Harvesting Honey!!!

About two weeks ago, we harvested honey for the first time!!!  It went great!!!   Harvesting turned out to be a lot easier and less messy than we were expecting.  We are very thankful for how it went and are so pleased at having our very own honey!!!  It is delicious!!!  The difference between it and store bought  honey is amazing!!!  We took quite a few pictures so, I've posted some below.

After washing our buckets and getting our equipment together, we headed out to the hive!

Out at the hive.

 

Brushing the bees off of the frames.

 

Look at all of that capped honey!!!

 

We decided to use a "crush and strain" method.  What you do is just scrape all of the wax and honey off your frame into a bucket and then mash it all together.  Of course, after you do all of that, you'll have to strain it.  In this picture we are scraping the frames off into our bucket.

 

The mashed mixture.

 

Getting ready to dump/scrape the mixture into our straining/filtering buckets.

 

Dumping it in.

 

Scraping...

 

 More scraping!!!

You can see the two buckets stacked on top of each other.  In the top bucket, we had a paint strainer which is what we dumped the honey/wax into.  In the bottom of the bucket, we cut out some 1/2  to 1 inch  holes.   So, the honey strained out of the paint filters, through the holes into the bottom bucket (our bottling bucket).  In the top of our bottling bucket, we had another very small micron filter.  By the time the honey went through the whole process, there wasn't any wax left!!!

Because is wasn't extremely warm, it took a couple of days for the honey to do all of the straining.  It was SO hard to be patient!!!

 

The bottling bucket with our honey!!!

 

Sienna and I had an excited audience as we began to bottle our very first harvest of honey!!!

 

The first jar of the first harvest.

 

Bottling the honey.  Isn't this a neat picture?!

 

 Myself with our honey crop.  We got about 36 pounds of honey off of just one honey super!!!   Considering all of the rain we had during the major nectar flows this year and also that this was our first year to harvest, we were extremely pleased!!!

We also got a little over 5 pounds of wax.  I am looking forward to making candles and lip balm this winter!!!

WANTED and FOUND - The Culprit of the Holes in Our Tomatoes!!!

That's right!!!  Sabrina went out to pick some tomatoes the other day and found what has been putting so many holes in our tomato crop.

 

This huge tomato worm!!!   

A closer look at the culprit and the damage.

Adding To The Apiary...

Last Monday(Labor Day), Daddy, Mr. Evans and I went to pick up some established bee hives!!! We bought them from an older gentleman that has been bee keeping for at least 30 years. He is trying to reduce his apiary because it is too much for him to continue caring for.

Mr. Evans bought 9 hives and we bought 2. It was a little bit of an adventure picking up the hives especially after dark! It went well though and we only came away with a few stings. We actually ended up doing about 180 miles of driving that night- all in a big circle!!!

I inspected my new bees the other day and they seem to be doing well. So, we now have an apiary of three hives!!! :)

 

This is the first location we went to.  It was quite an adventure getting back in here.  The grass/weeds were taller than our car!!!  We thought we were going to get stuck. :)  Unfortunately, you can't really see this from the picture- I wish I would have gotten a better one!

  

Look at all of the bees sitting on the front of the hive!  I think they rode like that all of the way home! 

  

This is the second location we went to.  It was easier to get back into this one, but it was so dark!  I had the job of holding the flashlight.  That is quite an interesting job when it starts attracting all of the bees! :)  I had taken my hat and veil off but quickly decided to put it back on when the bees started flying around and getting stuck in my hair!!!  Thankfully, I actually didn't get stung at all during the whole expedition.  I've gotten use to getting stung on my hands and it doesn't bother me anymore.  But, the face is NOT a pleasant location!!!

 

Finishing up with the loading. 

I didn't get any pictures of us unloading the hives, but it all went great.

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

This is one of our family's favorite bread recipes.  A friend was recently asking for it so, Katelyn, here you go!  

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

Water:               1 and 1/8 cups (if doing it by hand you may want to warm it slightly)

Butter:               4 Tbs. - softened

Honey (or sucanat):   1/3 cup

Dash of salt

About 1 Tbs. Cinnamon (I like to add a little extra! :)

Raisins:              1 cup

Flour:               3 cups (you may need to add more - we used unbleached pure white flour. I've also used whole wheat or a combination of both!)

Yeast:              2 ½ tsp.

Directions: Knead all ingredients together and let rise.  Bake at 350 for about 25 min (it varies you'll just have to check it!). 

I normally make this recipe in the bread machine, but I think you could do it by hand as well - just like any other recipe.

Note: This also makes good rolls.

 

Cochran Chronicles

Greetings!!! Once again, I've fallen terribly be...well... I won't even go there. :) Here is a quick recap of what has been going on in the life of the Cochran family!

July was an interesting month for us. We celebrated daddy's birthday the beginning of the month and then... everyone got sick!!! Unfortunately, daddy became very ill with pneumonia. Shortly after daddy got sick, everyone else (except me) became quite sick as well. Thankfully, no one else got it in their lungs like daddy. It took basically the whole month (plus a little more) for everyone to recover. Everyone is well now.

We have also been staying busy with daily life, animals, work on the property, school, Farmer's Market, OKC Food Coop (we recently started selling our granola and trail mix on there as well and we are quite excited with how well it is going!), trying to lesson our chicken flock some, piano lessons and trying to slow life down a bit too (we'll see how that goes!:).

Shenandoah is growing so fast and already has her first two teeth!!! They are just coming in!!! I was excited to be the first one to discover her very first tooth!!! She is also getting very close to crawling and trying to pull-up too.

Well, there is a quick update. I hope everyone enjoys the new posts below. The Lord is so good!!!

God Bless!
~Savannah

First Lessons In Gravity...

The other day, Seth learned the hard way that what goes up, must come down. :)

He had been helping move some rocks when he stopped to throw some in the air. Unfortunately, he did not get away from the falling rock quick enough and it gave him a pretty good gash on the head.  He came running up to the house with blood streaming down his face and leaving a trail behind him.  Once he was assured that he hadn't lost all of his blood (his greatest distress in the situation :) he calmed right down.  

Daddy and Mommy took him to the ER because we thought he needed stitches, but thankfully, he ended up being just fine without them! 

Random Pictures Of Recent Days...

Our little cowgirl.

Dr. Harrison and Sophie

Mr. Thornton and Margaret


Sayer has recently aged drastically. :)

New Goats!!!

Last week, we had a special surprise. Mr. Good (a friend and very nice neighbor of ours) brought us two new goats!!! After loosing Fawny and Felicity a couple of months ago (a cause of great disappointment and sadness in our home) Mr. Good set about to present us with two new goats without us even knowing. He bought them for us and had them tested and everything!!! Sabrina especially was very excited about this. We named our new goats Sweetie Pie (the black one) and Sue (the brown and white spotted one). They are doing great and getting along well with our other animals. We are excited about being able to breed three goats this fall!


Sabrina and Shane (Mr. Good's helper) getting the new goats out of the trailer.


Leading the goats into their new home.


Pansy checking out the new arrivals.


Our goats.


Mr. Good and Sabrina

Our Landscaping

Here are some long over-due pictures of the landscaping that we did a couple of months ago.  Things are growing well and although we are still trying to finish up a few things, we are quite pleased with how it has turned out so far.  I hope you enjoy the pictures!!!


The side of our house.


Close up.


Another angle.


Yet another view and...


Another!      and...


Another!!!


The plants and mulch we lined our drive with.


Another view down our drive and also the trees that we planted.  (You can see my bee hives in the background!)


Our rose bush.


Our newly re-painted pillars.  We like the burgundy so much better than the green that was previously there!  Don't the flowers match nicely?!


Another view of our front porch.


Our front yard.  (You can see our garden down the hill in the background).


The rock-way and potted plants by our front stairs that lead down our hill.

Water Fun!!!

Several weeks ago, daddy and mommy got this new pool! We have all been enjoying it very much!!! It is one helpful way to escape the unusually hot summer heat we've been having!
As of yet, I do not have any pictures of us in it. But, those will hopefully follow in the near future. For now, here are a few pictures of the evening that we put it together.


Daddy putting our new big pool together.


Stasia being goofy!


My younger siblings enjoyed playing with the little pool and water and such!

"The Heavens Declare The Glory Of God"...

I love taking pictures of the sky. It has so many different variations and is so pretty! Here are a few pictures that I took a couple of weeks ago.


Sun Beams


Evening sky


Storm clouds over the tree tops.

Fourth Of July Pictures

Here are some pictures of how we spent the fourth of July. We had a great day as a family and hope you did too!!!


We went to the Farmer's Market in period dress!!! It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it was raining so everyone had to be inside. But, the Lord blessed our sales and things went very well!


Most of our family (mommy took the picture and Shenandoah was asleep!)


Shenandoah LOVED the watermelon!!!

Each year, our family goes into town for a nice fireworks display that they have there. Below are some pictures of the fireworks as well as a short video clip.










Shenandoah was really fascinated. I think she enjoyed them!


Sayer had been looking forward to seeing the fireworks again ever since last year! For the past couple of months he would ask almost everyday "When will we see the fireworks again?" :)