A sweet bumper harvest!
The best harvest of all at the moment is that of the honey. Our bees have been very busy this year and we have extracted close to 90kg (200lbs) of it! Even better, we also left around 14kg (30lb) of honey in each of the hives to help sustain the bees over winter. This seems an astonishing amount considering that each individual worker bee only makes around one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her short life. The minute we bring the honey laden frames into the kitchen for extraction, everything we touch becomes sticky and it is good now to have the crop safely in jars with all trace of stickiness cleaned away. It is all about the harvest at the moment. After a slow start to the vegetable growing season, mainly because I was delayed in seed sowing, we are now reaping rewards. Climbing French beans have been prolific and now runner beans are providing ample picking. Tomatoes are still ripening and the sweetcorn is absolutely delicious. Carrots have been disappointing though. Germination of the seeds was very patchy. I am going to throw out all my half used packets of carrot seed and buy fresh next year, so hopefully this will give better results. Autumn fruiting raspberries are also ripening and provide a tasty treat on the way to the chicken run each morning and evening. The young apple trees in the orchard are bearing their first eagerly awaited crop and the crab apple trees are absolutely laden with fruit. The other main jobs in the garden at the moment have involved the use of heavy, noisy power tools. The long grass in the orchard has been cut and raked up and the beech hedge forming our boundary with the lane has also been cut.
Tales from a Country Garden 