The apple harvest was another success, and lots of work. We filled 3.5 crates and could have filled another but ran out of gas. Well, the last tree was mostly too small to deal with because we didn't thin them out as we should have. This winter will be pruning and getting better prepared for next year's work.
We washed, crushed, and pressed apples over three days to finish with 105 gallons of juice. We canned 45 gallons of straight apple juice and started 60 gallons fermenting in our big carboys. We've been so busy and have had tons going on so canning apple sauce and dehydrating apples didn't happen this year, just too much right now. Hopefully, next year we'll be prepared for some canning and dehydrating. Overall though, it's been another good apple year for us!
This year we harvested 144 lbs of honey from four of our seven hives, which is about 96 pints. It's interesting how different each year's harvest is in quantity, color, and consistency. Three of the hives are new, so we chose not to harvest from them, rather let them build up their colony in prep for next year.
This year's harvest appears runnier than previous years and I wonder if that was influenced by the heavier spring rains, since the sugar content in the pollen dictates the consistency and color of the honey. I found a great video on YouTube that explains why some honey is thicker than others if you're interested.
Personally, I prefer the natural state it comes when we harvest and don't mind if some is runnier than others, so I doubt we'll ever attempt to set the honey by adding a set starter. But never say never, we shall see.
This year we've decided to move our hives, so after we pulled the honey supers I setup two new areas along our southern pasture property line, which is closer to a hazelnut orchard and blackberries. It will be interesting to see how, if any, changes are seen in our honey production or health of the hives. Our old setup was out in the open sun more, so I had some makeshift shade, but the new location has trees. It's a much nicer setup and we're hopeful it will be better.
Once we have all the hives moved it will be time to winterize, quilt boxes and candy boards will go on top of the hives to help them regulate moisture and provide resources for the winter since we took most of their honey stores. We'll post some pics after that's all done.
This year's hay harvest was better than expected, we ended up with 500 bales from the approximate 15 acres we cut and baled. We didn't have the money to fertilize or seed last fall or this spring, so our expectations were low on how much hay we'd actually produce.
The spring rains kept us out of the field a little longer than the past few years, so we didn't start cutting until the 2nd week of June, when normally we'd have been done by then. The extra rain helped with production, but hampered harvest a little as we had a small storm front roll through catching us with bales on the ground still. We had put up about half of our harvest in the barn when the remaining bales in field got rained on. We had to wait a week while the bales dried before we could start bucking again. We turned each bale over by hand to ensure they dried and wouldn't mold on us. Thankfully, the sun cooperated and our bales dried and we got the remainder put up.
We also shared about 50-75 bales with a neighbor that's helped us buck hay in the past. They feed a few steers on their pasture and could use the feed to help with growing out their beef.
Bale Count
John Deere 224WT Baler in action
Another hay season in the books, our baler held up and we managed to buck all the hay off the field. We did lose our hay rake just before finish the last bit of field. One of it's rake arm bears burned out, so now we've got to work on replacing or repairing the rake before next spring. There's always something.
