Fall Harvesting

We were a little slack on the garden this year, but did manage a small crop of yummies.

Me with the carrots. They were pretty tiny (these are the big ones!)


The tomotoes. We had a bumper crop this year, which was funny given we didn't plant any. We had oodles of them which came up as volunteers from spreading out our compost on the garden.


One of the few apples that actually grew on either of our 2 trees.

The "haul"

Chanterelles (I think) I found on a hike. Could not get a postive ID, so didn't risk eating them, despite the fact they looked quite yummy.

Kessa and the kids kept a garden at Gramp's farm in Cawston. They brought home a bunch of corn, tomotoes, peppers, onions.


Prepping some tomotoe sauce for canning.


We are still working our way through drying up boxes of apples.

Getting the Bees Ready for Winter

Time to get the mason bees in for the winter. The idea is to clean them up (and get rid of any mites) and put them in the fridge until spring.

The inside of the nest box. The "mason" part comes from the work they do with dirt separating each cocoon. You can see the mites in the box and surrounding the cocoons.

Separating the cocoons from the box.

Wasps had invaded the box. There were about 8 or so that had made there way in. Didn't notice them until I pulled one of the trays apart. Luckily it is pretty cold out, so they were pretty groggy. The wasps get in and eat the cocoons.


We washed, soaked, cleaned and rinsed the cocoons.

Then we dried them off and put them in a box and into the fridge. Overall we started the season with 20 bees. There were about 50 in the nest, but a few were hit by the wasps as well as the mites. We ended up with a little over 40 for next year.