Goodness! It's been ages since I posted here. But today I was so thrilled with the beauty of God's world, I decided it was time for a Camp Kreitzer update from Seven Bends State Park. It's only five minutes from home and is becoming our go to place to take a walk. A prime advantage for two oldies is that so many of the paths are flat! So here goes. Near the parking lot is a little history of the park parcel. Much of the acreage used to be used by Massanutten Military Academy as a camp. There are markers all over the park that tell about its history.
I don't like the winter. I don't like the cold; I don't like the dark. Thank God for the holy days of winter! How I love the holidays. I love to fill the house with light when it's dark outside.
I love coming home and seeing our Nativity scene out front with the wayward donkey straying off on his own and the star of Bethlehem over our front porch. I love setting up the crib, the tree, and my Christmas village that all shimmer with light. And I will leave them all up until the winter is on the wane -- until at least Candlemas Day on February 2nd.
One year I didn't take the decorations down until Ash Wednesday. It was early that year, but I just couldn't bring myself to turn off all the lights and go back to Ordinary Time. So I skipped it that year and continued celebrating Christmas until Lent.
Every room gets its little bit of Christmas.
Here's the tour.
As you come in the front door, the living room/home chapel is on the right. I put my village there with all the trappings of an old fashioned Christmas. It begins with the little stable I fashioned out of an old shoebox and the Precious Moments nativity.
One of my favorite October events is dinner in a pumpkin. Last Sunday we had a family party and invited everybody to bring a pumpkin to decorate or carve. Nobody took us up on that, even our daughter who suggested it. I had to laugh when she and her children arrived with no pumpkins. Our son's family had a late sports event with their second grader and arrived shortly before dinner, so they anticipated no time for pumpkin carving. And our other daughter's family had already decorated their pumpkins. So other activities, mostly catching up on everyone's news, took precedence.
The dinner was a success: chili in the pumpkin with rice, muffins, coleslaw, and broccoli salad. Dessert was pumpkin cheese cake, rice krispy treats colored and shaped as orange pumpkins, and a big box of European chocolate coated cookies from Costco. A good time was had by all! And hopefully this is one more memory from Camp Kreitzer to treasure in the future and maybe repeat in the next generation and others to come. It's still not too late to host a pumpkin party at your house. And if you want extra fun, watch the hilarious Steven Spielberg short, The Mummy.
This time of year is busy at Camp Kreitzer. We've been working on closing up the pool and getting our bees and chickies ready for the winter. The mouseguards are on the hives and we've reduced the hive entrances. We've also been feeding a heavy sugar syrup to make sure they have enough stores to survive til Spring. Those preparations and the help of the beekeeping patrons give us confidence that all will be well. Hopefully we will come out of the winter with both hives surviving. They are strong now; we pray they will stay that way. And the reward for our efforts is the yummy honey. I've been making a honey egg custard that looks and tastes like flan -- delicious, light, and gluten free.
Bonnie Bluebeard is a Plymouth Blue.
The chickens are thriving and still giving a full complement of eggs every day -- except for our welfare chicken, Whopper, who is an Americauna and will lay blue eggs if she ever starts. Our five ISA Browns, one Orpington, and one Plymouth Blue are all laying big brown eggs which usually measure jumbo on my chicken scale. And despite the days getting shorter, they are still almost all laying every day. So we generally get seven eggs and six on a day when one of the girls decides to take a break. I love going out to collect the eggs every day! And we enjoy sharing them with our children.
If you are in the neighborhood, stop and meet our girls. We will introduce you to the chickens by name, but the bees are nameless. We just say, "Hi girls!" when we go out to work the hives. Maybe that's why they are testy some days which is why Larry is holding the smoker. It's a lifesaver on days when the girls are not happy.
We've never had such a hard time getting a split to rear a new queen! Bethesda still doesn't appear to have a queen so we gave the colony two frames of larvae and capped brood from Elkridge. Morgantown doesn't appear to have a queen either so we gave that colony one frame of larvae and capped brood from Wheeling. Hopefully, before the end of the summer we'll have four queen-right hives, but this is getting a little frustrating. We took two frames of honey, one from Wheeling and I can't remember which other hive. All the hives are bringing in lots of nectar and quite a few frames are almost ready to harvest. Elkridge doesn't seem to like the box of plastic frames. Wheeling is doing a great job drawing comb on the plastic and filling it. I got the plastic frames from two different places. Both were supposed to be wax coated, but I'm wondering if one set of frames are more bee-friendly than the other. Hopefully, Elkridge will start to draw the plastic frames before the next bee inspection.
After the wax moth invasion last week, we decided we needed to make sure we were on top of things. Since the mercury is climbing up to about 90 degrees today we headed out about ten after Mass and breakfast. Whooeee! Already hot as blazes in those bee suits.
Well, we're down one hive today thanks to an infestation by wax moth. Bethesda was the first hive we checked and they were doing okay but still don't seem to have a queen so we added another frame of eggs and larvae from Elkridge. Hopefully they will get queen right and give us a fourth hive.
