Busy little hands in the kitchen 2016.

A few snapshots in the kitchen this year...

The last of the beef fat from the freezer for rendering into dripping, October 23rd.

The fat of the land, beef dripping. There's a pot of honey in the photo too, the kitchen was really a mess for a while!

The Tomatoes were neglected in September with many splitting due to lack of water and not being picked regularly! However these Black plum Tomatoes continued to crop brilliantly. The seed came from Irish seed savers many years ago and I grow a couple of plants every year. This year they proved their worth, simply thriving with very little attention, they have good flavour, ideal for passata. We made a last pot of Passata on October 1st with Alfie chopping and arranging the tomatoes in his own particular style!

Berries (from the garden) in everything! Buns to go in the oven on August 18th.


In the midst of shelling peas, several bags for the freezer. July 30th.

Busy little hands love to shell peas, July 10th, and little mouths love to eat peas! ("gobble them up" is the phrase that comes to mind).

Angus makes bread a few times a week and sometimes he has help... Alfie sieving the flour, May 17th.

Little hands busy pulling stalks from parsley leaves.

May 16th.

 
We had a few months of homemade butter this spring and some for the freezer, in the summer I made ice cream with the extra cream instead. April 23rd.

Frittata in the making, A favourite spring dish using 100% homegrown produce.... purple sprouting broccoli, asparagus, eggs (and a little milk/cream) and the first of this years cheese, all ready to go onto the leeks that were sweating in the pan. April 7th.

Yogurt, January 29th, extra creamy on top as this was not long after Amber came into milk.

 Often when I am in the kitchen doing something Alfie will want to help, and I will wash dishes (or take photos!) while he becomes absorbed in the task at hand. Zoe and Tivon are happy when I am out in the garden, then they are free to express themselves in the kitchen without my helpful comments, which they don't find helpful! So no photos of their kitchen adventures.

Beeswax and mead.

Tivon concentrating while spooning crushed honey comb last May.

It might be quicker to pour, but I'm happy if Tivon chooses to do it one spoonful at a time.

Next morning the honey has drained through and it is mostly wax left in the muslin.

As in this photo, I started  to pour the honey into jam jars but I ran out after filling about 50, the remaining honey went into a few gallon Kilner jars. (There were a few of pot fulls).

I found myself with some ivy honey crystallized in the comb in November and after gently melting as much as I could in a bain marie to extract as much honey as I could, I decided that making mead was probably the best option for the rest of it.

As well as the honey and water I added the juice of a lemon. I also simmered several handfuls of crab apples in a little water and added the liquid after straining and cooling.

The demijohn proceeded to bubble profusely for a couple of weeks, in this photo it has just been racked off.

After a few more weeks settling down in the demijohn it is racked off into bottles. I had never tasted mead before, but after leaving it to mature in bottles for a few months I tried it and thought it was excellent.

 With the wax left over after straining the honey I rendered small quantities (about 8oz+ each) of beeswax at a time from different batches of comb. The selection of colours represent the age of comb, with the older comb containing more propolis hence the richer colour. The small quantities are easier to break into pieces for adding specific quantities to recipes. A large solid block of beeswax is hard to cut!

Honey harvest.

 This yielded several pots of honey, a few good pieces of comb honey and a tiny amount of wax. I didn't take any honey last year, (the bees first year here), instead I allowed the colonies to build up (without sugar feeding), all 4 colonies building all their own combs and getting through winter, the bees having started from small numbers last May and June. 

 This year has been very good weather for the bees so far. I have had a few swarms which I have hived to make new colonies and so far I have harvested a little honey from 2 of the parent colonies, the bees will overwinter on their own honey and we will harvest any excess in the late spring.