Harvest Time

Saturday the sun was shining bright, yet the weather was nice and cool- perfect for our harvesting day!
After breakfast was over and daily chores were finished, we headed to the barnyard to butcher thirteen roosters who had grown to fryer size. They were waiting nicely in our "chicken tractors."

The dirty deed being done, we plucked the roosters and finished the process, finally cooling them off in ice cold water, before storing them in the freezer.

While Rachel and Rhonda finished cleaning and cutting the chickens into fryer pieces, Mark and Amanda, our resident bee keepers, started to harvest the honey that the bees had stored all summer. Mark donned his bee suit and they set off. With only two active hives, and without a centrifuge, they scraped the comb and honey from the frames rather than uncapping and spinning it.

All went well except for two stings received by Amanda- one on the end of her nose and one on her ear. Concentrating on scraping the last two frames, she didn't think about removing the stinger. Needless to say, her face swelled considerably. When stung, always remember to remove the stinger as quickly as possible.

Sadly this year was dry, so we harvested only a little over a gallon of honey. Hopefully next year's weather will cooperate more so that the bees can have lots of flowers to visit. Home-grown honey tastes so good! Maybe this winter we will enjoy a little cornbread, butter, and honey! Yum! Yum!