Back to Basic Living

The weather has kept us from getting a lot accomplished outside on the homestead, but it sure has allowed us to make some headway in getting the inside of the house painted. By “we”, I mean Bernie. But I’m sure you knew that already. Today Bernie worked on our little sitting room. He removed the strips between the drywall last week, and he’s been working on getting those areas taped and mudded. Today he sanded it all down and attempted to mud over it again, but the mud was at the end of the bucket and getting rather gritty with old dried mud that kept falling in from the sides of the bucket. That makes mudding darn near impossible. He was not in a good mood when I checked on him around noon. I walked into the room to find it, and him, completely covered in drywall dust from all the sanding. He was totally white from being covered in dry wall dust, holding a mud knife full of gritty mud, cursing under his breath, and looking somewhere between a rabid dog and a crazed serial killer. I knew better than to say anything. I gave him a big hug and as I patted his back a huge plume of drywall dust erupted from his shirt. I wanted to laugh. But I knew better. I just said “Maybe you can quit for the day and wait until you buy more mud.” He mumbled something as I left the room, but I didn’t ask him to repeat it.

Sunday Tex, Charlotte, and Bobo came out to visit for the day. It was one of the warmest days we have had in a while. So the men decided to go outside and grunt and do manly things, while Charlotte, Bobo, and I decided to whip up a batch of soap. I’ve been wanting to try my hand at a batch of honeycomb soap I’ve seen pictures of, and since Charlotte and Bobo seemed game, I decided it was time. Charlotte and I lined my soap mold with bubble wrap, whipped up the soap, and poured it into the mold. I cut it this morning and I’m pretty pleased. It’s made with honey, and scented with Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey:

Elvis had me up at 4:30 this morning. Although he’s rarely awake, he can not stand to have me sleeping when his eyes are actually opened. He yowled and yowled until I finally gave up and joined him. I logged into work at 5:00AM, and Elvis curled up on the desk next to my mouse and fell asleep. I wanted to scream “YOWL” and wake him up, but I didn’t have the heart.

By the way, Bernie is in a much better mood tonight after his mudding experience. He sanded a bit more, and everything looks really nice. He’ll get some new mud tomorrow and get this finished up. It’s very rare for him to be in a bad mood lately. And when it does happen, it doesn’t last very long. After 20+ years of marriage, I’ve learned to keep my mouth mostly shut when it does though. I am, after all, a pretty darn good wife.

Bee Free,
Penny

I know y’all think I’m kidding, but I really do receive a lot of email pointing out any mistakes I make in my blogs or simply commenting on what a dufus I can be. In all honesty, I know that it is done in jest or with a sincere effort to be helpful, and being the good natured person I am, I take it how it was intended.

After my last post, my dear sister wrote to inform me I had made three spelling/grammar errors in my blog. No “Hey - great blog. Oh by the way you misspelled something” just “I found three errors in your blog”. Thanks, sis. I fixed them.

And then here’s the love letter My Dear John sent me:

“If that dentist isn’t any better at drawing I don’t think he’b b my first choice for removing a fin .

Either that U ain’t much better at drawing then he is”

I love you too, My Dear John. (Note to sister - the spelling errors are his, not mine)

And speaking of being a critic, here’s your chance to critique the latest soap I made. It’s quite a bit different than any I’ve made before and it didn’t turn out exactly as I had envisioned, but I think it’s OK. I’d just love to hear what you have to say about it. It’s honey scented with a chocolate center and chocolate shavings on top. I call it “Bee My Honey” - being as it’s for Valentine’s day and all.

Here’s a close up of one with the heart in it:

These bars are larger than I usually make. They measure about 3 and 1/2 inches wide by 3 and 1/2 inches tall (not including the shavings). So what do y’all think? I was a little disappointed in the shavings. I cut them with a carrot peeler and I think they are a little too short and a little too thin.

We’re heading to Richmond for Lobby Day weekend tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll be fine when I get there, but I’m kind of dreading it right now. Going to Richmond means I have to leave our homestead for a few days. I don’t like leaving our homestead. But I also don’t like the legislature being in session and not being aware of where I stand on things that many of them tend to take lightly - my pesky little rights, for example. So we’re heading to Richmond until Monday.

Until then, keep those emails coming! Let me know what you think of the soap. I’ll answer when we return.

Bee Free,
Penny

PS - I do love to get your emails. There is also a comment feature to each blog entry if you are interested in sharing what you have to say with the blogosphere. (Note to sister - blogosphere does not show up in the dictionary)

Well, this has been a weekend full of just about everything. To make a long story short….

I got a lot of good stuff accomplished. I made two nice batches of cold processed soap - an Orange Cranberry Holiday soap and a Honey Oatmeal soap. Both turned out really nice and full of moisturizing oils. I also made lip balm and filled over 100 tubes. And I started a batch of prison wine.

The bad and the ugly stuff all happened today. We went down to winterize our bee hives and found that two of them had died within the past month. When I say “died”, I mean deader than a door nail. We were so shocked and disappointed. There were fine last month when we robbed honey and fine two months ago when the Dept. of Ag. guy came out to inspect them. I wrote all about it on The Bee Buzz if you are interested in reading about it. We are now down to three hives - half of what we started with this year. I could just cry.

So, in a nutshell, that was our weekend. I suppose we always have to take the good with the bad. Being out here on our homestead makes even the worse day a little more tolerable. We have so much to be thankful for that it’s really hard to throw a pity party when little things go wrong.

On the upside, while we were working in the apiary we had a couple neighbor ladies from down the road stop by. They were both very friendly and we stood and talked to them quite a while. They told us of a man down the road that also raises bees, and they’re going to hook us up with him. One of them owns the chicken farm across the street with her husband and she said they’ll certainly work out something with us so we can get chicken poop for fertilizer! The other one said her husband rides a motorcycle and they’d love to ride with us sometime.

There’s always a silver lining - even when you have to peel back a few layers to find it!

Bee Free,
Penny

The past couple weeks have been very busy here on the homestead. Between moving, house guests, a biker event, and making soap, bath gels, and bath salts, we’ve been happily realizing our dream of living on this beautiful homestead.

I’ve had two businesses agree to sell my home made bath products and they seem quite excited about it. I made a big batch of oatmeal honey bar soap last week and set it on the rack to cure for the next six weeks or so. I’m pretty excited about this recipe, as I came up with it all on my own and attempted to make a very moisturizing, lathery soap - and I used the honey from our hives. We’ll see how it turns out in a few weeks…..

I hope to have a page up on The Bee Buzz website soon to sell my products in the next few weeks. I’ll let y’all know when I do that.

Bernie still doesn’t really feel that he’s quit work. Probably because he’s working so much around here. He gets up early and gets busy right away. It amazes me how much he’s accomplished in the past two weeks. I have noticed a big difference in him though. He’s much more relaxed and layed back - almost to the point of annoyance. I mean he’s always been fairly calm, but now he doesn’t seem to get riled about much of anything around here. If I take off on a rant about what a mess the house is with this move, he volunteers to stay home the next day and clean it. When I got worried about one of the cats not acting right, he told me to make an appointment and he took her in to the vet. He’s never taken an animal to the vet without me. He HATES taking cats to the vet! At least the “old” Bernie hated it. The “new” Bernie just loaded her up and took off. He even does the dishes now without me saying a word. And he puts them away when they are dry. Weird. It is down right weird. But I do think I can get used to this.

The bees seem to be doing really well, although there is another hive we are now concerned about. We’ll take it apart next weekend and be sure the queen is ok. I hope this cool weather is to blame for the inactivity in that hive. We’ll find out this weekend.

Life is good on the homestead. And it only gets better and better.

Bee Free,
Penny

We’re really enjoying the feeling of being on our homestead permanently. My Dear John wrote to tell me that this euphoric feeling will pass as soon as the burden of responsibility takes hold - but I have news for you, My Dear John. As much as I know you are absolutely right, you are not going to rain on my parade! I am going to take advantage of this feeling for as long as I can convince it to last.

We robbed honey from the bees yesterday and ended up with 77 pints! We are quite thrilled about that. I can not describe the flavor it adds to a cup of coffee. Possitively exquisite. I wrote all about it on The Bee Buzz blog and even put up a few pictures. Check it out!

Eddie and Gigi came out this morning and spent the whole day helping us get this place ready to start moving stuff from our house in town into it. It was a full day job. Bernie and I are pack-rats and you’d be amazed what we can collect in a year. At any rate, we’re all set to start moving tomorrow. Thanks a million Eddie and Gigi! Afterwards Bernie grilled us some burger and dogs over an oak wood fire. We eat good on the homestead.

That’s it for now from the homestead. Check out The Bee Buzz blog and think about getting your own hives. They are very little trouble, a simple joy to watch, give you plenty of honey to enjoy, and are so necessary for plant pollination. You’d have a difficult time not falling in love with them.

Bee Free!

Penny

We arrived this weekend to find our spare hive parts torn apart and strewn around. Dadgum bears! I wrote about it and put some pictures up on The Bee Buzz. Today we did an inspection of the apiary and found that someone had been messing around the electric fence. I really hate to give bears a bad name, but there is no question it was a bear that wreaked havoc with that fence. The ground wire was still attached, but hanging and most of the insulator posts were broken - undoubtedly from the pressure of some large butt animal hanging on or tearing at the electric wire.

These bears have about ceased being cute. They may want to talk to the mice around here. I declared war on those little rodents and I won!! I am now officially declaring war on these bears. It is about time for us to start robbing honey and I’ll be darned if we’ll share it with bears.

On the upside, the girls are doing great! They are buzzing happily about. In fact, several of them are spending a great deal of time up here cleaning up the mess the bear made. I just love these little bees - they are so darn efficient. And cute as little buttons!

We mowed today - early. It was 90 degrees by noon. Then we went into town to get some items to repair the electric fence around the apiary and to hang out in some free air conditioning for a while. We came home and I made some nice bath salts that I’m giving for gifts. Then Bernie got his oak burning grill fired up and we grilled some corn, burgers, dogs, and ribs. Man - that’s some good eating there.

Tomorrow we’ll repair the apiary fence and open up our weak hive to see how it’s doing. We have 7 supers ready to rob right now. We’ll get on that in the next weekend or two.

Bee Free,
Penny

As I mentioned in my last post, I made some beeswax lip balm last weekend. I’ll get some pictures up on the website soon. It turned out quite nicely, if I do say so myself. In fact, of the three people I’ve given some to so far, two of them reacted quite positively. One even suggested I could get rich selling it. Needless to say, THAT person will be receiving future home made gifts from me. Probably she’ll be the proud recipient of some home-made soap, but that little jewel isn’t quite cured enough to be a gift yet.

We’ve established how much I enjoy the whole obligatory gift giving notion, but there are times when I do feel obligated to give a gift - and even times when the spirit just moves me to do so. And because of this, I feel it only fair that I should tell you how I expect you will react when you are the blessed soul that recieves a home-made gift from me.

Gushing is completely acceptable. Proclaiming me The Queen of All Things Home-Made is not only acceptable, but somewhat expected. Doing these simple little things will insure that: 1) I will not hate you for all eternity and 2) you may well be the proud recipient of another slice of heaven made by my own hands.

The truth is, as much as I enjoy making home-made gifts, I do NOT enjoy giving to people who do not appreciate them. In all honesty, that kind of pisses me off. So, lie if you must - but certainly gush over your gift. You will not only receive future home-made gifts from me, but you will insure I will actually speak to you when we cross paths in the future.

You may think I am a little sensitive on this subject. You may be right. But I’m the one making this crap and I’m the one giving it away, so I get to make the rules. So gush away or be dropped from my gift list. And have a nice day.

Bee Free,
Penny

We are having a great weekend on the homestead. It was raining when we arrived, which was a welcome respite from the dry weather we’ve been having. The grass is coming in quite nicely now.

This morning we worked on my trike and corrected a backfire issue is was having by replacing the #1 cylinder spark plug and wire. We tuned her up and she’s running like a top now. Which is really good - because we’re riding in support of Delegate Lingamfelter this week for the Dale City 4th of July parade.

Afterwards, I made a batch of home made soap. I’ve been reading up on this, and it’s something that seemed a little intimidating, but I really wanted to do. If things were to get really bad, I’d like to think I could at least continue with basic hygiene. The ingredients are pretty easy to come by, with the possible exception of lye - and I found a recipe for making my own lye, if it comes down to that. At any rate, I spent an hour or so making soap, and I am pretty excited to see how it turn out. Check it out!

This afternoon we cooked out and grilled some great burgers and bratwurst. Then we walked down to check out the bees. On the way down we stopped by one of the little creeks and saw several of the girls getting a little drink of water. They were darn cute standing on the rocks so their feet didn’t get wet. Wish I’d had my camera. They seem to be doing pretty well. Lots of activity around every hive. We’ll get Bob W. from the Dept. of Agriculture to come out again in a couple of weeks so we can do another thorough hive inspection.

We also noticed on our walk to the hives that we have raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries ripening up. I had a few for dessert as we walked. Hopefully I’ll be able to beat the birds and bears to them in the next couple of weeks and collect enough for a pie - or at the very least for a nice topping on my pancakes!

Oh - and for those of you who have asked, I do believe I reign triumphant over the mice! I haven’t seen a sign of them in the house for several weeks now. Of course it helped that daddy helped me search out every conceivable point of entry for them while he was here and fill it with that expanding foam. And as a side note, I would mention that when you read “expanding” on that foam, it means EXPANDING. That stuff looks alien about 30 minutes after you spray it - and it ain’t budging once it’s in place. I speak from experience.

Bee Free,
Penny

As we headed out to the homestead on Friday night I had a song in my heart. We were going to spend a long weekend at my favorite place on the face of the earth! We had planned to do hive inspections of our six hives and we had our good friends, Tex and Charlotte, planning to come out to spend all day Sunday with us. How could it get any better? I was really happy and really excited.

But as we pulled into the drive way we noticed that one of the hives in the apiary had globs of bees all over the front of it. And only one of the hives - our most active hive. Bees will glob together on the outside of a hive when it is particularly hot weather - but it wasn’t particularly hot weather at that time. We instinctively knew something was not right, and after doing a little checking we absolutely knew we had a little problem. You can read about it on The Bee Buzz Blog and see pictures of us opening the hives on The Bee Buzz Website.

At any rate, we finally made it up to the house and the first thing I did was check the mouse traps. Sure enough we had one. I couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t the same little mouse with attitude that I had met last weekend. No telling I guess. I felt a little bad but then I remembered the conversation that little mouse and I had in kitchen. I told him point blank that I was baiting with peanut butter the next week and I warned him fair and square about coming back inside. So if he screwed up and came back inside, well I guess he picked the wrong kitchen to mess around in this time.

Saturday morning we woke up early to get the mowing out of the way. I was using the push mower in front of the house and Bernie was using the riding mower at the front of the property. After a while I looked up and he was stopped - and had his upper body shoved under the hood of the riding mower. I walked up just as he was pulling dead mice and bedding out of the carburetor. Our riding mower was dead - and we learned it would cost us about $600 to repair the mouse damage!

All weekend I continued to find signs of mice. One scurried into the garage as I came around the corner. I discovered the towels in the guest bathroom were all chewed up and pooped on by mice. I decided enough is enough. I have tried to be nice. I have tried to warn them. It would be obvious to the most casual observer that I am being ignored. I’ve had enough. I declare war on all mice on the face of the planet. Bring it on baby - I’m ready for you!

I have put poisoning in every nook and cranny inside and outside of our home and garage. I HATE using poison. But I am at my wits end. I will not be conquered by a bunch of small, obnoxiously obnoxious rodents. With the aid of mouse traps, peanut butter, and Di-Con, I intend to show those little bastards who is boss.

Lord, please don’t let them win.

Bee Free, Penny