Controversial Honey

My bees have had a great summer with all this hot weather. I think some of the larger hives may have swarmed but I've not noticed a great reduction in bee numbers, or productivity. There have been so many wonderful forage flowers nearby for them; field beans, brambles, bird's-foot trefoil and clover to name a few. There are large swathes of Himalayan Balsam along the river that the bees visit intensively and come back wearing a brand of pollen. As an invasive alien weed, it's not viewed favourably by conservation/river management groups as it shades out native plants, dies back in winter leaving riverbanks vulnerable to erosion and spreads its seeds voraciously. However, it is a forage plant nonetheless and the bees work it to their advantage. I'm sure they (and all of us!) would be just as happy with varied indigenous flora should that abound our watercourse margins but with nitrogen runoff and other contenders making local streams rather poor in biodiversity, HB it is...

I take a box of honey off the top of my hives when it's full, which works out at about every 5-6 weeks during the season so I may take up to three 'crops'. This means that the bees always have enough and I can judge whether the honey is spare by the numbers of bees and amount of space they have, as well as cross-referencing these factors with weather and amount of forage around. It sounds complicated but it really isn't...basically the bees' needs must always be met first, as they store honey for their own use throughout the year, but especially over winter. For this reason, I don't take any honey after the end of July as this gives the bees a clear 2-3 months to refil the frames with decent honey. I also leave room above the top board (the crownboard) as they can then build 'wild' comb if they need the space. Late flowering garden plants and ivy are important for the latter part of the year.

Harvesting little and often also means the honey varies over the season. These two batches were only a month apart:

Himalayan Balsam honey on the left, regular
floral honey on the right

It is a bit of a palaver harvesting such small amounts over the course of the summer, which is why many beekeepers harvest at the end of August. The problem with this is that it is difficult to know what sort of autumn or spring we're going to have, which means they usually have to feed sugar syrup to replenish the bees' supplies. Indeed, many honey producers remove all the honey the bees have produced and feed sugar syrup anyway. The bees do convert these simple sugars in to a thicker product to store in the frames, but it is a long, long way from the floral honey they've collected and has none of the medicinal properties of the nectar from which honey is made. All this at a time when the bees are under the most stress having to deal with low temperatures, damp and dwindling numbers of bees during the colder months.

Some beekeepers advocate a policy of not removing any honey and in some hives it is not possible anyway without severe disruption to the colony. My bees are housed in National hives which are designed to have honey removed from them, and I feel if it is genuinely surplus and the bees are fit and strong, it does no harm to the colony and a jar of raw honey can have huge benefits as a tool for persuading people against the bland, homogenous 'honey' available generally.

It's delicious straight from the spoon or on toast, can be medicinal - it's great to have honey and lemon to soothe a sore throat, or to help reduce your sensitivity to pollen for hayfever sufferers. It's a seasonal treat to be enjoyed and savoured and the price should reflect this. There will be a far smaller harvest from hives that keep their honey, but the bees will be healthier and happier.

Spring Is Definitely In The Air...

It was like switching on a light. My call ducks have been living in perfect fraternal harmony since I purchased two white drakes at the South of England Show last summer to keep my father-and-son pair company. But then, the warm weather kicked in a week or so ago and they have been awful! The larger white one (Puddle) picks on the smaller white one (Walter) because Walter keeps trying to attack John, one of the mallards, who in turn spends his time trying to attack me. Walter now has a Mohawk down his neck where the feathers either side have been chewed off and if I put them in the house together at night, even in the pitch black which is meant to be calming, all I can hear is thudding and banging like I'm tumble-drying rocks in the garden. Walter spent last night in a cat basket in the outside loo and I'm having to keep him in the run I use for the rabbits during the day. Oh dear.

I'm looking after some Bovans Brown chicks for my friend who will be taking them at the weekend, and they seem to be coping with the not entirely wholesome attentions from the cockerels, altho Simba had a bit of a shock when he put a morsel of tempting food by the run and the chicks all pecked his magnificent red comb through the wire, which I don't think was the reaction he was hoping for. They're very sweet though:

I put Hetty and Harriet in with Simba and his two hens, and Honey, the Rhode Island is being a complete cow to them and goes up in to the coop every so often just to terrorise them. Honestly!!

So, sigh, it's all rather hard work with the poultry at the moment, but the bees are behaving, and the plants aren't fighting, and actually the children are being remarkably pleasant.

Well some you win, some you lose.

Bantams, Bees and a New Pair of Mitts

The weather has been delightfully spring-ish and I'd earmarked today for going to buy some new chickens. My flock at the moment is a rather motley collection of hybrids and others that I've inherited or reared, so much as I love them all, I thought I might get some new ones of a specific breed. The coop I have (which was too small for Emu) is the perfect size for little bantams, so I procured myself a trio of Buff Sussex from Over the Stile in Broad Oak, about 20 minutes up the road from me.

They are very sweet! I've not yet named them as I can't tell the difference between the hens and you sort of need to get to know their characters before naming them. Yes, you really do.

Apparently they lay a good sized egg for a bantam so I'm looking forward to seeing how they get on. I'm hoping to sell some as hatching eggs (fertile eggs that people buy to incubate) as they are pure bred so will produce Buff Sussex chicks. Ooh how sweet would they be....no....no don't start on that train of thought :-/

My bees have been making the most of this warm calm spell and I was watching them visit all the crocuses in my garden. I can't stress how important it is to plant these easy bulbs wherever you can - pots, window boxes, lawns, borders - as they are so very valuable to pollinators early in the season. They are inexpensive, easy to plant and sink gracefully back in to the earth when they're done. Queen bumblebees were out too, and I saw one shivering to warm up her muscles in the bowl of a crocus having probably just had her first drink of nectar since the autumn:

I saw a small solitary bee and a variety of bee-fly enjoying the nectar too, so please put a note in your diaries to double your quantity of crocuses when planting time arrives in the autumn!

The new season brings some warmth but it's still quite nippy out despite the temperatures nudging in to double figures if you stand in the right spot. So, I was pleased to have my Peerie Flooers mittens (pattern: Kate Davies, yarn: 2ply jumper weigh by Smith & Jamieson) which I've just finished and have been blocked. I'm absolutely thrilled with them and they're just perfect; bright and cheerful whilst being really warm:

Aren't they fab?

A Garden Full of Bees

I had a phone call yesterday from the lady whose bees I look after; they'd swarmed. It was a dreary, drizzly, murky day so I hopped in the car with a box and a beesuit and went to collect them. The cluster of bees was beautifully situated on an overhanging branch, about head height, along a path :-) couldn't be better. So although bees are very rarely aggressive when they swarm as they've nothing to defend, Ann's are a feisty lot so I did put on my suit and after a sharp tap on the branch, into the box they went. I wrapped them in a sheet just in case as there were a few stragglers - a couple of whom decided to negotiate their way out of the folds of material and buzz ominously around the car as I was driving home.

There were a lot of bees as I put them in to a hive in my garden, but despite the rain they all flew around orientating themselves to their new home. A good job done.

Or so I thought. I noticed this morning that there were a lot of bees around the other 2 hives: not just at the entrance but also trying to get in to the vents and the floor and buzzing along the joins between the hive boxes looking for gaps. Little whatsits were trying to rob my hives!! So, back on with the beesuit and gloves, and armed with a roll of parcel tape and the tiniest, most useless pair of scissors we own, I set about reducing the size of the entrances to the hives so that the guard bees had a smaller gap to defend from their cheeky upstart new neighbours. Trying to unwrap parcel tape, cut parcel tape with Christmas cracker-quality scissors and stick parcel tape on to wood all whilst wearing rubber gloves and in slightly breezy conditions - well, I'm glad nobody was filming that particular exercise in cack-handedness. Or indeed recording; my language had deteriorated somewhat by this stage. And I couldn't seem to retain in my head that there was no point in trying to sever the tape with my teeth: I was wearing a veil. Anyway, the new bees seem to have calmed down now and left the others alone. The tape's still on the entrances which they don't really mind, although you can almost hear the tutting as the bees return, laden with pollen, and have to queue up at the doorway.

My new run arrived today (yes, another one!) as I thought the ducks needed more room, especially with the prospect of babies. It's really good and I feel much happier about them being in there. Rose helped me build it:

Isn't it great? It's the large freestanding lawn run from Flyte So Fancy - I have been so impressed with their other stuff and this is no exception. John and Jean and any future family will be safe and secure in there, and I can fit their big tub of water in too.

I must go and look for Mary the Adventurous Hen who has been gone for a couple of hours which she does frequently. Off she goes, all on her own in the more-than-chicken-high wheat crop behind the house. I did find myself having a fleeting, subconscious thought that I should text her......

Growing

The chicks have settled in well to their new broody coop, and have enjoyed a few trips around the garden with a ferociously maternal Blossom. She thoroughly resents any interference from me either in the coop or when they're roaming, to the point where I get roundly pecked when I am putting in their food bowls or retrieving a lost and cheeping chick from the wrong side of the herb bed.

She has got 5 chicks (the chipped egg didn't hatch unfortunately) but Blossom is obsessed with dust-bathing despite it being on the wet side of damp. There will be a bit of a change around soon as my cockerel Henry is going to live with a friend of mine who would like to breed from her hens, and I will hopefully have nextdoor's Barnevelder cockerel, Bruno. As Henry is the father of 3 of my flock, I thought it best to take the opportunity to mix up the gene pool a bit. I will get Bruno some hens of the same breed if I see them at any of the shows over the summer, not least because they lay the most beautiful brown eggs.

Still no sign of the ducklings...

Yesterday was typical Mayday Bank Holiday weather, but we braved the Spring Garden Show at Ardingly nonetheless. We bought a number of things, including a baby ginkgo tree. I love ginkgoes for their prehistoric heritage, and after a massive section on palaeobotany  for one of my degree courses, I find their presence (virtually unchanged) in the fossil record from the time of the dinosaurs rather incredible.

I have finished my owl sweater (designed by Kate Davies) and purchased the 34 buttons necessary for the eyes this morning, so I will sew those on once it dries. If it dries! I realise my knitting arm is also my vacuuming arm so I thought I'd better rest it: I've cast on some socks but I won't be hoovering the stairs...

My bees are flying whenever they get the chance and the little swarm seems to be doing ok. I don't know where all the bees have gone from the original hive; they must have continued to send out swarms until virtually all the workers had left. I now need to wait for the new queen in both the original colony and the new swarm to start laying eggs. During this time, the worker bees will gradually die off and if there aren't any newly-hatched bees to replace them, the numbers dwindle and it can be that there are not enough bees to look after the eggs and larva, meaning the colony won't survive. I really hope they make it. There is plenty of honey in there and looking at the varroa board underneath the floor, there are flakes of wax and plenty of frass so the swarm colony are building comb. I always feel like a 17th Century medic scrutinising the "humours" of some poor patient when I peer over the varroa board, but it's a good indicator of activity in the colony, not just to count them pesky mites. I try and observe what they are up to at the hive entrance as much as possible as that is also a good barometer of things in the hive. I don't want to take the lid off and have a look as it is cold and damp, and small colonies need all the warmth they can get. I am disappointed that I've lost the swarm though - it's not exactly what I planned!

Swifts are screeching overhead and I will take out my tea and sit with the livestock for a bit as it seems to have stopped raining.

Ahh

Saturday was hatching day for Blossom's/nextdoor's eggs, and sure enough, I peeked in to the broody coop and saw a fluffy black and a damp blonde chick. By the evening there were 5: 2 black, 2 blonde and one who's a mixture, and very large. We think he's a baby Gloria, who is also currently broody in nextdoor's coop and we think he's a he because of the black spot on his head; certain combinations have gender-specific markings.

It's a poor picture as the horrible weather convinced me that Bloss and the babies would be better off back in the rabbit hutch in the warm shed (rather than my home-made coop), which is cosy for a mother hen but gloomy for a photo op. I went along to Middle Farm and bought some Garvo Alfamix Chick Starter which looks really delicious, and as Blossom has been brought up on nice expensive mash, she'd looked in the dish of [organic] grey chick crumb and didn't seem bothered about encouraging the chicks. The feed shop owner said "you're spoiling them!" when I told him I was buying it for 5 new additions. He may have a point. The dried amphipods and herbal extracts did the trick though and she was soon bok-bokking and the little chicks were cheeping and pecking around in the shavings. Ahh :-)

Jean is also sitting patiently in her Dinky Duck House:

I'm not entirely sure when her eggs are due to hatch but hopefully the rain will have eased by then.

My bees swarmed yesterday, or indeed it could have been the day before as it was a tiny swarm in the beech hedge. I'm hoping it's not a cast swarm, where a second queen - a princess - leaves with a small group of foragers as it will mean I have lost the swarm with the original queen and her large entourage, which usually is in the region of half the adult bees. It's too wet and cold to open up the hive to see how many bees are left on the frames (it's like the Marie Celeste after the initial or 'prime' swarm leaves) but I did pop the cluster into my new skep and decant them in to a hive I had ready. They were very sluggish though and I squashed a lump of solidified honey into the frames under the crownboard as despite filling themselves to the brim from the stores in the hive before leaving, they will have used up their crop-full of honey as fuel to keep them warm in the hedge. They need to eat plenty of honey to make wax, as it's secreted from wax glands which is a high energy process, so hopefully they will be able to refuel so that the queen can get laying. If she's a princess, she will need to go on her mating flight first which takes the pressure off the comb-builder bees as she won't be ready to lay eggs until about 3 weeks after she's flown out and found herself a batch of suitable drones one afternoon up in the sunny sky...yes, she may be waiting a while! It was a bit warmer this afternoon and the bees were orientating themselves outside their new home, so I am really hoping for some good weather over the next few weeks so they can go and forage.

I went over to the farm on Friday and split the large colony into two, and with luck I've done it in time to deter them from swarming, as I'm not on hand there to collect them as easily. The bees were really calm, and I decided not to use a smoker as I find it stressful keeping it alight, and I don't know if it works as a calming agent anyway. I try to be really gentle and measured when I work the bees as they release an alarm pheromone when they sting or get crushed which is understandable but deeply unhelpful from a beekeeper's perspective. I found an unsealed queen cell on a frame and popped that in the hive opposite with some more frames of brood and a box of honey on top. I'll go and check they are flying next time it's warm.

It was my parent's joint birthday party yesterday which was great fun, and I was the lucky recipient of the contents of my aunt's shed which she brought over with her. It's like a gardening treasure trove - lovely terracotta pots and a proper besom broom among other things. I had put some lemon pips in to compost back in the autumn and forgotten about them; lo and behold, they germinated. I've potted them up into the terracotta pots and they look charming with their glossy leaves so I should have some nice citrus houseplants!

A Visit to Perch Hill

On Saturday I took a trip out to Sarah Raven's Open Day with Kate. It was rather chilly and we hurried past the cutting garden to the warmth of the barn and conservatory where tea and cakes were being served. After a delicious slice of coffee cake spiked with Baileys, we pottered around the shop choosing seed packets, wondering where our houses could accommodate the beautiful candles, and handling spools of colourful string with their lovely smell of potting sheds. I bought a pack of gladioli "Plum Tart" in the sale as I've never grown glads before, and some veg seeds: Red Bor kale, Amsterdam carrots and red giant mustard leaf. It was busy in the shop and I get a bit nervous when I'm walking round somewhere with so many costly and smashable items but the Delft blue hyacinths in pewter dishes were kicking out a perfume so it was very pleasant. Ms Raven's styling is inspirational but not wholly appropriate to my lifestyle and it's a bit out of my price range, but it is a lovely place to go with a friend and the gardens were looking surprisingly colourful given the earliness of the year. I'm not quite sure why I find the orderly lines of veg and tulips so appealing as I'm hardly a neat freak in any other area of my life!

The afternoon was the Grand National, and I managed - by complete girly fluke - to back the winner! A wonderful grey horse, who won by a few pixels judging by the photo finish. Two horses had to be put down which always puts a dampener on these things, but I take a rather pragmatic view having had horses myself, and being a livestock owner is fraught with delight and disaster. Anyway, I'm going to spend my winnings on some yarn to knit a jumper - my largest [size] challenge to date.

I took the girls in to town yesterday and Amber purchased some semi-permanent hair colour as she's been whittering on about it for ages. She did have doubts as the Ribena-coloured water streamed from her hair when I showered her head over the bath, but I told her it would be fiiiiiine and to stop worrying as frankly it was too late to change her mind. It's quite an attractive plummy-chestnut although of course I prefer her dark honey-gold locks. It lasts for 24 shampoos according to the packet, which given Amber's current rate of hair-washing and general ablutions, should last her about 3 years.

Today has been chilly and breezy inbetween sunshine and 'useful' showers to borrow the term used by the forecasters. I've planted the gladioli corms and Amber put some French bean 'Purple Teepee' into pots. It's National Gardening Week so I'm focussing on horticulture in the afternoons...it's a valid reason! - I'm not just trying to find excuses to go into the garden in the name of education, honest. There is a massive shortage of horticulturalists and botanists so I like to feel I am doing my bit to make the children aware of what can be grown and when and how. I did discuss vegetable crops with them but got a bit unstuck as Tristan refused to believe that we actually imported broccoli, saying that surely nobody liked it that much. I will get them pricking out seedlings later in the week as I've got quite a few: the alkanet and woad have germinated, as well as a quarter-tray of some green and glossy seedlings which are a bit of a mystery. I'm not a great labeller.

I've almost finished a pair of fingerless gloves based on Susie's Reading Mitts, a wonderful (free) pattern on Ravelry which I've adapted to have 2x2 rib at the wrist and fingers as it's a bit easier.

Blossom is still sitting on her eggs so hopefully we will have chicks by the end of the month - I hope it warms up a bit before then. The bees have been flying when the sun comes out and I am hoping for some swarms soon to fill all the hives in my garden!

Bee Check

I have been wanting to check my bees for a while but with a nod to my new-found bee knowledge, I wanted to wait til the weather was very mild and not breezy, so that I could open the hive up to dust them with icing sugar. The thinking is that they groom themselves and each other to remove the sugar, and in doing so, ping off any Varroa mites that have been latched on. I'd darned the holes in my veil and the elasticated cuffs of my bee suit yesterday evening and when the sun was shining brightly on the hives, I took the lid off and had a look. The smaller hive has a very small nest but that's to be expected at this stage in the season, but I did see the queen, eggs and capped brood, as well as plenty of pollen, so they look like they have done alright so far this winter. I put a desertspoon of icing sugar in to my sieve and gently dispensed it over all the frames of the brood box, and then tapped the last teaspoon over the bees in the super. They protested a bit but I put the crownboard and roof back on quickly anyway to try and retain the heat, and within seconds the rather disgruntled buzzing had calmed to the usual contented hum.

The hive at the front of the house is my original one, and contains the descendants of my first queen who was prolific and docile, and has passed the traits on to her offspring. They are still some of the friendliest bees I know, and due to my rather inexpert amalgamation of an artificial swarm, has over-wintered with two brood boxes. A quick look in the top box showed egg and lots of honey; I think they are going to grow in to a large and productive colony again this year. I'm hoping for some swarms so I can 'experiment' a bit with my apicentric theories by using frames rather than foundation and not using a queen excluder so she has the run of the hive.

I gave the bees in this hive a dose of icing sugar in the same way, and they didn't complain at all, even though they do look a bit ghostly:

I put the hive back together and left them to their grooming. I'll check the base board in a while to see if any varroa have fallen off...

I got in the way of their flight path as I was putting the roof on:

If we get another mild day in the next few weeks, I'll dust them again.

Bees and Geology

Tristan has returned from his father's and has disappeared with the laptop so no piccies I'm afraid. All I have on my camera anyway is a photo of my lovely Wiggly Wigglers Valentine's Day posy which has all British-grown flowers, and comes with a Quattro Stagioni jar for future use and a bar of Divine chocolate :-)

I went up to London yesterday to the Geological Society at Burlington House, Piccadilly, to listen to one of the Shell London Lectures, on the geological record of previous global warming events, particularly the one 55 million years ago. It was really interesting and the main message was that it's all very well having scientists saying in their peer-reviewed journals about climate change but it needs to become part of the world population's consciousness, and that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the only way to deal with carbon dioxide emissions until low-carbon alternatives become mainstream. I was disappointed to learn that top geology totty, Professor Iain Stewart, was at the earlier presentation, but never mind :-(

I missed the earlier lecture as I was meeting beekeeping friend John to discuss apicentric tactics for the coming year. It was great: we sat in the Waterstone's cafe talking and talking for 4 hours so the pecan tart and 2 pots of tea were very welcome.

Today was another day sans enfants, so Charles and I took the opportunity to go for a pub lunch at a child-unfriendly venue - I think it's called The Star but we know it as The Dreary Placemats due to the extraordinarily naff pen and ink drawings of a nondescript cottage on said placemats. I also had to get my boot catch fixed as it's been stuck since the snow, and it turns out the lock wasn't frozen. I popped in to the garage expecting to have to book it in and pay money I don't have to get it sorted out, but it was only a fuse, so for the princely sum of 42p I can now get a bale of hay in the car for the bunnies, who are recovering well from their neutering op.

The rest of the day was spent watching iPlayer and discussing which pollinator plants would be best and working out what we think about biodynamic gardening. Lovely :-)

Apicentric Beekeeping

Most people are aware that our honey bees have undergone a significant decline in the past decade, and many factors have been attributed to this. I have had my own bees since April 2009 and was taught the 'traditional' method of hive management, namely, that the beekeeper knows best and needs to manipulate the bees' behaviour in order to produce the maximum amount of honey. I'm not saying that conventional beekeeping techniques harm the bees directly or that their owners don't care, but as with many commercial farming practises, it has taken its toll on the health of the organisms concerned.

The Natural Beekeeping Trust are endeavouring to change this approach, and today I went to an event at their Bee Classroom in Ashurst Wood, Sussex to find out about the different hive systems that can be used. I currently use a National which is a square box full of frames that can be inspected and harvested effeciently and easily, but it is not necessarily the conditions that the bees would choose to live in!

We looked at a number of different hives:

Einraumbeute or One Room Hive

Top Bar Hive

Warre Hive (sitting atop a painted National!)

The new Sun Hive

It was really interesting and a lot of emphasis was made on how the bees work very hard to maintain a temperature of 38 degrees C (as do mammals) within the hive, and our opening them up on a regular basis does much to disrupt this. It also introduces spores and other nasties to what should essentially be a sealed unit - sealed by the bees that is with a substance called propolis, which acts as an antimicrobial and anti-fungal glue to patch up any holes and pockets where infection could enter and to keep light and draughts out. Bees naturally nest high up in trees and in bringing them down to our level exposes them to cold and moisture from the ground that they would not normally have to deal with. This is before other 'essential' beekeeping measures have taken place; I will be spending a lot more time observing my bees and enabling them to express their natural instincts rather than diving in to the hive every week thinking I know what they should be doing...

The trustees who took the course were very inspirational and I would urge anyone reading my blog to try to make sure they purchase local, ethically produced honey, preferably early in the season so the bees have a chance to recoup their stores before winter, as standard practice is to strip the hive of honey in late summer and feed the bees sugar syrup to replenish their supplies. I don't think this is fair! I always leave enough honey for them to overwinter with and although I do sell the honey from my hives, I keep a decent amount back to ensure that I can feed them their own honey (slightly diluted) should the need arise. Such honey does command a higher price, but you will be supporting a sustainable and vitally important process: investing in bee colonies that will be provided with the resources to live long, productive and healthy lives.

I do hope my colonies make it through the winter as I am keen to see how they fare on less intervention over the summer. I will have to wait a few more months before they get going, and that depends on their Varroa load which unfortunately is high. Fingers crossed I will have some bees to watch come April.

Craft update

I've been quite busy with various little crafting projects - like the bee stitch knitted jacket for my one-cup cafetiere:

I also knitted a little bee skep with attached felt bees. I had made an egg cosy in the same design but then gave one to a friend who said it was so nice he'd keep it on his desk as an ornament...so...

I might make a couple more to sell on the stall later in the year. I have also been doing some embroidery on my knitting needle case, which I need to finish as my knitting needles are strewn all over the floor. I wanted to do some flowers and foliage but so far I have done a sweet briar rose:

Nicky came over yesterday for a much-needed CCG crafting session, and she showed me needle felting, button-making and other such inspirational stuff. We made some lavender bags with dried lavender from my parent's garden:

The top one is for Rosie as it's made with the fabric she chose, and the bottom one is for my mum as it'll match the quilt I made for them ages ago. I've also been beetling away with my granny squares:

I've got a way to go before it's finished. I'm tempted to do a really big square in the middle and little ones round the edge but I'll see. I've also had an idea about doing a picture of Henry the cockerel in either needle felting or embroidery. He's so colourful and magnificent, I'll keep an eye out for his colours in threads or combed tops!

I've tried to do some home-ed with the children but as we all seem to be a bit out of sorts and getting on each other's nerves I have declared today an inset day! It's always tricky the day after their dad weekend so discretion being the better part of valour, I'll concentrate on some gentle activities to regain some harmony.

Wildlife Nightlife

I didn't sleep terribly well last night. As I was watching Stargazing Live, I could hear a vixen screaming outside, and she was very close. I let Scruff out for his pre-bed comfort break and he tore off down the garden barking, which continued up the track...and across the field...I think Miss Foxy got more than she bargained for! Anyway, I kept waking up for - apparently - no reason, except whenever I tried to get back to sleep, I could hear the bloomin' vixen yelling her head off outside my bedroom window. She wasn't outside my bedroom window, but it sounded like she was.

If you've never heard a fox belting out her come-hither yowls in the middle of the night, I can tell you it is one of the most unpleasant, unworldly, discomforting sounds there is; once I've clocked what it is, I can tell it's too high pitched to be human, but momentarily, especially with the disadvantage of being half asleep, it sounds like a small infant is being cruelly and persistently tortured. I did go to the landing window and saw her trot up the garden so my already jangled nerves suddenly panicked that the ducks or hens weren't shut in properly, necessitating a hurried trip down the stairs (and if you saw what was on my stairs then 'trip' is just the word) and out to check the poultry. They were fine, of course, and it did give me a chance to spot the 3am stars that had been brought to my attention during the tv programme while I waited for Scruff to come back from his second trip up the track and the field...

Soooo, today I have felt a bit tired, but I have done some knitting and some bee stuff and some work with the children. I went to the farm where I beekeep yesterday, and brought some work home to do:

I have invested in a blowtorch, as the inner surfaces need to be scorched to sterilise them. It's lovely, as the smell of lightly toasted cedar wood with a hint of beeswax and honey is divine. Ann also gave me some money that I had forgotten she owed me, and a pot of honey. I'll start back there once the season kicks off in February/March, weather depending. Unfortunately I won't be able to take Amber with me for the foreseeable future as Ann has got a 10 week old Jack Russell puppy called Sybil and I would not hear the end of it, as things like 'breach of tenancy agreement' and 'money' and 'it would savage your rabbits' and 'we already have a dog' seem to be of little consequence to my dear daughter. Don't know where she gets it from ;-)

Knitting-wise I have cast on Sweet Pea sock number 2, and have already done the boring 1x1 rib bit. I finished the cafetiere cosy:

I was quite pleased and look! - I stuck to my original plan! I am currently knitting another one for my smaller cafetiere, in a dropped stitch pattern called bee stitch. I'm a bit obsessed with all things apian and the moment.

I washed the kitchen floor yesterday, and wiped down the cupboards, although if I find whoever it was who invented grooves in kitchen cupboard doors I am going to make him come along with a toothbrush and he can jolly well get all the gunk out of them. And today I cleaned my Kitchen Aid mixer...I can't say I'm not concerned about such spontaneous acts of gratuitous housework - I blame the increase in daylength!

Party Time

Today was the day of the CCG Christmas Party! It was a select gathering but all the members of the Guild attended - and as the Country Crafters Guild consists of Me and Nicky, it meant we could have 3 Heston Blumenthal pine-sugar dusted mince pies each :-)

Yum. We also discussed the projects and crafts we'd like to complete/try/attempt. I'd like to have a go at needle felting and Nicky is contemplating knitting an Afghan throw, and of course, there will be the seasonal produce to preserve. We decided to press on with the Sock-a-Month challenge by casting on our January socks!

I am absolutely loving the yarn - it's British blue-faced Leicester wool from the Natural Dye Studio and feels lovely and soft. The colour is gorgeous too; I am really in to my greens at the moment!

Earlier on in the day I wanted to make the most of the mild weather and try and split one of my lupins as I need some space to fit other plants in and also need to do some dividing so I can populate my new border. I took out one of the smaller ones but it was still quite a whopper:

However, I took some tiny plants from the base, a bit like this one:

and potted them up in gritty compost and trimmed the leaves right back. I have no idea if they'll take, but I've put them in the greenhouse and I'll see if they produce some roots.

I love seeing a tray full of cuttings! So full of promise. The greenhouse is also being used for another purpose; I had lost Ida the hen earlier in the day and eventually found her in there having a bathe in the slightly drier earth. Mary also took advantage:

So as you can see they really appreciate my recent purchase of a fancy dustbath and perchery station with oven-baked sand :-/

The bees enjoyed the relative warmth too and I thought I'd give them a feed and use up some old waxy honey cappings that have been sitting in a tupperware on my worktop since the spring. I diluted it with hot water and popped it in a dish with a bit of sponge so they didn't drown, then placed one in the sunshine near the entrance of each hive:

I did also get round to giving the bathroom a thorough clean and Rosie said it looked much better and not so haunted...a reference to the cobwebs!!

So, it's now time for a podcast and a few more rows of the socks :-)

Warm October Day

We have had the most spectacular autumn, it seems to have been warm, dry and sunny for ages, and I'm not complaining. I struggle with winter at the best of times, as does my house who scores embarrassingly low on the alphabet of energy efficiency ratings. My garden is not suffering too much from the lack of rain, as I empty the duck's water on to my vegetable plots and containers, and in fact the wheat in the field behind me has germinated well:

I love the orderly lines of identical tiny plants stretching off into the distance.

I let all the poultry out at some point today so firstly the lawn had a puddling by the grey calls, then the same by the whites who also paid a visit to the hens:

Ida has learnt how to fly over the fence - she needs a leg-up from the coop but with a huge squawk and mad flapping she does clear it. Usually anyway. Mary has been very keen to talk to Henry through the fence and there is lots of pacing up and down and bok-bokking sweet nothings to each other. I'd like Mary to go back in with the big hens at some point, mainly as I feel rather sorry for her still feeling obliged to brood her chicks in the nextbox during the night as they are about half her size and there's 3 of them (I do sympathise). Anyway, she seems very keen on Henry so I let them all out together in the evenings and he seems more than happy to resume his er, relationship...honestly, he's incorrigible.

Anyway, Mary was happy to dust bath amongst my broad beans:

Maud took a turn in there too once she'd got over the fence:

Then after lunch Charles and I went to the garden centre but he hadn't warned me about the tubtrugs full of 'Seeds for 50p' so we both sat down on the plinth and got rummaging. It was great! Shame there wasn't a cup of tea on hand but anyway, we came back with £55.20 of seeds which had only cost £12!

Very exciting.

My bees discovered an old frame that I'd taken out of the hive and left out for them to clean up. I thought it was empty but seemingly not:

The frame is revolting as I trod on it in my wellies but as with all the other animals they are determined to find the disgusting horrible stuff so as to shatter any illusion of pleasant pastoral living.

I did finally get to prick out my hollyhock seedlings which were getting rather large in their seed tray. These seeds are from my magnificent hollyhocks which I took from my friend Kate's garden as they were a gorgeous deep red, though of course cross-pollination meant they were pink in my garden. Just as well I don't have any sort of colour/plan/scheme for my garden! They have come on really well though:

That was meant to be an arty shot but I seem to have missed out the cup of tea in Emma Bridgewater mug and included the Playmobil man minus his plastic hair. C'est la vie...