Started the day with a walk to Ildi & Levente go give them stuff for Andreea. The day before yesterday I was invited to a cherry picking … so yesterday I made my first Vishinitsa (Romanian Tsuika with cherry syrup) … came out very nice. So I sent some to Andreea together with a jar of the leftover cherry-mush – also yummy!
Then I did another coat of paint on the pieces of wood that can now be constructed into the bases for the 6 new solar dehydrators.
Potential rain tomorrow … so I headed out to collect the hay I cut into a pile (keeping for winter, when we use it as bedding for the flock). Since I don’t have a horse & carriage nor a carriage to hook up the car it was either do a lot of walking with hay stuck on the fork … or … I tried to use the wheel-barrow to create larger piles. I think it looked ridiculous but it worked. I managed to load and esily transport in a single wheel-barrow 4 or 5 times the amount I would have been able to carry by fork. A nice pile is standing next to the barn … proud … its my first … cut, turned, collected and piled on my own. I even brushed the sides so that the rain would wash off (though I will probably cover it with a tarp too). It’s already starting to look less impressive as it settles into place.
Took a break, ate, snoozed a bit … then didn’t really feel like working more. So I did some kitchen-cleaning, did my on-the-mat Yoga practice and …
… went outside to check the beehives. Good news is that the pre-emptive split we did about a month ago (there were signs of potential swarming … lots of males and queen cells) looks to have taken well – plenty of activity, brood, construction and honey collection – though still a small family. I hope they are able to get strong enough and collect enough honey to make it through winter. However I have a feeling that the original hive also swarmed. I saw two swarms .. one was just around the time ours should have … so it may have … and the other just today. I couldn’t spot the queen (but I can rarely do that), the hive is still very active, plenty of honey but I also did not see sign of brood. I did see two queen-cells … so … looks like swarming (the colony split and many left with the queen and honey stores to form a new colony) may have happened.
The flock is set for the night, dogs are fed, all the wood from the finishing stand has been brought inside, dinner is cooking … and I am calling it a day.