August Rains

Yes we realise it is almost October, that's how long this blog post has been written and waiting to be published.  Sorry, we'll endeavour to provide updates more often, there's just so much happening.

Foxy & Baron sharing pollard

Certainly unseasonal, we have had about 40mm over the last 5 days or so and there is much more on the way.  The house dam is spilling over for the first time in many months, and the tanks are overflowing.

Here's what we were up to before the rain started:

Honey, honey
Well we finally got around to checking our bee hive.  Actually, it's quite important to wait for the right weather - sunny, no wind, no clouds (if possible), not too early in the day and not too late.  Bees are surprisingly fussy.  When we prised the lid off, this is what we found.

Broken bird comb on the left, note the three very clean frames on the right.

Bee box lid covered with comb, and bees.

It's called bird comb or bridging comb, and it happens when the bees run out of space to build comb to store honey or lay eggs for baby bees.  The bees' natural inclination is to 'go up' which is why you may have seen bee hives made of two or three boxes stacked on top of each other.  Strangely, there are three frames in the bottom box completely untouched by the bees.  We think it might be a bit cool on that side of the box at this time of year and that may account for the absence of building works on that side of the box.

So we eventually managed to remove all the misplaced comb without upsetting the bees too much, and collected 2.5kg of delicious honey.  It really is amazing how much honey is created by these little critters.

Inside the lid with most of the bees removed.  Beautiful.

There is now a second box on the hive (called a 'super', short for 'superstructure') and we are looking forward to even more honey in the warmer months.  We'll keep you posted.


To save, or not to save

This is a photo of a beautiful romanesco broccoli.  Michelle has been trying to grow this variety without success for about 2 years.  This was the final attempt, and what a beauty, the only one of about 6 plants raised from seed to mature.  The question is - do we eat it? or do we let it flower and set seed so we can save the seed?

Seed saving is such a worthwhile exercise.  The seed you save from your own home grown plants will become acclimatised to your specific region and growing conditions, meaning you should get better and better results year after year.  Saving and growing from seed also means you have access to heirloom and unusual varieties not available in the supermarkets, like romanesco broccoli.  In our experience the taste of the heirloom varieties is often superior to anything available in the supermarket, and many of our market stall customers agree.

Many seeds are very easy to save, for example capsicum, chilli and pumpkin seeds can be scraped out of the fruit and planted immediately, in the right season, or kept in an envelope (don't forget to label it) till the right season comes along.  All the veg and herbs at Seven Springs is grown from seed, most of it saved by Michelle.  Probably the most important thing about saving seed, is don't forget you have them !!  

So, did we save the seed?  It was realised that since we had never tasted this variety of broccoli, due to the lack of past growing success (ok, call it failure if you must), we didn't even know if we liked it.  So we picked it.  And while it is pretty, we reckon it tastes the same as other broccoli, but has a slightly milder flavour.  Will we grow it again?  Who knows, but we've got until next Autumn to think about it.


Building progress
Dismantling of the above ground pool has commenced and is well on the way to being removed entirely.

Holes have been bored for foundations and the string lines set out.

Then it rained.

Needless to say the works have been set back by a few weeks, depending on how much more rain there is and how long it takes to dry out.  We have clay soils which are sticky and slippery when wet, it sticks to your boots and is not much fun to work with.

So our target completion of end of September just won't happen (despite Michelle maintaining the target is unchanged).  Disappointing, but out of our control.