Cherry Time!

At this time of year it's always interesting to see who (or what) can get to the cherries first!
We have had a few days away and not thought that there would be any cherries ripening yet. But when we walked up to check the moth trap a couple of mornings ago the birds were already feasting on the slightly under ripe cherries.

And this is the problem- the birds take them before they are ripe so picking them early means they don't ripen at all, the tree is now too big to net so it's a bit of face off!

So, over a period of a couple of days we have picked all the ripe cherries we could safely reach, leaving the others to the birds. We still rescued about 11lbs and faced the delicious task of deciding how to consume them!
Our go to recipe is always a clafoutis, a firm favourite now whenever there are cherries to be had but a more recent recipe is a delicious cake passed on from daughter Rebecca from the cookbook "Honey and Co" by Itamar Srulovich.

Cherry, Pistachio and Coconut Cake

100g sugar, plus 20g for the topping
90g light brown sugar
180g ground almonds
30g ground pistachios
45g desiccated coconut
50g self raising flour
a pinch of salt
1 tsp ground mahleb
150g melted butter
3 eggs
300g cherries
50g roughly chopped pistachios for the topping

Heat the oven to 170 degrees (fan oven).

I use an 8 inch square cake tin with a loose bottom for this but the recipe suggests a 22cm round tin.

Mahleb is the ground up kernel of a cherry and not that easy to get hold of but I used a mixture of almond extract and vanilla extract which apparently gives an acceptable alternative.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, pour over the melted butter and mix in the eggs and extracts. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and  smooth the top.

Remove the stones from the cherries- we have a handy gadget to do this but you can just cut them and use your fingers, as there can be a fair bit of juice it's good to do this over the cake batter so the juice goes into the mix.

Put the cherries on top of the cake mix and sprinkle with the sugar and chopped pistachios.

Bake for about 40 minutes, turning it after about 20 minutes. check the mixture is golden and firm to the touch and allow to cool in the tin before removing from the tin.
I have frozen the cake in slices and it seems fine after thawing.

A delicious cake, very easy to make, that has become a favourite with us!

Shetland Bumblebee

Recently we were lucky enough to spend a week on the Shetland Isles. We had been before about 12 years ago and had a great time. This time it was slightly later in the year but we still hoped to see the birds and wildlife that the islands are famous for.
Having become more conscious of the impact farming, especially grazing has had on the countryside it made a real impact on me that the landscape in these islands is completely shaped by the sheep that are found almost everywhere. The result of this is very little diversity in the way of wildflowers and so the resulting insect life, in particular bumble bees. The nature in Shetland website lists only 4 species found today in the islands and although the weather is probably a factor to limit the number of species, sightings of any pollinators were few and far between.
Nature in Shetland suggest the decline in bumblebees over the past decade may be due to agricultural practices, it is difficult to see how this can be reversed if agricultural practice does not change to improved enrich the range of plants allowed to regenerate.

Shetland Bumblebee

The "Shetland Bumblebee" occurs only in shetland and the Western Isles.

www.nature-shetland.co.uk/brc/bees.htm

There and Back Again! Drone layer or Laying Workers?

OK so it's been nearly 3 years since my last post but I have not been idle!
Mostly the absence has been because of technology issues and not being bothered to sort them out, but now hopefully they may be resolved and I'm going to give it another go!

Bee news- over the last 3 years I have been desensitised to bee stings and we started keeping bees again in the autumn of 2014, in a lovely new apiary at Cordwood thanks to the generosity of Jill, Rob, Judith and Roger.  We had a good year in 2015 with no swarms and collected some lovely, welcome honey.

This winter we successfully got 3 colonies through the winter, having sold one, we had 2 good colonies to start this year with.

Now, in June, we have artificially swarmed these and should have 2 colonies with last year's (blue) queens and 2 making new queens (white).

However, as usual the bees don't always do what they should and in one of the blue queen's hive we found this.....

This new frame has all drone brood - as well as being a real mess!

The only way this happens is if the queen becomes a drone layer- which means she cannot fertilise her eggs any more so they are all male (drones) or if for some reason the queen fails completely and the workers begin to develop their ovaries and lay eggs. If this happens the worker eggs are all unfertilised as well so will be drones!

It's a bit complicated and disappointing to find as it usually means the hive is not going to survive1

If the brood is still orderly and neat then the queen is usually to blame but in this case the brood is random and as one beekeeper friend commented a bit like "the craters of the moon". The culprit here is in all probability laying workers. As if to confirm it we also found brood in the supers (where the queen would not be) and multiple eggs in each cell.

Not very clear but some of these cells have 2 or more eggs!

The solution sounds a bit barbaric but otherwise the hive will just slowly die out.

The advice is to smoke the bees well, take the hive some distance away and having removed all trace of the origin hive on it's site, shake all the bees out.

Smoking the bees encourages them to fill up with honey, so when they fly back the bees in the nearest hive will let them as they are bearing gifts! Apparently laying workers can not fly because of their developed ovaries!

Well the bees were duly shaken out and let in the nearest hive with no fighting- this hive is very full now, so we shall see how it develops from now through the summer!

Beekeeping

On a recent visit to Attingham Park near Shrewsbury we came upon this old way of keeping bees in this bee house- the bees are in Skeps- a traditional woven basket - originally the colony would have been destroyed to collect honey at the end of the season, but here the beekeepers are trying a method using removable combs!


After a slow start to the bee honey bee season here in Notts things don't seem so bad- although I have no bees of my own this year I have been going to the apiary at Woodthorpe Park - things have been more settled than last year and it looks as if there will be a reasonable crop of honey from these urban bees. My injections are going well- no real reactions - so looking good to return to beekeeping in the future.
The bees I passed on are building up well, which is good to hear, this is the photo I took of the yellow queen in that colony before they went to their new home- she is not too clear but you can see the yellow dot that marks her as last year's queen!

In the field of opportunity.......

It's harvest time again!

The strawberry bed yielded a great crop this year - enough for jam and picking for a good 6 weeks with the odd everbearer still giving a few.

Still struggling to find a good setting strawberry jam but used redcurrant juice as last time and a very gentle set- but still lovely with croissants or on scones!

The cherry produced over 7 kilos of fruit- so a mass freezing, sore fingers from stoning and a search for new recipes- clafoutis always a favourite but cherry and almond pudding and hot cherries with cherry brandy and spices was lovely too.

We have had great success with broad beans, french beans are just beginning but onions only mediocre and garlic pretty pathetic again this year.
Potatoes so far- Internation Kidney and Charlotte good yields but Kestral huge potatoes and a good weight - hope these store well for jackets in the winter!

I made Elderflower Cordial again this year , and rather than waste the lemons and limes decided to try marmalade with them after the soaking and draining- what a success- I used a basic recipe and was slightly worried that because all the fruit was there it would produce a bitter result, but I pulped all the fruit in the blender and used that as the starting point, cooking the fruit with water then adding the sugar and boilling until setting point was reached.

Hot Bed

When we demolished the shed we saved as much wood as we could ( don't like to see any waste!) with the intention of making cold frames and raised beds . During the prolonged cold spring we made  a start.

The sides were made from old walls - easy enough to cut to size and the sides of the cold frames just cut through at the angle we wanted the cold frame cover to be.

The covers were simple frames that we covered with reinforced polythene kindly donated by Rob as a by- product of the building of Cordwood . www.sustainablegarden.blogspot.co.uk

April 2013

With what was left we made a " hot bed" - the sides about 2 feet high and filled with a mixture of manure, leaf mould and compost. The idea is to generate heat from below as the contents rot down and the plants get a good boost. We set seed in this bed - salad leaves, herbs, salad onions and beetroot and the results have been great, we have been picking leaves and herbs for nearly a month with plenty more to come.

Hot bed   - April 2013

The cold frames have really helped us get tomatoes, courgettes, squash and other tender plants off to an early start . The other cold frame we have used to plant up squash to see if it helps bring fruiting on earlier; one of the problems we have always had is the short growing and ripening season for squash.So in this bed we have put - Crown Prince, Golden Hubbard and Musquee de Provence, and because they are in a frame I have been checking for female flowers and giving them a helping hand to pollinate- just in case the bees don't find them!

May Sunshine

I know it's a long time since I last (I want to say set pen to paper! ) wrote an entry on the blog, but we haven't been idle in the allotment or garden. The first of May is officially the beginning of summer and the weather rose to the occasion- lovely and sunny although a slightly chilly breeze. After such a cold start to spring I reckon the gardens are about 3 to 4 weeks behind last year. The weather has been so cold there have been hardly any flying insects to pollinate the plants so it's just as well they weren't out sooner.
Our new cordon fruit trees are just beginning to shoot and in the garden the greengages and cherry are flowering; and luckily we seem to have an influx of pollinators -a mixture of bumble bees, solitary bees and other flying insects. This year of course we have no hives in the garden but still have seen some honey bees.

The spring time is my favourite season in the garden, I love to see the fresh new growth and early flowers. This year we are rejuvenating a couple of areas in the garden and have made some changes in the allotment, of which I am aiming to get up to date with soon on the blog!