.  Happy Dance!!!  Our winter wasn't as harsh as it has been in past years so that was a help. However, my dad has done more research on beekeeping and decided that we needed to make bee candy and feed them through the winter.  I am guessing that it was a huge help as all the hives thrived this time. 

   Dad and Ryder went up to check on the hives two weeks ago and Dad decided that one hive in particular was just too full! Yep! Too full!  They filled a tote with frames and brought them down.  Madi and I scrapped them and then I started to filter the liquid gold! It is so sweet and a beautiful color.  We haven't ever had the opportunity to harvest honey in the spring so this was a real treat! 

   In the picture above you can see my little pint jar on the left.  I put honey in my tea every morning.  Actually, whenever I make hot tea I put honey and vanilla creamer in it.  I am addicted to it.  I am all about the honey and vanilla!  I have made my own vanilla creamer in the past but it is a bit more work than I really want to do right now.  I just use Coffee-Mate's Natural Bliss creamer.  It's made without GMO's.  It sounds so good that I think I need to tear myself away from the computer and make a cup of happiness!  Have a blessed day! 

Canning shelves for 2016

   I am finally finished canning for 2016.  The only thing that I may have to can is venison if Ryder or Jeremiah get another deer.  We froze the meat from the doe Ryder already got.  My mom needs some venison so the next deer will go to her but both boys can get a doe and a buck each.  We only harvest what we will eat so really we only need to get two more deer.  One for mom and one more for us. 

Here is the break down on the jars.

 ::The first shelf from the ceiling is our tomato soup.  We have already eaten a lot of jars.  Madi has eaten the bulk of those jars.  She took them to work.  :-)

::The second shelf is salsa on the left and carrots on the right.  I may end up canning more carrots because they are so convenient to have on hand.  One of Ryder's favorite sides is sweet carrots. I melt some butter and brown sugar together.  When it is blended I just add a jar of drained carrots and heat it thoroughly. Easy peasy.   

::On the third shelf starting from the left is grape juice then some applesauce from last year, then some spaghetti sauce that I also canned last year. Next in line is some spicy banana peppers and some peaches- again from last year.  Finishing up that shelf is jams.  I have elderberry, peach and blueberry.

::The fourth shelf is the green beans.

::The bottom shelf from the left is red beets, venison, honey and maple syrup.

   That's a wrap on this year.  Hopefully I haven't bored you with all the canning updates. Until next time, be blessed and enjoy this November! 

Honey!

   I finally finished the honey!  I ended up with 13 quarts.  :-)   I am pretty happy with the end results!  My dad is the beekeeper.  I only help with the harvest.  ****Now before I continue I will tell you that we are novice beekeepers.  We do not do everything correctly. I can not endorse the way we harvest the honey.  It works for us but I can't state that this is the safest or correct way.****   

 

This year my dad and I decided to try a different approach to harvesting. We have tried several different methods in the past couple years but we struggled with those ways- me more than my dad. Since we thought we should think outside the box my dad decided that we should try to scrape the honey combs off of each section. 

 

 

This was a great idea!  It made much easier work for us- me especially with the filtering process.

 

The only drawback to this method is I was keeping the combs away from me so the honey would only drip onto the table and not make a mess on the floor.  Some of those combs were really heavy and stretched my abdomen muscles...hence I was pretty sore for a couple days! Ack!

 

I filled two nice sized bowls with honey and the wax. 

 

 

If you notice the plate and fork in the upper right hand corner- Ryder was making a quick snack of the honey and wax.  He said that this batch was one of the best harvests ever! :-)

 

I filter the honey through cheesecloth and a stainless steel strainer into a glass bowl.

 

This is some of the filtered honey.  All that is left is wax.  My dad took the wax back up to the bees.  We are experimenting to see if they will reuse the wax and take the leftover honey.

 

I put the filtered honey into clean Mason jars. I used a couple little jars that I recycled in case we need to give some away.  I don't worry about those jars being returned.

 

You can see the difference in colors if you look closely. The darker honey is clover and the more bright yellow honey is goldenrod.

 

Sorry about all the clutter in the pictures.  Ryder was helping me take photos and I just didn't want to take the time to make everything look all tidy!  LOL