Harvesting Honey & Meat

     The past month has been too busy for us to post an update to the farm journal.  We harvested the honey from our hives the second weekend of July and then harvested our meat chickens the last weekend of July.  Wow...what a month
     We have 9 hives, but 2 are new this past spring, so we hoped to get honey from the 7 older hives.  Unfortunately 1 of them swarmed early, and 1 experienced beekeeper error!  Ooops!  I put a hive part on backwards. I saw my error in a few weeks, but I am afraid the error really impeded their honey making.  So we only got honey from 5 hives.  These hives really produced though and gave us over 150 pounds.  All 9 hives look really healthy.  We are busy extracting, jarring and selling the honey.  We are only selling our honey in one pound glass jars.  I wanted to sell some squeeze bears, but couldn't find any that were BPA free. It is already time to think of next year...how many bees to order and what supplies we will need.  
     We harvested our meat birds.  They were the Cornish Rock XXX that we had raised from chicks since mid April 2014. We originally had 20, but one died from the heat earlier in the month.  We gave them a good life and thanked them for their meat as we humanely harvested them.  We have to look at our meat birds as a crop.  We get them as chicks, and like seeds, we plant them and tend them and when they are ready, we harvest the crop.  We got 145 pounds of organic, soy free meat for our big freezer.  A lot of expense and hard work, but very satisfying to know exactly what meat we will be eating for the next year.  
     Our 17 month old layers will be molting soon and will stop laying until they grow in their new feathers.  Our new layers, which we have been raising since April 2014, will start to lay in September and we will be receiving 20 new layers mid September.  These new chicks won't start laying until around January 2015.  We finished the new brooding area and these new chicks will be the first group to enjoy it! 
      The vegetable and flower gardens have been phenomenal this year due to the chicken manure.  I had always read that a well fed, healthy vegetable garden could withstand insects and disease...this was my first year to see it! The bugs were there, but the plants didn't care!  The flowers were gorgeous and we have frozen and canned so much produce that we are exhausted...but very happy! :)  The veggie tunnel worked so well...all the climbing veggies loved it, and it was so easy to harvest.  The beans, cukes and tomatoes were hanging within easy reach from the sides and ceiling of the wire tunnel.  I was finally able to successfully raise the heirloom tomato, Mortgage Lifter.  It really likes to climb!  What big beautiful tomatoes!  We are starting a new garden behind the big coop and will definitely be putting a "tunnel" there too.  I will be posting the tunnel building details in the "Naturally Interesting" section as soon as I find time.  Time to start thinking of planting those fall veggie seeds!  Gardening is so rewarding & fun!