The Flaming Kitchen

Capturing a Swarm

I am not a bee keeper. But, I am a new bbee keeper. Learning. Under the instruction of reading books and watching YouTube videos, I am learning. Slowly.

It is amazing how much a little experience, mixed with some instruction, can open your eyes to the simplicity of small tasks.

In years gone past we would have let them swarm, and fly away. But after attempting to capture two swarms, and then finally getting the third, this was the arrival and subsequent capture of the forth swarm of the season. Much easier than the previous attempts – so either we are learning, or the bees are getting simpler.

This video is long. It was the entire capture, with some boring bits removed. Excellent background watching.

Feeling Down

It has been difficult this growing season to stay motivated about my peppers.

We planted early, and the success was not evident. The peppers were small and yellow. No growth. Even after six weeks of planted time. The only good news was that the snails didn’t eat them.

In this video I sing a sad song about watching the short term progress, rather than the larger picture.

Of course, this was in September. Things are a little better now.

Orange and Poppy Seed Cake

Print Recipe

Orange and Poppy Seed Cake

Prep Time20 mins

Cook Time30 mins

Total Time50 mins

Servings: 8 cats just joking, people

Ingredients

150 g butter soft
1 tbsp orange rind grated
2/3 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cup SF Flour
1/4 cup milk
2 tbsp poppy seeds for a poppy seed cake
1 1/2 tbsp orange juice

Instructions

heat oven 180 C
beat butter, rind, sugar, eggs, flour, milk in bowl with electric mixer till smooth.
Spread in pan
Bake about 30 min

Icing

combine icing sugar and juice is a small bowl. Mix until smooth

Fruit from February

Time passes by. Second by second things are changing. Imperceptible, but still passing us by. When we stop and look back, we see how things have changed; see what has passed by our eyes without noticing.

Growing food is much like that. Day by day we check the plants have water, and light. We pull weeds to give them the best opportunity to grow.

One day there are flowers. Then fruit. As the months go past, we reap a harvest.

Over the past few days we have been pulling fruits from our plants. Still too soon to be ripe, but we have enough to experiment with.

The Whirlwind of Sheep

First Reaction to the Mayhem of Sheep

A few years ago we got two baby lambs for our home farm. They were cute, and fun, and everyone loved having them around. As they have grown larger, they have fallen out of favour with everyone… knocking over fences, chasing and head-butting children, eating plants. Really, they have been sheep and acting as they should – we just want them to behave differently.

A few days ago they pushed in through an unfinished fence and wreaked mayhem on the Pepper Pen. Pulling plants from the ground, munching to tops off of peppers, pulling a dill plant out with all the roots. It was a sad day.

Fixing the Problems

The plants they were carelessly ripped from the ground we have replanted, or replaced. The soil has been damp after a good rain, and the weather is warm – we are expecting the plants to take root and keep on growing.

Some Survivors Alongside the Recently Topped

The peppers that were “topped” by the sheep will stay in the ground. Previous experience will show that they will continue to grow, but maybe in a different shape.

The sheep also” topped” some of our first peppers. They are growing well now, considering we moved them well out of the way.

Peppers that were once eaten by the sheep are growing well…

We will give the peppers longer to grow, and smile when we have a nice seasoning to go with our roast lamb.

The Flaming Blog

The Flaming Kitchen started as an idea many years ago. It has sat on the shelf for these past years, existing in word and thought only.

Recently we started to farm some peppers, and the idea became viable to bring off the shelf, and bring it into the world.