John set out early for the coast and returned with a 12 pound Coho salmon and two big Dungeness crabs. They formed the backbone of a delicious dinner, rounded out with mashed potatoes, fresh greens, and lemon-ginger pound cake (thank you Ebba!). One of the best meals we have had here.
Our main project today was to weed the greenhouse, dig the soil, and till in horse manure compost in preparation for planting winter crops. The manure comes from the big horse training center down the street, where they are happy to get rid of it. Tomorrow we will transplant kale and broccoli and plant winter lettuce, mustard greens, and arugula.
Last week we combined our two beehives since one was queenless. That left us with more frames than we could fit into two boxes, so we put a third box on top in the hopes that they would move the honey and pollen down. This week we discovered that plan had failed, as they were actually moving some honey up to the top and the queen had laid a few eggs up there. Our new plan was thus to pull the frames out and leave them near the hive. That worked amazingly well – the bees poured out to get the “free” honey, although they were competing with yellow jackets and probably with other bees. By tomorrow evening all of the honey will be gone, and we can store the frames for winter. I have high hopes for our combined hive surviving the winter at this point.