Honey Harvest

Here are the promised photos of the honey harvest.

Pappy raises bees, as did his father... his son and grandson are likely to follow.
The hives surround the abandond house which Pappy was born in ( a 2 minute walk from our house...hence his bees being responsible for the abundant performance of our fruit trees). I've been inside the front room, which is the old kitchen (invited in to see bee-keeping equipment...apparently the hand-painted 'danger-of-death' signs didn't apply to us!) -- and it is very like the old 'haunted houses' from my childhood, which were in reality old abandoned settlers' homes, hidden away in long-untrodden regions of the Ottawa Valley. I doubt any room in Pappy's birth-home is safe to walk in any more, other than the kitchen. How I would love to explore it though! I wonder that I did not more thoroughly explore such houses I knew as a child, for I have always loved their weighty aura of history and story...but I warrant adults knew what they were doing by not erradicating the addage 'haunted' from our references...for it served a successful deterrant from over-familiarity. Even for children convinced that they did not believe in 'hauntedness.'
I dither on over such memories, as there is much about Pappy's world that constantly draws my mind back to the Ottawa Valley....which, when I was a child, still had many pockets lost in the recesses of time. I hope a few still linger.

You will have the opportunity to see, in these photos, honey harvesting equipment as it used to be. Indeed, even our young friend N. could be a snap out of time himself. Unfortunately our visit and introduction to Honey Harvesting was curtailed by other appointments...we would have loved to stayed longer and taken more photos!
The event took place in an upstairs bedroom at Pappy and Madame's...

I'd love to make these pictures bigger, to give a better sense of the event, but I also want to include the whole progression, which will take up much room. So, smaller photos, but more, it is.
(hmm...the photos seemed to have come out different sizes...and non-techy as I am, it's best to leave them as such, or I'm likey to have to start all over again! However, as with all pictures on the blog, if you click on the photo itself, it should pop up in a larger version for viewing)












You can see that this is very definitely a three generation event. And N. answered our questions as eagerly, and capably, as his father and grandparents (he's also good at translating his grandfather's old rural French into something a little more accessible for we les étrangers).
































Unfortunately there are no photos of the honey slowly dripping out of the spigot at the botton of the barrel. The smell was pungent and rich. And the taste...










We sampled both the fresh spun honey, and also the dripping combs. It has been years since I've chawed on a honeycomb...and never on one from Pré Borel!








This master spinner on the left, by the way, is the best tractor driver we've ever seen -- at the age of twelve no less. Any work on the farm which requires particular skill with the forklift is handed over to him. Some kids fine-turn their eye-hand co-ordination with a joy-stick...N's more interested in the real thing. He's also the one who pulled the car out of the pit for Greg (hmmm...Greg started writing that story for you, but I'm not sure he's finished it yet...).
More anon.

(btw -- picked and puréed 99 ripe and ready large & medium sized tomatoes two days ago...off of only 6 plants...and today there are about 30 more ready to go: help!)
(and, we've relief from the heat. Indeed, yesterday morning it was 14C -- a 30 degree drop in less than a week!!)