Day 65

Local Breakfast

Phaedra's ham, coop eggs, home made bread with Four Leaf local flour, & garden spinach, & spring onions.

I am missing cornflakes and other cereals for breakfast, I tend to eat toast for breakfast mostly, or smoothies, or fruit and almonds, on weekends, we often have eggs. Aarod is getting bored with toast, as he tends to eat toast for snacks and lunch. Michael is now regularly using the bread maker, mostly making a loaf a day. I estimate it costs about a dollar a loaf for organic bread. Which is pretty good compared to about $5 -$6 per loaf that we were spending on organic bread from the farmer's market / food co-op, and we were also buying (from the supermarket) Country Life organic loaves from victoria.

Bee Keeping Course

Today I went to a workshop on Bee keeping with Robert Beer. A group of us from the EcoVillage have embarked on a four day course. The last two days have been very interesting and inspiring. I had no idea how complex a bee's life cycle is, or moreover, a bee hive's cycle. Today was practical, after a day of theory yesterday. We held drone bees, looked at frames containing honey and pollen, and identified the queen. There is so much to learn, and I am excited about the possibility of producing our own honey and wax candles here on our farm. Here are our hilarious attempts at getting geared up in protective clothing.

Elizabeth Gloves upBrad Looking like an AstronautClare trying to bee-llydanceCam looking like an arctic explorer.

We were all a little anxious about keeping the bees out of our clothing, but as it turns out, they were very calm and quiet once smoked, and more interested in eating their honey than investigating us. The bees were fascinating to watch and I was not afraid, in fact I was more concerned about not hurting them. The whole experience was a lot of fun. I am looking forward to the next weekend workshop when we will learn to extract the honey.

We can buy local honey at the farmer's market and at the food co-op, but if we are looking to replace all of our sugar with local honey, then it will be much more sustainable and financially viable to make our own.