That'll give you, uh, bees.

It's spring! Or whatever the Australian Queensland semblance of spring is! Of course that means my apples are blossoming and fruit is fruiting and bees are buzzing. Which of course means honey and wax! For those of you that know me, you might know I make candles. What you probably don't know is the process. It's fucking gross. So I thought I'd share with you.

This is unrefined beeswax. Well, the ones below the top one are. The top one has been refined one whole time and then when I realized the batch was too large for my pot, I had to break it down into smaller batches to refine a further three times. To refine wax in your own home, you simply put it in a pot, turn up the heat, watch until the wax melts (try not to boil) and then turn it off.

It should look like this as it starts to cool. This is a 3rd refinement. It went through four total. After it gets to thgis stage it hardens and cools for about half a day (since the wax seals the top as it hardens, it keeps the pot quite warm for awhile). The bottom of the wax is covered in scungy stuff. Old beetles, dead bees, wax moth poo... everything. As a matter of fact, here's my sink after I've finished cleaning the wax:
How I can turn something like this into a candle is amazing. I'll update later on how that process works, but hey, now you can scrape bee guts and refine wax in your own time!

Duckling and Gordon Ramsay

I think I forgot to mention that when I went to the farm, I brought the Two Fat Ladies and Nigella Hoverchicken with me. Nigella was always supposed to be Mother's but the Two Fat Ladies were simply causing too much trouble in my roost to keep for long. With 750 acres and a couple old biddies who are barely laying in a much bigger pen, they should fair well and just be on laying age for Mother to start getting some chicken eggs once more.

I have this...habit.. much to Father's faux distress, of bringing up birds with me of various breeds. This time being the three chickens from my flock, nine ducks and three guinea fowl. The chooks weren't a surprise and the guinea fowl were probably only a minor surprise since Mother slyly hinted at wanting them when we called to ask her if she wanted peacocks (answer was yes followed almost immediately by a loud bellowing male "NO!" in the background). I think she secretly knew they'd be bought for her almost immediately and she'd get them if she put the idea in my head. It's what I do.

However when we went to pick up the ducks I fell in LOVE with this one I called 'Lipstick Duck' because it had a red tipped beak compared to it's brothers and sisters. When my husband was collecting them to bring to Mother, this one was wiley and got away and made funny noises and jumped on his hand and acted out in a great way. I declared that duck mine and then spent the next day and a half pestering my husband for the duck. No. No. No. No. No. OKAY FINE YES! Pft. He knew I was gonna keep it anyway, don't know why he bothered with the day of no's. Maybe so he could look like he had a say in it. Ha.

So everyone, meet my new little duckling, who is keeping great company with Gordon Ramsay, the chick of the 'farm'.

They are currently housed in the run I built with the other chickens, so the others can get used to them and not attack them when they're finally big enough to join the flock, which should be in a month or so. Exciting!

So much for this blog having my motorbiking and cleaning recipes and the like in it... oh well. Just to make this blog about something other than chickens, here's a photo of 20g beeswax shells I've been making for quick soap/candle dispersion:

I've been passively making these for two days.. I have about 40 of them now... just melt the wax, wait for it to cool a bit, pour and pop in the freezer. Repeat whenever I remember. All fresh from Mother's farm with a backdrop of the honey the same bees made for me. I love my pretend farm life.

Maybe I should change the name of this blog to Farm Girl in the Suburbs.