Down on the Farm

Just in case anyone was worried, you can rest assured that we have arrived safely back in India. The internet has been down in our house since we got back a week ago, so we're a bit behind on our blogging. Now that it is functional again, we thought we'd make a couple more posts about our time at home in the good old USA.

First we wanted to take a look at our time on the farm in Michigan. It was great to be able to be at Beth's parents' farm without much responsibility. One thing that Beth was excited about was harvesting honey. She got all decked out in her nectar collector gear for the occasion.

The extraction process began after the hives had been collected. Beth and her dad did all of the uncapping of the combs.

After the combs were uncapped, they were placed in the extractor and spun around till all the honey had been...extracted.

We were left with more than thirty pounds of honey in a big bucket (don't worry...we filtered out all the dead bees that you can see in the picture below before we handed out free honey to friends and family).

Of course, no trip to southwest Michigan is complete without some fruit picking. In addition to our usual cherries (and requisite pies) we did some blueberry picking, as well.

This was Dave's first time with a bucket tied around his shoulders, but he did quite well. Beth is a natural at this task and had perfected a very efficient system before the day was done.

We thoroughly enjoyed our time on the farm and will certainly miss it for the next year.

Dave and Beth