Solar exposure leads to joy explosion
After a couple of months of cold, snowy gloom, a couple of days with sunshine and normal to slightly-above-normal temperatures changes everything. Especially our mood. We’ve got vitamin D coursing through our veins, and we feel so alive! There’s still snow covering everything, but it looks a lot better with sunshine glaring off of it. And we have been shocked to find how early the sun is actually coming up, and how late it’s going down. With the clouds it wasn’t so obvious. Yesterday we walked through town and had some really nice visits with others who were out enjoying the sunshine. Smiles all around. It’s like the sun is radiating joy. The non-human animals are clearly feeling it too. The rabbits were running in circles when I went up to the rabbitry this morning, Monkeyshines got up on the fence and just crowed his heart out yesterday, Andy Cat has been bouncing off the walls, Gibson Dog has been occasionally sitting up and wagging his tail. Ah, sweet promise of Spring.
Yesterday we got out the solar cooker for the first time this year. It was about 20 degrees when I set it out, but within an hour or so in the sun it was up to 190. We put in a loaf of apricot nut bread, with black walnuts from last Fall, and it cooked perfectly. Actually, we would have had time to do a second dish if we had something prepared. The air temperature topped out around 230, so it was cooking at around 260 or maybe a little higher. This morning for breakfast, in our suddenly well-lit kitchen, we had fresh eggs, solar-cooked apricot nut bread, and peaches that we canned last Fall. With raw milk and coffee (for us big folks).
Today, we’ll be getting into the bees. It’s time to see how they’ve weathered the Winter so far, and to start feeding them some lower-concentration sugar water with essential oils to stimulate feeding. We want the queen to start laying eggs and building up the colony so they’ll be ready to take advantage of the early Spring blooms — maples, poplar, willow, etc. One of our top goals this year is to put more work into the bees, getting into them regularly and regularly doing things like powdered sugar treatments for varroa mites. The topbar hive design that we’ll be using for an additional one or two hives this year has a built-in viewing window that will allow us to see what’s going on inside without opening the hive, thereby putting the “fun” into functionality. And of course Tretan will be starting to help us with the beekeeping this year, so we’re excited about that. I think we’ve got a great Spring on the way.
apricot nut bread is working on its tan in the solar oven