Baking up a storm

I have always loved to bake. In fact, over the past year or so I have made almost all of the bread that my family uses – sandwich bread, rolls, etc. I do love to bake sweets as well, and I was reminded just before Christmas just how much fun it is to create a pretty, tasty cake when I was asked to help out with the annual 4-H bake sale.

I did a little brainstorming, and – I’ll confess – a bit of taste testing with my mom. We came up with this little idea that would let us have fun baking while also spreading the calorie load around a bit.

I have added a page here on the Crack of Dawn Farms site with the menu of offerings and my contact information. I am making these to order, and I should be able to get cakes out once or twice a week. Just call or email to let me know what you need and when, and we can work out the details.

Raw Materials – ready for frosting

Enjoy!

Adding a new hive body

We have had the bees in place for 10 days now. There are 2 hives, and each started out with 5 active frames from a nuc (nucleus colony). We put 3 empty frames with just wax foundation for them to start building.

Today, I went out to see how they have been putting all that sugar water to use.

Busy days on the farm for sure… until next time!

Adding an Apiary

ID-100167764My kids love honey.

That, my friends, is one of the greatest understatements ever. My youngest would eat it on anything and everything. PB&H is his go-to sandwich.

Truth be known, we adults love it, too 🙂

We all have heard that local honey is best. True that. It is also expensive. A budget buster at the rate we go through it.

I have some good friends who started keeping honeybees last year, and I always thought it would work out well… maybe we could barter eggs for honey once their honey production was up.

Then I realized I would need a LOT more chickens (and they’d need a LOT more bees) in order for that to be anywhere near a workable solution.

Jokingly, I mentioned to Jerry that we should get our own bees and teach the kids how to be beekeepers and raise our own honey.

Funny how a joke can turn. Continue reading Adding an Apiary