The Kitchen

This kitchen is the central location at Yerba Buena and it’s ALWAYS busy. There are a million different typical activities that happen there. Here’s a look at just a few.

The boys bought these balloons with their own money and I got the job of tying each one.

Watching “DiRass”

Processing pimento!

Kofi falls asleep on the couch

a lot

The pineapple boxes are always a big hit

Kudjoe will wear your shoes when you’re not looking.

First cucumber harvest

Watermelon is a daily activity

Ants seek higher ground before a rainstorm

frying dumplings

Sneaking in some more screen time.

Squeezing the limes while they’re still fresh.

Puppy love

Sometimes We Go on Walks

After a couple of weeks of settling in, it’s nice to get out and explore the area a little. Last week we hosted some Canadian tourists named Marla and Oliver, so Emanuel, who’s 15, begrudingly lead us on a walk through the bush to the peninsula. Kwao mentors two students, Cory and Chrissy, from the Robins Bay School every Saturday. Luckily they joined us and Chrissy pointed out the local flora she knew including the Jamaican grape tree and Noni, a medicinal fruit that taste like blue cheese.

Cory

Cory and Oliver

Chrissy and Marla

That’s Oliver behind me

Your guess is as good as mine

Apple blossom petals

Emanuel

Kofi

I just had to share this nice moment with Kofi (age 5) because he was so shy at first. This is what we were doing when I finally cracked him.

Catching a Swarm

When your bees are doing well and they use all the space available in the hive, worker bee’s will build a special cell on the comb called a queen cup. The queen will lay an egg here for a second queen to develop. If you don’t catch them early, the new queen hatches and half of the colony “swarms” to a new location. This is ultimately bad news for beekeepers in the sense that they loose perfectly good bees from a perfectly healthy hive. Kwao explained that loosing a swarm is like losing at least $100 US dollars (i.e. the amount it cost to buy a colony of bees.) If you are lucky enough to find their new location, you might be able to catch them and start a new hive. The challenge is to ensure that the queen actually makes in into your possession, and to teach the bee’s where you’ve moved their new home. Here is a look at our attempt to save a swarm.

Queen Cups

Reducing Bee’s Wax

 

Agape and I have been experimenting with different techniques that make collecting bee’s wax simple, elegant, and affordable. We collect old honeycomb, break it up, and pack it tightly in a mesh bag to be boiled. While bag boils it’s important to agitate it as much as possible to maximize the amount of wax collected. When we feel like most of the wax is sitting on top of the water, we set it aside to dry. The challenge here is figuring out a way to keep the bag of comb below the surface of the water while all the wax hardens nicely at the top.  Agape puts on workshops for other women to learn about extracting bee’s wax so the solution can’t be too complicated and has to be accessible to anyone. So far we’ve tried putting a heavy rock in the bag and experimenting with how tightly the bag is tied around the comb. We’ve even held the bag down with a top bar and a shoe or backpack. Here is a look at what we’re up against.

Home Made Chocolate

Whole nutmeg covered by mace

Yesterday a friend brought us LOTS of cocoa butter, so Agape showed me how to make vegan, sugar free chocolate from scratch. She explained to me that most processed chocolate uses milk and no cocoa butter at all, but she always does the opposite. Before today, she dried and ground ground cocoa beans, then clumped them into equal size balls to freeze. So, in a pot we combined three frozen cocoa balls, lots of honey, and a nice chunk of cocoa butter over the fire. As the honey began to bubble and froth, we decided to grate some fresh nutmeg and ginger into the mix, and Agape convinced me to add a handful of raisons, although I was reluctant at first. Once I broke up the frozen chocolate balls with my spoon and all of the ingredients were melted and mixed evenly. Agape poured the contents of the pot over the hydrophobic underside of a banana tree leaf to cool. Eventually she divided the chocolate into bite sized pieces and stored them in the freezer to keep them hard.