Last weekend we didn't go to the Smallholder's Show at Builth Wells like we did last year. Instead we stayed local and went to an open day at Sparsholt Agricultural College. It was a totally different experience, but very interesting! Whereas the show at Builth naturally focuses on small-scale producers, at Sparsholt we got to experience mechanised milking, aquaculture, forestry...all sorts. I can't say it's the sort of farming/gardening/self-sufficiency type thing I'm interested in, but it really gave you an insight into how commercial farmers operate - interesting, but also kind of sad when you think about all the stuff they're up against today!
Piglets in the agriculture section of Sparsholt.
The last of our overwintering crops has been harvested now. The carrots, although knobbly, were spectacular. And the tops make good animal fodder!
Recently I've also looked at spinning waste fibres. I took some loose fibres from some fraying fabric scraps in my stash, and tried carding them with some silk waste and merino wool. The resulting rolag was very light, with polyester and lurex threads giving it a lovely shimmer. The lurex didn't stay in the spun yarn so well, but I plied the yarn with black cotton thread to create a wiggly yarn, and this seems to make them more secure.
Friday saw me cooking - quite a rarity! I made Good Food magazine's Moroccan chickpea soup (here's a link: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1499/moroccan-chickpea-soup ) although I added a carrot, half a red pepper, harissa, cayenne pepper and a bit more lemon. Came out brilliantly, definitely one to add to my repertoire!
Pops and I also made some delicious chocolate truffle swirl ice cream - basically the most chocolatey ice cream you've ever eaten with ripples of even chocolatier stuff thrown in! Mixing the cream into the chocolate custard made lovely swirling wood-grain patterns.
On Saturday Dad and I took our neighbour Jayne to an apiary meeting with our association's swarm coordinator, Keith. It was a fantastic day - absolutely baking, with the bees working hard. It was a fantastic day for the newbies, and really nice to see so many people turn up! It was great for us too, though. We've been beekeeping three years now, but the advice on queen rearing from some more experienced beekeepers was very much needed!
As far as the bees are concerned, things seem to be going quite well. The hive we had to artificial swarm at our main apiary is a bit shaky - we've reunited most of the splits back together, but none of them seem to have a queen. We're going to let them try and re-queen themselves. They have a strong population so things aren't desperate. But I'm glad we've got some new queens on order! The split we did at our other apiary has been very successful. The artificial swarm has already filled half a super with honey! We have now have three strong nucs too, made up from splits. We've seen the queen in one, and she looks like she's mated, though she hasn't started to lay yet, and the other two we haven't seen the queen, though it looks as though they're there. All three are very strong colonies however, and so there will be no harm in waiting a while before coming to a conclusion on the state of the queens.
The weekend also saw us take a canoe trip on the canal. We took a bucket to collect elderflowers with, but they were only just coming out - we were just a week early! Oh well, better than going too late! We'll go again next week and hopefully come back with enough for wine, sparkling wine and cordial. One of the recipes we'll be using only requires 1 pint of flowers to make 1 gallon of wine, so hopefully a little will go a long way!
We also let our tortoise, Alfie, romp around the garden for the first time. He's been off his food a bit lately, but with the warmer weather seems to be perking up. The other animals are curious but a bit nervous about the strange "moving rock", except for Willow, who bounded straight up to him, sniffed him a bit, and promptly rubbed him with her chin (or chins) to mark him as hers. Sweet!
Alfie stalks the ducks.
Yesterday we visited my grandparents in Hertfordshire. It was really good fun - my Grandpa and I swapped tomato seedlings, so I now have 6 more tomato plants to find room for! They're a variety called Roma. I haven't looked it up yet,
Sorry, I had to break off there when an enormous hornet flew in through the window and buzzed around my head! She's gone now but unfortunately she lives to fight another day and chomp her way through bee after bee...I got one spray in, but she looked distinctly unfussed about it. Bummer.
Anyway, my Grandpa and I swapped tomato seedlings, and my sister and I picked his strange salad leaves...I think they were chinese veg - definitely some pak choi in there, maybe mizuna, but I'm not much of an expert. My dad and I also got to look around his workshop, where he used to do wood carving. He can't do it any more because the wood dust affects his lungs, but it's an absolute Aladin's cave, with all sorts of tools, papers and blocks of beautiful wood in there. At a few of the shows we've been to this year, there's been people green wood working, which I find very intriguing - just as well I have a Grandpa who knows all about wood!
Green wood work demonstration at Sparsholt.
Our neighbours across the road from us recently noticed a bumblebee nest right by their front door and asked us to remove it for them (I think the husband expected us to spray them with something nasty, but luckily the wife if very fond of wildlife and a lot more understanding!) so on Saturday that's what we did. I stood back and let Dad do the work, but I needn't have worried; even when he had found the nest and was digging them out, the bees were weirdly calm!
This pic is a bit blurry; it shows the queen. Large abdomen full of eggs.
Bumble bee brood; much bigger than honey bee brood and in clumps.
We rehomed them in a large plastic pot, lined with straw, and placed that on the site of where their underground nest had been. One night this week, when all the flyers will be home, we'll remove it to our apiary, which is nice and wild, and where the farmer is very wildlife-conscious.
I leave you with pictures of the garden as it is at the moment.
2 comments:
I've never seen a bumble bee nest before. Gosh you were brave to dig it up. Lovely post!
It was good to read your article and have a good chuckle!photos are really very pretty.Good luck. beth-iflorist.co.uk
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