Expect the Unexpected

Sometimes the craziness that is our lives here at Gael Glen Farm still amazes me.  We never know what will happen.

The day started at 5 am with my plan to move the honey supers from the front yard into the house for extraction before the bees typical wake up time.  However, upon lifting the first box of honey (which was over 100 lbs when I removed it from the hive) I knew something was up.  It was as light as a feather because....surprise! There was not a smidgen of honey left in it.  It seems that the bees somehow managed to find a secret way inside the box.  When they were supposed to be vacating the super to return to their home hive leaving the honey behind for me to extract, instead they must have worked madly to truck all that honey home again.  Amazing.  I was totally outsmarted by my bees and I admit absolute and total defeat.  The honey is yours bees.  Enjoy it and please survive the winter.

Our whole 2020 harvest. 
Three measly frames of honey.

With our day unexpectedly freeing up, we turned to other more enjoyable tasks than honey extraction.  Liam and I did some weeding and planted some lettuce, radish and spinach seeds - how could we not?  The empty space in the garden was just calling my name.

We baked some bread.

We infused some white wine vinegar with garlic chive blossoms.

We made our last floral jelly of 2020 - sunflower.  This year we made: dandelion, lilac, peony, rose petal, elderflower, and sunflower jellies.  Not bad, huh?  We will have lots of lovely jelly options for our mid-Winter tea parties.

Ian delivered some of our wares to the North Kanata Pop-Up Market and he and Seamus did a quick run to Cabela's to pick up my brand new Muck boots.  They fit so well and I love them!

Oh, and we chased escapee animals.  So many escapees today.  

The juvenile layer hens escaped into the backyard to mingle with the meat birds.  Thankfully, they did not feast on my vegetable garden so I was not too upset about this.

And, for only the second (and third) time ever in nearly seven years of happily grazing in their paddock, Violet and the lambs breached their perimeter fence (not once but twice) to forage the freshly cut hay and fallen apples on the other side.  The lambs are super docile and come to me easily so it was simple for me to lift them up and over the fence to the correct side.  

"We're on the wrong side?  You don't say."

Violet, on the other hand, is not nearly as docile or accommodating.  Ian, our new across-the-street neighbours, the boys, and I found ourselves chasing her up and down the neighbouring field for close to an hour before Ian managed to wrangle her around the very back of our property and through one of his newly installed gates on our back fence line.  Meanwhile, the farmer cutting the hay in the field and anyone who happened to be driving by must have thought we were nuts.  Many thanks to the neighbours for taking break from their renos to help us with our impromptu sheep chase.  What a way to spend an afternoon! 

 

Yes, that brown speck is Violet.  She ran up and down the
field many, many times with a whole gaggle of us in hot pursuit.

Like I said, life on our farm is full of surprises; some of them good, like...  

This afternoon's rainbow.

And the ONE blackberry we grew this year.

...and others a bit more frustrating.  Our farm family certainly thinks up creative ways to keep us on our toes and we would not have it any other way.