You may have noticed that today is, in fact, Monday. Not Saturday.
Saturday night we got home after this magic happened:

I set up a Christmas Shop for the kids at our church. It was filled with donated items from members of our church and I collected stuff for the past month. When the day arrived, we set it up and the kids came with their lists and away we went. People had also donated wrapping materials so we were able to wrap the presents up and send them home with genuine surprises for their families. It was a huge success and made me so happy. By the time everything was taken down and cleaned up and we made it home…I was a wee bit tired. That means our regularly scheduled programming got bumped to today. And oddly enough I’m still tired. Given that I’ll be sharing the most massive holidays of the year here soon…tonight’s post will be short and sweet. It’s just a few updates of how our farm is wrapping up the year.

The cover photo is the dead weeds in the garden, the bare trees in the orchard and the beautifully bleak sky we’ve been enjoying. Our chickens are all grown up and laying a pastel rainbow of tastiness for us. Of course we ended up with a handsome rooster (grr…) but he isn’t nearly as aggressive as other roosters we have owned so we are rolling with it.

Our warm weather fruit tree set a ton of fruit this year (so excited after a few years of minimal production!). I’m pretty sure that’s why it got extra cranky when I tried to bring it inside for the season. It started dropping almost immediately. The weather then cooperated and it’s back outside and holding on to it’s remaining leaves and fruit. I’ve got some tricks to try when the weather gets cold for real and it has to live inside. I love this baby tree and the lemons it grows are amazing.

Last but not least…the bees. Oh my bees. My strong hive started to be a lot less busy, no bees in and out and so I was worried. I got into the hive and realized that most likely what happened is this: The hive was strong enough that it swarmed and half left. The remaining colony was not strong enough to deal with the small hive beetles that had already started attacking. Small hive beetles are a nasty pest that can wipe out hives, which they did. My colony died because it was too late to save the hive. I suddenly had some work to do. We emptied the hives and scraped off all the bad comb. There were a few frames of good honey to be extracted and it’s delicious. We also had the excuse to buy a small extractor. I also tried my hand at working with the wax. I washed all the wax that was scraped off to release the honey. I melted it down and made candles for my sisters for Christmas. Our remaining hive is doing great. That meant I had to get them ready for winter. One of the main things is changing the entrance. A mouse can actually squeeze into the gap in the wood entrance and that makes for a nasty surprise come spring. So I replaced it with a metal entrance with tiny holes that are perfectly bee sized. So far so good…the real test is if we can make it through the winter.