The Smoker is Now Painted

The smoker is now painted. I am planning to cook chicken tomorrow for the family and in -laws for Memorial Day.

Updated Photo of Garden

Looking good, looking good.
The snap beans are nearly ready to harvest. Some squash will soon be ready also. I am usually picking a handful of strawberries every other day. My blanc dubois cuttings are also healthy.

This is a smoker/cooker that I built from an old used water well bladder tank. It holds the desiered temperature well and will cook for 5 or 6 hours on only 40 charcoal briquets. This was a fun project. I have yet to paint it. I wanted to make sure all items were fine tuned before painting. Its's ugly but it works great.

This is the catfish trap that I built today. I will try to document the catfish harvest. Maybe someone will find this pretty neat. Like I have said before, you can never till what sort of strange project I have going on. I lost my other trap in the river.

This is a photo of my grapes that I am growing. This is the second year for the vines and I have allowed a few of them to produce grapes. The variety is blanc dubois. They are suppose to be pierce disease resistant.

Recent Photo's of Bees & Honey

This year I have started a garden from some very good soil. I have burned my wood flitches and scrap wood here for about 10 years. The soil is dark and grows very large weeds so I thought I would make a garden out of the spot. The bee hives are within 50 feet of the garden. Hopefully I will have some fresh veggies this year. I have planted corn, strawberries, peppers, squash, tomatoes, potato's, bush snap beans, and my grape vine cuttings were rooted in 1/2 of of one row. The bees should enjoy this.

This is another view of the garden that I have started this year. I put an 8 foot cyclone fence around it to be sure I have no deer in there. It is small (23' x 23') but I have 7 rows of veggies in an area that I can reasonably manage and water. (I ran a 3/4" water line to the garden underground and have it set up nicely for irrigation purposes.)

It is hard to see but the extractor had honey almost to the extractor cage.

It was about 3 1/2 gallons in there that we extracted from 2 hives.

I am now emptying the extractor with a screen filter.

Ahhhhhhh the sweet rewards of backyard bees.

This is a fun little video of the bees in action.

This is a photo of my 3 hives that I keep in my backyard. The middle hive is the new split hive.