this weekend

we made a batch of carrot cupcakes.  Had to use up the leftover cream cheese frosting from her birthday cake.  No way was I letting that sweetness go to waste.  The cupcakes came out a bit dry though.  Probably should have just taken care of the excess with a spoon.

We also made big, fluffy, syrupy belgian waffles.  And the perfect meatloaf.  Don't make that much, but when we do it doesn't last long.  This time I mixed mostly ground beef with a bit of sausage (both from the nearby farmer that we buy most of our meat from), some oats, bread crumbs, a splash or so of whole milk, garlic powder, oregano, a sizable pinch of nutmeg, and some sauteed onions, carrots and celery.  Mmm-mmm.  Mostly I just shared all of that so I could come back here and see what I used when next the meatloaf mood strikes.

Mike scavenged some more wood to split and add to our growing pile of wood for next winter.  This winter has been so oddly mild and we are left with quite a lot of already seasoned wood in the wood shed.  Of course I'm hoping we'll need it for a while longer.  Mike brought the old woodstove that he bought years ago at an auction out of the shed and built a fire in it using a length of ceramic chimney liner as a flue.  To see if it (the rigged up flue) would work.  It did.  It (the woodstove) even has just the right size and shape removable plate on top for placing a metal pan.  For boiling down sap someday.  Someday.  We have big dreams.  Urban sugarbush type dreams.  We'll see.  We did yard work.  Quite a bit.  Raking and shoveling and compost pile turning and mixing and organizing.  Garden planning.  We burned the large pile of wood and pallets that had grown so tall next to our fire pit.  We daydreamed about building our outdoor bread/pizza oven fire pit combination.  We found a couple small salamanders overwintering under an old log next to the fire.  That log went unburned, of course.

The windows were left open for hours, allowing the fresh air to creep inside and fill the house with that which only fresh air can.  Our toes were let out to enjoy the sunshine.

One of our hens, Margaret, our best layer before she moulted months ago, finally started laying again and her eggs are enormous.  Like won't-fit-into-the-carton enormous.  They dwarf the other hens' eggs.  I've accepted that Pearl just isn't going to lay for us.  Ever.  But I'm okay with 4 hens and 3 eggs.

Our bees, sadly, are no longer.  We are starting again in a few months, this time with 2 hives.  We are unsure whether the problem was something with the queen or the hive being ruthlessly robbed despite out attempts to discourage that.   It was disappointing, but we learned some good lessons and are eager to start over soon.  We've left the frames complete with the already drawn out honeycomb, so as to give the next batch a head start.  The frames are in our chest freezer right now.  Freezing them is supposed to kill some of the potential problem causing pathogens such as foulbrood.  Actually, all but 2 of the frames are in the freezer.  The other two are sitting on our counter perched at an angle over a stockpot, cappings scraped off and honey oozing slowly into the pot.  It's not much.  But it's delicious.  Amazingly so.  It's a bit sad, really.  They worked so hard and we have just this little bit of honey to show for their season of foraging and pollinating.  Thanks, girls~ we will most certainly enjoy the fruits of your labor, and we will be the best stewards that we can be to the next inhabitants of our bee yard.

On another note, naps have returned to our household.  Not every day, but most days.  Not long naps, but I'll take them.