Far Lands

Three weeks ago we checked our 2 hives and we were not sure we would be taking much honey at all. But three weeks constitutes many bee-hours when there are 60 000 bees or so, possibly more across the 2 hives. The situation on Sunday was much improved. We took 2 frames from the WBC (our new colony which we created earlier this year) and added the porter escapes to the National, our established colony. These are one-way doors which overnight remove most of the bees on the frames in the super. Yesterday, we returned to the National hive and removed 5 really good frames. (The porter escapes had done a good job and only a hundred or so bees remained.) Honey harvesting is a serious business!

Last weekend we kicked (not literally, Lesley) the chicks out of the boiler room and into the Turkey House. During the week I stopped liquidising their feed. Yesterday, I introduced them to the lawn. Two or three are roosting. The book for the male-female ratio is doing brisk business. Please get in touch.

Bilberries or w(h)imberries or whortleberries are the UK's rufty-tufty equivalent of the North American blueberry. You have to collect them yourself, and they're not for the starving hungry. Bilberries grow on wild moorlands, are very small and are difficult to collect in any number. A rake helps. Seriously. At the weekend we met my brother near Llangollen, and went bilberry raking. One drawback with raking: you also rake a lot of other stuff up so processing takes a while.   Scores on the doors: 2 hours of raking, 2 hours of processing, 2.3 kilos of bilberries.   CHICK STOP PRESS *Too smelly for boiler room, now in turkey house.*

Some good news, but really it needs to be a lot warmer if the top fruit's going to ripen well. Top photo shows the espalier ( Cox Self-Fertile ) - showing good growth and in the right directions!   Middle photo is the cordon line - a very disappointing amount of fruit. The apples are Katy .   Bottom photo is a plum ( Marjorie's Seedling ) in the tree nursery. It shows an extraordinary amount of growth - over 5 feet since March (now as tall as me). Behind it are its peers. It will be moved into final position (a cordon on the lawn) in March next year.

I've been trying an experiment with my lawn-mowings. We now have a lot of raised beds for all the fruit trees and they get very weedy and take a long time to de-weed. So, I tried laying the fresh grass cuttings straight on the beds. (Saving time on composting too.) In a few days, they went brown. That was a month ago. Today:- No weeds, no grass, nothing. A (minor) miracle. I'm now going bananas with the technique.   Tell your friends, tell the world! And if you're only reading this to see the chicks . . .