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: Early Summer Photo Album

The All Peoples Porch Pots and Partner Plots ministry has taken the Community Garden out into the community - way out!  Peeps Plants are growing up in their new homes on porches, in raised beds, in church gardens and home gardens, across a 3-county area.  Here are a few photos that the plants have sent us (with a little help from their caretakers) so we can see how much they've grown!

Oh Baby!  This little cucumber plant made the journey out to 
Waukesha County and is already producing fruits!  Congratulations!

Here's a message from the cucumber plant in this Waukesha County partner
porch garden:  "The tomato plants were complaining because I was
creeping around near them.  Then I felt like I was going over the edge! 
Luckily my caretaker moved me so my baby cukes won't fall to the ground
and I can crawl around as much as I please!"

And here's a message from the tomato plants in that same porch garden:
"Thank goodness that pesky cucumber plant is no longer crowding
us.  It is SO hot out here, but as long as we get the water we
need each day, we love it!  Our caretaker is doing a good job of
giving us a consistent amount of water each day so that we don't 
get yellow spots on our leaves."

We got this message from 3 happy Peeps Plants:  "Check out the 
lovely couple that takes care of us in their partner plot!  They put us
into these big buckets and we are so comfy and have room for our 
roots to grow!  Pretty soon we will give them what they
need to make salsa."

Our friends out in Rubicon made a cool logo for their 
Partner Plot program.  Many of the church members there
have big gardens and even farms!  This is their first year
of partnering up with All Peoples.

One family started a Partner Plot
near the picnic table in their yard.

Another family has a great big garden.  Can you see the
little Partner Plot sign in the garden?

Here's another friend with a Partner Plot which is growing
yummy veggies to share with All Peoples families.

The next time you visit the All Peoples Darius Simmons
Community Garden, you can look for the All Peoples &
St. Olaf Partner Plot sign!  It was a gift from our friends
at our new partner church.

Our friends from St. Olaf noticed that the strawberry farms
in their area had a lot of extra berries on the vines.  They
braved the warm weather to glean the fields so that families
in the All Peoples neighborhood can have fresh, picked strawberries!
Produce from the St. Olaf Partner Plots is usually delivered on Wednesdays
to the All Peoples Free Produce Stand in the community garden.

We hope you are enjoying the photos and the news from the Porch Pots and Partner Plots!!  Thanks to the photographers and communicators who are sharing their stories with us.  

Keep growing, Peeps Plants!!