A big birthday,preserving, and bee hives and more !!!.

Back in October, my wonderful Mum turned 90 years of age. Most of the family got together  in Dubbo to celebrate the occasion.

We  had a lovely lunch ,a few speeches and the kiddies enjoyed a fun lolly buffet table.

Mum at 90 is doing so well and I am so very proud of her attitude and independence, she has in the past and  still today  sets  a fantastic example for us to follow.
It was lovely to see so many of our family  all get together  and we had a wonderful catch up.

Returning home after the party, we were talking to some neighbours  who told us they had a loquat tree that we were welcome to come and pick fruit from,  so we did  go and got to pick  two buckets and an esky full.

I had never preserved loquats before  and did some research and found that they are mainly used for jam,we are not big jam eaters, so I decided to just halve  and de-seed them( I had to soak  them  in water and lemon juice to stop them browning.)

I then stewed the loquat halves in a light syrup,

I then  filled my jars and water bathed them in my Fowlers Vacola electric water bath preserver.

They  turned out really well,  we ended up with 28 pint jars, and hope that we get the opportunity to pick them again next year( They were a lot of work, but well worth it.) We are also going to plant a few trees of them as well)
Hubby decided to attach the sheets of  bees wax to the frames while we were at the farm last time also, he first tried using battery alligator clips attached to his jump start pack to melt the wires into the wax, but there just wasn't enough power in it to work.

Next he used his small  soldering torch  to melt along the wires to attach them, this worked much better so he continued to use this method to complete all the frames.

The hive is now complete and all we have to do now is obtain a bee colony to move into it's new home, I can hardly wait.
Back home on the coast we decided to dismantle a  metal structure we had with shade cloth  over it that  originally protected the fish pond and more delicate potted plants that we had.

Hubby  will re-assemble it over a new vegetable garden when we  get it established up at the farm.
We also removed  another metal structure  that we used to grow our choko vine over.

We  loaded all of this metal onto our trailer along with a lot of boxes and crates that I have packed  and took it all to the farm ahead of our move which hopefully will be in the next few months.

I decided to empty one of the  spare rooms, and stack all the boxes and crates in there until  we finally move all the furniture in and have some of the renovations  completed.

The time for our move is drawing closer, and we have had a really busy time sorting out a lot of  things and life has been a little crazy. I will try to keep up with the posts, and they may seem a little random at time, but that's how our crazy  life is at the moment,we seem to spend half our life on the roads between the coast, the farm and our children's homes.
So until we meet again,
Take care everyone,
Cheers,
Jane.