Sally's GF3 thread

[Sally PB]

I'm switching my kombucha brew from sugar to honey, since I have my own honey coming in now. I wanted to do this before, but at $48 a gallon for honey, versus $10 for 10 pound bag of organic sugar... I couldn't justify the expense.

There is also the issue of the bacteria in the SCOBY. The "mother" of the brew; it stands for Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast. The bacteria in honey and the bacteria in the SCOBY don't "play well" together, so you have to retrain the SCOBY to work with honey. This takes several brews, using more honey and less sugar each time.

This past Friday was the 3rd brewing with honey. I'm at about half honey now. Since honey is sweeter than sugar, it's not a one-to-one ratio. I'm kind of making it up as I go.

The SCOBY is still doing its thing. The new layer that grew was a little thinner than usual, so I didn't swap as much sugar for honey this time as I had planned. In other words, I'm going more slowly and it'll take 5 or 6 brews to go to all honey, instead of the 4 that I thought it would.

Yes, I notice a difference in taste. It wasn't as sweet, so I'm rethinking the amount of honey this will take. Usually it is one cup of sugar to one gallon of tea. I had thought it would be about 5/8 cup of honey to one gallon, but it might be 3/4 cup.

If I'm right on the math, the cup of sugar was about 50¢ but the 3/4 cup of honey would be $2.25, if I had to buy my honey from Ed, my "bee guy."

Don't get me started on what our first harvest of honey cost. That's like asking how much the first egg from your chickens cost. I could have bought at least 25 gallons of honey from Ed for what I estimate we've spent on bees so far.

 

[cavemanrich]

I could have bought at least 25 gallons of honey from Ed for what I estimate we've spent on bees so far.

But the Bee adventure is PRICELESS

 

[Sally PB]

This is our third summer with bees. We really expected to get honey last year, and were VERY disappointed when there was nothing. Before we got our harvest, before I knew there was honey in the hive, I asked hubby if we should give up on keeping bees. He said he thought we were doing a good thing by adding pollinators to the area. I said, then that seals it, and we keep going, honey or not.

But just like playing sports, it's a lot more fun to play when you win than when you lose.

 

[cavemanrich]

But just like playing sports, it's a lot more fun to play when you win than when you lose.

Winning isn't everything. IT'S THE ONLY THING

 

[saysfaa]

Thank y'all for the recommendations. I ended up making pollo guisado. I didn't think I had enough time left to make chicken salad. Chicken salad is really good with dried tart cherries, though.

Gazpacho sounded scary, I don't think I've ever eaten it much less made it. Better to try something that new-to-me sometime when I care less if I mess it up.

Fruit salad made the menu plan and then I ran out of time. We ate the watermelon and persian melons for breakfast. And steel-cut oats with dried tart cherries and walnuts.

I'm going to try the zucchini boats tonight. My guests have left but it dh and I will enjoy them. I wonder if eggplant boats would be good too? Our two eggplant plants are very productive. They are the small, slim kind that don't need to be peeled or salted or anything like that.

 

[fuzzi]

Winter squash boats, too?

 

[ShrekDawg]

Winning isn't everything. IT'S THE ONLY THING

“If you ain’t first, you’re last.”

 

[drstratton]

I got my bone density score... My bones are less dense than they were 3 years ago when I had my last test. -1.5, for anyone who knows what that means.

I checked my calcium supplement... it's a lot less than I thought it was. So I'm going to take more of it and look for a better one. Same with the the Vitamin D. I cover up when I go outside (long pants, long sleeves, hat), so I don't get much vitamin D from the sun. But I don't have much sun damage to my skin, either.

So, more walking! More calcium, more vitamin D. I work out on the elliptical, but even though that's a weight bearing exercise, it's very low impact. I like that, as it's easy on the knees.

But it's the impact that helps build stronger bones. So I'm going to skip on our walks. Not skip the walk, skip on the walk. 50 steps times 3 walks. I don't jog, I don't run, but I can skip.

I used to do something called "the Sally hop" down the hall at work. (I didn't name it that; a coworker did, and it stuck.) It's sort of a sideways skip. I bet that's a good bone building exercise too.

Sounds like a good plan. Make sure you're also taking magnesium. It's needed to help your body absorb calcium. And make sure you have fats with your vitamin D, it's fat soluble.

 

[drstratton]

Can't wait to hear how your honey harvest went today!

 

[Sally PB]

Sigh. No honey. We found two frames FULL of honey. The rest of the frames were about 1/3-1/2 capped. When we looked a couple weeks ago, we thought two weeks, and we'll be pulling frames. Since set up/clean up is quite a bit of work, we decided not to do it for just two frames. We run 8 frame boxes, to keep the weight more manageable.

The goldenrod is juuuuust starting to bloom. I still think we'll be getting another honey harvest before the end of the season.

But there was good news. We saw a lot of bees bringing in a lot of pollen. And the other hive had frame after frame of gorgeous brood pattern, with an arch of honey/pollen at the top. Any honey they make they will get to keep, as it's their first year.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned that we have two hives. Hubby named the queen of the first hive "Charlotte," so those are the Charlatans. (Feel free to roll your eyes.) And the second hive is The Newbees.

We think two hives is enough for us to manage, and if they both give us honey, we will have plenty. We don't plan to sell much, if any, so it's just for us to use and give away.