One of the things Mike and I have really gotten interested in over the last couple of years, is finding ways to live solely off of our land – both in what it produces for our own consumption, and in what it can produce commercially for income.

I think I mentioned this once before, but we’re getting BEES soon! I have a combination of trepidation and excitement about it. There are so many questions I have about what happens AFTER the honey is produced in the hive… and that end of things is my responsibility! I know about packaging supplies and have some good ideas about the marketing. I need to find out what is required legal wise since technically it’s a food product, ya know? I think it would be governed by some sort of FDA type laws, anyway. :::shrug:::

Oh, and there’s also the health potion / pollen angle. There are these cool gadgets – kind of like a pet door for your bees – that brushes their legs as they enter the hive and remove the pollen so it can be collected and encapsulated. I have to figure out the market for that and the legalities as well.

Thankfully, Mike and David (mostly David who has been referring to himself as ‘The Bee Whisperer’) are in charge of the hands-on hive & bee stuff. I don’t think I could do that part without a lot of screaming and freaking out – which I’m sure passerby would enjoy, but me – not so much.

You should have seen David the day his white bee suit thingy arrived. (I have no idea what it’s called) He put on the white suit and the veiled hat and spent most of the day wearing it and working on his hive construction. We kept asking him if he was going to ever take it off – after all, the bees haven’t even arrived yet – and he said, “No, I’m the Bee Whisperer. This is what we wear.” What a goofball! The frightening thing though was when he threatened to wear it to school – HIGH SCHOOL!!

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This weekend we’re putting in the garden. Mike has to mow and till and then it’s time to drop the seeds in the ground!

We’re doing pumpkins again so that we can make tons of our famous Pumpkin Butter to sell at the festivals and farm shops.

We’re increasing the corn because we ate everything last year, froze almost nothing, and our reserves were gone a long time ago. Everyone loves corn!

We’re also doing the usual beans, broccoli, peas and of course, tomatoes. No Jalapeno’s this year. Sad to me – I loved those and surprisingly they grew really fantastically here in Central New York! No okra or summer squash this year. No-one but me liked the okra and we had such a jungle of the squash that the deep freeze is still overrun. Butternut squash is still in the garden this year though because lots of people in the family like it and it’s a traditional holiday food. Oh, I think Mike picked up some cantaloupe seeds too. LOVE cantaloupe!

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This morning I put Vince into his Exersaucer and sat down to spin for the first time in a long while. He actually let me spin for about 20 minutes!! At first, he just sat and stared at the wheel, fascinated with the motion. It did eventually lose its’ charm though, and as the Exersaucer lost much of its’ charm a long time ago, that’s when the end came for today’s spinning. I won’t complain though because I’m so thrilled to have gotten done what I did!

Also this week, I got TWO – count ‘em – TWO – rows done on my Rebecca ballet wrap!! The only thing is, its been so long since I was able to pick it up that I forget how I was doing my end stitches on that Fisherman’s Rib. Hopefully I’m winging it correctly and it looks the same because it is impossible to frog Fisherman’s Rib!! Actually, the frogging is quite easy. It’s the re-stitching that is a royal pain. If the instructions had been better translated from German to English it would have been nice but you can’t complain much about a free pattern ….. although I think it would have taken less brain power to just make a pattern from scratch than it did to figure out that convoluted set of instructions!