A Brief (Ha Ha) Update

Good Morning All !
I realise that it is several weeks since I wrote, and that fact has been languishing on my conscience and featuring daily on my to do list (or facienda) for at least the last week. The trouble is that the longer I left it the more there is to write about and the bigger the task appears. I think I shall just have to write an overview today and then write several more in-depth blogs. The weather forecast for tomorrow is for heavy rain, a perfect day for sitting at a computer.

Firstly the soapy business, the Great Yorkshire Show was very hot and very busy and a little like an endurance test, I was there from 7.30 am to 7.30 pm being pleasant and chatty and basically saying the same thing over and over again 'It's all made from beeswax, an amazing natural moisturiser. I am a beekeeper you know' By the end of the day I was sick of the sound of my own voice and pitied my poor neighbours. Like at Bramham I met an amazing bunch of entrepreneurial women and in quiet periods the marquee was almost like a study group or tutorial. The key topic of discussion was Twitter, some were old hands, some just starting (ie me - @Gilliganwood feel free to add me if you are that way inclined) and some were complete novices.  Whilst on the subject of e-marketing my website  www.gilliganwood.com is now open for business. I won't say the website is complete, the pages on the benefits of beeswax are looking very bare and the 'What we've been doing' page is also in need of updating (another candidate for a wet Monday) but should anyone have an urgent need for a beeswax based skin balm they can now buy online.

Secondly the poultry, so much has happened here that they will definitely need a post devoted to them. Una the quail has started laying! She now lives in a hutch with Goldie, Tim being separated, in another hutch, both hutches in urgent need of more females. I saved up Una's eggs and made mini scotch eggs for us to take on a beach picnic. They were very cute and had the huge advantage of not having as much egg as a normal scotch egg. Amelia turned broody so I bought in some fertilised eggs and let her sit on them. She (or I) timed the whole thing really badly as they were due to hatch in the middle of the Great Yorkshire Show, which led me to refuse the opportunity of going for a drink with the words 'No, I must rush home, my eggs are about to hatch', the ladies eyed my dubiously and agreed that they mustn't hinder me. Two out of the five eggs hatched, a black Orpington and a Brahma. If that isn't enough poultry excitement, last Sunday I collected three ex battery hens and brought them home to recuperate and provide me with eggs. More about all of them plus photos, tomorrow.

The bees, also have kept me busy, partly this was my fault as being occupied with the business I left them to their own devices, which inevitably led to swarms. One of the swarms decided to settle at the top of the hawthorn tree that I didn't prune last winter. Remembering how I felt when I was pruning in the winter I asked my neighbour, Dave who is a climber for help. He involved his son, Kris and then in the way of our street, my other neighbour, Nicky came out to offer advice and ended up filming it all on her mobile phone. If possible I shall put this too on the blog in days to come. The next step I have to tackle in beekeeping is harvesting the honey. Last year the weather was so bad that there wasn't any honey to harvest but this year I have at least one full super, undoubtedly there would have been more if I hadn't let them swarm. Although there are ways of extracting honey without using an extractor, my plan is to put my name down to borrow one from the Leeds BBKA.

I'm afraid I have neglected the garden a bit this summer, all the hopes I had for growing my own veg didn't really happen. I have a few potatoes and carrots, a handful of tomatoes and one courgette. There are some onions in the plot but I have neglected them so much that I don't know how they are doing. It has been a reasonable year for fruit though, I picked a pound of red currants and added it to a pound of rhubarb I'd stashed in the freezer earlier and two pounds of bought strawberries and made a surprisingly tasty jam. The gooseberries have reached their peak of ripeness this weekend. I have been watching them carefully as I adore gooseberries that are ripe enough to be sweet whilst still keeping their crunch. I think the only way to achieve this gooseberry perfection is to grow them yourself. Promisingly there are berries on the cranberry bush this year that are looking pretty big, although still green. Hopefully there will be enough for home grown cranberry sauce at Christmas.

There has been work done on the house, as I am totally fed up with how bad my internet connection is and I am going to seek a new provider. However, I have suspicions that although the loss of internet for 12 hours at a time, is the fault of the provider, the extreme slowness of the system is probably down to my wiring. If I am going to let a telephone engineer into my bedroom to sort this out, then I would rather that he did not have to pick his way over sewing machines, spare computers, soap ingredients, wool, clothes and everything thing else that has found a home on my bedroom floor. This tied in nicely with the Mortgage Free in Three's challenge to chuck 100 things in 10 days http://mortgagefreeinthree.com/forum/the-100-things-in-10-days-challenge/  After several days work I can now see vast expanses of floor, I reckon by next weekend I should have it all in shape. Rosie is also busy throwing things out as she is moving into a flat for part of the week from September and is in the process of reassessing her belongings in a what to take, what to leave and I wouldn't wear that again if you paid me mode. So far she has managed three bin bags of clothes to charity shops and several bin bags of rubbish. I think I will write more about Rosie's flat in future if she will let me as it is going to be an interesting challenge to take a  basement  student flat furnished with basic necessities and turn it into something homely and creative on next to nothing. Her eldest sister Maddie has already crocheted a blanket for her. Incidentally since I showed the WIRE ladies, some blue genitalia that Maddie had knitted for a friend, she was ever after referred to as 'your daughter, the obscene knitter'.

Finally on the health front I remember mentioning in January that I needed to drop a size by summer so that I could fit into a wetsuit I'd bought in the sale. Frankly this never happened and by Bramham I had mysteriously gone up a size! I don't know how that happens, I take my eye off things and the weight just rushes on. So I have finally started dieting again and since Bramham have lost a stone. I don't want to say too much about this though, as other people's diets are not interesting. I will just say that having worked in an office where people were always counting points or on red days or green days or having complicated regimes where they couldn't mix carbohydrates and proteins, I am simply cutting back on my food. I do realise however that on a limited intake every calorie has to pull its weight so I am trying to go for healthy foods high in vitamins and minerals.

Phew! I think that is the end of the update. I bet you're glad I went for the brief version with no pictures or involved stories. I will save those for the next few days.