Each year, I try to create a theme for the upcoming work on our farmstead. It provides direction and helps us tell our story. This year we are focusing on three 'B's: Remodeling our basement bathroom, starting beehives, and refurbishing the basement.
After several months, the basement bathroom is complete. The final touches such as a towel rack, grab bar and artwork, are up. It is a dramatic improvement from the old bathroom, and will allow us to start work on the main floor bathroom later this year.
Our bees have slowly been building comb in their Langstroth hive and making honey. I added a honey super a couple of weeks ago, but comb production has not started yet. I did not have time to roll some additional wax onto the foundation, which may be a factor. We may not get honey this year, but the real goal has been to help the bees get ready for winter. If they maker it to spring, we should get honey next year. Maggie has not had any luck attracting swarms to her Layens hives, but maybe next year.
That leaves us with the basement. I was able to fit in some spare time to build shelves for storage, including a shelf for our canning supplies and canned food. Last year we ended up using a spare closet for canned goods and winter squash, which worked well in winter but quickly became too hot during summer.
The basement should maintain a more even temperature. The last project will be to paint my workshop space and start to position tools and workbenches in their final spots. We talked about replacing the old flooring, but because this will be a workshop, I plan to hold off on a new floor. I see little point in spending the money on new flooring only to see it damaged by paint and solder. I have patched nail holes and started to prepare the ceiling for paint. This project should get wrapped up quickly, but the tail end of the year is always busy.
We are just entering canning season, and prepping the garden for winter will take an entire month. If I can just paint a wall or two at a time, it will slowly get done.
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