Tales from a down-shifted family
- Making the most of modest means
The temperatures are dropping, the nights are getting longer and things are coming to an end in the garden. The courgettes are still going but aren’t producing at the rate they were. There’s still plenty of flowers out but it’s time to start tidying things up and preparing for the winter. I cut back lots of...
Not the greatest of honey harvests this year, but at least we got some. About 12lbs in total which is what we usually get from a single hive here in Ynyslas. The good news this year is that we’ve managed to raise at least one new queen. best of all she has come from a...
Saturday morning was a lovely affair. Pretty chilly mind you with the temperature dropping overnight to 10ºC but the morning skies were huge with wispy clouds first thing. We’d put the moth trap out so once Morgan was up we had a quick look through the catch. There was nothing unusual but we haven’t had...
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Tuesday was a scorcher with temperatures up to an annual high of 32.8ºC. Not ideal weather for donning a full hooded bee-suit, wellies and gloves, but that’s what I did. It was the first chance for a while that I’d had to inspect the bees so I suited up and headed down to...
The back (south) side of our house is a long narrow strip of land that has previously housed a couple of small sheds two waterbutts and a has become a bit of a dumping ground. The sheds were storage for gardening and beekeeping equipment. The area did have a raised bed that was never very successful...
The half-term continues and amazingly the weather continues to impress too. Further east in the country people are complaining of the cold, wet, miserable weather, but here in the west it has been gorgeous for ages now. Sunshine from 4 am until the sun sets at around 9:30pm and temperatures up into the 20’s everyday. Wind...
The bees at the bottom of our garden have been doing really well so far this year. They’ve been building up well and were beginning to fill their brood box so we’d been expecting to see signs of swarming. The queen in the colony is fairly old so we were planning on splitting the hive soon...
I can’t quite believe it… Gorgeous sunshine on a Bank Holiday weekend. That can only mean one thing, a busy beach – busier in fact than we’ve ever seen it. Not to worry, we’ll soon have it back to ourselves. It was great weather for the Aber Cycle Fest as well. There were four Sportives...
Morgan was at home ill on Monday, he wasn’t too bad but he was recovering from a nasty bout of diarrhea and sickness on Sunday, so I was housebound too. I did a fair bit of work first thing, then did an hour on the turbo trainer with some VO2max intervals courtesy of ‘Shortoff +1’ from...
May is the month where things really take off in Beekeeping. Colonies should be building up, the queen should be busy laying eggs, brood should be developing and emerging, the honey flow starts as more and more flowers are out and regular inspections become necessary in order to keep on top of swarming. With fertile drones...
Fitness / Technology / Triathlon
Fixing the Altimeter on my Garmin Forerunner 910XT
Monday, March 17th, 2014
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