OMG It's May (Not Ready)

It's May & I am planting things, as well as buying fresh local produce at the farmer's market. Wonderful, right? Well, yes, but it also means that I am feeling GUILTY that I still have vegetables frozen and stored from last year. I am on a mad dash, or at least a motivated saunter, to eat what is left.


I planned to make a quiche this weekend and noticed I still have bags of shredded zucchini in the freezer. Shredded zucchini quiche... why not? I decided to add half of a fleshy heirloom tomato that I had not finished, plus some of the tiny garlic that I had pulled out from the garden and some fresh basil from the plants I have not put outside yet. Add shredded provolone and feta (because those are the cheeses I had on hand), and suddenly I had an Italian-style quiche. For the custard I used a basic 3 eggs, 1 cup of milk, 3 tablespoons of flour, and a dash each of salt and dry mustard (45 minutes at 375F). It was delicious!

Before & after:

And here's what I did last week with the last of the acorn squash. Stuffed acorn squash is one of my favorite things in the world. I had fresh herbs from the garden already and it was delicious--the squash was still very sweet. I was so impressed they lasted the whole winter.

A few more squash and a little more shredded zucchini to go. I should make muffins.

Honey Harvest Time

It is September, and that means the days are feeling obviously shorter in Montana. The sun seems lower in the sky, and the nights are definitely colder (even if the days have still been pretty darn hot!). To beekeepers, all of that together means that it is time to harvest honey before it is too cold for the bees and too cold for the honey to flow easily.

We always had top-bar hives, so I can appreciate the sentiments of this blogger on the crush and strain method. Sometimes it is laborious, and I always find myself wondering if switching to traditional Langstorth hives make more sense just for the extraction ease. I still don't think so, but many others do. For those considering what kind of hives to use in the future, compare the crush and strain method with this basic "traditional" explanation, eHow Guide to Honey Extraction.

Any thoughts from other keepers? Extraction methods that work well for you? I am still waiting for the library to call and tell me the new edition of The Beekeeper's Handbook (4th Edition, 2011) is there for me. It is getting excellent reviews, so I eagerly anticipate great improvements over the now pretty outdated 3rd Edition (1998). In particular, the absence of colony collapse in the 3rd edition makes it clear that it is missing some info.