Haymaking and Honey.

When I first sat down to write this, we had officially just passed the longest day.  It has taken a few weeks to catch up and finish off.  Long days feature quite high currently, mainly due to waking up very early.  I think it must be the birds.   It's not so much a chorus as a symphony at dawn.  I was looking out of the bathroom window a few mornings ago, the clock said it was 4.26am.  The bathroom faces north and there was the most amazing stripe of orange running across the sky from the church, which is in the east.  I realised that I was at that moment witnessing the crack of dawn.  I couldn't go back to sleep so I headed to the garden and got busy taking cuttings and doing all sorts of other things I can only do productively when no one else is around.  Having worried about the lack of foxgloves, I had to laugh to myself as we were surrounded by triffids of them along the hedgerows and everywhere else you looked. All they needed was some light and space. Hurrah!





A swarm of bees landed on us a few weeks ago.  We called the local 'swarm hotline' and within a few hours they had arrived and done what they needed to do to capture the swarm.  At dusk that same day the bee keepers returned and collected the swarm and took them away.  I had a sense of regret as they left.  We used to keep bees years ago - my father kept bees for years and he passed on all the kit to us when he hung up his hive tool.  

I am keen to keep them again but the 'Ologist wants to get all our development and building work out the way before we set up our hives.  Plus, when we set off for foreign shores ten years ago we sold and gave away all our beekeeping equipment apart from our protective suits.  Good logic on his part to hold off, but when a week later another swarm landed in exactly the same place I took it as a sign!  'We should keep them', I nagged, 'and set them up in a hive so they can pollinate my garden and make us honey!'  It took some persuading, but after much hurried nailing and sawing the 'Ologist fashioned a make-shift hive and placed it by the swarm.

That evening at dusk, suited and booted in protective clothing, he shook the remainder of the swarm into the nucleus box and we moved it to an ideal position well away from any buildings or play areas, but within sight of the farmhouse behind a stock fence.  The front of the hive faces south and the back is protected by a Devon bank.  The ponies are in the paddock there, but they won't bother with a hive they can't reach.  We watched them for a few subsequent rainy days and there was no activity.  We presumed they had swarmed again to find a better home.  On the fourth day the sun came out, as did the bees.  They were busy flying but not collecting pollen - if you watch them land you can see their back legs carrying sacks of yellow stuff - like a Cowboy's saddle bags.  The 'Ologist was promptly dispatched to the local bee club and signed up for membership. The  members meet weekly at the club apiary and it's too good an opportunity to miss out on the knowledge one can gain at such a meeting.  Now a hive has arrived complete with foundation wax and frames. Although bees have been successfully making honey for centuries on their own, there is method in a beekeeper's madness with the supers full of frames with wired foundation and a brood chamber, queen excluder and all sorts of other exciting sounding bits of equipment.  It enables the colony and beekeeper to co-exist, it becomes a happy balance if you get it right.  It means as a beekeeper you can open up the hive and inspect it without breaking up the waxy honey and risk destroying the colony.

It is an interesting dynamic, the goings on in a bee hive.  You have the workers, the drones and the Queen. And something of utmost importance to realise. There is only room for one Queen in a hive.  There are the worker bees who are busy tending to daily housekeeping, feeding larvae and drones, and as they get older out foraging in the fields.  There are the drones, who are limited in numbers and the only males in the colony.  Their only job in life is to mate with the Queen when she is ready. A lethal job that leads to death after the act of procreation.  Then there is the Queen.  All she does is lay eggs, and feed.  Her chemical scenting keeps the balance in the hive and she is attended to by a host of loyal workers.  She needs replacing every two to three years as her egg production decreases and therefore the viability of the colony will suffer.  It is a tricky balance to keep a hive productive, added to which there is the dreaded varroa virus which is deadly to a hive. We won't rush out and buy a box of clean honey jars quite yet, but there's a good chance by the Autumn we may be ready to extract some honey.


South Meadow being cut for hay

Turning the hay with an old 'haybob'

Most of our energy has been sapped this week by the biggest event of our year so far. Haymaking. It must be one of the most discussed subjects in farming, and one that everyone has their own opinion on. We were led by some local farmer friends who called it just right and got it spot on for us. We are grateful to be looking at a section of our barn packed to the rafters with sweet meadow hay. After last year's relative disaster we did good this year. When they made the call to bale we all jumped and I called in the cavalry...in the form of Grannie and Grampy! I figured if I'm out in the fields baling no one gets collected from school, or fed. So my parents duly came down to the farm via school to pick up the small girl and Grannie got busy in the kitchen while Grampy drove the tractor and haywagon. Meanwhile I was stacking bales up high while the Ologist and another helper were chucking bales up to me. I was relieved to see another friend come to help – my Knight in shining armour – he can lift three times the bales of an average man, literally! The trailer then teetered and tottered into the barn stacked much higher than I could ever manage. As the last trailer load arrived in the barn we felt the rain on our flushed faces. And the next day

Ready for the hard work of lifting & stacking

we woke up to the rain.

 

As I said, the farmers called it just right.

We are harvesting from the growing room and the veggie patch.  Strawberries, raspberries and gooseberries are succulent. No sign of any runner bean flowers as yet, they are slow to get going. But then they always are. And just when you think they're not getting anywhere and you stop studying them they explode with beans, more than you can cope with! I have pumpkins, butternuts and water melons all showing the first expectant signs.

 There are tomatoes galore, of differing shapes and sizes, all green but swelling daily and looking healthy. We have a few broad beans ready to pick and many rows of onions doing their thing. One fun vegetable we are currently harvesting is a round courgette.  It tastes just the same as any old regular courgette, it just looks wrong!


 The 'Ologist has earned huge brownie points and managed to hook up an automatic watering system to take care of the main bulk of the growing room which takes a huge pressure off my daily life.  With the farm water works turned off due to leaks from autumn fencing, we are hand filling buckets and trugs for pigs, ponies and sheep daily, sometimes twice daily when its hot. It takes up a lot of time and we are looking forward to the future when we plumb each field with self-filling water troughs off a bore-hole system.

Before the haymaking started I managed to catch a window of opportunity and made some rather delicious Elderflower Champagne. It is very easy, you just need a nice elder tree nearby and to catch it just as the flowers mature. Early morning when its sunny and warm is the best time to harvest the flower heads. You only need 20 or so. A few lemons, some sugar  and water and a clean bucket. That's basically it. Nature does the rest.

 

A week later after a little fermentation has taken place you bottle it and store it. Another week later and its ready to sample. Sometimes it can be a little temperamental and explode out of the bottle so a little caution must be employed when storing the bottles.  It will keep for a few months so can be enjoyed any time in the day - the alcoholic content is negligible and it is fresh and fizzy and delicate in flavour.

 

 My next ambition is to grow a Sambucus nigra 'Black Lace' – a black elder. This has an intense purple black foliage with flowers tinged with a deep rosy red. Once established, I should then be able to make Elderflower Rose Champagne (I can't see how to put an accent on my 'e' to make it read 'Rosay' as in the French pink fizz,) but hopefully you get the point.  I am now on the lookout for established shrubs locally to filch cuttings!

 

 

 

We are slowly working on the horse box, and happily found a new source of cheap labour.  A few flakes of rust were removed in return for a raspberry lolly each. 

 

The summer holidays are round the corner.  Hurrah, we will no doubt get very feral very quickly as the morning routine and rush to school disappears.  Instead, we will look forward to many visitors, leisurely breakfasts, children's laughter, and if the sun is willing we may see the return of our hay-bale pool.