Soap boxes & soap

Soapmaking is Nicole’s project but she doesn’t post anything about it. As this settles into an acquired skill, it’s time to build some proper boxes.

A few two-bys

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 Watch your fingers, arms; pretty much any protuberance

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Assembly required

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Reminiscent of Breaking Bad

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Curing

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8 weeks curing time, I’ll post the soaps when they are done. We’ve been using them for a while now and they are my absolute favorite. They are made with our wax & honey, tallow from friends’ animals and sometimes goat milk. They last forever unlike the shit you buy in stores. Nicole is experimenting with a recipe that does not include coconut oil or olive oil, this way we’ll be able to source all ingredients locally.

Fun fact: soap is thought to have originated on sacrificial altars when rain mixed with ashes and fat made a suspicious substance someone decided to take a shower with. Sacrifices & dumb luck created one of the biggest advancement in chemistry. Maybe we could sacrifice our way to Mars?

Hunting

And the unusual places & times it takes you to.

IMG_0438This is the main field of our land at dusk, a great reward after hiking through rough terrain. I still find many new and interesting places in the forest.

Honey

All in all this has been a pretty weird bee season. Between the swarms, the bear attacks, the drone baby-boom and the lack of reserves; I lamented that no sweetness would be gained from the hard work.

To my good surprise however, the bees finally adjusted to all this and got in a decent amount of honey. It probably helps that they already kicked out all these freeloader males.

Lot of activity but they remained super friendly throughout my extraction of a few frames

I only pulled 6 frames, I want to leave enough food behind for the cold days ahead

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The cells are packed!

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The frames gotten from the Top Bar Hive are all used, the wax is saved for soap & lip balm making.

Sticky business

While the frams of the Langstroth Hive are spun in an extractor in an effort to save the wax (saving bees the costly work of making more wax if you’re only interested in the honey).

 

As I said, not a great year but happy to have gotten some loot

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Looks great, tastes great

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