*the fiber of our lives

Cotton.

160 days frost free needed for growth.

I am not a cotton farmer, I do not know anything at all really about this important crop or how to properly grow it.  What I do know is my dear friend, Jen, gave me some seeds to plant for fun and plant we did.  We have watched these beautiful deep green plants grown and bloom for months now.  The bolls on the plants have been waiting for the right moment to show the beauty that lies within!  Just this past week the bolls started opening to show forth the beautiful white cotton.

Are you raising young children? Are you home educating your children? Or are you just curious like I was about the cotton plants stages of growth? Either way, I have numerous seeds that I would like to share with some of you.  If you are interested in a few seeds please leave me a comment below and I will get in contact with you.  Here is a great link for educators about the cotton crop.

I am going to allow the cotton to dry out nicely and use it as part of our decor somewhere in our home. I will use some of the nicely opened bolls to make some cotton angels and other crafts.

This is the last crop in our summer garden spot. This week the area will be tilled for the fall crops!  We will be planting broccoli, cabbage, beets, onions, late corn, some more tomatoes, and more. Are you planting a fall garden? If so, what are you planning to plant?

*Honey, we got honey!

All of us around Erilyn are whooping and hollering! We couldn't be more excited about beekeeping than we were this afternoon upon returning to the house with two frames of delicious honey!  Eric and I have been planning to check our top supra for possible capped honey. Boy, what a delight it was to open the top board and find fully capped honey cells, our gift was finished.

This week we will replace the top supra with new frames for the busy bees. We were really hopeful that the frames would be ready for harvesting, but somewhat doubtful based on the things we have read about young colonies.  Our hive has grown so much since we got it back in the spring.  When we added the second supra, I felt like we had a good chance on honey in our first season.  By the weekend we will likely have 50lbs of dark amber colored honey.

Eric has become the smoke master.  He has not protective gear on because he is not working directly with the bees.  He is usually close by, but not directly involved so he feels safe enough just wearing a long sleeve shirt.  He is also my eyes and my careful guide when I need it.  I have got the moving slow part down really well.  In fact, when I put get all suited up, I switch into a different gear - SLOW. 

Mr. & Mrs. Beekeepers

Just look at that full frame!!!! Maneuvering this heavy frame with the gloves is not as easy as it might look.  I work carefully, and very meticulously all the while the gloves really make the job harder- perhaps safer, but harder. I am trying to work my BRAVE up enough so I can go to the hive under regular maintenance glove less.  If you look in the background you will see a container with pebbles in it as well as water. This container serves as our bees water source, a safe place for them to get water and not drown in the process.  Before we put this out for the bees we were finding numerous honey bees floating in our pool daily.

Momma was there with a clean plastic garbage bag for us to slip the frame into until we were ready to leave the area.  I had to give the frame several hard shakes to get the bees off. Many flew off, but some were more difficult remove.  I had to lightly flick them off the frame in order to rob them of their precious honey. We ended up with two live bees in the bag, which we set free when we got up to the house when we took the frames out of the bag.

Here we are putting the top board back for now. We still need to harvest the other 8 frames in this supra.  I am so glad we only took two the first time around. It was a lot of work. Exciting. Interesting. Joyful too!  We are an awesome team!   NO stings to day at all!

Let me encourage you - if you don't already keep bees, look into starting a colony next spring!  We have no idea what we are doing and we are harvesting our first supra of honey just 4 months after getting our hive started.  Mind you, we are NOT taking the surplus food supply that our sweet bees will need to weather the fall and winter months, but the other supra. The bees are keeping busy these days most likely with the blooms on the many, many Crepe Myrtles all around our neighbors property as well as a few on our property.

When we opened the top board on the hive we found 15 to 20 (visible to us) Hive Beetles.  We saw these little beetles skittering around and had no idea what they were or why they were there. Upon a bit of research, we found that these critters can be little to great harm based on the strength of the hive. Either way I will be paying Mr. Bundrick a visit tomorrow to get something to take care of the beetles that are known to be deadly to Florida bee hives. We don't want to take any chances.

We did harvest the honey in our spacious kitchen, um.... I think every surface in that kitchen was covered with sweet honey and wax.  With this having been our first time in claiming and harvesting honey, we were totally inexperienced in every step even though we had read everything "bee" that we could get our hands on. 

Here momma is helping scrap the honey off of the frame into a pot with as strainer in place. 

We ended up with about 10lbs of honey from two frames!  If the rest of the frames go this well, we will end up with about 50 lbs of honey this year!  This will help balance out the cost of investment made earlier this spring to get us started in keeping bees.

Stay tuned for more updates on our "Erilyn Honey Harvest Summer 2011".  (all photo credits go to my nephew Skyler, he did a great job didn't he!?)

*another WIP getting completed

WOOT! I have another WIP (work in progress) getting completed this week! This particular quilt top has been finished for a year or more now and I am thrilled to finally be setting it in for completion!  Just this weekend Eric spoke who this was to go to, so with that I am finishing it up to get it on it's way to it's new home. I can hardly wait! 

This quilt is made using one of Deb Tuckers rulers, the Tucker Trimmer, which is supposed to make the pinwheel quilt pattern process more precise.  I have used several of Deb's rulers and would recommend them to other quilters.

I will be sure and post more photos once the project is completed.  Have a great weekend!

*trip down memory lane

This past week I was moving some things around in my sewing studio and relocated some of my photo's (that are still waiting to be scrap booked), I found myself taking a walk down memory lane.   As I started opening the boxes of photos, some cropped and some not, I found myself slowly sitting down on the sofa and spending much time pouring over the memories that each photo holds for me.  Many thoughts were prompted by seeing each photo.  I am so grateful that we can capture images and have them to view at a later date, especially since my memory isn't the greatest.

This photo was taken in Pennsylvania and obviously is not a Christmas photo, but it is one of the first family shots in the beginning of our family.  This is the first trip, out of womb that Robby took to Gettysburg Battlefield!  When I was 5 or 6 months pregnant, Eric took me up to   took me on a hike to the top of  "Little Round Top" or it may have been "Big Round Top".  I cannot remember which one specifically, but I can assure you that it matters not, the simple fact that I was hiking up a rocky hilly terrain while pregnant with our precious first born. He has been there many times since and climbed the rocky trails for himself, and scaled Devil's Den many times over!  We hope one day to take our grands there as well, much of the family history lies in this area and we hope to keep it alive in the generations to come.

This one is my favorite. It was taken about 4 or 5 years ago, the last "Christmas photo op" in our NC home. Robby moved away shortly after this and our next group photo was taken on the Gulf of Mexico.

Isn't this the sweetest picture you have ever seen? I love that Henry is looking up at  his great grandmother with great delight. The Lord planted a sweetness in Henry's heart for older people at a very young age.  I am so grateful that my kids have had the opportunity to live life with grandparents, and great grandparents intertwined along the way.

This is Robby and Great Grandma Sanders, I don't think these were taken on the same trip, but you can see how both of our boys treasure family.  Going to see Great Grandma Sanders was always a trip we looked forward to as a family.  These are of course not Christmas group photo's but they were too sweet not to share.

Go ahead, open those scrap books and look at days gone by; open your photo boxes and sit a while!

*what I love about you

This post really is written to my boy, Henry!  What I love about you:  I love that when I pick you up from the airport from an almost three week trip, that you notice my purse and say, "It looks like a Coach." Then you say,  "But, yeah. I see the LC, it is a Liz Claiborne."  Love it!   I love that you are excited to get home to see your dog. I love that you are excited to get home and see how much the baby rabbits have grown since  you saw them last. I love it that you walk in and notice the changes that have been made in the rooms of our home -and that you approve!  I love the constant chatter that we had on the long drive back home from the airport even though you were dog tired from the whole flying adventure.  Some thing else that I love about you is that you take little to no time at all to connect to people, to make meaningful relationships.  You now have a new family of friends in Colorado.  Seeing how much you appreciate me finishing up your quilt for you was something sweet too!  But what I love most about you, is the fact that you are home!

Oh, yeah. I love that your teeth all came in practically perfect own their own, there fore saving us thousands of dollars in orthodontic care. A few people have naturally straight teeth that fit together perfectly, I love that you are one of them.

Yep, he loved the finished quilt!

*poop in the coop

This entry has nothing at all to do with poop, I just read an article from Mother Earth News a few days ago entitled, "Is there poop in your coop?" Well duh! Yeah. Anyway.  No poop  here, just a chicken! An adorable chicken with endless possibilities.

I think I like this little green button best for the eye on this particular chicken. What do you think?

I have this quilt I am working on, have been working on for a year now (sigh) and I have decided to make it whimsical instead of a more formal Celtic braid. 

I searched through my folders of quilt projects that I have removed from magazines over the years. I found this!  The templates for Spring Chickens!   I am excited about making various chickens for this quilt out of many different funky fabrics.

Not to mention the cuteness of a variety of button eyes.  I was at a thrift store today and found this container of buttons for - wait, get ready - $3.99.  Isn't that awesome?! There were 5 other containers of buttons, but I couldn't justify the need to buy all of them.  But I couldn't help but think of the thrifty young or older person who must have cut these from clothing with a future project in mind. 

I know this Kaleidoscope Quilt doesn't really lend to chickens too much, but I am rebel. So, there ya have it.

It will have chickens. Many chickens. Or maybe just a few.

Oh, just in case you are wondering. I FINISHED Henry's Crazy Turning Twenty quilt! Well almost,  I only have just the binding to finish up tomorrow -  I will be sure and let you know how he likes it.



This entry was shared at Deborah Jean's Dandelion House.