Good Morning!



The whole fam's still camped out in the bedroom, but in an unexpected twist I'm actually awake, so using some well earned computer time! In a few minutes I'm headed out back to take some pics for y'all... We're officially beekeepers. E picked up our hive on Thursday night, and while the girls still seem a little confused - there's a lot of very undirected flying and buzzing around, foragers keep heading in with full pollen sacks - pollen means they are making babies - so that's a very good sign of a healthy hive. They are using their feeder, and E will work them in a week or two to see if we can find the queen - she's marked so it should be do-able.

Last night we were at the quarterly meeting of the Central Jersey Beekeeper's Association - we went with Mary and Ed who gave us out bees. We joined the association and while we were the youngest ones there, met a lot of very cool old guys and a young lawyer just a little older then E. The similarities are crazy - he is taking a bar exam in July, he works in NJ as a lawyer, just started with bees, also bought his bees from Mary, and lives on 13 acres of his family's farm with his girlfriend, who will soon have an ag degree just like me :) She wants to stay home and raise greenhouse plants while he goes out and does law. Sound familiar?

The speaker was a super cool young woman who's the executive director for NOFA NJ - she certainly had balls too, as those old farmers are a very conservative bunch! (Ooh - just found this on their site - I wanna go!) They warmed up to her pretty quickly though, and soon were talking about all of their farms - including this one guy who I just loved who went on and on about his love of garlic - a man after my own heart! We heard about a large garlic festival in Lafayette too, which we'll definitely be going to next year. NJ garlic production is really growing. Another must- attend event is the state bee supplies auction - 10% of the proceeds go to the beekeepers association, and maybe we can pick up a hive for next year's expansion and some other equipment cheap. Matt, the guy we met last night, is thinking about buying an extractor - maybe we could go in together and extract our honey together every year - that would be really cool. Extractors are one of the biggest expenses, just b/c they cost so much new. We can also most likely extract at Mary's in a time when she's not too busy with her own frames.

We'll be heading to the dump to pick up a carload full of wood-chips and mulch and then hopefully lay out most of the garden paths like that today. Corn will go in - plot #3, and I think I'll plant peas along the fence where the corn is for another crop. Maybe even bite the bullet and dig the final two beds. I'm making saag paneer with our spinach and onions tonight (picked at least a pound and a half this week), as well as with butter Dave brought home for the historical farm. I'm going to try to get in on the milking action once I start working there - homemade butter, cream, cheese, and milk - hooray!

Just got back in, as usual, with a list...
- weed around lamppost, fill in with impatiens.
- Hang up baskets on front porch - water all of them.
- Mulch up potatoes.
- Turn and add straw from coop into composting bed.
- Add rabbit manure to sidedress corn.
- Move tomatoes and tomatillos around in the front bed.
- Call about sweet potatoes.
- mulch paths - bring both cars and find newspaper!
- dig beds for flowers and more veggies - another crop of spinach, swiss chard.

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Posted: Sat - May 22, 2004 at 10:42 AM        

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