Category: Blog

As we come towards the end of September we also mark the end of the beekeeping year. The wet Spring was a real challenge to gardeners and beekeepers alike. Plants and insects just seemed to sit and wait for signs of Spring, but they never really came. The impact on pollinators and insects in general has been much reported, with record low numbers of butterflies for example and, from our own experience, a very slow build up of bee colonies. Even when a form of summer arrived it was clear that colonies were struggling. As a result, honey stores are low, to the extent that we are leaving the majority of this year’s honey crop with the bees to ensure they are as strong as possible and ready for the coming winter.

There was however a bright end to the summer season. That came with the fields of beautiful blue borage.

 

Borage honey remains my favourite single crop honey. Visually it is clear and light, most notable when compared to a regular summer season honey. From a taste perspective it has a lovely light tang to it and due to its composition it doesn’t start to set for upwards of a year. I have it available from my shop here.

It may only be the beginning of March, but the bees are taking advantage of every warm day to get out of the hive.

At this time of year there isn’t much available by way of forage for them, but the odd crocus and primrose flower provides vital pollen, as does some of the early tree blossom. The pollen is used by the bees to produce ‘brood food’, fed to the developing bees which will grow into Spring foraging bees.

These early Spring flights are also important to help the bees with the right conditions to clean out the hive.

It is a lovely sight after the long winter months and a true sign of the warm days to come.

 

There are still a few days to order honey in time for Christmas. I am currently using Tracked 48 hour delivery services to post out honey so all should be fine up to the end of this week at least.

Whether you prefer the light delicate flavour of borage honey, seen on the right in the picture below, or the depth of flavour in blossom honey, as on the left, the choice is yours.

Along with local honey being that ‘what can we possibly buy for ……….’ present, it is good to remember the positive side to eating local raw honey. Even NICE, The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence have been issuing guidance for years that good local honey should be the first defence against coughs and colds, rather than antibiotics.

Beekeepers have been saying this for decades.

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This week we have been doing our bit to save a colony of honey bees.

We were asked to take a look at a hive left by someone giving up beekeeping with some people who had decided this was their opportunity to become beekeepers themselves.

Its new owners had done all the right things. They had bought new equipment to replace the old dilapidated hive and had joined the local beekeepers association to learn what to do, hence asking us to help.

We found a very small colony on old comb with a disorganised mix of frame types and an area where they had been left to make comb as they wished, which you can see on the far right of this picture. The bees we found looked healthy.

The problem was that we couldn’t inspect the bees in this wild comb as it was fixed to the box. It was also, of course, where the bees had decided to live.

So what to do?

We cut the ‘wild comb’ out of the box and carefully placed it between some nice new frames in their new, clean hive. As the bees gradually move onto the new comb, the wild comb can be removed. There are only a couple of cups of bees in there, perhaps a few hundred, whereas a full colony should have upwards of 30,000 bees at this time of year. But they have their queen and there is plenty of nectar around so they have a better chance of surviving now.

This picture shows what we found once we had cut the comb free from its old box. There is everything a colony needs to survive, only on a very small scale.

Right in the centre is the queen, with her female worker attendants surrounding her.

You can see the pearly white bee larvae in cells around her. These will pupate and be sealed into the cell by the worker bees, creating the domed ‘biscuit’ coloured cells you can see around her. In a few days time new bees will chew their way out of the capped cells and start to contribute to the future of the colony.

For food, you can see the nectar the bees have recently collected glistening in the cells on the left and bottom third of the picture. This will have the water driven off by the bees fanning it and, with a little magic from the bees, will become honey.

Then you can see a band of differently coloured cells, with a matt finish. This is pollen from different flowers and trees. See my previous post about the number of different pollen types found in our honey. The pollen is protein to the bees and is used to feed the young larvae as they develop.

So, these bees have everything they need. It is going to be an uphill struggle for them to grow from such a small colony. But, they have a good home, a queen, and some keen new beekeepers to look after them. All they need now is nice weather and a bit of luck.

I had an interesting follow up question to my last post about raw honey for hayfever.  It was a simple question, but not so easy to answer. I was asked how an individual can tell if the honey they see on the shelf is pure, raw and unadulterated?

The easy answer might not be quite so correct. You might imagine that if you buy from a ‘man on the market’ then you take your own chances, whereas if you buy from one of the top supermarkets then you are safe in their buyer’s hands. Wrong.

What about price? I just looked on line and you can buy a 12oz jar of honey from a top 5 supermarket for 75p, and that’s typical.  Look closely and it comes from China. Some just say ‘blend of non-UK honey’, but is that a problem?

Well, in 2002 all Chinese honey was banned from Europe because it contained illegal levels of antibiotics. Then in 2010 honey from India was banned by the EU for the presence of antibiotics and lead.

In 2016, countries previously without any significant honey production suddenly became major exporters of honey. Honey from countries like Vietnam was siezed and found to be Chinese honey.

More recently the EU has launched a campaign to fight off adulterated honey flooding the markets. As reported in the Financial Times just a few days ago:
“The drive by 20 member states, led by Slovenia, to tighten regulation against what one official dubbed “honey laundering” follows a European Commission study that found a surge in fraud. Almost half of the honeys surveyed broke EU rules, with ingredients such as sugar syrups, colourings and water, according to findings published last month.”

So, surely if you just buy from your ‘Top 5’ supermarket they will have done all the tests to make sure you have pure 100% honey in that jar you have just purchased for, erm 75p?

Perhaps not if you read this report that nearly half of honey imported into Europe is actually a sugar water mix, with added flavourings and colouring.

A report by the British Beekeepers’ Association in 2022  summarised:

• Between 2000 and 2014 China increased its honey output by 88%, but only increased its hive count by 21%. So where is all that extra ‘honey’ coming from?
• Well, we know where a lot of it ends up. The UK imports 50,000+ tonnes of Chinese honey a year. Take a look at the back of that 75p jar of ‘honey’ and you might start to join up the dots.
• As part of a survey, researchers in India ‘spiked’ honey with varying percentages of sugar syrup (25%, 50% and 75%). They were sent to labs where UK style tests for adulterated honey were carried out. Scarily only the 75% sugar syrup sample failed. This suggests that ‘honey’ with 50% sugar syrup would pass UK tests for ‘pure honey’.

So where does that leave the consumer? Well, the oldest of sayings always hangs true. If the price looks too good to be true then it probably is. If you are happy to take that risk on your 75p jar of honey, or even that reassuringly expensive jar of supermarket honey, first take a look at the back and see where it has come from and ask yourself how sure you are that it is what it claims to be.

So, what do you do?

Buying direct from a beekeeper is the best way to make sure you are getting what you are paying for, as any honey which has passed through a supermarket supply chain, particularly with overseas origins and sold cheaply, might not be quite what it claims to be.

Much has been written about the claimed benefits of raw local honey to help reduce the symptoms of hayfever. Little of it has scientific backing, perhaps because there is nothing to be gained, financially speaking, by the larger pharma companies from doing the work.

This leaves the anecdotal words of those who have suffered from hayfever and found local honey to be beneficial in reducing the affects, whether directly or indirectly. The principle is a simple one. Eat raw, unprocessed honey, which still contains pollen, and in consuming that pollen it finds its way into your mouth/nasal passages etc and helps desentisize you.

My own personal experience was that of a 20 something having steroid injections once a month through the summer just so that I could survive. After a season of taking regular unprocessed honey (teaspoon a day) I found my symptoms reduced to the level where only on the highest of pollen level days did I need an antihistamine tablet. This was a direct trigger to me starting to keep my own bees. Now the only pollen that affects me is when the grasses are in full flow, as bees don’t collect grass pollen, it is wind distributed.

So, if you want to give it a go what should you, or shouldn’t you, do?

Firstly you need untreated (not over-heated, not micro-filtered) raw honey. Overheating breaks the sugar strings and damages the more subtle enzymes and structure of the honey. Micro-filtering removes all particles, including the beneficial pollen. Both of these processes make liquid honey stay liquid for longer, ideal for bulk storage on supermarket shelves.

Whilst our use of ‘Raw’ to describe honey is unregulated, you get the idea and can decide how much processing you want in your honey.

Out of interest, last year we had our late season honey tested and there were 35 different types of pollen. When we jar our honey we mix early and late season, further increasing the range of flowers visited to produce the depth of flavour in the honey and for its pollen content. Ours includes:

• Oil Seed Rape
• Borage
• Bramble
• Turnip
• Purple Viper’s Bugloss
• Cabbage
• Wood Forget-me-not
• White Clover
• Indian Balsam
• Ivy
• Privet
• Mustad
• Sycamore
• Heather
• Broad Bean
• Blackberry
• Weld
• Thistle
• Willow
• Stag’s Horn Sumach
• Bindweed
• Coriander
• Purple Loosestrife
• Bird’s Foot Trefoil

This list surprised even us, our bees are truly busy when it comes to visiting a wide range of flowers and collecting nectar and pollen.

So, after ‘raw and unprocessed’, ‘local’ is a good principle to use when buying honey for hayfever. However, saying that, the important thing is to have honey from an area where the crops and wild flowers etc are similar to your area.  Taking it to the extreme, if you live in Essex and suffer when the oil seed rape is in flower, then pretty much any honey from Essex, or areas with fields of yellow, is going to be the honey to go for, whereas Scottish Heather honey isn’t going to help you much (delicious as it is).

Hope that explanation helps answer some of the questions I always receive at this time of year about honey for hayfever.

 

 

 

OK, I have to admit to being a bit rubbish at this blogging at the moment. Life has been extremely busy, but the bees go on and have had a very busy year, doing their bit for pollination and generously providing some excess honey beyond what they need for their winter stores.

A hot dry summer is a double edged sword. Whilst the bees are out and about in the heat, it isn’t great for honey. The general lack of water and moisture in the soil reduces the amount of nectar produced in flowers and so reduces honey production by the bees. We must also be extra vigilant to provide a water source for the bees as it is essential for their survival.

It didn’t deter the swarming season though. Here’s one after collection from a local village, just about to be rehomed.

September is the end of the beekeeping season. Whilst there are a few flowers left and the bees still fly on warm days, it is the month we remove the last of the excess late season honey and tuck up the bees for their, and our, winter rest.

phew…

 

Well, it’s April and the bees are flying at every opportunity. Whilst pollen and nectar sources are not overly abundant, when the temperature is above 12 degrees or so the bees fly. They do bring back some early pollen, which is a sign of a laying queen, always good to see, and they can use the good weather for a bit of spring cleaning.

The oil seed rape is already coming into flower and within a few weeks will yield nectar and ultimately provide the first honey harvest of the year.

It’s Spring…

 

I have received quite a few enquiries regarding giving my talks via Zoom.

Having dipped my toe in the process over last summer, I have now given quite a number of Zoom talks to WIs, U3As and similar groups.

Given the continuing lockdown and likely extended restrictions, it seems that more groups are now setting up regular Zoom meetings and I am receiving more calls asking about the suitability of my talks for zoom. So I thought it useful to put up a post to let anyone interested know that my talks do work well for Zoom and that I am happy to help out.

It of course means that I am not restricted travel wise so can offer my talks to groups beyond Essex.

Full details of my talks are here.

The talks which work best for zoom are:

• ‘Around the world in 33 years and 7 months’
• ’90 years of Social History Through the Eyes of Mildred, my Austin Seven’
• ‘Blacksmithing: from then to now’

Feel free to contact me for further information.

I know it has been a while since I last posted, but circumstances have conspired against me.

Apart from WordPress introducing a baffling new layout which I find infuriating and leaving me not wanting to fight my way through it to post here, it doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy, especially in relation to the bees.

Below is an amazing picture, where the queen and bees have decided to lay some brood in precisely the shape of a hexagon, within a frame of stored food. This is the shape they use for each cell in their comb, as it is the most efficient use of space. To then use it on a larger scale for the brood pattern is one of those amazing things bees do.

At last it’s time to finish off my weather vane posts. I last left the story with the base of the weather vane in zinc undercoat. I finished off the pig for the ‘wind’ part from plasma cut aluminium and balanced it on a rod with a curly tail end for decoration and balance. This fitted over the vertical part of the main vane stem with a greased ball bearing to allow it to swing easily in the wind.

With the whole assembly screwed in place of the original tatty weather vane, I was quite pleased with the result.

Here is a close up of the pig:

I know I have been remiss in not posting the picture of the finished weather vane, but in the meantime, Happy Xmas to everyone. Be kind.

I am overdue part 2 of my weather vane project, so here goes.

This is of course the main body after zinc undercoating.

it weighs about 3 times as much as the ‘shop bought’ one it replaces and should last a lot more than 3 times as long. I have added some twists and scrolls to the design, partly for strength but mainly for decoration.

I have also added my trademark, and favourite, use of organic scrolls along with industrial rivets in the strapping design to support the vertical post. A quick bit of compass work also confirmed the need for a twist in the post to get it perfectly aligned.

Now to the N, E, S and W indicators and the all important vane itself.

I have been thinking for a while that I need to replace the shop bought weather vane, currently sitting over the garage, with a proper blacksmith made weather vane.

The current weather vane, as seen here, was bought about 20 years ago from a garden centre somewhere long forgotten.

It was chosen more for its subject matter than its overall design, pigs being a favourite of my wife.

However, over recent years the weather has taken its toll and I have had to make a few running repairs to the arms. From a distance it still looks OK, but for a while I have wanted to make a slightly more ornate weather vane before the old one falls apart.

So now I have set the scene, the work began. The one stipulation was that it must have the same basic pig design. I therefore started by taking a photograph of the pig and blowing it up onto aluminium sheet, but more of that to come.

 

The final stage of making our 25th wedding anniversary celebration bench was to make the slats for the seating. These were made from oak, from another plank bought from the National Trust, Ickworth wood fair.

It took quite a bit of cutting and planing to produce the slats, but the results are very pleasing.

Below is a picture of the completed bench in the garden.

Following on from my last post, it was now time to start rebuilding the bench.

The first part I made was the back. I chose a lovely piece of oak, which I had in store for about 3 years since buying it at the Ickworth wood fair. It was felled from the estate, so has provenance, and I have the reassurance that it was part of an active RHS woodland management process.

The design is based on the script we made for our wedding party invitations, with added ribbons curling to the ends. Having cut the plank to the basic shape to fit the cast ends, I blew up the design, then stuck it to the wood before carving through it.

As an added touch I also decided to carve the back of this piece. Hardly anyone will ever see it, but that’s not the point.

I chose a sunflower design. It starts with a simple relief in a plate sized piece before carving out the detail:

 

 

For a while now I have been working on a special bench. A 25th wedding anniversary present to ourselves.

It all started with a chance purchase from one of our favourite junk shops in Hexham in November 2018. The owners were sitting outside the shop having a cup of tea. They were seated on a small Victorian cast end bench, which was for sale.

We had to buy it. 10 minutes later we were ‘feeding’ it into the car.

As we had assumed, all the woodwork was rotten, but the cast ends held much promise, and an opportunity for some wood carving.

Having borrowed some tools from the farm we stay at, the rotten wood was removed so that we could more easily load it into the car with all our other bits and pieces. My starting point was thus set, with an awful lot of work to do:

August brings the last honey extraction of the season and that means time for borage honey extracting. Borage is a beautiful blue flowered herb grown for its oil. It flowers over a very short period and, if you prepare well, and are lucky, your bees will bring it in as a single crop.

It doesn’t always work, but when it does, the honey is crystal clear and has a lovely delicate, light sweet taste, with a slight tang at the end. Its composition also means that it can take a year to set, compared to, for example, oil seed rape honey, which will set in a couple of weeks.

This year we had 100 acres of borage grown near to us, so we made sure we were ready for it. The first stage of honey extracting is to remove the wax capping over the honey, placed there by the bees to store it, and by default showing us that it is ‘ripe’.

The next stage is the extracting process itself. The frames are put into an extractor like the spokes in a wheel and spun. The honey simply flies out from the centrifugal force. No heat, no pressure, nothing unnatural.

The result from a little extra work is pure borage honey.

I jarred it up this morning and you can see the results below.

 

I have held up the jar of borage honey (on the left) against a jar our our regular mixed season honey, so that you can see just how clear it is.

We were lucky, in that 3 of the 13 supers we extracted were pure borage.

Last year we had none, next year who knows, but I love the ‘chase’ to get the purest of single crop honey. The fact that it is also my favourite tasting honey of all is a bonus. Get it while it lasts.

We have always solved the problem of differences in flowering times by planting in pots, which can then be moved around to maximise displays.

However, we now have a more permanent, and artificial, solution.

With electricity by the bucketful being generated by our solar panels, we are making as much use as possible, rather than just feeding it back to the grid.

The latest solution to both the lack of colourful flowers and the need to use excess electricity, has been a lot of experimentation in making fused glass ‘flowers’ in our kiln.

To the left you can see a selection of our, slightly over the top, glass ‘flowers’ in the sleeper garden.

Below are some closer pictures. They certainly don’t resemble any real flower, but that isn’t the point. They are just intended as a bit of fun and an interesting way of adding colour.

 

 

 

it was some time ago that I completed my carved elephant. It was always designed to stand on a glass platform, but the cost of running the glass kiln for a casting run has put me off.

That all changed when we had 25 solar panels installed late last year. They are currently generating around 20kW a day and so a 5 day kiln run using about 35kW doesn’t seem so bad.

I used the lost wax principle. This entailed first carving the base in wax. It was then used to create a mould from plaster and silica, reinforced with wire mesh. The mould is then inverted in the Aga to melt the wax out, leaving a plaster mould ready for the glass.

The glass comes in chunks and is simply placed in the mould at the start of the 5 day cycle, most of which is a very gradual cooling down annealing process to ensure the finished base doesn’t crack.

A few finishing touches and the elephant was glued to the base and stands proud as it was always designed to do:

Well, after a few tantalising glimpses of the different stages and parts of Bertie 2, here he is in his natural habitat.

I finished him with beeswax polish on his shell and a matt wood protection on his legs and head. This has given a nice contrasting sheen and matt finish.

 

As a homage to the original Bertie, here he is having recently woken up for another year.

Wooden Bertie now sits on the mantlepiece. At least I don’t have the worry and responsibility my sister has of looking after the real one.

All I need do is add a bit of polish once a year and not think about lettuce and, always his favourite, cucumber slices.

 

Time for the final part of my Bertie 2 project.

The interesting thing about carving a subject is just how much you study it first. Having had a tortoise in the family for 50 plus years and having him (or her, we still don’t really know) throughout my childhood, only now have I studied the differences between Bertie’s front and rear legs. As you can see from the pictures below, his rear legs are elephant like stumps, whereas his front legs are more flipper like.

The complication for his front legs is that, as a tortoise walks, the flippers bend inwards so his toes point towards each other, easier to see than explain, but it does make carving them quite challenging to get the movement and curves realistic.

Let’s start with the real life versions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then as translated into the carved versions for Bertie 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next will come the final version revealed.

Part 3 of my project to make my own wooden tortoise was to carve Bertie’s head and face.

If it isn’t obvious, this is the real Bertie, my model.

The stages in carving wooden Bertie’s head are shown below.  I was careful to select the angle of grain to give me the best chance of getting the lace grain across his head and shell.

To say it worked a treat is an understatement.

As you can see, the grain flowed down his head to help create the scaly look of his skin.

The second picture shows the outline head shape, with the eye marked on in pencil to make sure that I left enough wood to create the eyeball and lids.

In the third picture you can see the nostrils and form around the eyes roughed out.

I have also left a roll of skin on his neck to give him room to extend his neck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The picture below shows his finished head:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next time I will move on to his legs and claws.

 

 

It’s time for stage 2 of the project to carve my own Bertie. This comes with the news that the real Bertie has just woken up and lives for another year.

Having completed the outline shape of his shell, which revealed the beautiful lace grain of the London Plane wood, the next part of the project was to carve the ‘scales’ in the shell.

Normally this would be a freehand process allowing artistic interpretation. However,  what I am doing is copying a real tortoise, so I had to start by studying all the photographs and copying out all the small nicks and curves from ‘real Bertie’ onto ‘wooden Bertie’.

 

This was then carved out using a simple ‘v’ chisel. As you can see from the first picture, whilst this gives the design, it is hardly realistic. The second picture is about 20 hours work later, where I have added depth to the scales both on their edges and through the undulations over their surfaces. The final picture has the additional texture from the layering in the scales.

All in all about 30 hours work and that doesn’t include the underside.

Come back soon for part 3, for Bertie’s head and face.

 

 

 

 

My latest woodworking project has been the creation of Bertie 2.

I need to explain. Bertie is ‘my’ first pet. Not many people of 50 something can say that their childhood pet is still alive, but mine is. Bertie was/is the family tortoise. He is at least 60 years old. He now lives with my sister.

As we don’t have the real Bertie, I decided that I would make my own wooden version.

As usual I will go through some of the stages in order to get to the finished piece.

Above is the real Bertie. He is about 20cm long, so a small tortoise.

My Bertie began with the choice of wood.

I decided to use London Plane, otherwise known as Lace wood.

It has a lovely grain. I cut it across the heart wood so that the lace look would come out across the shell.

Part 1 was the taking of a number pf pictures by my nephew, with Bertie placed on graph paper so that I could take key measurements.

Stage 1 of the carving process is below. Having selected the orientation to bring out the grain,  I gradually formed the outline shape using my new home made carving stand based on a towing ball.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The final stage of the poppy is of course the instantly recognisable seed head.

I made 2 for the sculpture.

I don’t have any pictures part way through, but they are made from 2 inch tube.

This is pinched top and bottom to create the stem and neck. The top is then flared out and shaped to create the feathered edge and the base pinched in to blend in with the stem.

There was then a rather long process of setting up the sculpture ready for my mum’s 80th birthday party.

There were many elements to arrange, with viewing points from the garden and the house windows. They then all needed setting into the stone.

An hour or so later and all was finished.

 

 

 

 

 

Following on from the first 2 stages of my poppy sculpture, it was time for the most difficult part, making the fully open poppy flower head.

You wouldn’t believe how many different types of poppy exist. I needed to set on a style, so I decided to go for the classic 4 petal design. I added furred edges to bring in my own design style and because I thought they needed a softer edge than the straight steel provided.

Work began with some real poppies, taking them apart, flattening out the petals and then making paper templates. I then used these to mark out the shapes of the 4 petals (which are actually different sizes) and then again my trusty new plasma cutter came into its own.

Shaping the petals into a natural look was quite difficult. Poppy petals are very thin and don’t hold their shape well, so a natural look is actually folded back and loose looking. I also hammered folds into the petals radiating outwards to give that paper look. Finally I added centres, again cut out with my plasma cutter and ridged to show the beginnings of the seed pod to come. Stems were added and the poppies finished.

For some reason I don’t seem to have taken any pictures of the process, only of the finished flower head, which is below. I made 2 to balance the sculpture.

I have been delaying revisiting my blacksmith poppies and the ‘how I made them’ bit. But here goes.

First of all a reminder on the left of how it all finished up.

The rock was made from a piece we obtained from our favourite farm in Northumberland.

That was the easy bit, simply drilling some holes ready for the metal stems. Except it wasn’t that easy, think flower arranging with very heavy flowers and you get the idea.

On to the first element, the leaves.

First stage was to cut them out of 1.5mm sheet steel using my nice new plasma cutter.

As ever, the right tool for the job made it very easy to do, but without it, it would have been impossible.

 

 

The next stage was to form the sheet into leaf shapes. This required the forge and a heavy gauge V block.

A great deal of hammering and bending later and the sheet metal was looking much

more 3 dimensional and leaf like.

 

Repeated another 6 times and I had the 7 leaves I needed.

As with gardening, even numbers just doesn’t look right. There is probably a mathematical rule for it somewhere, but simply put, 7, not 6 and not 8, leaves were now ready for the next stage.

Come back soon for stage 2.

 

 

 

The cold of winter, and general lack of food for our feathered friends, makes it a great time to put up a blacksmith bird feeder.

I have made 2 on a similar theme, basically because a lady asked me to make one against a sketch and then my wife liked it so much she wanted one too.

They are free standing, with a spike to push into the ground, 7 foot tall and made from 19mm steel. This makes them very substantial, able to stand up to the biggest birds and strongest winds, and to my general style of nothing thin and flimsy.

They were left in untreated steel finish, so will rust and age gracefully.

I just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Continuing our love of making use of treasured things rather than buying new, this is a knitted wreath made by my Grandmother over 20 years ago. It comes out every year and has pride of place in our home.

There is still time to buy last minute Christmas presents, blacksmith or beekeeping experience days in Essex.

Last year I was given a bucket of horseshoes to make into a sculpture.

Whilst the sculpture is still in the planning phase, I have made some heavy duty hooks for the kind person who gave me the shoes for their horse blankets. They should take the full weight of a couple of horse blankets each.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you are looking for the ideal Christmas present, blacksmith or beekeeping experience days might be just what you are looking for. I can supply you with a pdf gift card to print and give to the lucky person, with the date for the ‘day’ to be set later.

Full details of my experience days this year can be found on this link.

Whether you are interested in finding out more about beekeeping or blacksmithing, I can tailor make a day for you.

In a day designed around what you want to achieve and learn, a beekeeping experience day will involve opening up hives and gaining an understanding of how the hive lives and thrives.

Meanwhile, on a blacksmithing experience day, I first work with you before the day to understand what you would like to make on my outdoor forge.

I then work on your idea to make it something you can make, with a little help from me when needed. Alternatively, you can make a hanging basket bracket incorporating a number of blacksmithing techniques, to learn more about the art.

On the day itself you will learn key forge techniques and make something to take away and treasure.

“Thank you for such an amazing day!”

“We both had a great day and my wife is very impressed that we managed to produce such beautiful work – all of which was thanks to your excellent coaching.  You made great use of our time and I’m still amazed that we managed to do quite so much in a few short hours.” – Patrick

“Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and patience with us.” – Karen and Graham

“Wow what an amazing candle holder Dan made..I was gobsmacked….I absolutely loved it…thank you, Dan had an amazing time and hasn’t stopped talking about it….” – Leonie

“Thanks so much for making Henry’s day so enjoyable yesterday. He had a truly fabulous time and loved every minute of it. I am amazed and delighted at the sculpture he made in the time he had – his DT teacher was equally impressed. I think we have started something here! If you ever hear of any trainee opportunities, please let us know. He was still smiling at 3.30am when I woke him to go on his school trip to France.” – Rachel

Visit my students page to see some of the items they made.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been working on a fused glass table top. It was designed to replace a mosaic top on a table I made from an old tractor wheel. The mosaic had suffered from last winter’s cold snap, flaking off.

The design was inspired by the agapanthus flowers we see along the roadside and in gardens all over South Africa.

The pictures below show the 3 stages of fusing. Ultimately the glass is fused ‘upside down’ to give it a flat and slip free surface. This is the same process I used with my carved oak tray.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s official, NICE, The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence says take good local honey for coughs and colds, rather than antibiotics. Been saying it for years…

I can’t help but post pictures of more veggies.

The courgettes really are taking over. The warm weather has turned them into wild things growing before our eyes.

This one has come from a plant alongside an old hanging basket container used to protect some lettuce from being eaten by our the escaping hens.

Unfortunately I missed it and it made its own attempt to break through, which of course failed.

 

Meanwhile the hot weather has brought on the peaches.

This year they are the biggest we have ever grown.

Protected from the wasps by fleece, we are enjoying the sweetest, juiciest peaches ever.

 

The courgettes are taking over the garden.

We have grown more varieties than ever and the hot weather has brought them on amazingly. Suggestions for recipes gratefully received.

On other subjects, I am currently working on a special sculpture for my mum’s 80th. For obvious reasons no pictures until after the important day in October.

 

Yesterday was Mildred’s 85th birthday and she had a day out at the seaside.

We headed off at 9am, balloons and birthday signs on show, and took the opportunity for a leg stretch beside a lovely field of echium.

If only we had the bees with us, as it makes lovely honey.

 

Next stop was Manningtree, where we almost saw the sea.

It was a brief stop as we were heading on to see Grayson Perry’s art house building in Wrabness.

Whilst the garden is lacking in any care, the house itself was very impressive, and only a couple of thousand to stay in for a short break in the summer (providing you win the ballot).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A quick break for the most delicious fish and chips and we were off to visit an old family friend at Frinton-on-Sea.

It had been too long since we last caught up on life and, at an amazingly sprightly 94 (she won’t mind me saying), she beat Mildred into this world by nearly a decade. Mildred took her for a short ride and they both had a lovely time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11 hours and 130 miles later we arrived home to be greeted by our 92 year old neighbour, who was out gardening.

The balloons were, by now, sagging somewhat and we had replaced a couple along the way.

There may be many things wrong with this world, but, with the average age of Mildred, our neighbour and family friend at over 90, we are all living longer than ever.

That’s the key, as the song goes, ‘Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think‘.

At last Mildred has had her new front spring fitted.

Having fitted her new rear springs about 3 years ago, her front sprint has languished in the workshop. Finally I decided that I had delayed for too long and so volunteered her for a workshop day.

12 keen Austin 7 owners assembled for a 4 hour session, where her old saggy spring was replaced with a nice new firm spring.

In this first picture you can see the old worn spring behind the nice new one, wrapped in denso tape to protect it from road grime and grit.

The spring is held in place by two U bolt clamps in the middle and then by shackles at the ends, secured to the hubs.

Much fiddling was required to get to the nuts on the U bolts, as you can see from the assembled crowd  leaning in, over and under Mildred.

However, fuelled by tea and cake, we succeeded. Mildred’s spring was safely secured. She now sits about an inch higher than before and with a firmer ride, so she no longer rubs her tyre on the inside of the front wing when braking and taking  a sharp turn.

She also looks much happier with her new springs all round and gleaming shackles.

I was recently asked if I could make a Tower Bridge sculpture for a special birthday present. It was to hang on a wall, but have depth to it, and be 1m long. A lot of sketching and design work later and all was agreed. It was the perfect job to make use of my new plasma cutter to produce the towers and window cut outs.

The result is below. The finish is burnished steel, lacquered to protect the look.

 

I didn’t take many pictures along the way but the one below shows the base frame from which everything hangs. This gives it strength and makes sure everything is nice and square from the start.

For some time now we have had Gardeners’ World cloche envy.

I have some home made cloches made from some old bases used on an exhibition stand and then rescued from a skip about 10 years ago.

They are (were), to say the least, ropey. They were rusty, the hoops were made from plastic pipe, which had deteriorated, and they were covered in torn netting.

With spring finally approaching and Monty Don’s cloches in full view on Gardeners’ World, the time had come to update ours.

I started by cleaning them back to rust free metal. Then I welded in 10mm steel hoops for stability. Finally some old corrugated sheeting, saved from a skip having served its purpose as a friend’s ‘lean-to’ roof, was cut to slot inside the hoops. The end panels were then made from some offcut plastic sheeting used in picture framing.

The plastic can then be slid out and replaced with netting for summer protection of brasicas.

A coat of rust protecting undercoat and black paint and we are no longer quite so envious.

Cost about £2 for the metal used in the hoops and £3 of paint, the rest recycled, result.

Only thing is, Monty has many more that we have, and I have just found another base behind the polytunnel ripe for conversion. So it’s back to work…

At last I have finished and installed my blacksmith gate.

I wanted to give it some strength and bulk in the posts, so have used 20cm by 10cm oak sleepers.

It has taken me a while to get it all finished, and of course the weather hasn’t helped, but here it is.

 

The last stage for the gate was to add vertically standing leaves to the base. These partly block out gaps, but are mainly decorative, giving the gate structure and weight both literally and figuratively.

Having finished the gate I decided to get it galvanised. This is a process where the metal is zinc coated to protect from rust. Any scratches are covered by zinc oxide before any iron oxide can form.

There is a great galvanisers near to us which I use.

They have a minimum weight, so I took the opportunity to have a table I made in the summer from an old gear wheel galvanised at the same time.

On the left is the pile of bits ready on the pallet and then the finished galvanised gate. The shiny finish is the zinc. Left alone it would be perfectly protected, but would dull down to a boring grey, just like corrugated iron roofing.

This is how it has finished with its silk black painted finish. I will put up more pictures when it is installed, showing the hinges and arch over the gate.

 

 

 

Right, with the design sorted out it was time to start the fun, the making bit.

I started by setting out the frame.

As with most of my work, I began with organic curves, rather than lots of straight lines.

It is important to balance design with structural integrity. Stating the obvious, whilst it must look good, it must also support its own weight, hang on the hinges without stress breaks, and of course keep out those we want to keep out.

The curved piece at the base does exactly that, it braces the bottom, curles up to support the bottom hinge point and then finishes off in a purely decorative leaf design.

This is the next stage in the design. I have added a top hinge, vertical pieces to add bracing and design, and a top curved piece to replicate the one at the bottom.

I am liking how it is coming along, the balance feels right.

It’s time to make another gate.

We need a new gate to get to the other side of our hedge to make cutting it easier. I drew up a rough idea and have been slowly making it over the last few months in a snatched hour here and there as time has allowed.

So, here we go with part 1, this is my ‘highly detailed’ sketch. The only really important details are the overall dimensions so that it fits a standard width gate, the rest can evolve to ensure that it looks balanced.

Over the last few months I have been making an oak carved tray with glass insert. It was made from a solid piece of oak, carved with rope edging and straps. To say I am now ‘roped out’ is an understatement. The textures elements to the twisted strands took a long time but they do add a lot of movement to the piece and help make it look more realistic.

You can see my template piece of rope in the earlier pictures below, which helped me work out how the twists moved as they went around the corners. They don’t move how you might think, as the twists tighten on the inside and open up on the outside, so you just need to go with the measurements, and know that it will look right. This is how it finished up:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have written about the tray in the past, but here is a series of pictures showing how it developed from a plank, through a simple solid cylinder around the tray, on to the carving of the rope shape. I had 3 attempts at getting the curve right around the corners, using my piece of rope and a plastic template with the curls marked out on it. Remembering to leave enough wood to make the straps:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The glass insert was made a few months ago. I used real ferns, with glass powder, to produce the fern design on white background. It takes 3 firings to make the glass insert. I wrote about it at the time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately Mildred has been a little off colour. She ventured out on New Year’s Day with her friends for our traditional New Year opener.

All began well.

We arrived at the local Church to join the queue of 30 Austin Sevens, and a few assorted others, to enjoy mince pies and (non-alcoholic) mulled wine.

We then happily set off on our 25 mile run.

Unfortunately we didn’t get to the end. About half way through we spluttered to a halt. It looked as if the head gasket had failed, nothing that could be solved at the roadside.

With thanks to our insurers and SOS road rescue, we had a truck with us within the hour and were on our way home.

 

 

For anyone technically minded, this is what I found when I removed the head, a missing piece of gasket, which appears to have broken away.

The result is loss of compression in cylinders 2 and 3.

Mildred is now well on the way to recovery. The new gasket is bedding in and she should be back on the road in a day or 2.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy and enjoyable 2018.

Life has been a little busy over the last few weeks. The vegetables and fruit have been growing faster than we can eat, freeze, store or make jam from.

We are particularly pleased with the tomatoes. Having lost all of our 30 plus plants to tomato blight last year, this year we spent some time researching blight resistant varieties.

We picked 10 of the best and haven’t had a problem with any. We have grown them in a variety of places from a polytunnel to a greenhouse and out in the open.

Remembering just how much rain we have suffered this summer, it is amazing that they have shown not a single sign of blight. The results speak for themselves…N0w must go, I have a couple of buckets of runner beans in need of picking.

Even since we saw some glass fusing with plant material I have wanted to have a go.

Time, the garden, and the bees have conspired to thwart our attempts to find the couple of hours needed to try it out, but, with the nasty weather over the last few days, we decided that today was the day.

A little online research brought up about 4 different techniques to cope with the basic problem that, at 800 degrees, the temperature required to melt the glass, all plant material will have turned to carbon.

 

 

This picture shows the 9 different test pieces, all slightly different, to determine the process that works best for us for different leaf types.

Come back in a couple of days to see the results.

In the meantime keep your fingers crossed.

 

It has been a while since I last posted. The garden is in full swing and harvesting the soft fruit (blackberries, blueberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, gooseberries) has been my priority. it has truly been a bounty this year ad we haven’t even started on the apples and plums.

Squashes and courgettes are also getting underway and the garlic needs digging up, so you get my point, food comes first.

Having said that, the bees have also been busy. We have completed the first extraction of the year and the bees in the long hive are doing well.

Here is one of the long hive frames, as seen during a recent beekeeping experience day. They are pulling out the comb to fit the V shaped hive and have built up 6 frames already. I’ll try to post some more detailed pictures soon, but that’s it for now.

 

Back to the elephant’s rear end today.

The stance I am going for is that of an elephant ready to charge.

This means that it is standing with its back legs pushed forward, its head at a slight angle to its body, so that it presents a large mass, and finally ears flared wide, again to show the largest mass to the opponent.

If you didn’t watch this over Christmas, and you like elephants, then you really should.

Having roughed out the elephant, this is the stage where work appears to slow down. The process of getting the detail into the elephant takes time. Within the roughed out shape you know that, about 1cm down, the elephant lurkes. I am beginning to sketch out the head details first.

Day 3 and, whilst some are heading back to work, children are coming down from a 2 day sugar high, and parents are wondering when school restarts.

Meanwhile the elephant begins the process of rounding off to create the body shape. We are still in the roughing out stage, where large chisels and a strong hammer are needed.

Not being overly religious, I have decided to celebrate the 12 days of Christmas in my own way, with the carving of an elephant.

We start of course with day 1.

This is a piece of lime wood. I started with nothing more than a sketch to give me the initial idea of where, within this block of wood, an elephant lies, waiting to be revealed.

I’d like to take you back a few weeks, to when I posted a picture of the beautiful echium crop being grown one field away from us.

Our local farmer is always looking to new crops, and so this is the first time it has been grown in the area. It is grown for its oil, as an alternative to fish oils, and for medical uses.

 

 

 

We were hopeful of a good honey crop, especially as echium is related to borage, which gives a beautifully light and delicate honey.

 

Well, the honey is every bit as delicious as we had hoped.

Like borage, it is almost transparent in appearance.

The flavour is light and delicate, perhaps even more so than with borage.

It is now for sale here

 

 

 

I thought I owed an update on the glass casting. Well, it all got a little bit worrying. The first night of firing we were woken by a strong smell. Investigations proved the source to be the kiln, which, in its mould drying phase, was filling the studio with smelly steam.  This definitely wasn’t part of the plan, so we switched off the kiln and left it to cool. In the morning we opened the kiln to find one mould cracked and a nasty brown tinge to the kiln.

Fearing the worst, I contacted Kilncare, to find that this was actually perfectly normal. I perhaps needed to slow the drying phase to prevent cracks. Apart from that the brown stain was caused by the water, which would burn off. Panic over, reset process.

 

 

 

 

 

For the second attempt I decided not to use the already cracked mould, so the ‘gold bar’ will have to wait for another day. The foot went back in and, with a slow ramp up, appeared to melt well. The picture below is of us taking a quick peek at the 880 degrees C melting phase. The wire in the picture is being used to pop a couple of bubbles in the molten glass.

 

The foot is now in its long cooling down phase. This takes about 4 days to prevent cracking of the glass.

 

With the coldest April since I can remember, the bees are struggling to get out. They need the temperature to be around 13 degrees before they fly and that means no nectar being brought in at a time when they are increasing in numbers.

The trials and tribulations of a beekeeper aside, we have been making some glass bees ready for the Essex Young Farmer’s show, so at least there is the illusion of flying bees around here.

Following on from a fusing run, I slumped the results to make a shallow dish and 2 tea light holders.

The dish slumped perfectly, which is not a great surprise, since it is a shallow run and so has nowhere to go other than into the mould.  I think we have perfected this design now.

The key setting was 725 degrees for 30 minutes, which I have adjusted following a few earlier slumping runs to the point where I have a setting that appears to make good shallow dishes and deeper slumping for tea lights.

However, next we move on to a problem with the slumping of the tea light holders. The holder at the front of the kiln didn’t slump enough, it has a rounded base that didn’t reach the kiln floor. Worse was the tea light at the back, as can be seen in the detail pictures below, it slumped unevenly, sinking down unevenly on one side and not the other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am a little mystified. I have a few theories, against which I would welcome a critique from those more experienced in fused glass work.

• I have a Kilncare kiln, which is supposed to have (and on fusing runs has proved to have) a good even temperature across the kiln. But is the slumping process too sensitive to run successfully towards the corner. Does this explain why the inside of the top tea light has melted more?
• But, if this is the case then why has the bottom tea light slumped evenly, but not enough, suggesting that it wasn’t hot enough?
• Or could it be that my vermiculite mould is too rough to allow the glass to ‘slide’ down and has caught it on one side? I have checked and this doesn’t seem to be the case, unless again it is extremely sensitive.

If this wasn’t the same setting that was successfully used for the last tea light, I would think that I need to increase the temperature by 5-10 degrees and move the tea lights to be more central in the kiln.

Or am I missing something? Any ideas welcome.

For those of you waiting with baited breath for the glass fusing results from the kiln, here is the resulting bowl.

It all came together nicely and we are quite pleased with our first attempt.

Soggy bottoms are not just the preserve of the Great British Bake Off. As a consequence of bouncing along lanes and roads worse even than today’s pot holed surfaces, an 82 year old Austin Seven can also suffer a sagging rear end.

This year the time came to address the problem, with a new set of springs. So far I have only fitted the rear set, the main culprit for Mildred’s problems.

Come some nice spring (no pun intended) weather, when I can once again comfortably sit in the drive without risk of my own soggy bottom, I will replace the front one too.

These pictures show the dramatic change before and after, with Mildred now sitting about 5cm higher on fresh, taut springs:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In between these 2 pictures was about 7 hours of pushing, wrenching, levering, heating and bolting. With new pins, nuts and bolts replacing the old parts.

All in all, very satisfying. For those interested, there are a few more detailed pictures below of the chassis rail after removal of the old spring, the new pin compared to old, and the new spring being eased into place, with the pin not quite in alignment yet and in need of some persuasion.

It is a year ago today that I signed up to the process that led to me leaving work. It wasn’t until April 7th that I actually left, so strictly speaking I have only had 8 months in my brave new world, but on his day, a year ago, the countdown began.

I don’t regret a day of the 33 years I worked at e2v. The skills I gained, the experiences I had, and friends made are a part of me. The experience has also left me a lifetime supporter of apprenticeships. By that I mean real apprenticeships, where trades are learnt and college attended, not some of the modern apprenticeships that satisfy government targets and deliver cheap labour at £3:30 an hour. I am proud that e2v still offers the type of quality apprenticeships that will set youngsters up for life.

The last 8 months have flown past. I have been able to do things I didn’t previously have the time for: growning more vegetables, making things on my new forge, spending more time beekeeping, starting a weekly wood carving class, learning some new craft skills, giving some talks and demonstrations, and completing some of the long awaited jobs on our 1933 Austin 7. I have also given a lot more time to my role as a Parish Councillor.

What I haven’t learnt yet is how to relax a little more. I have read a few more books (previously a holiday luxury), but it isn’t in my nature to laze around. Daytime TV remains a mystery to me and please someone shoot me if I show signs of sitting down in front of Jeremy Kyle.

One thing is clear, I would not have been able to do this without the full support of my wife.

So here’s to the rest of my life and now I must go. The sun is out and I need to finish the audit of our beekeeping equipment supplies, to see what we need to restock in the winter sale. I then have a Parish Highways Committee meeting and after than our Austin Seven Christmas party. I also have to do some designs for a glass fusion course we are doing tomorrow.

Who has time for work?

We have just returned from the National Glass Centre where, as a surprise birthday present, we did a course on flame working glass rod with Zoe Garner.

The venue is impressive and our tutor, for just four of us, was organised, patient and worked to our comfort rather than her schedule. She was great.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The course was to make glass chains, but we all digressed into our own designs. For me, once I had made some basic chain designs, I decided to make a new version of my logo. If  Google can have a new logo style each day then I am sure I can manage a couple a month.

Last night I gave my ‘A year In beekeeping’ talk to a group of very interested people. We looked at a real hive, to understand what goes on inside at different points in the year, and had a 40 minute Q & A session, only stopping when our time ran out.

With my thanks to the Ideas Hub for organising the event, Anglia Ruskin University for great facilities, and of course everyone who came along to listen.

 

 

 

There have long been subsidies and allowances for leaving a 10m or so strip alongside a field planted out for crops. This strip then being appropriately planted to encourage wildlife.

Now our experience of this in practice is that the strips tend to turn into weed beds. Come August they turn into a launch site for a million (literally) weed seeds, which are spread far and wide…..including over gardens.

Whilst visiting some old friends this weekend we passed through Steeple Bumpstead and saw the most beautiful wild flower strip alongside a field. It clearly took care and money to keep like this, but it just zinged with colour and insects. Well done Mr/Mrs Farmer, you are a credit to the community.

 

By now any regular readers will know that I like organic form.

Bullrushes are at their best at the moment and we have a plant currently trying to take over our pond.

In the background you might be able to see a sculpture I made to reflect the bullrushes.

 

 

 

if you can’t make it out then this is what it looks like close up.

it is rusting nicely and is designed so that the wind blows the leaves against the rushes and gives a nice wind chime effect.

 

Today we have added plant sales to our honey with some fig trees taken as cuttings from our very large fig tree on our south facing wall.

 

I had a very enjoyable day yesterday as a part of the judging team for the Chelmsford Science and Engineering Society schools competition.

There were 65 teams from schools across the region with an incredible range of projects from a wide range of age groups.

It was one of those evens where you wanted to make sure that every child received an award of some sort for simply putting in the effort to work on a science or engineering project.

Congratulations to CSES for the work put in to run such a successful event and to everyone on the school teams.

 

 

 

Well, I have finished the forge and today is the day to try it all out, more later, hopefully with pictures too, and not of a cold forge.

I will try to add them to twitter as I go along, link at the top of the page.

I will also be saying hello to Cathy from my old team at e2v. I may be a little sooty 😉

Swarming season is upon us, a little late, like Spring, but undoubtedly here now.

Today I collected a swarm from a neighbour, using my skep, which I made at a skep making course a couple of years ago.

It is a simple process made to look quite dramatic by the sheer number of bees that take to the air as you shake them down into the skep.

Providing you have the queen, the others will follow.

The first picture shows the swarm in the tree, the second, the swarm knocked into the skep, the third, the swarm inside the skep, the fourth, back at my apiary and knocked into a hive and the final picture, the remaining bees walking into the hive in search of the queen and their natural instinct to walk up into the dark.

  

 

 

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent the weekend with a group of friendly wood carvers. My project produced a cheeseboard from a slice of silver birch.
More pictures here.
 

I have been on a wood carving course this weekend, more of which later, but importantly I came across my first bumble bee nest of the year at the hall.

The picture is not great, but it gives me the opportunity to plead for care and consideration when faced with a bumble bee nest.

If you find a bumble bee nest in the coming weeks (this one is in a house cavity with access through an air brick), then please try to leave them alone and enjoy them and their free pollinating service. We need all the bees we can get and calling in the exterminators at the first sign of a few large fluffy bees is not to be done lightly.

Bumble bees will die out in the Autumn and do not return to the same nest. So even if you have bumble bees in a slightly inconvenient place then try to work with them for just a few weeks and then they will be gone.

Only the queens survive winter and they hibernate, so if you find a large bumble bee in your compost heap in the cold Spring then it will be a hibernating queen, so please put her back carefully.

 

Work continues apace on the home forge facilities.

I bought 2 leg vices on Saturday from a local treasure/junk shop for a great 2 for 1 deal, so I now have a portable vice and a large one for the home forge.

The large one was seized from about 50 years of use, and probably 20 years of abandonment in a field.

Today was spent heating, hitting, levering, cleaning, painting and greasing.

 

The result, which I am very pleased with, is a fully functioning vice at a fraction of the price had I bought it in this condition. Now I just need to make something very sturdy to attach it to and the home forge moves closer to being ready.

  

And to show that Chelsea was more than just flowers, this garden was explaining some of the principles of dark matter twisting through time and space.

Well, even Chelsea Flower Show is getting in on the space race.

The European Space Agency had a very interesting display which included their Mars Rover prototype, although it wasn’t clear what it would achieve over that which Curiosity has, and will, discover.

What was very interesting was their research on the growing of food in space, vital to any plans for long term space habitation or exploration.

 

 

In their work to involve schools they are offering seeds, which will have been taken to the ISS, for schoolchilden to then grow on Earth.

It is a great idea, but I do wonder how many of the seeds will actually be planted, against those that will end up ‘framed’ as Genuine Space Seeds and listed on ebay shortly after, watch this space.

 

It’s been a busy few days

Thursday night was spent at a book launch for a great friend of mine,  Liz Kessler. Liz was launching her latest book, ‘Read me like a book‘, at Waterstones in Hampstead. It is her first book for Young Adults. I remember reading an excerpt from the draft 14 years ago and thinking then that it was a powerful read. 14 years on, 15 books and a New York Times Bestseller award later, ‘Read me like a Book’ is published. You can read more about it on Liz’s new website, also built by mutual and very clever friends.

Sunday was a lovely sunny, if chilly, day. It was spent at the Essex Young Farmer’s Show in the Essex Beekeepers’ tent . The observation hive always brings the children around and they are never afraid to ask questions, the types of questions mum and dad are to embarrassed to ask but would like to. As a result we educate the parents and the children.

 

This is a typical group gathered around the observation hive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

They are all trying to find the queen, pictured here in the centre (through the glass so forgive the reflection), surrounded by workers, grooming and feeding her.

 

 

 

 

And here are some other random pictures from the day.

  

I’m not too good at this ‘regular posting’ lark. So, a quick update. The last couple of weeks have been busy ones, both garden wise and blacksmithing. The former concentrating on unusual varieties of tomato and pepper plants. The latter being about building my own forge, which is nearly finished. All I need to do now is to work out how to join up the car turbo hose, bought on ebay, including postage from Hong Kong, for £5 (how do they do that?), to the second hand bouncy castle blower, bought on ebay for £10.
It will all make much more sense very soon I promise.

We have over the years tried a number of different ways to get those early broad beans, from autumn sowing to applying heat, planting in plugs etc etc.

This year we have been a little more scientific, with 3 methods running concurrently. Planting times were set to be as early as possible within the positions.

Method 1 is straight outdoor sowing under fleece, with the beans planted late March and currently about 6 inches high with sturdy stems, showing all the right signs to becoming strong plants.

 

 

 

Method 2 is outdoor under a glass cold frame, with sowing late February. The stems are a little thinner but are about 12 inches high and looking good with supports probably needed. History tells us that this method might flower slightly earlier than method 1, but there will be little difference in cropping time.

 

 

Method 3 is in our polytunnel, with sowing late January. The plants are strong, nearly 24 inches high, in flower, and with some flowers pollinated and already showing small pods.

 

 

 

 
This is our third year with the polytunnel and it continues to bring great benefits. It gives us salad leaves through the winter and its size seems to balance out temperatures, so that we can start plants off weeks earier than even a greenhouse can achieve. We will be eating broad beans from here within 4 week or so. I have also planted peas in amongst the beans for a second crop.

It goes without saying that I am a fan of the polytunnel.

 

It is 25 years since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, with a 15 year mission to unlock secrets about the origins of the Universe. Strictly speaking Hubble’s 25th anniversary is tomorrow, but in the spirit of news programmes announcing what is going to be said or announced before it actually happens, I’m saying Happy Birthday today.

The majority of the amazing pictures now published come courtesy of an upgrade to the imaging system in 2009, incorporating imaging sensors made by e2v, the company I worked at for over 33 years.

25 images have been released celebrating Hubble’s discoveries. Every single one is simply astonishing.

As a slightly different image, this one is of Gary Fildes from Kielder Observatory posing with the engineering test sensor for Hubble, which I took up for him to see whilst at a talk at the observatory. I left them with a GAIA imaging sensor for their school outreach work.

If you have a chance to visit Kielder Observatory then do so, Gary’s enthusiasm is impossible not to get swept up in.

 

 

 

The garden bulbs are definitely at their best right now. These pictures show just some of those we have planted over the years:

  

With a not inconsiderable amount of technical support, I am gradually adding functionality to my site.

Today it is blog links. First added is from a good friend of mine who blogs about creating a garden on the Anglesey coast. I have seen it and it is gorgeous (the garden that is, not just the blog).

We share a love of gardening and the outdoors. Beekeeping of course feeds into this and has gone hand in hand for me, as we have a dozen fruit trees currently in blossom and benefiting from the bees in residence.

Yesterday I spent some time finding the queen in our strongest colony to mark her. This is a painless process that makes her easier to spot. The colonies are building up well with healthy bees and a lots of brood (the raised cells in the picture below).

 

 

 

 

 

There is a song that resonates with the thought processes that brought me to ‘doing my own thing’; that and an awful lot of support at home.

Whilst it was written in 1949, the words seem to be as appropriate today, if not more so. It currently features in Simon Mayo’s Friday Drive Time show, which I regularly listened to whilst driving home from work. This week I listened to it whilst in the polytunnel watering the tomato plants.

My thanks to Herb Magidson for some great lyrics. Go on ‘enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think’.

I quite like this version link .

With spring having sprung straight into summer and hitting 30 degrees on our wall thermometer, it was definitely time to spring clean the bees. Anything over about 13 degrees is enough for the bees to fly and about 20 degrees sees you safe for frames to be exposed to the elements for a few minutes whilst changing over brood boxes and cleaning the hives.

A spring clean is very important for disease prevention after a long winter when the bees have not been out much. Fresh boxes flamed with a blowtorch and frames checked over, replaced every 3 years and scraped clean, makes management so much easier and just feels right.

Sadly, as we suspected we lost one of our 6 hives. it was attacked by wasps in the autumn and despite all you do to help them they just seem to give up. So we went into winter knowing that they were weak but hoping they would make it. Give it a few weeks and we will be able to split a strong hive and make the numbers back up. As I cover in my beekeeping talks it is vitally important to keep numbers of colonies up given the effects of varroa on wild colonies.

It feels good to be back out playing with the bees, and with 150 acres of borage behind us it should be  a good summer.

 

Well, my new website has unearthed an old boss and colleague of mine, Peter Maggs. I enjoyed my time working for Peter, even if his attempt to introduce me to the delights of sailing resulted in a rescue by the local lifeboat and an early shower.

He is now an author and speaker http://www.mirlibooks.com/.

Hi Peter, welcome.

 

Space exploration is one of my many interests, and the subject of one of my talks. This interest started due to e2v, my last employer, making the imaging devices used on major space exploration programmes, including Hubble and GAIA.

One thing I will never tire of looking at is the ISS. Many don’t believe that you can see it with the naked eye, but you can. It looks like a bright star moving across the sky at the speed of an aeroplane.

All you need to do is register on the NASA site (it won’t SPAM you) here: http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

It wil then send you an email with details of when the ISS can be seen over your location. Tonight on the Chelmsford ‘route’ we will be seeing the ISS at 8:11pm :

Time: Thu Apr 09 8:11 PM, Visible: 4 min, Max Height: 43 degrees,
Appears: SSW, Disappears: E

It is then back at 9:45 having circled the world in about an hour and a half.

It is quite something to see this bright light streaking across the night sky. Then you have to appreciate that it is a space station travelling at 17,150 miles an hour, moving from day to night every 45 minutes or so, and the home to astronauts from around the world. Where Americans and Russians can work side by side away from the politicians. Amazing.

My new post-e2v life starts now on a gloriously sunny spring day, the omens are good.

I am still taking in the kindness and sheer effort put into yesterday by my friends and colleagues, both in the gifts they gave me, starting with a ‘litepro’ for my talks, to the lovely book made for me with photographs and personal memories from my 33 years. Not forgetting the surprise guests, my mum and my wife. It was particularly special for my mum since the room where the presentation was held was the location of my dad’s old office; he joined the company in 1963.

Then there is the sculpture made by our apprentices, who are carrying the torch for high quality engineering apprentices better than ever, 29 years after I completed mine.

I shall write, but to any of you who have found your way here, you made my day, thank you.

Stealing a song title (if not the song’s sentiment) from Dina Washington:  after 33 1/3 years (you can see a record theme here for those who remember vinyl), I am one day away from my new life.

The car is full of cake and I think I am ready for tomorrow at the office. I am going to miss e2v and the friends I have made.

But, I am also ready for my new life, more time with my wife, more time to concentrate on the crafts I love to do, and time to take up more opportunities to talk to groups and enthuse them into learning practical skills.

The garden also awaits, but that’s another tale.

If you have found this site then hello. I am new to this blogging lark. My Brave New World starts on Wednesday 8th April. Hold tight…