Heather Honey Press.

It’s now Tuesday morning (just) and I’m getting around to posting last Thursdays feeble effort. It was one of those days. I seem to be running on a cycle of posting twice a day for a while - followed by a period of abstinence; the result is that I’m slowly losing ground.
 
I had planned to process my rather small crop of honey (as always, smaller than estimated); it’s a task to which I like to devote a day. With Mrs TD away this morning consorting with the local Riding for the Disabled Association, and working this afternoon while Jnr would be packing ready to depart for a rather taxing year at university, I thought I would have peace. It transpired that Jnr needed some supplies with one of the reasons for getting them now being that I would have to be both taxi driver and banker. When we returned, he had an email to the effect that his verbal contract on the lease of a flat had been withdrawn; landladies are not what they were in my day, so the afternoon was spent rushing around frantically making fresh arrangements. The lady at the agency with whom we dealt went beyond the normal bounds of duty and stayed at the office after hours, until all the paperwork had been cleared; Jnr is very appreciative and talking about buying a box of chocolates for her. The net result was that I went to bed with the honey extraction incomplete, but I was able to leave things clean and tidy.
 
I suspect that there is some heather honey in the crop as only about half of it spun out in the centrifuge, that half is in the bucket on the left. The rest could be given back to the bees, but if it is heather, that isn’t a good idea; the high protein content can give the bees dysentery and, since our winters are quite long and they don’t have an inside toilet . . . .
The alternative is to mash up the honey comb (it’s in the cat litter trays which have, I promise you, never been near a cat) and put it through the press which is in the middle. The pleasure of that job will have to wait until Saturday as tomorrow, I have to deliver Jnr to his new flat; a 600 mile round trip.