Coffee is on

It was still a little cool outside , but the late's are hot . 

After putting the cafe back together for the summer, everyone drifted over for a coffee, a dozen late's later I got to sit down and join them.  The coffee shop is such a great place to be able to sit with the kids and visit .  It is like they leave troubles and work behind when they sit down, and get to have a moment of normal ... what ever that is.  

The farm bees are up in the mountain, but there are still lots of bees in the fields at the farm.  One of our neighbors a couple doors down works for us part time.  He does a walk around the farm properties every night to make sure everything is ok and that the fires are on, especially the one in the green house .  All that to say, that he has bees as well as a big  part of his income.  This winter he had a large die off as a result of the extreme cold   

I sat down with him a couple days ago with him and he showed  me a bee house that is used in the north of Russia.  It is like a condo for bees that holds 40 separate families of bees.  By keeping them all under one roof, they generate enough heat as a group to keep the hive temperature correct.  There are many other benefits to this as well.  It is much more compact then having 40 separate hives.  From the inside there are windows into the hives so that you can at a glance monitor the haves to see how they are doing.    Servicing the hives is also done from inside the house which will lead to optimal honey production and health of the hives. 

We are thinking that we could take this up a notch and be able to make this an educational tool that he could open it up to visitors to safely see the inside workings of a hive and include some of the processing tools to view and sell the honey right from inside the house.  Situated beside the guest house and across the road from the museum, this could add to the draw of the community. 

We are expecting the total cost of this project to be about $2000.  We are hoping to provide the funds as an interest free micro loan, that will be paid back toward other micro financing projects once it is up and running and the honey is flowing.   If any of you are interested or know anyone interested in providing a micro loan for this project , please pass on the information.  This would be a donation so would be tax respectable.   

We have several teams coming this spring, with the first one arriving in a couple weeks.   This fist team we will have them working on the farm, but will also be helping another family in the village . 

There are always a ton of kids at the park, and we found out that 14 of them live in this house .  

There are a collection of kids from a few different families all living together in this one house. 

The house could use lots of repairs, but the most important right now is to fix the roof so that the rains don't damage the house any more, and they don't start having a mold problem.  

I stopped in to see them a couple days ago.. three more kids are out playing while this photo was taken ... likely out at the park .