Selfsufficientish.com

Hi selfsufficientish people! I was involved in a interesting projects couple of years ago. My food story is a depository of short stories found on the web and offline http://www.myfoodstory.info/ Btw. I am the one who is picking cherries on the photo.
I am also a member of a internet based network Minciu Sodas http://www.worknets.org/ which is a lab for independent thinkers and we are currently working on a project sponsored by a UK company Mornflake http://www.mornflake.com
We want to reach out and connect to other online communities. As part of this I would like to gather some food stories. Since self sufficient people are heavily into food I think it will not be a problem.
Also as a beekeeper I offer my humble knowledge to people here who are interested in keeping bees.
here are some bee's related stories http://www.myfoodstory.info/index.php?tag=Beekeeping
Please feel free to contact me regarding bees or myfoodstory project I am interested in. Thanks!

I am interested in learning more about bees. I was wondering if it is possible to keep them in town. Also have Carpenter Bees in our fence posts and wonder if there would be a conflict?

DeneciePie

Absolutely possible. there are people keeping bees in Paris, London and New York, Tokio too. I kept a hive on my umm what is the name, well, basically near my window. A person keeps 30 beehives in his yard but he is in suburbs.You can keep them on the roof. Best to keep them out of sight so nobody will notice them. Believe it or not bees are very peaceful creatures.
Beesource.com is the best forum on bees. They wont notice carpenter bees.
http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm this is IMHO best site on organic beekeeping.
Cheers!

Hi Sasha - I read the bit you wrote about freezing cherries for use in cakes etc. How do you manage to freeze them? I tried last year but when the cherries defrosted they had all discoloured and turned brown like plums do when they've been frozen and were unusable so I had to throw them away. They are the yellow/pink coloured variety.

Hmm, I need to ask my wife aou that :) I just pick them.
But as far as I know you just wash them, take out the cherry stone (if that the term), and freeze them.Also great for making juice. Maybe the difference is in the type of cherries?

Interesting - it must be the different type of cherry - presumably red ones freeze OK. Mine weren't just discoloured, they didn't taste or smell anything like cherries at all either. I've had the same problem with freezing cooked greengages (green plums) which as soon as the air touched them when they were defrosting turned black and smelt like prunes. It wasn't nice though.

Still you learn by your mistakes and these are two fruit I won't be freezing again!

Also I can help with the beekeeping projects for beginners if there are such here on Ish forums.

Thanks to Mornflake who is sponsoring some of my efforts.