21st October - Sugar for My Honey (Bees)

Runway Traffic

'For every moment there is an action demanded by weather and season. They are the conductors of every years song, who lead the familiar tune, learned by rote to an ever shifting beat. '

The diktat for this moment is to feed my bees in readiness for winter. Bees under natural circumstances are more than capable of looking after themselves, but when you spend all summer raiding their winter store cupboard it must be replaced. The smiling lady at the local Spar must have thought I had a chronic sweet tooth when I first staggered to the counter balancing 15 bags of sugar, but it is a sight she is used to as I probably buy around buy 50 kg annually for my 10 hives. This flies in the face of self-sufficiency I know, but the cold light of economics penetrates even my sheltered world. Honey sells for £8.25 per kilogram and granulated sugar costs around 70 p per kilogram. Even so, I reduce the quantities a little by allowing the bees some time to collect their own stores at the end of each summer.

Once I had recovered from parting with real money (the Spar don't except barter card) I made up the syrup. 1 kg of sugar to 1 pint of water (a marriage of units for convenience's sake) warmed until all the crystals have dissolved. When it had finished cooling down, which conveniently happened after dark, I placed it into the bee feeders which sit on top of each hive just under the roof. The feeders are not unlike round cake tins containing a tube which allows the bees to climb up into it and collect the syrup. My head torch, a gift last Christmas is a useful tool for the job, but has left me with a sore nose on more than one occasion as bees will always fly to light!

 Bee Feeder

'Money can't buy you love' and parsnips won't pay for the council tax, so even I from time to time must delve into the world of work. I am fortunate however that I can choose the things I enjoy doing and most of my (and my wife's) moneymaking schemes centre around our interests. Tomorrow and the next day I will be leading foraging courses from the cottage and as part of the package I provide a home-cooked lunch. I mention this underwhelming fact because I'd like to say a few words about one of the dishes I have prepared. The scarlet runner bean must be the cause of more guilt amongst gardeners than any other vegetable on the face of the earth. It's sheer abundance driving growers to extreme measures such as chutney or even winemaking in a vain attempt to eliminate waste. One year Em (my wife) and I were fed up with the emotional blackmail and left the pods on the vine to set seed. We have never looked back and now use more runners as shelled beams then green. This slight deviation delivers me smoothly to runner bean hummus, the dish in question. I suppose just about any pulse or been could be turned into a kind of hummus, but we find runners work particularly well, they're plentiful, big and give a sweet smooth finish. I have included the recipe for anyone who is interested.

Runner Bean Hummus

1/2 pint dried runner beans simmered until tender

3 tbsp vegetable oil

1 small clove of garlic

1 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tbsp red wine vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Method

Place all ingredients in a liquidiser. Add water a little at a time until it is possible to blend ingredients to a smooth paste.

Runner Bean Hummus

Dinner

Spatchcock partridge with mixed vegetables and gravy. Not my own acquisition but a gift from a friend who was offered a brace for his dogs! A sad indication of the type of shooter who has become far too common. Cutting up the backbone and flattening out makes for faster, more even cooking and does away with the, 'Do I risk drying out the breast to cook through the legs? ' conundrum.