Local

So last weekend I was cruising Craigslist when I ran across something I'd been looking for. I found someone selling their local, raw honey. I've always heard about the health benefits of local, raw honey and, up until now, had only found raw honey. Nothing harvested locally. The benefit of local honey is all the pollen that is native to your area is in it. Local pollen is said to help wonders with season allergies. I suffer through spring and fall and jumped at the chance to try out this theory. Six miles later and I had three pounds of honey in my truck.

After a quick google search I found this information in case you were wondering about the health benefits of local, raw honey.

 

"Raw honey is full of minerals, vitamins, enzymes, and powerful antioxidants.  It has anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal properties."
Other uses:

• Helps digestion
• Strengthens immune system
• Eliminates allergies
• Stabilizes blood pressure
• Balances blood sugar
• Calms nerves
• Relieves pain
• Treats ulcers
• Sore throats
• Colds
• Indigestion

Naturally, I have flirted with the idea of bee keeping for a little while now. It intrigues me and I follow several bee keeper pages on facebook. I might start to read some books about the topic this winter and see if that is something I might dive into in the spring. Being self sufficient in general interests me and this could be one leg of that journey.

We do like flowers on our property and bees might have a nice home here. Might be a fun excuse to plant more. I think my daughter would love that idea. Greta is my flower girl. She likes to go back to the garden and pick bouquets. The zinnias are growing like weeds and have these giant heads on them in every color you can imagine. The problem with zinnias? They are tough stemmed. When she pulls on a flower she sometimes pulls the whole plant out of the ground. Oops.

The garden is an overgrown mess (like it always is this time of the year) but it keeps pumping out those tomatoes. I didn't feel like canning them so I fill freezer bag after freezer bag with them and pop them into the freezer. They'll keep forever and work great in recipes that call for canned tomatoes. I can almost taste the chili now.

Someone else besides Greta that adores tomatoes? This one.

Dear old Dym has got to be my favorite animal around here. She's always got one eye on me hoping I'll bring her a treat from the garden. Lately it's only been tomatoes and basil as that's the only two things growing anymore. She's ok with that.

I've been thinking about how to put more weight on Dym before another cold winter sets in. I was doing the shredded beet pulp last winter and I plan to start that back up again but I wanted to get her a better quality hay as well. She did really well on alfalfa while she was pregnant so I started searching for a local farmer selling alfalfa and I came up with nada. Then low and behold I found it in compressed bales for sale at my local farm and garden store. Score! After putting several bags of feed in the back of my little car I had to resort to letting it ride shot gun. It even got buckled in for safety. Oh the lengths we'll go to for our animals. :)