Gates Family Summer Update

Hannah and her cute little "Shadow"

Maia and her cute little "Butterscotch"

"Cheep Cheep"

Well this summer we decided it was time to add and subtract from
our chicken family.
We added 8 new chicks and
eliminated 2 of the
"Old Ladies"
They were not laying as well so instead of
keeping them for pets Jeremy and his
Dad processed 2 of the non productive birds.
The Girls were on vacation so there
wouldnt be any hurt feelings.
They have become quite attatched to
some of them.
They had these named in a matter
of minutes! :)

Jeremy and I Celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary
the end of July.
So just for fun I pulled out my dress.
I still LOVE it after all these years.
It just didn't fit me so well.
It was pretty baggy and
loose but just as pretty as
11 years ago.
Kind of hard to believe it's been so
long.  Time flies when your
having fun!

We like to head to the local "Daybreak" Lake for an evening walk
and feed the giant geese and the new baby ducks.

We have had many fires in Utah this year but a few
of them came a little to close for comfort. This is taken
from our back deck looking South West.
Lightening started this fire.

Here my Very Fit Handsome Man is working on his newest and
greatest project.  We have a great garden, we have
thousands of bees, we have egg laying chickens
what more could we need....right???

A WINDMILL of course!
As of right now the plan is to get power to run the lights
in the chicken shed/coop.
I am so proud of Jeremy and his hard work at
making this work.
He amazes me every day.

What kind of update would this be without a Bee update.
We open the hives (2) every Saturday to see their
progress.
We have prepared a bucket with
cheesecloth and holes
in the lid so that when it's time
to harvest some of that delish
honey we are ready.  So far there are about
2 combs that we will harvest honey from.
We don't want to leave them
without what they will need to
survive through the winter.

This little candle is made from the comb wax
we gather each Saturday.  Some times
the bees connect the comb to places in the
hive that we don't want them building to
SO we gather it and melt it down.
Boy does it smell yumm-o!

Here I am "helping" to hold one of the combs.
Wasn't I SO brave!
"Look Mom NO gloves on those hands!" :)
Ha Ha Ha
I've come to really look forward to opening up the hive to
see what they have been working on durring the week.
We now know where the phrase
"Busy as a Bee"
comes from.
This particular comb is full of honey,
up towards the top of the bar it's about
3 inches thick and weighs about
3lbs if I had to guess.
AMAZING!