Wow! I sure let a lot of time go by this time! We've been very busy since Panda was born 5 months ago-lots of good things, too! So, here are a few pictures of just a few of the things we've been up to:
My favorite Milk Man!! lol After weaning Little Bit, Jeff started getting 4 gallons a day of milk. We have a really good customer that comes out every other week and buys milk and eggs from us. But about a month ago, we began drying Lady up so she could have a rest before her next calf is born in mid September. It also gave us a chance to get away for a couple of vacations this summer-more details later!
OK-on to our next major project this year-bees! Jeff has been very busy with our hives. We've lost a few-the stump hive at the house is gone. He has gotten the chance to capture several wild hives with some success! The second one is actually doing quite well at the moment-have had it a few weeks. Numbers 3 and 4 didn't stay in the hives-but we also left the next day on vacation, so we weren't home to tend to them. Number 5 seems to be doing good-we have had it a week today, and Jeff is in the woods now trying to capture yet another! FREE BEES! The best kind! The hive in the picture above is the one we bought in Huntsville last year and it is doing great. We've robbed honey from it once already this year!
Two frames full of honey from the above pictured hive. And I finally got stung helping out, and on the side of my nose at that! Wasn't too bad-but I don't know which was running worse-my nose or my eyes! lol
And the honey we jarred up from the frames-Yummy!
Jeff doing one of his favorite things!
Some of the produce from the garden. It hasn't done very well this year, but we are putting up as much as we can scrounge up out of it.
And our beautiful granddaughter Hailey graduated from 8th grade-now we have a High School student! We are so proud of her!
This is one of the most awesome things we have seen this summer. The honey bees will come to the magnolia blooms and knock off the "matches" and they land in the blossoms. Then they walk around in them, collecting all the pollen, then fly back to the hive!
Ok-back to the vacation stuff! We took a trip to Fredericksburg week before last with our friends, Sheila and Alfred. We had such a wonderful time. We went to Luckenbach one morning and spent quite a lot of time seeing the area and watching the deer. We stayed on a 360 acre ranch in a cute little house called Among the Crepe Myrtles.
We stopped in Stonewall on the way home and bought a box of seconds peaches. I peeled up lots of them and canned them in a sugar syrup-put up 9 pints!
One of the favorite pictures I've ever taken! We were at the Wild Seed Farm in Fredericksburg and I finely captured a hummingbird on my camera! It was also an awesome place to visit-lots of beautiful plants and flowers.
OK this is long enough for now-gonna try harder to keep this more up to date! We are going to Peyton's Birthday party this weekend. We are hoping to process some more honey this weekend and we need to go check on the hives at the creek. We've been getting rain nearly everyday, so have lots of grass in the pastures. The sow is finally bred and due next weekend-so hopefully we will have baby pigs soon!
