Blueberry Pickin'

The second we moved to Auburn we decided to join a local CSA program. CSAs, Community Supported Agriculture, are a great way to get local, seasonal food while supporting small farmers. Every week we meet our farmer in the old Bruno's parking lot to pick up our share. We leave with a dozen eggs plus about 5-10 lbs of fruits and veggies. 

 It's blueberry season in the south and our farmer has a huge blueberry field so we set out on Saturday to pick our share's worth of blueberries.

 Boyd enjoyed his first taste!

Of course, Tyler brought his camera so our foraging trip became a photo shoot. It sure would have been nice if I had tried a little harder to look presentable. Welcome to real life!

 

PS My face is back to normal. It only took 5 days to look like a human again!

Tales of a Beekeeper

Warning: Graphic pictures below!!!

This, my friends, is what happens when you don't zip up your bee suit properly! I mean all I was trying to do was help them rearrange their house a little bit and they obviously didn't appreciate my hard work! Two little martyrs decided to join me inside the veil of my suit and take their anger out on my face! Everything from my double chin to my forehead is swollen and I couldn't open my eyes enough to go to work yesterday! I'm on day 3 and the swelling is finally starting to subside. 

On top of that, I think I have a queenless hive. UGH, welcome to my life!

The Bees!

Since the human baby has been hogging the blog lately it's about time my other babees, our honeybees, get some face time!

 Flash back: I decided to start this little hobby of mine when I was about 7 months pregnant and obviously didn't know what I was doing. Hence the fact that we had no bees to pack up for the big move to Auburn! My failure didn't deter me and I enrolled in a beginner beekeepers class in the fall where I learned all about the things I was doing wrong!



Needless to say, once the days started to get a little warmer I was itching to bring my 50,000+ babees home! So on Easter Sunday we loaded up the truck and went to Central, AL to pick up our 2 nucs. A nuc, as is a small nucleus colony that has 5 frames of bees including a queen who is already laying eggs. I loaded those 5 frames into my 10 frame box with 5 empty frames and off we went.



We now have 2 happy hives in our backyard and both of them are doing pretty well. Each hive has filled up a box with brood (babies) and another with honey and now we are just waiting for them to fill up a second box of honey and we will be ready to harvest. So far the bees are already doing much better than last year! Knock on wood!

I really encourage you all to support your local beekeeping community. Not only is local honey so much tastier and healthier than the fake grocery store stuff but bees are incredibly important to our food supply. Without them we would not be able to enjoy a HUGE amount of fruits, vegetables and nuts that they pollinate. The honeybee population is shrinking dramatically so think twice before you spray your yard pesticides! And off my soapbox I go!