From the Mountain (WV Campus updates)

[Wade Hampton III]

Ah very good. I was wondering if Gliebe had found a fence for those....

[David Pringle]

It's a rainy day today so I have time to write. It's been a busy couple of weeks up here on the Mountain. Work on the farmhouse is on going. The inside looks much larger and brighter with a fresh coat of paint. The walls were black, pink, yellow, red and green.

We cleared the chicken coup next to the farmhouse last week. Our plan is to buy chickens in the next week or two when our funds allow.

Over the years since the Main Building was built the trees around it have grown very large, some were hanging over the building and needed to be cut. We had a team of professional Arborists come out this past Saturday (on their day off) to trim large overhanging branches and cut down several large dead trees. It was a lot of hard work. I'm glad I'm not an Arborist.

Our garden is growing like gangbusters! We harvest vegetables almost everyday now. Squash, Zucchini and Cucumber right now. Tomatoes will be the next crop.

On August 1st we celebrated Lammas, or early harvest, the midpoint between the Summer Solstice and the Autumnal Equinox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lammas All the families who have been working with us over the past few months attended. With children I counted 20 people. All ages, two babies, one expecting mother (37 weeks), children from 4 to 14 years old. Some of us camped at Pierce Point and enjoyed the sunrise and early morning views. Each family has done something meaningful for us. Bees, trees, brush-hogging, garden building, land clearing, road repairs, painting, carpentry...everything you can think of. Our intentional White community here will provide inspiration to those who must still live in La Cesspool Grande. Also, it will be able to self sustain over the coming years and allow researchers, and staff workers and other families to come and live and thrive.

The Land feels alive again. Not dormant and abandoned like it was when Laura Lee and I came up in March.

[Albert Pike]

How many hives in the apiary, I do enjoy seeing the fruits of good stewardship, good jpb

[David Pringle]

How many hives in the apiary, I do enjoy seeing the fruits of good stewardship, good jpb

This is our first but we set up in an area that can handle 40 (according to our expert). We also have blueprints to build more boxes to meet our future expansion.

[David Pringle]

We've got a grocery store in the ground. Today's haul.

[Will Williams]

Yummy! Nature's bounty with considerable human input.

We enjoyed the varieties of tender squash plucked from your community garden a couple of weeks ago.

[David Pringle]

We added another hive box to our apiary. I suited up this time and did some of the work with our "bee master." He was stung once, his dog got hit several times but I was lucky and didn't get stung this time. We feed them a sugar water nectar to speed their growth. This easy food is being used to make build the honeycombs in each row. Some of the rows in our hives are made from plastic. The bees don't seem to like using those as much as the wooden one. I saw our queen (she has a white dot on her to make identification easier) and several of the drones which are much larger than the worker bees. The bee population should double within the next 7 to 10 days according to our expert. He just harvested 100 pounds of honey from his hives. He has five double stacked boxes like ours to give you an idea of how much honey we could be getting.

[Albert Pike]

Did a little harvesting today in my apiary, approx 100lbs will go out later this week and finish up anticipate another 100lbs, got 3 hives working this year. Make sure you rotate the frames the inner full ones to the outside ones that are more times than not worked by the bees. It's impressing to see a bee colony at work, not to mention of course honey is the perfect food. Btw I did get stung once, it got inside my suit and than inside my shirt, goes with the territory though for the beekeeper and the bee

[Emily Henderson]

Did a little harvesting today in my apiary, approx 100lbs will go out later this week and finish up anticipate another 100lbs, got 3 hives working this year. Make sure you rotate the frames the inner full ones to the outside ones that are more times than not worked by the bees. It's impressing to see a bee colony at work, not to mention of course honey is the perfect food. Btw I did get stung once, it got inside my suit and than inside my shirt, goes with the territory though for the beekeeper and the bee

Wow, that's really good that you're doing the beekeeping:
Something interesting about bees and honey-if you eat local honey you will greatly reduce your allergies to pollen and other native things, as you're getting it in small doses from the honey. That's why eating honey from Wal-Mart that comes from who knows where can't do this for you. There is a major interest in local honey in Central Texas for this reason, the Cedar Pollen is very hard on people.

[Albert Pike]

Did a little harvesting today in my apiary, approx 100lbs will go out later this week and finish up anticipate another 100lbs, got 3 hives working this year. Make sure you rotate the frames the inner full ones to the outside ones that are more times than not worked by the bees. It's impressing to see a bee colony at work, not to mention of course honey is the perfect food. Btw I did get stung once, it got inside my suit and than inside my shirt, goes with the territory though for the beekeeper and the bee

Wow, that's really good that you're doing the beekeeping:
Something interesting about bees and honey-if you eat local honey you will greatly reduce your allergies to pollen and other native things, as you're getting it in small doses from the honey. That's why eating honey from Wal-Mart that comes from who knows where can't do this for you. There is a major interest in local honey in Central Texas for this reason, the Cedar Pollen is very hard on people.

Thanks EH, yes beekeeping is a rewarding experience giving oneself the opportunity to first hand view some of the animal kingdoms finest working society.

How appropriate to see the working of the bee colony on the LAND, it gives the breath and depth of the virtues that are being displayed there by the stewards in charge, all in all it shows purpose thru focus and giving success an opportunity to shown. I believe the virtues best shown are:

Courage
Truth
Honour
Fidelity
Discipline
Hospitality
Self Reliance
Industriousness
Perseverance