Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Final garden peppers

Last night it got very cold - upper 20s; and it's stayed very chilly today. Milk a little down, just 1 1/2 quarts.

Yesterday picked the last of the peppers outside in the garden; there were a whole lot of "king of the north" on the one plant under the tarps, about 15, probably 10 of them red, and a good many "nardello". Also picked the persimmon crop (about 5). Tarped the winter veggies, the fall broccoli has heads peeking out. It's getting dark very early now.

Monday, November 19, 2007

Beeswax

Pretty warm and sunny for this time of year; if I knew where the sunoven was, we could have used that to make bread. But at night, it rained heavily; snow on the mountains behind us. We made progress on sheet mulching the new beds for the field crops (a.k.a the corn beds).

Finally got to separating beeswax, which means a lot of heating jars of wax in the microwave, trying to pass this hot wax through filters, and a huge mess. With a
little plastic mold, I tried to make beeswax votives, but they stuck to the mold
badly and didn' come out very nice looking. They would probably burn just fine.
This year's honey harvest, the part that I hadn't got around to putting into jars, has crystalized already.

For dinner, baked potatoes with broccoli, carrots and an amazing semi-red bell pepper from the greenhouse, topped with feta. And bread.