Alkahest

With apologies to Terry Prachett, I feel like I being dragged (dragging myself?) into the Century of the Fruitbat.  As I mentioned a long time ago, I don’t care for Facebook.  I prefer my blog.  That said, many of my friends and most of my family use Facebook.  So I’m going to start a bit of an experiment.  I’ve downloaded and installed the Wordbook plugin for my blog software (wordpress).   Starting with this post, in theory anything that’s published on the blog gets cross-posted to fb.

Kill me now.

I need another hobby about like I need a(nother) hole in my head.  But at the same time, ya gotta keep life interesting.  Several times over the past few years, K and I have talked about keeping bees.  I think that next year we’ll finally do it.  We’re interested in the bees themselves (hive mind!  hive mind!), the pollination and the honey, so why not.  I’ve read a couple of books and was originally planning to take a class, but the one I wanted isn’t offered until 2011.  But hey why let that stop us.

This afternoon, I took a trip up to our local apiary.  Actually, the only apiary (to my knowledge) in a 150 mile radius: Busy Bee Apiary.  There a very lovely woman, Betsy, whom I am certain had better things to do, talked to me for almost an hour about beekeeping.  What is the equipment like?  What would I need at first?  What kind of clothing do I need?  What’s an extruder look like?  How much space does the hive need in NC?  When should we feed bees in NC?  Do you just feed sugar water or pollen too?  When can I order bees?  What kind of bees do they recommend and sell?  You get the idea.  The poor woman.

The upshot is that I seem to have a good head start, having read as much as I have and we’ll probably host two colonies come spring.  After the grilling, I did pick up another book and a jar of their honey – it really is much better tasting than the clover honey you buy in stores.  Maybe I’ll make the next batch of breakfast bars with this instead.

I went out to the garden on Sunday and took a look at how the okra was doing.  Now I’m feeling somewhat, um, inadequate…

as a gardener.

Really, who lets okra get that big.  I should have been picking them every two or three days so that the maximum size was only 3-5 inches, not 8-12.

In other gardening news, I opened one jar of the pickled peppers early (they should still be pickling for another 3-4 weeks), and they are delicious.

Oh, and I am *so* jealous of these people.   They also seem to have a great stuffed pepper recipe that I would bet even K would eat if I fixed them with sweet banana peppers (as opposed to jalapeños).