Nectar of the Gods... er Russians

Not too long ago we made a plan 'ol trip to the hive to add a queen excluder. Lo and Behold, the Russians had been busy filling foundation-less frames with some CRAZY comb. Normally bees will build comb into frames so that each frame slides out easily but this time around my gals had built comb that took up two or three frames at a time making frames impossible to remove. To make matters a bit more sticky, the comb was full of sweet, oozing uncapped honey. In order to remedy this we had to remove the entire super of golden awesomeness. Dirty Feet, my usual buzzy photographer, had to help me by holding out giant bags to fill with frames and comb and helping sweep the baby girls off their precious nectar. What does a girl do with 40 pounds of uncapped honey and beeswax??? I thought you might ask...

The wax comb is pulled from the frame then crushed so the honey comes out.  You can wait for it to drain but it's a bit more fun to get your hands all gooey and takes a lot less time. You put the smashed wax in a colander to drain the rest of the way. After the wax is drained you can rinse it with warm water and store it to make candles, lip balm, and other products later on.

You're left with oodles of golden goodness that contains flakes of wax. Quite delectable but those chewy chucks can be annoying.

You then filter it, I chose double filtration... I like to leave some nature in my nectar.

Then you pour your filtered Russian awesomess into jars of your choosing for later use.

That's not bee pee folks, that's a great start to the 2012 bee season. Two pints of some very interesting tasting stuff. We had quite a bit more but decided it would be best fed to the gals as a treat. While it's not technically honey yet, it still won't ever spoil and is great for making mead, baking,  or just sticking a spoon in. It's very sweet with a mild plantlike/cloveresque flavor to it. Come by The Hippie House today and get your fingers in our honey pots. Then you can comment and tell everyone how you would describe the taste!

Along the way we had one casualty, I accidentally crushed one of my gals and she exacted her revenge swiftly. RIP worker number 14,261. We'll miss you. 

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Playing Catch Up

Growing season is in full swing and I must say Dirty Feet has done most of the work this year with the edibles. Check out some of the greatness he's pulled off:

Bell Peppers are growing like weeds. They're delicious too!

Baby watermelons are starting to form on some of the vines.

 

Squash plants get bigger every day but as you can tell on the picture on the right, something has been eating our babies! Any ideas on what it might be?

Tomatillo Plants. Guacasalsa anyone? YUM!

Moon Flowers are starting to bloom like crazy. They're climbing up the Sweet Gum tree where the old Foxglove used to be and growing along the fence line. They are absolutely gorgeous.

This ends today's tour. Check back for more on the progress of the plantlings and adventures into homesteading.

For more awesome DIYness, check out the Stinky Farmers amazing friend, The Dabbling Housefrau: thedabblinghausfrau.blogspot.com

Well now Stinky Followers, it appears as though we've been too busying DYIing and gardening to keep up with our blog much. Many things have happened. Last year's crop of Squash and Zucchini can only be described as outstanding. The farmers experienced vegetables larger than any we've seen in a supermarket. Dirty Feet learned the basics of how and when to fertilize and we experienced another boom in growth. The beehive grew their numbers and miraculously everything survived that hellish drought.

This year we're back at it with more DIY adventures, more veggies, and a lot more wisdom. Happy Harvest!

Homeopathic Mosquito Repellent

It's starting to get warm in this sauna of a state. With all the resent rain we have had the mosquitoes are starting get thick! I look down while in the garden and my legs are covered in those blood suckers! Naturally, I start beating the heck out of my legs. So we got to thinking, how about some repellent. Wait a minute! That stuff stinks and it has ingredients we can't even pronounce. Why not make our own? We didn't hesitate... We headed to Drug  Emporium to get Eucalyptus and Lemon oils. We mixed the oils with rubbing alcohol into a spray bottle at a ratio of 10:1 alcohol to oil. It smells great and we aren't putting something on our body that is known to the "state of california" to cause cancer! The oils are great on the skin but the alcohol can dry your skin so we will try witch hazel next batch.

Homemade areoponics planter

As dirty little tree huggers, we don't like to buy stuff that we believe we can build. Instead of purchasing those really expensive "Toppsy Turvy" planters, we got creative. Imagine that! We decided to purchase some cheap, small pots from the local Home Depot. With those and some wire coat hangers, we produced our own "Toppsy Turvys". Cool huh? The pots were about $2 a piece. We made 5 of them. That saved us about $65!
Directions:
1. Drill two 3/16" holes in the pot, one adjacent from the other.
2. Straighten a metal coat hanger.
3. Put both ends of the hanger through the holes and even them out.
4. Twist and bend a hook at the end.
Congrats! Now that's being resoureful!

snakes, frogs, and rocks... oh my!

Busy weekend in the land of stinky farmers. We have the second bed completely installed except the seeds. It's going to have two different types of cucumber, variegated lettuce, and basil. Today were hard at work clearing out all the debris that has been accumulating along the side of the back porch for the past two or three years. All the leaves, sticks, and other mess filled up an entire composter. Underneath we found all kinds of wildlife, our final count was 7 frogs and 3 snakes.

After we cleared out all the debris we re-released them into the plant beds so that they could eat the pests that have been munching on our squash leaves.

The initial bed, onion bed, and melon bed are now equipped with a great drip irrigation system via cloth soaker hoses. I'm personally excited about not spending as much time hose watering.

We've also lined the space outside of the back porch area that was previously occupied by debris in rocks. Our plan is to fill it with pea gravel, stepping stones, a fire pit, seating, and raised flower planters as an additional chill spot for spring gatherings. Moving all those rocks(yet again) was hard work but I got some help from a very special person.

Thats right, my little prince came by and loaded an ENTIRE wheelbarrow of rocks for me. He also used clippers to trim out all the saplings that were trying to take over the foxglove bed. Until next time!