Exhaling and updating

Well after an insanely busy summer, we are at the Beach for a week of R & R.. I am so sorry I haven't blogged, but Ive been exhausted at the end of each day at the homestead, I just didn't have it in me...
So here I am ocean view, coffee in hand, and ready to tell you a bit about the last 2 months?!?!? wow it has been a while since Ive blogged. I cant believe fall is almost here!


Farm Tour  

So this year we were part of the High Country Farm tour put on by Blue Ridge woman in Agriculture. An amazing organization that is dedicated to strengthening the High Country's local food system by supporting women and their families with resources, education, and skills related to sustainable food and agriculture.

 

Every year they put on a farm tour for a number of counties. You pay around 20.00 a carload, map out the farms you want to see in that county, and then drive from farm to farm for a tour. Its pretty cool..

We had so much fun doing the farm tour and had a really great turn out!! I couldnt find the pictures of the actual tour in my files, but here are some photos of us getting ready and making sure everything looks nice ;)



Summer Honey Harvest

Expectation for our summer flow were low. After a very rainy spring, which started out nice, but turned into a 2 week cold and rainy event, which killed our Spring Honey flow ( the bees stayed inside and ate the spring honey they had brought in, since they weren't able to go out and forage), we braced ourselves for a similar event for summer. We figured this year would just be a bad year for honey and we would except the disappointment with bigger hopes for next year.
We were WRONG! We endep up pulling aroun 1000 POUNDS!!! a far far cry from our anticipated disappointment! the honey a floweth! I am so happy for My husband most of all, who worked endlessly in the beeyard making this happen. ( yes assistance in the bee yard increases honey flow) and bringing us from  a horrible loss of around 30 hives (back down to 35 hives coming into the spring from 65 hives going into last fall) and bringing our fall hive count to around 85 as of right now.


How does your garden grow??

 

 

 

Bountiful INDEED! I was a bit worried about our tomatoes this year. Many of of my plants fell over ( and they were extremely tall, things get tall here in the holler). While i did have some staked, I never got around to staking all of them with the tall stakes they needed . Add a pretty bad storm with a 65 mph gust of wind and you can guess what happened..
But the bounty was incredible, I put up around 10 quarts of tomatoes, and about 42 pints of salsa.. The canning will resume when i get home. :)


Coffeys General Store

 

 

SO as many of you know that follow my blog, we recently purchased a 120 year old General store in the middle of the Pisgah National forest. And while its 12 Miles of gravel in any directions to arrive at this destination, our first month open has been a success!
The store is located in Edgemont a sleepy isolated town with about 8-10 full time residents. Located In the Grandfather District of the Pisgah National Forest and right Wilson Creek ( a designated Wild and Scenic River). Our cliental include but are not limited too, Kayakers, campers, hikers, swimmers , and old timers that just want to comeback and reminisce.  Its a weekend Gig! so works perfect with our homesteading life! I will have time to keep up on the gardens, housework, bottling and labeling of honey, etc..
My daughter has had a rough summer >insert sarcasm here< swimming in the creek, eating icecream, and even busking/ playing here fiddle to support her icecream habit.

We are on our last day at the beach. Every year this is a much needed week for us. Could we go without it? sure.. but a recharge is always nice.. When we get home this week, we  will be extracting honey,, canning more bounty, planting our fall garden, feeding some of our hives, doing a full inspection, starting to split a entire seasons worth of firewood ( yeah we are really behind), and getting back into the groove of Homestead life...

I hope everyone has had an amazing summer!!!

The cool Family

Dreams and gardens are Growing!

So, Its that time of year,, its bee season and garden season. and I just cant seem to sit down and blog! At night I am just too tired to try and conjure up the words and explain to you the gazillion things we have going on.

In the past couple weeks we
*got our gardens in
* have been building bee equipment
* inspecting bees and getting ready to rear queens
*weeding, watering, watering and watering( we finally got rain)
* remodeling our honey "house" and putting new equipment in
* spoke at the Mother Earth news fair out bees
* spoke at Eustace Conways Turtle Island preserve ( about bees)
* working with Blue Ridge women in agriculture as we are going to part of this years farm tour,,

oh and did I mention,, ??? we bought a 150 year old General store?? yeah, true story...

We are now on top of everything else ( almost) the owners of a 150+ year old General Store Located in the middle of the National Forest on a wild n scenic river.. * Coffeys General Store* ( its one mile from my house and has been closed down for years) it has survived 2 Historic Flood a great depression and has so much history. the antiques in it are amazing,,  It's  almost overwhelming ... so much history in the store!! and yes everything in it comes with the store ;)
  it will be a bit of long road and a 5 yr vision to really have it how we want, but we plan to open on July 4th of this year.
   the goal : you can get your essentials here for camping, our local produce, honey, eggs, soap, Chicken, ( pork eventually) etc
This is going to be a beautiful extension of our homestead!




The gardens : so all 5 gardens received a wonderful steady rain yesterday( after about 3 weeks of nothing) so everything should really start filling in!!
Its just me working these gardens so its quite a bit of work, but I wouldn't have it any other way.. :)


 

 

 

 so if you follow my blog you are just gonna have to get used to a lot of info crammed into one post,, haha...
we have a lot on our plate right now, but I will continue to update your on our homestead , store, off grid life, market, bees etc...


So as you can see our gardens are growing and so our our dreams!!
Yay for new adventures!

and please forgive all the typos, I know there are more than a few ;) headed out the door and getting started on my day!! Have a beautiful day!



until next time

The Cools
 

and so this is Farming...............

My husband and daughter left early this afternoon for some much needed time together. So as they headed of to do some bike riding at the park, I decided to hit the big garden which is so so so weedy, but after 20 minutes of weeding its started pouring rain, which forced me into the house, and onto the computer to Blog ( its either that or laundry and since I cant hang anything on the line right now....;)



This is our 4th  season as beekeepers. We started in 2010 with 3 hives, bounced up to 6, then up to 20 back down to 9 up to 17 back down to 14 and  are now up to 30 hives( and growing).

.This year I really feel like we are on our way to small time/part time farming..........and its tiresome but feels good!

 Beekeeping is tough. There have been many bumps along the way. and even a time early this year where my husband unintentionally participated in the failing of some hives, and was thinking about giving up on beekeeping. I had NO idea this was going through his mind. I knew he was distraught early in the season after a few big mistakes, but had no idea how much. And then,, things really started repairing themselves ( as nature tends to do despite  the mistakes of humans!) and Robb jumped back on the Bee Bandwagon, :)
I havent seen much of my husband since the beginning of May. We are Not full time farmers ( and I dont really know if we ever will be, although its nice to have a goal and dream) . He is gone 50 hours a week at his day job. He comes home, eats dinnner, talks briefly about his day, and heads out to the bee yard.  When the sun sets he heads to the shed, building hives, building nucs, priming , painting, and building frames..
Lets just say he has been pulling 80-85 hour work weeks since bee season has started.... and lets also say  , IT PAID OFF. We pull and enourmous AMOUNT of honey this spring!!!Nearly 5- 5 gallon buckets! Thats approximately 320 lbs of honey ,, and that was only off of 6 hives ( you dont always pull honey off of all your hives, some are weak, some needs queens replaced , some are new splits,, etc)
We are getting ready for our summer honey flow now!

This was a serious VICTORY for us. We actually went out to lunch and celebrated that afternoon... Might as well bask in the victory and relax for a hot minute :)

I have been been pulling my weight too , now ;). I have been busy Bottling, Labeling, bookeeping, taking care of all internet sales, and packing/shipping.

Now we are learning the business end of it.. selling the honey. We are only doing 2 markets right now. But are also getting in touch with some stores. and actually have one store carrying our honey right now...

My husband is tired. I mean tired....
Last night he looked over at me and said " One more month of hardcore bee management and things should slow down a bit.... but right now all I can think about are bees, I have bees on the brain, big time"...

Our goal is to reach 100 hives....Im really trying to wrap my head around what that would be like, if we are this busy now......

As my dad told me the other night  " Tommorow is a new day"... so I guess we will just wait n see what tommorow brings <3 p="">



Also if you are interested in purchasing some of our delicious Honey, You can do so at :

http://www.beekindfamilyfarm.etsy.com


Some Photos of our life lately here at Bee Kind Family farm




Cutting our larvae for Queen rearing

 Queen cells

Newly hatched virgin Queen

Mating nucs

Hive bodies and supers,, My husband makes all of his equipment..

HONEY!!!!

The man behind it all, watching his girls :)

The story of Beeswax

The past few days, Robb and I have started preparing for our annual Holiday Market up in the mountains. We sell raw and infused honey & everyonessss favorite Beeswax Candles!
Beeswax candles are different than other candles. how so you ask??  Beeswax candles burn brighter, longer, and cleaner than any other candle. And after you see how its all done, you will have an even greater appreciation for beeswax.

Worker Bees develop special wax producing glands in their abdomen. These glads turn the sugar from the honey into wax. The wax is then able to move through tiny spores in the bees body, leaving flakes on the bees abdomen. The wax is then chewed up by the bees and added to the construction of their hive.
Honey bees also Cap the frames of honey with wax( like a little lid on top of the honey filled cell :). This is usually a good indication for us as beekeepers to know when to pull the honey from the frame... If you pull the frames to early, the honey can still have to much moisture in it ( the bees fan the honey with their wings to draw out the moisture,, and they know Exactly what they are doing and when its ready to be capped)
Pulling honey that is runny can result honey that will spoil or ferment.

Here is a photo of a frame of honey with the wax capping still in place:

When the frame is about 80% capped thats where we come in. We give the frame a quick shake, if no honey runs out, we know we are good to go...

Before we put the frames in our Honey extractor, we have a tool that scraps off the wax cappings , (its similar to a wire comb) to open up the cell and allow the honey to flow from the frame.

Next the frames go in our honey extractor ( a large machine that spins the honey out),, and the honey comes out a spout at the bottom and then through a large strainer to remove any large bee parts etc.. the WAX cappings are also sitting on top of this strainer , allowing as much honey to strain through before bagging up the wax.

 

After all the honey has made its way through the strainer ( NOTE: we use the largest strainer possible, allowing the pollen,small bee parts and some wax into our honey, because thats all the good stuff ;) we take the wax, throw it in a gallon bag until we are ready to make candles...

When we are ready to make candles, we pull all that beautiful sticky wax out from the freezer. There is still honey in the wax. The only way to seperate all the honey from the wax is with a solar wax melter or using a double boiler on the stove.

We place the wax in a coffee can, then place that coffee can, in a pot with water and melt the wax down completely.

Once the wax is melted, we cover containers with cheese cloth to strain it yet once again,, to remove any other little bee parts, dirt etc..from the wax.

Then you let it cool, The wax will solidify at the top and the honey will be at the bottom of the container . When you pop the wax out of the container you are left with this:,, almost ready, but there as you can see, there is still a bunch of honey n gunk on top of the wax..

This obviously must be removed before making candles...

 

so what to do???

 

FEED THE BEES :) give em back what is rightfully theres to begin with:)

 

 

 

Then just take a butter knife and scrape off any excess gunk, and you are left with a Beautiful chunk of beeswax to make Candles, lipbalm, soap ***********

 

The whole process is very involved, labor intensive, and when it comes to the bees part in the whole process, nothing short of amazing...

 

 

Be sure to support your LOCAL Beekeeper at this Years Holiday Markets..

 

Blessings

The Cools