productive.....

is a nice way to feel at the end of my day.


This morning I met with Karin to talk about needed preparations for the swarming season which is close at hand.  We'll need to put the finishing touches on our 2 new hives, each of which are horizontal Top Bar Hives, one with the dimensions of PJ Chandler 's (The Barefoot Beekeeper) and the other is made by the Golden Mean.  We'll need to come up with more swarm traps, create more Top Bars to replace the frames in our 4 Langstroth hives, decide on areas where we want any new hives and prepare the areas, and weatherproof all newly constructed hives.


After my bee meeting I headed back down to our area where I felled some big leguminous trees for fodder for Eustice.  He really like the legume-trees.  Also cut down some Malokia and Secropia trees for him, this also helped to clear the pasture border a bit more.  Then I harvested a bunch of green and red ti stalks and put the ends in a bucket of water so they'll begin making air roots.  Once they've made little root buds, I'll plant them all throughout Eustice's pasture for snacks.  He loves ti leaves.  A few days ago I moved his pasture borders again, and now our pineapples are safe from his nibbling!  He's doing good, but still impressing us with his Houdini-ness.  He thinks it's so fun to escape and come find us to rub our noses in it, then he gets all excited and prances around and runs in circles and chases us around.  It's quite cute.


After my Ti propagation, I went on a coconut retrieval mission around the neighborhood.  I loaded myself on the scooter and took off looking in papaya fields and on the side of our road for any signs of decent dried coconuts.  Managed to pull together a small load and got it stacked on Ghengis (the Ruckus) and took off for home all saddled up like I was on a camel.  The cocos made a big enough pile that I had to ride with my legs propped up on them, it was pretty comical looking to the cars that passed me. 


I recently bought a pair of $6 headphones from Long's and it has made my scooter adventures even more lovely, as now I can create my own soundtrack as I go.  Plus, I love serenading the trees as I harvest or weed or just scoot by.  My most recent serenades have been comprised of Sherree Chamberlain's album "The Wasp in the Room", which I must say has some very endearing cover art.

Got the cocos back and set them in the carport for Little Fire Ant testing, which consists of smearing p-butter on them and waiting to see if those tiny, orange bugga's show up.  So far, no LFAs. :)


Came home and began preparing to make more of my scrumptious and good-for-you infused, medicinal honeys.  The flavor combos I've made so far are:
~Rosemary & Garlic
~Hawaiian Chili & Yellow Ginger
~Lavender Vanilla Chamomile
~Hamakua Shade-Grown Coffee
~Tangerine Spice:  Tangerine peel, allspice, clove and vanilla bean
Nearly all my ingredients are local and most come from right outside our kitchen.  Local ingredients include: Rosemary, Hawaiian chili, yellow ginger, vanilla bean, Hamakua coffee, tangerine, allspice and of course HONEY.  The honey in this batch is from the August harvest.  It's dark and amber, and luscious.