Getting Ready for Fall!

Actually, it has been fallish for a while, we never really had a full summer. But that doesn't mean we get to skip out on our end of summer responsibilities. Right after Jasper's birthday party we decided to take the honey supers off the hive. It was about one of the last dry, warmer days left of the season and once it starts getting rainy and cold, the bees will start eating the honey. It felt really warm in that bee suit. I think Baby Wormie made me feel even hotter.

Since Peter was out of commission, Kim helped out as my bee partner. She was a pro shaking the bees off of each frame and lovingly handling "the girls". Look at all that capped honey!

We've been harvesting vegetables from our garden through out the summer, mainly a ton of lettuce and yellow squash. We did get some zucchini, one cucumber, carrots, lots of tomatoes and a basket full of peas. We still have some tomatoes, corn, romaine lettuce and acorn squash to pick. But we'll see what the cold weather does to them. They're not quite ready yet.

We had 2 cords of wood delivered and the amazing children stacked it all!! We really had no other choice, Peter couldn't do it and neither could I. They have 2 lame parents right now. I mean literally, we are lame. Well, I can walk, but not far as my hips and pelvic bone had already started the separating process and it feels like I will rip in half while I waddle along. They did such a great job with the firewood, though, they didn't complain and all worked together for the couple of days it took them to do it.

It really was a lot of work!

I just like this pic of the bigs reading to the littles. We usually have story time every morning before they get dressed. Jasper and Opal both get to pick out a book or two. This morning, I decided to let Eben and Kivi do the reading while I cleaned the kitchen and looking over at them made my heart melt. I love my kids!

I had to clean the kitchen so we could do honey extraction!! Usually this process takes a while but our friends that we share the extractor with updated our hand crank spinner with a drill bit. Much faster! I cut the caps off the honey with a hot knife.

The summer was short, so we didn't get as much honey as we thought we would. One whole honey super was empty, but we did get about 14 frames of honey.

Dada puts the frames in the spinner two at a time and the drill does all the work. Berg looks on mesmerized. And the other kids eat the honey and chew on the wax caps from the pan where I cut the frames.

Then we pour the honey through two different strainers and into the big honey bucket so later on we can fill our little jars.

Mmmmm. Honey.