Making up the numbers

My workload has started to increase after a few quiet months and today was the busiest I have been for a long time.

I opened up my email first thing this morning and saw that a set of management costs had come in  from colleagues in the US. As a result, the rest of the day was spent drafting a solution document and aggregating the US costs with estimates* to cover ancillary activities.

Shortly after lunch I was able to get the work peer reviewed and submitted for pricing. Now our Pricer is a stroppy cow and I was expecting her to perform her usual trick of rejecting the request and demanding pre-meetings and reformatting of cost sheets before she would develop the price. I was therefore truly amazed when I saw the pricing delivered to my inbox a few minutes after four o'clock.

I have to admit that it was an enjoyable experience to be busy after such a long interval and the piece of work is likely be accepted by our client as it will facilitate network connectivity for personnel required to work from home as a result of Covid-19 Social Distancing regulations.

One unexpected result of this flurry of activity was that I was exhausted by the end of the working day and asleep on the sofa by eight o-clock this evening.

---

* The less generous would say that I had simply pulled these numbers out of my arse. I would counter that years of experience had allowed me to suggest reasonable numbers without the need to trouble very busy support personnel.  I would probably also add that I have the sense to document my work in order that there is full disclosure of the approach.

A new anniversary

Today could be regarded as an anniversary.

Not one of the traditional ones like Birthdays or a Weddings, or even one of the less formal ones, like a first date* or a first kiss.  But today is definitely a date that deserves to be noted down somewhere.

Back in the October of 2018 we were invited to the wedding of a couple of friends from the puppy training class. Initially we were just invited to their "evening do", but we actually got upgraded and attended the entire event; Church, Wedding Breakfast and Evening Reception.

We had a fantastic day and were absolutely bowled over by their choice of venue for the Reception. It is a Country Manor House on the Worcestershire/Gloucestershire border and it is superb; rolling park land, splendid views out to the Cotswolds and a fine Manor House hotel, settled perfectly in the landscape.

We enjoyed the day so much that we actually started to think again about our own wedding ... or, more accurately, the fact that we had been engaged since 2005, and had not got around to tying the knot.** If the truth is told, we were both apprehensive about "the whole wedding thing" and that nervousness had resulted in a very long engagement.  We had both been married before and had attended quite a few as guests, but that wedding in October 2018 was the first time we both felt that that type of wedding would work for us.

Over the following months we discussed our wedding often and even started to look at venues.***  We didn't get very far with this selection process before we both realised that we both actually wanted to use the same venue as our friends had.

On this day last year, we headed over to the venue to attend a wedding fayre. As soon as we walked though the entrance we knew that we had made the right decision and were soon sat with their wedding coordinator discussing packages and dates in 2020.

I had been thinking about an Autumn wedding, whilst 30% was keen to go much earlier and February 2020 was mooted. We started to look at dates in February, having agreed that Friday, 14th February was definitely not an option.  As I started to work out the Saturday dates in February it dawned upon me that it was a Leap Year and that the 29th was going to fall on a Saturday!

The cosmic tumblers had clicked in to place and a booking was made.

---

* 30% and I cannot agree on our first date.  I say 22nd December 2001 which was the date we first met up after linking up via the old Friends Reunited website. We had a curry at the Shahi Palace in Redditch ... see I do remember!
However, 30% claims it was 14th February 2002 when we went to see Monsters inc at a Cinema complex in Rubery.
Now we both agree that we were at both of these events, so how on earth can the later event be the "first date"?
** We considered getting married in Las Vegas on our first trip out there in 2006 ... that was until we got there and immediately realised that neither of us wanted to associate our marriage with the tacky, "plastic" Vegas experience.
*** We went to look at one local venue and, after making an enquiry about menu choices, we were asked "Well, didn't you register and get a package as you came in?"  It rapidly became apparent that 30% and I had been considered to be parents of the Bride or Groom rather than the happy couple ... funnily enough, we didn't give them any further consideration as a potential venue.

Sometimes you need to rant!

Today was always going to be challenging!

On Friday I was instructed to take over the lead on a piece of work assigned to Colleague M.  Now Colleague M is a well meaning and intensely irritating little tit,  so today was spent on a series of calls attempting to extract information from him in a structured way and get the aforementioned info inserted in to the relevant sections of a Solution document template.

You can imagine how delighted I was to hear such comments as "So, all you're doing is putting information that I have in a series or emails or in my head in to one spreadsheet" or the equally inflammatory "You seem to be spending a lot of time saying what we won't be doing".  There was absolutely no fucking recognition that I was taking his scant items of information and using a common sense approach to weave a service definition that could be rapidly costed and contracted without causing financial exposure the Neat & Tidy Piano Movers.

Option 1 was to remind the moronic prick that I had suggested that he start to document the solution over a week ago, and had even provided the template to do so.  In this option I would have also pointed out that he didn't have the intelligence to realise that I was defining the solution, it's components and how it was dependent on other Service elements.

Instead I went with Option 2, where I bit my tongue* and made vague statements about how well he had done in his initial investigations and how defining the solution would ensure that there was a clear and common understanding by all involved parties.

If I'm honest, it was actually quite rewarding to perform the interrogation and see the resulting solution start to appear from Colleague M's addled ramblings. We now have a pretty clear, high level scope definition and now know who we need to talk to about costs.

---

* I had to bite it quite firmly

More nonsense

I'm certain that many of us have encountered a blinkered old fool that rambles on about how "things were much better in the old days" and the possibly contradictory statement that "kids today haven't had it so good".*

Right, where was I going with this?

...  Crisps, that is the subject for today's dissertation.

When I was a child there were only four or five flavours of crisps; ready salted, cheese and onion, salt and vinegar, smokey bacon and roast chicken. These flavours were judged to be the only necessary snack flavourings in the early 1970s.** They were just perfect, except for salt and vinegar which is just a bag full of fried potatoes covered with acetic acid dust and ready salted which needed a more mature palate, than that of an eight year old, to appreciate their simple perfection.

So, why did crisp manufacturers decide to release new ranges of flavours? We clearly didn't want or need them and this is evidenced by an internet search of UK crisp sales by flavour.  This shows that these 1960s flavours are still top of the charts.

At this point in the rant I'll mention that some of the new flavours are just cynical rebranding of an existing flavour. How different can Red Leicester and Caramelised Onion be from the flavourings used in the original blue bagged, Walkers Cheese and Onion?

And, now I'm on a roll, let's get to the quite bizarre flavours that are available. Thai Sweet Chilli and Worcester Sauce and Sun Dried Tomato are a couple that spring to mind. Why on earth would you want to taste those in preference to the "original 5"?

One evening last week TP and I were having a G&T and tucking in to a few crisps that 30% had tipped in to a dish. Not being able to see the packet, we started to try to guess what flavour they were.  We are still undecided but, after several of the of the unappetising, vaguely tangy slivers, we agreed that a strong favourite is Tramp's Vest.

---

* 30% and TP are concerned that I may be heading in this direction at a rapid rate of knots.
** I do have a theory that you should never eat a food product that has been developed any later than about 1976. If you stick to this rule of thumb, you will still be able to enjoy well made convenience foods, confectionary and desserts but avoid the chemical laden, massively processed crap that is on offer nowadays. I will mention one example ... a few years ago in the US we encountered a pressurised can that sprayed "cheese" from a nozzle. I rest my case.

What on earth are you doing up there?

Saturday; the weather was forecast to be fine, so today's plan was to mow the lawn and, once the day warmed, inspect the hives. This is fast becoming the norm for a lockdown weekend.

The turf was soon clipped and I then headed over to Kathy's cottage with a car stuffed with beekeeping paraphernalia.*

My main objective was to relocate the shook swarm from their six frame nucleus hive to a National Brood box. The National Brood holds eleven frames and will give the colony almost twice the space it had in the "nuc".  Hopefully this will assuage its swarming tendency. I soon had the bee covered frames transferred to the larger hive, although I failed to see the queen during the procedure. I then went through the other two colonies and both are doing reasonably well. I needed to remove a few queen cups and they are likely to need additional supers if this warm spell continues.

Back at home, I made a start on three of the four hives in the garden.** All was as to be expected until I reached the smaller of the colonies. I took a look at a couple of frames in the super to see how much nectar was being stored and was surprised to see large patches of worker brood.

Now the occasional few drone cells at the bottom of the frames are to be expected, as the workers will relocate drone eggs from the brood box up in to the super, but solid patches of worker brood suggested that the queen had managed to make her way up through the queen excluder.

It took me two searches of the super's frames before I found her, returned her to the brood box and reassembled the hive. I am now wondering whether I have a small queen that can fit through the bars of a queen excluder or whether this recently acquired excluder has an oversized mesh?

The aim of a queen excluder is to ensure that the stores of honey and the developing bee larvae are kept separate. This is because no beekeeper wants brood contaminating their honey crop. The brood in the super is not a major problem this early in the season as the eggs and larvae will complete their development in no more than 21 days.

I just hope she doesn't make her way back up their again.

---

* Keeping Bees involves a fair bit of planning, especially if the hives are away from your equipment store. I had a mental list of everything I was likely to need and still managed to forget syrup for the shook swarm.
** The hive from which produced the shook swarm will be left for four or five weeks before being inspected. This should be sufficient time for the queen cell to hatch, the queen to have her mating flights and start laying in the hive.

Dad does dinner

For the past couple of weeks I have been shadowing two colleagues that will be leaving the Neat & Tidy Piano Movers in the near future. They both have a muddled and confusing approach to work and I have been attempting to sift through their rambling narratives and contradictory emails in an attempt to work out what the hell they have been doing!*

Today I finally thought I had made progress as I had whittled Colleague R's task list down from three pages to one and had provided much needed mentoring and guidance to colleague M. You can imagine my delight when my Boss pinged me for a discussion about colleague M. We both agreed that he had bitten off more than he could chew and it now appears that I am to lead his piece of work complete pile of fucking shit ... Oh Joy!

I am now going to step away from this rant as it is Friday and this bloody mess can wait until the weekend is over.

This evening I was assigned to Dinner duties and 30% instructed me to "do that smoked salmon and pasta thing that you do".  This was a dish that I picked up from my elder sister many years ago.  It has almost certainly evolved over the years and this is its current incarnation ...

Pasta with Smoked Salmon in a Cream Sauce (serves 4)

1 medium onion (finely chopped)
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
Sliced button mushrooms ... I must have used 20 of them?
olive oil
A dash of white wine or cider, half a glass or thereabouts
1 tsp dried rosemary
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
A pack of smoked salmon cut in to narrow strips
1/2 pint double cream
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
15 oz of pasta ... I used penne

1) Add a good glug of the oil to a frying pan along with the onion and garlic, sauté until they start to soften.
2) Add the sliced mushrooms and dried herbs, continue cooking until the mushrooms start to soften
3) Add a good splash of white wine or cider and continue cooking until virtually all of the liquid has evaporated
4) Remove from the heat, season with the salt and pepper and add the sliced smoked salmon. Set the pan to one side
5) Cook the pasta and drain it well.
6) Return the drained pasta to the pan and add the salmon, onions and mushrooms.
7) Stir in the double cream and place the pan on a low heat. Continue stirring for a minute or two to ensure the dish is heated.
8) Check the seasoning and serve immediately with a green salad

This takes no more than twenty five minutes from start to finish and is a simple, but tasty supper dish.

---

* At this point you might be wondering what my boss does during his working day ... so do I!

Is this the new "normal"?*

I think TP may have made a serious misjudgement of my abilities this morning ...

He approached me, whilst dragging his fingers through his hair, and asked me if I would consider giving his hair a trim. I have to wonder if he has lost all sense of reason after five weeks of Social Distancing?

Let's be clear here, I have only ever cut a persons hair once before and that was over 35 years ago when I was a student. Since then my barbering experience has been limited to clipping a number of Standard Poodles and the occasional trimming of 30%'s fringe.

I can do a half decent lamb clip on a reluctant dog, but, for some strange reason, TP appears to think that this qualifies me to trim a 23 year old's hair.  His view was that, if it all went horribly wrong, I could just give him a crew cut and it would eventually grow back.

On a completely different matter, I have also noticed that honey sales appear to have increased significantly recently ... Four jars were sold from the doorstep in quick succession this morning.

This may, in part, be due to an increased footfall past the house as people take their daily constitutional, but I also wonder whether it is because there is still the urge to shop, but very few outlets to satisfy this desire for retail fulfilment?

Well, if a tastefully packaged jar of honey is now seen as retail therapy substitute, I'm happy to oblige.

---

*  In the past 24 hours Government Advisors have started to make statements about some degree of Social Distancing measures being necessary until such time as effective vaccines are available and that might not be in the next calendar year.

Another departure

The exit of the Triumph wasn't the only departure from the garage in early 2019.

The Black Enfield Bullet Classic that 30% presented to me for my 50th was sent over to Arden Motorcycles to be sold on commission too.

As with the Bonnie, she was a pleasant enough little bike and quite enjoyable for a potter around the lanes at 50 mph.  However she lacked power and even I could get the rear brake pedal to grind the road surface when she was leant over negotiating roundabouts.

It was 30% that suggested that I part with her on one condition ... that I used the proceeds from the sale to buy a proper present. In other words, I wasn't to just put it in the bank or fritter it away on shirts and shoes.

So this left me with a couple of grand in the bank, potentially another couple of grand heading my way once the Enfield sold and two empty spaces in the garage.*

Time to peruse the internet!

---

* At one point in time I had accumulated six bikes. There were the two Enfields, the CBR 600, the Ducati 996, the Bonneville and the impulse buy.**
** More on this in a future entry

Been and gone

It's very frustrating that the weather is so splendid and I have a selection of motorcycles sat in the garage just begging to be used.

My only essential journeys appear to be trips down to Kathy's cottage to attend to the bees and it is never going to be feasible to use a bike to transport the various bits and pieces I need for a hive inspection.

I suppose I am just going to have to be patient and wait for the Social Distancing restrictions to be eased.

Work was equally frustrating today, so I decided that today's entry would be an update on the contents of the garage ...

Back in the Summer of 2016 TP passed his motorcycle test but was without the means to purchase a "proper" bike. To be fair he never complained and was happy to take the occasional ride out on one of mine, but I eventually took pity up him and started to peruse the internet.

Late in December 2016 I found a 2001 Triumph Bonneville in amazing condition, with very low mileage and at a very reasonable price. Within a few weeks it had been viewed, paid for and delivered.

It was the perfect bike for TP. It had much more grunt and much better handling than his Yamaha 125 or my Enfields, but it wasn't so ridiculously powerful that he was tempted to ride at speeds beyond his level of experience.

Both TP and I really liked it and TP used to comment that he used to regularly get approached by men of a certain age that "used to have one  like that years ago".  30% was also rather keen on it. She loved the colour and really got in to riding pillion, as it had a very comfortable saddle and handled reasonably well "two up".

I even located a few upgrades and she sported twin clocks, alloy indicators and a much nicer rear light unit in time for TP's birthday in the November of 2017.

As I said, we both really liked it, but we never actually fell in love with it. It was incredibly heavy to push around and the performance from the air/oil cooled 790 cc engine was nothing to write home about.*

I eventually took her down to Arden Motorcycles and left her there to be sold on a commission basis. Surprisingly one of the partners decided to buy her and gave her a street scrambler conversion.

The Bonnie hasn't been the only change in the garage, but I'll leave that until I have another crappy day at work.

---

* I originally had it restricted so that TP could legally ride it on his A2 license. However a mechanic may have inadvertently removed the carburettor restriction device a few months later,

Picture Post

It was going to be challenging to make Monday look interesting.  I had a minor rant on a call at work, the dogs were walked and I popped down to Kathy's cottage to put a feeder on the shook swarm.

See, I did say I couldn't make it look like fun, so I thought I'd go with a picture post. Now I do like an unusual botanical subject, so how about this "beauty"?

I'm reliably informed by Wikipedia that this is Aristolocaceae grandiflora or the Pelican Flower as it is better known. This strangely evocative* flower is one of the largest in the world and reach 60 cm in length.

30% and I encountered this one at a butterfly farm on our visit to Costa Rica in 2018.

---

* It was interesting that many of our tour companions commented that it seemed vaguely pornographic, but none of us could explain why?

A shook swarm

Today's weather was much improved compared to yesterday and, although cool to start, it looked like it was going to be a fine day.

My plan was to inspect the bees and mow the lawn and I really wanted to leave these until the weather warmed up.  Ideally it should be above 15 degrees centigrade to open up a hive and I always prefer to mow a dry sward.

This meant that I had the early morning to finalise volume five of the Journal, upload it to the Blurb website and place an order for a single copy. The Gods appeared to have smiled down at me today, as I tracked down a 25% discount code just before committing to purchase and a good amount was deducted as I checked out.

I then headed down to Kathy H-R's cottage and checked on the two hives. One was doing reasonably well and the other was absolutely booming.  The very prolific colony was rammed with bees and had nearly filled it's super with nectar. A second super was added to give the bees some space and, hopefully, reduce their urge to swarm. Surprisingly I was also rewarded with a glimpse of each of the two Queens* as I worked my way through the hives

Back at home lunch was taken and then I wandered out to inspect the four hives in the garden.  The first was fine and required little work, other than a clean up of some brace comb and the squashing of a few queen cups.

I then moved on to the second hive and was gobsmacked by the difference. It was very busy and had laid down significant quantities of nectar in the super.  As I started to inspect the brood box it was apparent that this colony was going to swarm as there were a number of queen cells developing. I needed to respond immediately, so a Nucleus Box was fetched and I started to search for the queen.

My plan was to create a shook swarm. **  This management technique should create two colonies rather than letting nature take its course and watching the original queen and half the colony bugger off in to the wide blue yonder with little chance of catching them.

I eventually located the queen and placed her in a small nucleus hive with a couple of frames of brood, a couple of frames of stores and shook a frame of bees in to keep her company. The shook swarm was sealed up and then TP and I took it down the road and sited it in Kathy's garden.

This left two more hives to inspect. One was doing well and second super was added to create room for the bees. The second was fine, but needed nothing more than a standard inspection.

Its early in the year for swarming behaviour and the swarming season lasts through until July.  That means three months of preventative management. I may need to consider brood reduction to keep them in check.

After the fun and games with the bees, I was ready for a kip, but I fulfilled my promise and the lawn was shorn first.

---

*  They can be challenging to spot, especially in a large colony and, as an alternative, I often resort to checking for eggs or young larvae to confirm that the colony has an active, laying queen.
** A shook swarm is a management method where the beekeeper removes the queen and four or five frames of stores and brood. These are all placed in a nucleus hive and a few thousand bees are shaken in from the original hive.
The nucleus hive with the shook swarm is then sealed and relocated a few miles away. At its new location it is opened up and the colony is provided with a feeder filled with syrup to sustain them.
In due course the nucleus will be transferred to a full size hive as the number of bees increase.
The original colony is closed up and left well alone for about a month. Hopefully the queen cells will hatch and the young queen will have a successful mating flight, returning to start laying and thereby creating a new colony.

Remember, 50% of the population is below average intelligence.

Today's weather was pretty miserable.  The day started with heavy rain which eventually petered out leaving an overcast sky and a chilly breeze.

A consequence of this was that I spent much of the day sat at my desk polishing the turd that is volume 5 of the Journal. I've sort of proof read it and performed a visual check of the page layouts and formatting. I even managed to find my way in to the Blurb files of an earlier volume, so that I could check the RGB values* for the cover and thereby ensure that volume 5 will match volumes 1 to 4 on the bookshelf.

TP and I eventually persuaded ourselves that we should walk the dogs and headed out on to the Three Miler in the early afternoon. It was obvious that a significant proportion of the village had the same idea and we must have encountered 15 people in the first half mile of our walk.

It also appears that the International System of Units (SI) has redefined the meter and it is now 60% of it's former length.  This observation is based on the Social Distancing applied by most of the people we encountered and also at the village shop.

Not being particularly tall myself, it appears that, as a result of the revised Covid-19 definition of the meter, I will now be able to walk under tables without ducking.

---

* R 0, G 159, B 0 ...  if anyone is interested.

Filling in some of the gaps

In any spare time I had today I finished copying the last of the Journal entries from the Blogger web site in to the Blurb book wright software on my Mac.

Once I've finished formatting, editing and proof reading, these will become the fifth hardback volume of the Bad Man's Journal.

As I scanned the entries from 2016 it dawned on me that the Journal recorded the trials and tribulations of my first year of beekeeping, but I had left the story unfinished.  At the point of abandonment I had two hives, one of which had been re-queened, and the beekeeping year was coming to a close.

Well I can report that both of those colonies survived the Winter of 2016 / 17 and over the intervening years the number of hives has increased. At the start of this year I had five in the back garden and one a mile, or so, down the road beside Kathy H-R's cherry tree.

We took our first honey crop in 2017 and our two hives gave us 90 lbs of honey.  As the number of hives has increased, so has our crop and we produced 145 lbs in 2018 and close to 185 lbs last year.

We've designed some rather natty packaging and seem to have developed a reputation for producing a quality local honey. As a result we have no problem selling a good portion of our crop from the doorstep.

 We have been invited to sell at a couple of local food fairs and even went "International" for a while when the Cardiff Deli, that employed TP, decided to stock our Honey.  Now a Deli is exactly the sort of outlet where you would expect to find a small scale local honey, but our honey has also done really well being sold from a local Hairdresser and currently from a rather bijou little Jeweller in Alcester.

We're still alive

Earlier in the week 30% had served up a splendid Lamb and Chickpea curry.

We tucked in and were thoroughly enjoying it when TP commented that the Lime Pickle tasted a little odd. I sampled it and agreed that it lacked the expected zesty tang. At this point I enquired about the Use by Date and 30% waffled that Lime Pickle didn't go off.

I reached for the jar and saw a date in the middle of 2016!

We're both still breathing and I think the jar has been thrown away.

The irony is that one of 30%'s favourite Sunday morning jobs is to go through the kitchen cupboards; tidying and seeing what provisions are needed ...  Checking sell-by-dates is obviously not part of the job description.

More nonsense

This time it's somewhat less amusing.

As I've mentioned, things are livening up at work and I now have almost enough to keep me busy.  Today my Boss gave me couple of new activities to add my "to do" list.

Task no. 1 was to fill in a spreadsheet that his Boss had asked him to complete. "Don't spend too much time on it" he said "An hour should be plenty".

I took a look and saw that I was required to assess ninety projects and provide yes/no responses to 6 parameters for each project.* We discussed it and agreed that I shouldn't let poor project descriptions and incredibly vague parameter definitions get in my way.  I didn't challenge my Boss' crappy estimate, but I did dodge delivering it today and instead got him to agree to a joint review the following day.

As a result I was going to be spending two hours tomorrow morning populating a spreadsheet with data of the worst possible quality ... At least it will have his name on it rather than mine.

Task no. 2 was to attend a call to get an overview of a piece of work that a Contractor is working on.

It was an absolute train wreck of a call and the amusing thing is that the Contractor is so clueless and out of his depth that he didn't actually pick up on how badly it was going.

There is much work to do to get this deliverable back on track and me and another Colleague have been asked to shadow, mentor and step in as necessary to make sense of his nonsense.

---

* If you do the maths this works out to be 6.67 seconds per parameter, or about 45 seconds per project assessment.

Back to work

I was back at my desk this morning and my plan was to draft a requirements document that I should have been given last Thursday, when I was engaged on the latest project.

It's mildly irritating that I need to do someone else's job, and then make sure that they agree that I have done their job properly, before I actually do what I am paid to do. Ah well, at least I'm adding value.

If I'm honest I had real problems applying myself after the long Easter weekend and I was frequently to be found away from my desk on vital errands. *

On one of these forays I wandered in to the lounge and found Marauder watching Homes Under the Hammer. **

"Wotcha doin' Pip?" I asked
"Watchin' this" she replied

She then went on to inform me that, based on her understanding of the rental property market, the chickens' coop rental payment of four dozen eggs per week was way under market value, especially in view of the fact that I was providing full board too.

She suggested that I kick the buggers out on the street or demand an immediate improvement in improvement.

She is a very wise and knowledgable dog.

---

* 30% was frequently to be heard applauding my efforts with a hearty "Will you get out from under my bloody feet and go and do some proper work?"
** Some of the finest daytime TV there is.*** A strangely orange tinged man from Cheshire previews a ratty property that is up for sale, then goes to the property auction and collars the landlord that buys it. He then returns to the property after the landlord has splashed a bit of magnolia emulsion on the walls and gets two chubby Estate Agents to provide a sale and rental valuation. A TV Commissioning Editor actually heard this and agreed to produce several series of it ... go figure?
*** This is sarcasm

The last of the 2019 crop

Back in August last year we harvested 160 lbs of honey from our five hives.  Most of this was bottled and has been sold over the intervening months. We did hold back a dozen, or so, pounds for gifts and personal projects, but in the past couple of weeks we noticed that supplies were dwindling.

It was time to break out the "Reserve". This had been sat in a sealed, 10 litre container in my study since last September and now it was time to crack the seal.

The honey had crystallised in the intervening months and I would need to use a water bath to gently warm the honey to get it to return to a liquid state.  This sounds straightforward, but a 24 lb slug of honey was going to take a very long time to warm up and become runny.  My approach was to scoop it out and put it in to smaller Kilner jars. These were then placed in the water bath and within an hour I was able to decant it in to jars.

All I need to do now, is get them labelled

I wonder whether this will last us until this year's crop is ready for extraction?

Beekeeping notes

Yesterday's Journal title mentioned the bees, but they got nothing more than a name check in the actual entry. Instead I spent too much time rambling on about the delights of home cured bacon.

So, today's entry is about yesterday ... an update on the bees.

It has been a beautifully warm Easter weekend and yesterday (Saturday) was just perfect to have a proper inspection of the hives. Shortly after lunch I donned my bee suit, lit my smoker and took a look at the four hives in the garden.

Three of the four hives had been supered the previous Sunday and all were doing well. The colonies had expanded up in to the Supers and nectar was already being stored there.  The bees are clearly doing well. There are no crops of Oilseed Rape in the vicinity, so they must be working hard amongst the Spring flowers and hedgerow blossoms to be bringing in significant quantities of nectar so soon.

I moved on to the fourth smaller colony, expecting it to  still be somewhat smaller than the hives I'd just inspected.  It was a pleasant surprise to see the brood box absolutely brimming with bees.  A Queen Excluder and Super were quickly grabbed from the shed and added to the hive.

Later in the day I headed over to Kathy H-R's cottage and added an excluder and super to the colony that I relocated there last weekend. I also took a look at the hive that has overwintered there. If I thought that the hives in the garden were doing well, this one was amazing. The Super was already heavy with nectar and I would estimate that there was a good 15 or 20 pounds of nectar already stored within.

---

In previous years I had overwintered my hives with a brood box and super. I was always concerned that they would run short of food and starve if I removed all of the supers in the Autumn. There is a downside to this approach as the Queens often move up in to the supers and start to lay. This means that the Queen has to be located and moved back down in to the brood so that an excluder can be put in place.  Then there is a three week wait whilst any eggs she has laid in the super complete their larval and pupal stages before the young bees emerge.

Last Autumn I took a different approach. I have been befriended by a delightful, retired Gentleman who has a semi-commercial operation of about 50 hives. He has been a wonderful source of guidance and information and it was he who suggested removing all of the supers and feeding the bees on an inverted sugar syrup. He reassured me that they would be fine overwintering in the brood box and he was right.

I'll admit that I did give them all a pack of candy in December "just in case", but all six of my colonies came through the Winter and are now starting to produce this year's crop with far fewer management issues than I have had in previous years ... Thanks Pete.

Bacon & Bees

I woke early on Saturday and, after letting out the chickens, I wandered over to my smoke box.

As I approached I could smell a faint aroma of wood smoke and I couldn't resist a peep inside. As soon as I removed the front panel I was rewarded with the most fantastic aroma and the sight of a beautifully smoked loin of pork

The eighteen hours of smoking had turned the skin an amazing tan colour with a very firm texture* and I could see that hand slicing the rashers was going to be a pig of a job.  I'd anticipated this challenge and had decided that today should be the first outing for my new bacon slicer.**

Once breakfasted, TP and I headed out to the garage with the loin and he guided me through the finer points of the slicer's use. It worked beautifully, slicing through the firm rind and soft meat with ease and within twenty minutes we had about 7lb of smoked back bacon rashers and a few lardons.

I then headed back in to the house with the bacon and my vacuum packer and spent the rest of the morning getting this lot packed, labelled and stored in the freezer.

The rest of the day was equally productive, dogs were walked, bees were inspected, the slicer was cleaned*** and gin was consumed in the garden.

---

*  I usually remove the skin before curing as it can be very challenging to hand slice. On this occasion I was just too lazy short of time, so decided to get the cure underway and deal with the bacon rind at the end of the process.

** This mechanical marvel had been lurking untested in the garage for about 18 months and had arrived courtesy of TP.  The brief back story is that TP had worked in a Delicatessen whilst he was a student at USW's Cardiff Campus. The Deli had an absolutely fantastic meat slicer that was going spare and a deal was done. This allowed me to replace the decrepit slicer that I had given up on using years ago.

*** As I scrubbed the slicer I asked TP how it used to be cleaned when he worked at the Deli. He took one look at the blade guard in my hand and said " we never used to take that off". I commented on the food hygiene certification of the establishment and he grinned and advised that he only used to get paid £8 an hour.

Meat Fest

I probably need to start with a warning that this is probably not one for the Vegetarians ...

Two weeks ago I started to cure a loin of pork.  I do this every couple of months, having become disillusioned with commercial bacon.

The loin sat in the cure mixture for six days before being dried, wrapped and hung from a meat hook for a further six days. Early this morning it was taken down, unwrapped and a butcher's hook was inserted in to one end.

The loin was then hung in my smoking box and a cunning little device* manufactured by BBQ Dave was filled with applewood sawdust, tamped down and lit with a blowtorch. I made certain that I had a good ember smouldering in the smoke generator and then placed it at the bottom of the box. The smoke box door was put in place and that was it for the next nine hours.

I think this is version 4 of Dave's smoke generator

The smoke generator will need to be refilled with sawdust this evening and the loin will continue to smoke overnight.  Now 3kg of smoked pork loin might seem like more than enough protein for one day, but I had other plans ...

After walking the dogs I headed in to kitchen and took two whole chickens from the refrigerator. I'd promised 30% and TP that I'd do Beer Can Chicken on the barbecue and it is fair to say that they were delighted. For those of you that have never sampled this delight I can say only this "stop fucking around with sausages and burgers on your Barbie and cook something worth eating".

It is simplicity itself to prepare and cook and it tastes incredible. You can also leave it pretty much to itself while it is cooking, so there is no need to hover over it getting smoke in your eyes and missing out on the gin, nibbles and chat.**

At this point I should state that you need a kettle barbecue as this is cooked "lid on". The recipe is as follows:-

1 whole chicken (1.5 kg or thereabouts)
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 tsp of Thyme
1 tsp of Rosemary
1/2 tsp Brown Sugar
Salt and Black Pepper
A good glug of oil
2 tsp of Paprika
1 oz of butter
1 can of beer

1. Mix the chilli flakes, Thyme, Rosemary, sugar, salt and pepper together in a small bowl.
2. Place the chicken on a large baking sheet and drizzle oil over it. Gently rub the oil on to the bird to ensure that it is completely oiled up.
3. Now rub the mixture of chilli flakes herbs and seasonings on to the skin of the chicken.
4. Take the can of beer and wash the outside thoroughly. You'll see why in a minute ...
5, Open the beer and pour half of it in to a glass .... you can drink this.
6. Place the half filled beer can on a baking sheet and position the chicken so that the can sits inside the body cavity and supports the chicken as shown in the photo below.
7. Now melt the butter in another small bowl and stir in the paprika
8. Then brush the butter and paprika glaze over the outside of the chicken making sure that you cover all of the skin.

9. Set up your barbecue for indirect heat.  Basically this means that the charcoal is lit and then split in to two piles, one on either side of the grill. Some barbecues have charcoal baskets that make this straightforward. The key point is that there is a central area with no burning coals. ***
10. Place the grill bars over the coals and put the lid on. Leave the barbecue to heat up to about 180 degrees centigrade and then add the chicken on the centre of the grill.
11. Cook for about 80 minutes. You can use a meat thermometer to check whether it is cooked. It should be at least 75 degrees centigrade in the middle of the breast meat.

12. Remove the chicken from the grill and let it stand for ten minutes before shredding the meat from the bones.

The chicken is absolutely gorgeous as the steam from the beer keeps the meat beautifully moist and the herby rub, paprika glaze and barbecue smoke gives the most fantastic flavour.

You may be wondering why I cooked two chickens when there are only three of us here at The Pile ...

Once you've tasted this you will understand that one is never going to be enough and we will make several meals from them. It's great as a main meal, in sandwiches and a multitude of other dishes. The carcasses make a fantastic smoky chicken stock for soups and as for potatoes roasted in the oil that collects in the trays!

---

*  Sections of perforated steel have been riveted together to create a zig-zag channel about 1" in section. It is filled with sawdust that is tamped down and then lit at one end. Over the course of about nine hours the smouldering ember burns along the channel creating a continuous stream of smoke.  Simple and incredibly effective.
** This obviously refers to social events that were allowed prior to Social Distancing.
*** Add pre-soaked chunks of apple, hickory or any other wood that is suitable for smoking for a fantastic smoky flavour.