Partner Plot News: Honey!

This is the story, told in pictures, of how jars of fresh, artisanal honey made their way to the free produce stand in the All Peoples Darius Simmons Community Garden.

These are bee hives.  In nature, bees make their own hives, but bee keepers build these little houses which are just perfect for honey bee colonies.  Each bee in the colony has its own job.  Forager bees are the bees we see in the garden.  Their job is to go out into the world, flying from flower to flower to collect nectar (the sweet juice in the center of the flower). The nectar will be turned into food for the bees in the hive. Pollen from flowers sticks to the bees, so as the bees go from flower to flower, that pollen moves from flower to flower with them.  This pollinating process makes it possible for plants and trees to produce fruits, from apples to zucchini.  This is why taking good care of bees is so important!

When the forager bees come home to the hives, they give the nectar to the house bees. A little bit of bee spit from the forager mixes with the nectar.  A little bit more bee spit mixes in when the nectar goes to the house bee. That bee spit helps the nectar turn into honey.

Inside the hive, the house bees build little hexagonal cylinders out of wax to hold the nectar. After bees squirt the nectar into the wax hexagons, the bees inside the hive make a warm breeze with their wings to remove some of the water from the nectar.  The nectar becomes thicker.  That is how it becomes honey!  To keep the honey fresh, the bees make a little beeswax cap for each hexagonal honey pot. In this photo you can see the honeycomb - all of the little hexagons are filled with honey!

Bee keepers collect honey from the hives by removing some of the honeycomb.  It is important to leave enough honey in the hive so that the bees have food for the winter!  Remember, honey is bee food first, and people food second.

The process of collecting the honeycomb and squeezing out the honey is sticky business!

This is a honey press.

Look at all that honey!!

It's important to remember that raw honey should not be given to children under age 2.

The pressed honey is then decanted into jars.

Good to the last drop!!

And that is the story of how jars of yummy honey made it to the All Peoples produce stand. Thank you to Pastor Larry, the honey team and friends from St. Olaf for this fun Partner Plot Project!!

Partner Plot News, Fresh from the Corn Field

Our friend, Steve, was busy with his camera during the last 2 weeks, as teams from St. Olaf and All Peoples harvested corn fresh from the partner field!  Neither heat, nor pending storms kept the team from completing its mission!  Everyone involved had fun, learned a lot and says THANK YOU!

This team helped collect the first batch of corn for the All Peoples vegetable stand.
The community was so excited to get its first taste of fresh, Wisconsin sweet corn!

Check out how beautiful all of the produce grown in St. Olaf partner
plots looks at the free produce stand!

It's so much fun when we work together!
St. Olaf friends will recognize this woman doing her part.

The littlest harvester was a pretty great helper!

Our friend Steve calls this "four-handed picking"

What's the last you thing you did before heading off to college?  Picked corn, of course!

Always stop to smell the flowers.  And photograph bees.

Photos submitted by St. Olaf Lutheran Church, Rubicon, WI

Plant Diaries: The Babies are Growing

The Grow Room is empty!  Where are the plant babies now? 

Remember our friends, Tom and Mat O?  They are growing tall alongside
their new friends in Kingo Lutheran Church's community garden.

They are growing so fast, you can hardly find them like among all of their new friends!

Thanks to that nice lady who let Tom and Mat O stay at her house for a couple
of nights!  That really helped them to get ready to be out in the big garden!

Tom and Mat O are pretty famous.  Do you remember the first letter we received from them?  They are even featured in a new short film which All Peoples is using to help teach kids about hardening off their plants before planting them into a big pot or a big garden.  You can watch the movie too!  It's called Baby Plants.

Some of our plants went to St. John's Lutheran Church in Brookfield, where
they met their new caretakers.  The plants spent a few nights on porches in Brookfield,
Waukesha, Pewaukee and Mukwonago before venturing out into the bigger world.

Out at Holy Cross in Menomonee Falls, the youth put some effort into creating
lovely warm, rich beds for a wide variety of baby plants from All Peoples.

Baby plants require a lot of tender, loving care, and we can see that these babies
are being tucked into their new beds with gentle hands.

Meanwhile, back at All Peoples Church, many of the plants are spending a little time in the greenhouse.
Here they are getting used to their new, larger pots, which will be their permanent homes
on neighborhood porches and in the All Peoples Community Garden.

Yesterday, a small cucumber plant was spotted skipping down Clarke Street in the hands of a small boy.  Are pickles in his future?  Stay tuned for more plant adventures!!

This story is brought to you by the All Peoples Community Garden Porch Pots and Partner Plots programs.  During Covid-19, the community garden is moving out into the community in new and broader ways.  If you are a caretaker for a porch pot or partner plot, please submit your photos and stories to linda@allpeoplesgathering.org or post them in the comments.

Submitted by Linda Muth.