Although our barn is a terrible mess, it's also chock full of useful supplies.  When friends and family start to throw things away, we instead cart their junk home to toss into a corner.  Someday I'll get it organized, but for now visiting the barn is a bit like browsing through a crowded antique shop.

Tuesday, I headed out to the barn in search of paint for the bee boxes and came back with a full can of maroon.  No white paint to be found, but I started to ask myself --- why are bee hives painted white?  A quick internet search suggested that white is traditional primarily to reflect heat in the summer.  Since I plan to cover the lids with reflective tin, I figured I could fly in the face of tradition and stick with maroon.  I wonder what farmers did before google?

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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