Joy in the Kitchen!

  Our little garden is producing!  We didn't plant most of it until Father's Day weekend due to weather and crazy schedules but it is on now!   When we moved to this home, we left a large garden plot and a slightly warmer climate.  Gardening really helped us feed our large family on a budget.  I remember several years canning close to 100 quarts of green beans, freezing 50-75 3 cup packages of corn, canning several quarts of tomatoes and up to 30 quarts of salsa in a year.  Whew!  I had several children at home so along with many mouths to feed, we had many hands to help!   The garden at our current home has a small garden plot with several raised beds on the side.  This is enough for just a few of us and I don't miss the busy days of canning until the wee hours of the morning when the house was cooler.   We had a fabulous red raspberry crop this year.  I have no idea how many we ate fresh (as we picked), but we weigh...

Early this spring, my friend called asking for help!  A swarm of bees had landed in her yard and were collecting on the base of her lilac bush.  I called my niece, whose husband (Andrew) is a beekeeper and he was here in an hour or so.   He brought all of the equipment needed for capturing a swarm.  He was excited when he saw how large this swarm was!  A prime swarm!  HUGE!   I wish I'd videoed him scooping the bees up by handfuls and shaking them into their new beehive home.  Pretty cool from a distance! We have sev eral apple tr ees, pea r, plum trees and a fairly large garden.  Alfalfa fields are nearby as well so our little hive of bees have plenty of blossoms to stay busy all summer.  Andrew told me bees gather nectar in a 5 mile radius of their hive.   When the hive was fully capped off (the bees had filled all their little honey holes and sealed them), Andrew and his wife Cassie brought their honey separat...