Mojo

I seem to have found my mojo. This weekend I; fettled bees, sorted Steve's Landy and mine, fitted a fan to the down stairs loo, refitted a cupboard in the garage, took time to walk down to the local car boot and had a brew on the way back, patched some holes in the garage brickwork, emptied Degsy and tidied up the garage. The weather is mad hot with high humidity. Any work was sweaty but it did mean that I could leave all the doors in the house open, even if H does not like it. It does let me get the work done quicker.

I even got the watch the Moto GP and ran Steve's landy back to him.

Bee brush

This weekend was very warm and sultry. I went to the apiary on Saturday to "bed down" the bees for the winter. However I think I shall be visiting again before too long. I closed down the left hive to a double brood. It is full of honey but no Queen. In the few weeks the hive will be dead. At least I will get another honey crop.

The hive on the right is filling up with honey which is not bad thing. There is a viable queen and she is laying although the brood area is much reduced which is as it should be. I put feeders on both hives and removed empty super and moved them to share area.

H and I went to Moira car boot sale on Sunday. Whilst wandering round I spotted a stack of plastic feeders. I had to ask the chap what he wanted for them. One pound for the bag was the answer. A pound was exchanged. The bag contained six feeder with lids, A bee brush and a capping fork. I bought a capping fork earlier in the season. I had decided to buy a bee brush so getting for free was a result.

Summer Time & harvest time

The summer has been very busy at work. I have had very little time for anything else. Despite the weather at the moment it has been a very dry summer. I also have several big Willows growing in the hedge and it roots have been found in Bed A. The trees have sucked all the water out of the bed. The crops in that bed have done very poorly. We did get some nice peas but not as many as we should have.

The spuds have done well enough. I did go to the trouble of watering them now and then. The nice thing is that we not see any sign of blight this year. When the spuds were dug up and the soil being so dry, the spuds came up clean, not needing washing. The crop has been better than fair. I dug up a two rows of spuds today and despite all the rain we have had over the past few weeks the soil an inch down is still bone dry.

The Calebrese did really well. I got a second and third cropping before digging them up this weekend. The freezer is full for the winter. We had a fair crop of French climbing beans. The freezer is bulging with them.

We have a small crop of Pears from the tree at home. They are a bit small but Pears after only a couple years is encouraging. My neighbour gave me access to their Pear tree. It has given us a big crop of really nice Pears. H made several jars of smashing Pear jam.

The bees have come good. One hive lost its Queen but the other two are on double brood boxes. This makes them very strong. I have had a decent crop of Honey. because all the Rape round the hive means the honey solidifies in the combs. I have damaged the super frames trying to extract the honey. In order to extract the honey I took to extracting the honey much earlier in the year and before the honey solidified. It has worked well. The farmer tell me they have sown Rape this autumn, so it is likely I will have adopt the same strategy next year.

The poo runs have continued throughout the summer so I have fair supply for winter digging. The wind has given the netting a beating so I have a repair job to do.

Hazel's blog

H has started a blog covering her walking the Dales Way. The link to the blog is on the listing on the right of this blog.

A bit of rain

I managed to get to the lottie for an hour today. There have been heavy showers over the past few days. It has not made a great deal of difference to the soil. We still need some more rain. I dug up the Broccoli and Lettuce that had bolted. I chopped the plants up as I put them in the big compo bin. I watered the peas and beans. They are looking very poorly.

I had a trip to the bees as well. Hive B is fantastic. It has big brood pattern. Brood at all stages and evidence of successional laying. I put on an extra supper. The two that are on are only part filled. I will just leave that hive alone to create stores for the winter. Hives A & C show signs of day old eggs. I did not see the Queens which is a bit worrying. I think hive C has a laying worker but there are lot of bees. I think Hive A may have had a queen which has now swarmed again or not. It is hard to tell. There are not many bees though. I will have to find the queens in those two boxes. I have to think about combining the two hives to make one good colony to see out the winter.

Weeding and talking

The evening was so nice and the Calebrase won't stand much longer so H and I went to the lottie. H harvested the Calebrase whilst I did did a job over at the new plots. When I came back H was chatting with our lottie neighbour whilst they weed their respective plots. It's a trait amongst lottie friends - weeding and talking. There was also a tray full of Calebrase and a few Lettuce sitting on the front of the plot. H had a bin full of weeds and was still pulling them out by the hand full. I emptied the bin into one of the compost bins and gave the empty one back. H set about weeding the Leeks and Onions patch. I got busy digging up another row of spuds. After that I tidied up the french beans. A few leaders were not running up the canes properly. To finish with I watered the peas and squashes.

The weekend before last.

This summer is flying by without me. I have been up to the bees each weekend. Hives A and C are giving me trouble. They are queenless at the moment. I hope that will resolve itself by my next visit. if not I have a plan B, pun intended. Last weekend I took my honey extractor up to the apiary. It was quite nice extracting honey in a field with the warm sun on me. Then I was able to put the wet supers back on the hive straight away. I might do that again. It felt quite efficient. The bloke combining the wheat field across the River Mease from the apiary stopped. We had a shouted conversation across the river and over the sound of the combine harvester at tick over.

The allotment is struggling in this prolonged dry weather. I don't have enough time to water as often as I should. The good thing is that the hoeing I did and the dry weather is keeping the weeds down. I have started harvesting the potatoes. They come out of the ground nice and clean. The dry soil just falls of them. My Sprouting Brocolli has bolted and and I am up to my armpits in Calebrese. The Caulis and sprouts have been hit with whitefly.

The new allotments should be finished at the weekend. That will be a load off me once that is signed off. Steve, Pete and I had an impromptu work party to set up the path edgings on one of the new plots. Pete was especially chuffed to get out his power tools. His circular saw made short work of trimming down the pegs.

Work has been a pain, I even had to work a weekend recently! It is easing up again. It is the lottie bbq in a month. That will mark the turning of the year.

I still have a load of stuff to plant out from the greenhouse. I must trying and do that this weekend. I said the same thing last weekend and the weekend before that!