Needs Must as The Devil Drives

It's raining heavily now. On the morning of the 18th of January! The gas heater is pumping out warm air at a big tub of honey in front of it, honey I extracted yesterday after taking a few boxes of combs from the bees on Saturday. I tipped a bucket of honey through the fine strainer last night. It was difficult to get it through so I'm keeping this one warm while my rinsed out straining cloth dries off.

Summer cold snaps are not unusual here in southern Victoria, and the rain is most welcome. Huit dropped off a trailer and ute load of plants in big pots yesterday, for me to look after while his new house behind the supermarket is built over the next six months. Canna lillies, tree ferns, maples, lilacs, a gingko, are amongst a wide range with which Huit hopes start his new garden. He and Wilma sold their 15 acres after 38 years and vacate this week, to a house they are renting from a friend in Bayswater. They plan to go away a bit in their caravan and  do trip to Holland and Canada in May. I won't have to water Huit's plants, or mine, for a few days now, nd the water tanks are full and the vegie garden lush.

I would have liked to get some honey off the bees earlier, say a month or so ago. Not that there was much there, which I knew from a quick inspection, and which was probably the base reason for my lack of action, but had I done it earlier, less of it would have been candied. Candied honey wo'nt come out. It hasn't been a good honey season, the weather's been up and down and the bees have been scrappy when I've had a look. Not from a distance this year have I looked across to the beehives and seen heavy flight with honey laden workers returning heavy with good loads. Nor have I caught the sweet scent of ripening honey in my nostrils in the evenings when near the hives.

So it was a weekend of work cleaning out my shed and setting it up as a honey house, working through the bees on Saturday before the change, then extracting, now clean up, all for little result. Maybe 50kgs in total. There might be another extract in February, but I wouldn't expect much. So it goes sometimes. Maybe next year will be a 'biggee'. In hope, I resolve to get the bees in good nick in the autumn, replace crook boxes and paint spare material, buy new frames etc in readiness, but I doubt it'll happen. There's too much else to keep me busy.

I've been busy since some weeks before Christmas, driven by necessity, without a day off for personal pursuits, except for Christmas day itself. I don't mind admitting it, I'm tired. The effort to spend the weekend mucking about with bees and honey took some mental strength, knowing I'm so far behind with work at the farm and at home, and there's always things to do in Nobelius Park (in my spare?time).

For some reason the wholesalers we work with don't stop or slow down for a few weeks after Christmas like they used to. Christmas Day was a Friday and they were back as normal on the Monday, wanting their orders a day early that week because New Year's Day, also a Friday, was a holiday (for them). We say "how high" when they say "jump" as we paid the farm insurance in November, which rises every year and cleans us out, and have to get the rates together by February, as well as all the usual on going expenses.

My old friend John Barelds used to say, regularly, "It's a great life if you don't weaken." It's true. And we've been so lucky with the rain this year. Maybe next year there'll be a bumper crop of blossom and foliage at the farm and a bumper crop of honey.

I worked a bit with my friend Mal over the last two weeks in his garden. Mal, in his seventies and recovering from recent heart attacks, threw himself at the landscaping while Pat was away. He was for five years a commercial salmon fisherman off the west coast off Scotland. When I suggested he take a breather, he told me how when he went home to take up the licence, an old fisherman in his eighties, Hamish McGlynn, said to him, "If you give me a pound I'll give you my cobble, and teach you how to row it in the Ocean." A cobble is a large wooden rowing boat used to set nets. They went out week after week, sometimes in enormous swells, with Mal working the heavy oars by himself while Hamish shouted instructions. Mal said once his arms needed a breather. Hamish said, "There'll be plenty of rest when you're in your grave, laddie."