Herbs and Herbal Teas

So, for the past couple weeks I have been busy harvesting and drying Herbs in an effort to blend some Herbal Teas for my shop and for the upcoming Farmers Market.

We have an abundance of Stinging Nettles throughout the Forest! ( if you are not familiar with the benefits you can read my previous HERE post to find out more!)

My first Herbal tea blend : *Cool It** A blend of Nettles, Catnip and Lavender..

Its absolutely delightful! I am so happy with the flavor and aroma. Its good as an iced tea as well as  hot tea.. a wonderful way to decompress after a long day or just to ease those nerves on those stressful days.

and of course I would recommend you pair it up with Bee Kind Family Farms Raw Honey ( which we will have available very very soon!)

Mug is made By Artist Molly Johnson Of Molly Johnson Ceramics ...




Blessings
The Cool Family

A Glimpse of the Gardens

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I absolutely revel in this time of year, soaking in every beautiful moment. The gardens are thriving and growing rapidly! Soon the bounty with be plentiful!!!!
I am maintaining 5 gardens right now.. I added a 5th this year ( not pictured) , in which I planted  30 additional tomato plants, more beans , carrots and bunching onions. I also have a smaller side garden which is home to Miss Norahs Garden ( I am sure she will want to share some pictures soon, maybe after she weeds it, haha)
The bugs don't seem to bad so far.. which is strange.. I have seen the cabbage moths fluttering about and have been covering my cabbage with some floating row covers

Right now we are feasting on  Chard, Kale, arugala, lettuce radish, cilantro and sugar snaps.
We should be able to pull some new potatoes, bunching onions,beets, blueberries, and carrots soon!

The only hurdle we have had so far this season, is lack of rain, So I have been having to water. Luckily the days have been super sunny which allows me to use our hose . Our well is run off of Solar so I can only use the hose when the weather permits.. I have been watering by hand as well, but the rainbarrels are near empty again.

What's growing in your Garden??

Busy

I gotta say I get a little jealous of the folks out there with methodical, well thought out, consistent, pretty blogs.
I feel like I was keeping up ok on here for awhile, but now feel like I am getting entirely to busy to take the time to sit down and do this. This is NOT to say that other bloggers aren't busy,, I honestly just think they maybe they use their time more wisely? or maybe they don't sleep? I don't know.. Whatever the case may be, I can only speak for me, and Ill tell ya its been BUSY around here!!
So I figure I would just catch ya up on whats been going on around the homestead!

Gardens:

Everything is growing beautifully in the gardens, and while we could use a little more rain to really make them explode, we are picking lettuce, kale , chard, cilantro, sugar snaps, arugala, and radish..
I have pretty much my entire garden(s) in. all 5 areas,, although I am thinking Of tilling up another tinny spot for more carrots, bunching onions, beets, and peppers.. but we will see if time allows :)

Bees:








I asked my husband the other evening " Do you feel you are keeping up with the bees?" His response was " I am at the cusp, and could fall behind any day now" ..hahaha, well I guess we know how he feels,,, busy and maybe slightly overwhelmed.  Welcome to the beginning of Bee season!

We lost quite a few hives this winter. its always a hard thing to swallow. We are fortunate to be able to rear our own queens and make our own hives though, RObb has been busy rearing queens, building mini mating nucs, and expanding the apiary. I believe he has reared around 20 successful queens thus far! (that means 20 more hives already, if all goes well!!)
We are currently at about 40 hives and really hope to reach near 80-100 this year.

The SPRING FLOW has started!!! The Tulip Poplars, Holly Trees and Black berries are all blooming. These are just some of the flowers that contribute to our honey flow. The bees are furiously building comb and getting ready to fill them up with that sweet sweet nectar!

 

Workshops, teaching and more.......

 

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We have had the wonderful opportunity to do some teaching the past couple weeks.
May 3rd we attended Eustace Conways ( you may know him from the show Mountain Men on the history channel?) Turtle Island Preserve for *Families Learning Together* to teach a beekeeping workshop! It was a wonderful day filled with teaching, learning and just chatting with so many like minded folks! We also had a diagram of our Off grid/solar set up and spoke about that as well.  They had everything from woodworking, blacksmithing, hide tanning, soap making , basket weaving, and more!!

This past Monday, we went up to our Local school to teach the 1st graders about Bees. This was our second year invited up talk to them and its always
SO much Fun! We really love the enthusiasm these kids show for honeybees, and all the great questions they ask. We feel very lucky to be able to spread the word about the importance of honeybees!

 We will also be hosting a Queen Rearing Workshop at our home on June 6-7th!

Chickens:
We have about 20 chickens ready to butcher in 2 weeks, with another 20 that will be ready in about another 2 months. We finally finished up an additional chicken tractor for the baby meat birds.

The Little kids

The big kids







So that about wraps it up..kinda sorta.. oh besides the pipe that is leaking under our home , which is on a concrete slab,which requires digging 32" down to find the pipe, taking apart the deck and replumbing that section of the  house.. sigh, we will save that post for another day... Its just so negative haha..


Blessings
The cools