Port Potager

When we last looked in on the bees in February , they were doing well. The  hive that had swarmed  had made it through the winter, and the bees were foraging for pollen during the unusually warm February weather. We even saw the queen when we took a peek, and they had honey stores left. To be safe, we gave them a few extra combs from the hive that had died off over the winter. We figured they had only to get through a few more weeks. And then March happened. Temperatures plummeted, and the whole month was far colder than usual — as if February and March had switched places . We went from a high of 76 on February 21 to a low of only 12 on March 18, and it struggled to get above 40 for most the March. The average temperature for the month was 35 degrees. That was too much cold coming on too fast for the bees to reorganize after they had broken cluster to forage on the warm days during the last two weeks of February. Bees huddle together and beat their wings to produce eno...

Back in August, our bees swarmed and broke themselves into a new hive. I caught the swarm and Kirk built a new top bar hive to house them. Since then, we’ve had two side-by-side hives.  We helped the new hive get started by feeding them some simple syrup so they’d have extra energy to build all the new honey comb they need. I’m not sure they needed our help, though. They built comb super-fast, and they now have 11 or 12 bars completely drawn in the space of just five weeks. It’s pretty clear that when the original hive swarmed, they sent out their best and brightest: all workers, and lots of them. We were worried about the new group having enough time to get their house in order for the winter, but they’re doing really well: This is just one of many combs that is heavily laden with honey. Capped honey (the white part at the top) is ready to go for their winter reserves. The center (where most of the bees are) is full of nectar that is ripening and should be cap...

Hot toddies have come my way several times this season, and I must say, I’m a fan. I wrote about them for a client in an article about warm cocktails, and discovered then that there are lots of ways to make them. In general, think of the tea you’d drink to soothe a cold, and add a shot of liquor – you know, for comfort.  I was served one at a Christmas party that was lovely. It was, I think, based pretty closely on Jamie Oliver’s hot toddy recipe , but with the addition of some ginger to the general mix of honey, lemon, and spices.  This week I have been struggling with a killer head cold, so I took the opportunity to make a hot toddy for myself.  First, this hip retro mug was originally Kirk’s grandmother’s. She was a nurse, and everyone on her floor had one – the back has her shift hours. Next, I made this with a mug of herbal tea, a slice of ginger, and a wedge of lemon studded with a couple cloves. The tea had a fair amount of stevia in it alrea...

Did you know that Saint Valentine is also the patron saint of beekeeping ? Though in our climate it’s nowhere near time to think about beehives and nectar flows yet, Old-World beekeepers might be gearing up for the thaw and eventual arrival of spring by the Ides of February.  We’re not expecting our new box of bees to arrive until mid-April, but in the meantime we’re still enjoying a sweet Valentine’s Day, courtesy of last fall’s  honey harvest . Hope your holiday is just as sweet!

Though we haven’t quite committed to a No Sugar Buying Challenge (yet), we have discovered that it’s probably totally possible for us to accomplish. This is due mostly to the fact that honey is delicious  in a cup of coffee : I am, admittedly, addicted to my morning cup of coffee, and I do tend to drink it fairly light and sweet. Committing to using honey and maple syrup in my coffee felt like a big stumbling block at first, in the event that we try to rely on only our own sugar production.  But really, honey in coffee is very, very good. It doesn’t have that sharp, metallic ping of cane sugar. Instead, it’s got a mellow flavor that plays well with coffee. It kind of disappears and lets you taste more complexity in the coffee, so honey works best with medium roasts. I’m a convert! And it reminds me that maybe we should lay down the rules for a No Buying Sugar Challenge as we head in to maple sugaring season again. 

Guest blogger Tiegan shares her experience of using some of our honey harvest to make honey fudge this winter. The recipe is from The River Cottage Family Cookbook .   As a Christmas gift for my parents, I decided to use our honey to make honey fudge. It didn’t turn out to be much of a surprise, though. You will need: 4 cups granulated sugar  13-ounce can evaporated milk (I used 12 ounces) 1/2 cup water (I used slightly less) pinch salt 1/4 cup honey (I used a bit more) canola oil  7 tablespoons butter (I used a little more to put on the top of the inside of the pan so the fudge wouldn’t bubble over) glass measuring cup large saucepan wooden spoon tablespoon candy thermometer jelly roll pan knife 1. Put sugar, evaporated milk, and water in the saucepan. The pan should be no more than a third full.  Place over low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Stir in the salt and honey. Clip the candy thermometer to the inside ...

I haven’t written in a while, having taken some time to grieve , reflect, and celebrate the holidays over the past several weeks. We’re not at all sorry to kiss 2015 goodbye and are hoping for better in 2016.  One thing worth celebrating was our first honey harvest, which we only recently finished crushing, straining, and jarring up . In all, it was about 20 pounds of honey, all of it now in wide-mouth mason jars. Honey doesn’t ever go bad, so it’s very easy to store — we just poured it into clean jars and put a lid on it.  Because it lasts forever, honey also makes a nice gift. Back in December we had a little holiday workshop going in the dining room: I couldn’t share these before Christmas and risk ruining the surprise for the recipients, but now that it’s well and truly January, our holiday gifts looked like this:  The tag features Tiegan’s artwork; the cute silicone honey dippers are from the Stonewall Kitchen  downtown.  We sti...

So far we have jarred up about 10 pints of honey, and there are still several combs left in our buckets waiting their turn for crushing and straining . That’s about 16 pounds of honey (well, according to the online calculator  I found, it’s 15 pounds, but we also used quite a bit in passing that never made it to the jar at all). Anyway, with all that honey around, we need to use it for more than just sweetening morning tea and coffee. (More about honey in coffee later — it’s a life changer worthy of its own post). This morning, Kirk pulled out an old favorite recipe: Big Bird’s Banana Bread is the best you will ever eat. This recipe is vintage 1970s, straight from the Sesame Street Magazine  (though ours is a photocopy). This recipe is also as wholesome as you would expect, given the earnest source: tons of real bananas, honey instead of sugar, and it’s totally whole wheat. You’ll have more fun if you click on the photos and follow the original directions, but her...

We took advantage of this beautiful weekend to finish up some garden clean-up chores that we had put off while working on the kitchen. Now all the garden beds are tidied up for the winter, and all the root vegetables are mulched and ready for cold weather. Part of the clean up included harvesting some beets and beet greens that are not under plastic. I also picked the last radishes, which have done admirably in the cold without any protection. Add some last snippets of broccoli and a carrot, and you have a tasty winter salad: We were a little disappointed to discover that most of the arugula and lettuce in the greenhouse tunnels was limp and mushy from the wide temperature fluctuations over the past month, so this salad is mostly beet greens taken when we pulled the beets for storage. (There's a tiny bit of arugula from a volunteer patch, but not much.) That makes for a strongly flavored salad, so Kirk balanced it out with a sweet new dressing: Honey Sesame Dressing ...

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade. ~ W. B. Yeats, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” Our own bee-loud glade has fallen silent , but we were able to harvest eight full combs of capped honey: These five we had sitting out on the counter for some time, since dealing with sticky, messy honey in the midst of kitchen chaos would have been difficult. That’s not an ideal situation — without the bees using their wings to maintain the proper humidity, the honey thickens and will eventually crystalize.  But over the past several days we’ve been working to get the honey out of the comb (though you can see in the photo above that we’ve been cutting off pieces to use as needed, for a cup of tea or to drizzle in an apple pie, for example).  To deal with the honey properly, we finally cut the comb off the...

As I alluded to ever-so-briefly in my previous post , our bee colony has collapsed. Through October they seemed to be doing fine, but when I checked in on a warm day earlier this month, it was eerily quiet. No bees at all at the entrance, and no humming of activity.  I opened the hive to find lots of gorgeous combs of capped honey, but no bees at all. No living ones, anyway. There were a few dead ones on the floor of the hive, and that was it. Thousands of bees had simply vanished into thin air.  Later we went through the hive to take some photos to send to our bee mentor for some insight on what could have happened to the colony. Here's what we found: Lots of comb that should have brood cells (baby bees in the comb) had nothing at all. The cells at the top are capped honey for winter, but the ones at the bottom have only a very spotty brood pattern (the parts that look like closed dots in the honeycomb). There are no eggs in the comb either, a sign that our q...

Last weekend when we checked the beehive, we saw that one of the combs was stuck to the bottom of the hive. We're thinking it must have fallen and then the bees reconnected it to the bar, but we had to remove it to keep them building comb in good, straight lines. So we cut it off of the box and decided to get a closer look once we closed up the hive: The part that Kirk is cutting off is actually the bottom of the comb. The solid yellow around the side and bottom (or shorter) edge is capped brood: cells that have bee larvae inside. Sorry, bees.  Here's one hatching. Can you see her little eyes looking straight up at you? (She's dead center in the photo.) To the left is more capped brood; to the right is uncapped honey, nectar, and bee bread .  Kirk cut off the brood sections because we are just not into eating bee larvae (yet). Fascinating cross section makes for an awesome biology project, though: In each cell you can see a semi-formed baby bee. T...

Yesterday Anita from Beverly Bees came by to check our hive. We suited up and got to work.  If you remember, we have a top bar hive . It's basically a big trapezoidal box with bars running across the top. The bees build honeycomb to hang from each bar. Our job is to check each bar to make sure they are building their comb nice and straight. We started from the back: You can tell by the pure white color of the beeswax comb that this is brand new, and it's still quite soft. Kirk easily spotted the queen on this one, though she crawled around to the back by the time I snapped the picture. The bees are building this to fill the box, and the queen is laying eggs in each little hole. Further down the line of bars, toward the hive entrance, there are completed combs that are much sturdier, which allows us to flip them upside down: This comb is nice and straight, and you can see that it has taken on the shape of the box. The part that looks solid yellow is whe...

For the last ten days, we've been in the land of influenza. Well, one of us has, anyway: There's just not much to be done about the flu except to stay in bed (with or without a cat to keep you company). Trouble is, this flu came with a really terrible cough, which would keep the patient awake, making all that rest a lot harder to get. Of course we have regular cough medicine, and our children prefer its sugary "grape" flavor to my homemade cough syrup. The adults, on the other hand, are psyched about our new, all-natural cough syrup. It's based on a recipe I found here , but I also added turmeric. ( Turmeric milk is a traditional cold remedy in India , so the turmeric here gives this cough syrup an extra little boost.) The acidic vinegar cuts through phlegm, and the honey coats and soothes an irritated throat. The cayenne has lots of capsaicin, which blocks pain receptors and stops the tickle, and the ginger and turmeric are antiseptics with usefu...

Today I was home with the boy child, taking walks in crunchy autumn leaves, exercising my democratic rights and privileges, and puttering around the house. Said puttering included making a couple new bars of soap.  The past several batches I've made have been variations on my original oatmeal bars , but I'm getting a little tired of those. The idea was that they would exfoliate, and they work to a degree, but not quite as much as I had hoped. When I say "exfoliate," I mean "scrub the bejeezus out of our very thick, incomparably effective sunscreen to try to get rid of it." And oatmeal soap is just a little too gentle for that. Next summer I'll work on some kind of all-natural super scrub, but for now, the exfoliation isn't so necessary. My lotion has pretty effectively solved wintertime dry skin, so this time I'm going with a non-scrubbing, gentle herbal soap. Enter the herbs I dried over the summer , comfrey and calendula:  I...

Remember my homemade face scrub ? I've been using it for over a month now, and (once I got used to it) I love it. There's a bit of trick to getting just the right amount on your fingertips, and massaging it gently at first, so it doesn't just slip off your hand in a big glob. It also helps to start with a dry face, so the scrub can get a grip on your skin. There is a bit of finesse involved, but the results are really worth it. I haven't had any of my occasional PMS-induced chin breakouts since I started using it, and it's not at all drying, which makes it great for winter. It's a winner! Turns out that Tiegan wasn't a huge fan, though. I can understand that – as I mentioned, there's a learning curve, and a 10-year old is likely to be more easily frustrated by it. Also, a 10-year old's gorgeous skin barely needs and exfoliation anyway, so I started looking for a less scrubby alternative for her. After some internet research, I decided on this D...