Harvest Breakfast

A Harvest Breakfast.

Our kitchen window looks out onto the garden from between a vine of honeysuckle and a climbing rose. This morning, the sun-splashed garden is heavy with a late summer dew and the light breeze through the open window, laced with the scents of harvest and dust, has that fresh hint of autumn, just around the corner.

For me, that harvest is honey; precious, gleaned from my hives in meagre amounts after a disastrous spring which saw me having to actually feed the girls from April to May, just to keep the colonies alive. The flow from the Lime trees was a late season relief that allowed the girls to build stores at last and allowed me a few frames to take off.

It's my first proper look out onto the new day as I go through my coffee comfort ritual. The smell as the boiled water hits the fresh-ground coffee has me breathing deep to catch the full aroma before I go 'nose-blind'.

As the coffee settles, I reach into the fridge for the milk. I like the un-homogonised, full-cream milk that our local supermarket has recently started stocking. It's milked from Jersey cattle and sits there in it's little group of elite creamy bottles on the top shelf of the refrigerated stack, it's rich yellow cream crowning the top couple of inches. Real milk! We'd have called it 'Gold Top' when I was growing up. My sister and I used to fight over who got to open it and have the slug of cream on our cereal. These days, I like to shake it thoroughly, but today the plug of cream has solidified to the point where it will never redistribute through the rest of the bottle. What to do?

I look to the little stack of golden jars on the kitchen table where they're waiting patiently for labels. Cream and honey for breakfast! Obviously! This is so far from my usual raw-oats-and-milk-no-sugar breakfast that it's taken my sluggish morning mind a few moments to connect the dots.

The cream is solid as I spoon it out of the top of the bottle. It's so solid that it's actually difficult to spread without tearing the bread. There's just enough to adequately cover one slice.

Turning to the table, I retrieve the part-filled jar from the end of the bottling, designated for family eating. The honey is light, golden and very runny. I wonder how long before it will start to crystallise – I've never had a harvest that was so easily tagged to one particular flower before, but the avenue of huge old Lime trees came into flower and drew my girls in with the light, but all-pervading scent filling the grounds of the old estate where they' live. I watched them leaving their hives and immediately climbing high to turn back behind the apiary and off to the trees. The blackberry was in flower at the same time and I did see a few of them on the brambles around the place, but the vast majority were captivated by the Lime, forming a busy conveyor of nectar. In a week they had filled a box with the last major honey-flow of the season. Relief!

Now, I spoon this golden treat from the jar to run over the cream. Where the bread has torn a bit the honey soaks in. Effectively, this is my own cream with my own honey. OK, it's neither; the cream settled out of the Jersey cow's milk and I stole the honey from my girls. In fact, they're not really my girls. They're the girls I house in exchange for a little rent. ...House, treat against disease, feed during the hard times... But they are their own colonies and they behave as they will, with no recourse to me, leaving me to guess at their moves and reminding me of my place with the occasional sting if I'm too hasty or inappropriate in my investigations. They can be particularly grumpy if the weather's a bit thundery, or if I leave an inspection too late in the day. They're easiest when the weather is hot and the nectar is flowing. Then a good half of them will be out of the hive and the rest are too busy to take much notice of me.

It takes three bees their entire, short lives to make one teaspoon of honey. I think of that constantly as I'm bottling, taking great care not to miss a drop. It's a slow process as I wait for the last of the drips through the muslin filter. (I didn't spin this year; there wasn't enough honey to justify the mess.) I'd like to say that I wasted no more than a couple of spoonfuls throughout the entire process.

All of my bee relationship is uppermost in my consciousness as I take that first luxurious bite. Thank you, you fabulous furry little grafters.