Have you ever wondered just how rendering beeswax from hives is done? At Bells of the North Homestead, we’re pretty small scale so we don’t have fancy tools to render ours. Instead, like many of our other processes, we go with a bit more old school, traditional ways. As we work on projects around our property, we tend to use current technology along with historical ways of doing things. In
Six more weeks till Winter. Or so the story goes told by Alaskan Natives and sourdoughs alike. When the fireweed has bloomed all the way to the top, we have six more weeks till the snow flies. So far this break up and then into summer, we’ve had some successes….and some failures. That’s pretty typical though. The garden is doing well but could be doing better thanks to the late
T-minus 19 days till April 15th. 19 days till our honeybees arrive. 22 days till April 18th, the day we get about 20 to 25 trees removed from the front of our property by BlackHawk Works, a local company that has expertise in taking down trees in tricky locations. The tree removal will help us with our future potential project; solar panels which will allow our house to be a
I’ve often told newer gardeners that the best thing to do is watch your yard, really watch it for a full season to get a good idea of where the sun is at any given time of the day, where the water collects and lays stagnant most often, which areas are drier, and so on. So, following my own advice, last year that is precisely what I did. Now
A long time ago, when we lived in Maryland actually, in military housing, I badly wanted honeybees. I felt like it would be the perfect addition to my backyard garden. And of course, that was a no go since military housing said “No you may not have domesticated honey bees in your backyard“. So I shelved that idea until we had a house with some land. Land that we could
Well the housing office FINALLY responded back. I am not allowed to have honeybees because they are not “domesticated” I must admit I’m a bit sad. I was kind of looking forward to trying my hand at beekeeping. Ever since I read the book Farm City by Novella Carpenter I really wanted to try this. So obviously there will be no honeybees in my immediate future. Just wasps. By the
Lately I’ve been thinking more and more that it would be great to have honey bees in the backyard. Two reasons actually. First and foremost is the honey production. Next reason however is because they’re great pollinators. Now here’s the big issue. I live on a military post. They govern what I can and cannot do in my yard and house. So today I approached them with the question. Can
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