Extracting Honey

Last Sunday, Sept. 18, we extracted our first crop of honey from Danny's bees. We used the meat cooler room in our shop, which is about 5 feet by 12 feet. We warmed everything up to an uncomfortable 90+ degrees to allow the honey to flow.

The picture below is of the "supers" that hold ten frames each.


Danny is holding one of the frames that is full of capped honey.


We are using a capping scratcher to take the wax cappings off the honey.


We borrowed a two frame extractor to fling the honey out of the frames.


Oh! How exciting to see the honey begin to flow. We attribute the very light color to an overabundance of sweet clover this year.


A five gallon bucket filled almost to the brim! About 57 pounds.


Bottling time.


Below are a few pictures of the finished product.

Bobbie--pictures by DJ

Selling Steers and a Fly-in

On the 7th we gathered the steers and put them in the trap.

















The next day we brought them in and (after some excitement) loaded them on the trucks. We drove in to Dickinson to watch the sale. They were lighter than we thought they would be, but they sold well.

On the 9th we loaded up the airplane and headed to the Badlands fly-in at Hot Springs, SD. This is the second time we have attended. We had a lot of fun last year and this year wasn't any different.

I got a couple of pictures of Mt. Rushmore on the way down.


When we arrived, there were already quite a few airplanes there.


Shortly afterwards, several more showed up.


3 RV-10's and an RV-7A.


An RV-10.


An RV-9A


Another RV-10


RV-4


RV-12


RV-9A


RV-8


RV-7A (I think)


A bunch of RVs


A nice RV-10


We also went to a mammoth dig site. It was once a sinkhole that mammoths fell into and couldn't get out. Since they say a picture is worth a thousand words...

DJ

What We've Been Doing

We finished haying a few weeks ago. We ended up with over 2,400 bales for the year. Dad finished hauling bales from across the river, but we still have to haul 1,400 or so bales over on this side of the river. We got all the bales bunched and ready to load on the trailer though.

These pictures were taken three weeks ago.(I forgot to post them)




It has cooled down a bit. Highs in the 70's lows in the 40's. It has been kind of dry recently. The other day we looked out the window and saw this. Evidently the cat was kind of cold.


A couple weeks ago Dad got his wheel loader. It is a John Deere 544H with approximately 1850 hours on it. Dad found it online, drove to Minnesota to look at it, and bought it. One of the main reasons he got it was to plow snow in case we have another bad winter. It is handy for other things like loading rock too.


DJ