Visiting events around Newport

On Saturday, we decided to take advantage of visiting a couple of events going on in Newport.

We first went to the farmers market. There were a few produce vendors, and vendors with other products as well...

This lady was selling spun wool - and she was spinning it there at the market. We asked her about her wheel - it was from New Zealand and could be nicely folded up and carried.

We enjoyed looking at things for sale and talking with different vendors.

Carl took a last picture at the market, and it is interesting that it has a honey vendor in the picture...

... because then we went to the Lincoln County Fair and the first picture from there was from...

... the beekeeper association!

We enjoyed talking with them...

The beekeeper challenged us to find the queen bee -- that she had a white mark on her back...

... there she is!

The beekeeper marks the queen based on the year in which she becomes the queen -- this one was marked in white, signifying that she became the queen bee in 2020. The colors are set: white for years ending in 0 or 5, yellow for 1 or 6, red for 2 or 7, green for 3 or 8, and blue for 4 or 9. He gave us a mnemonic to remember it: "Will you raise good bees?" (w for white, y for yellow, etc.) (more info here: https://tbbk.co.uk/queen-marking-colours/). Generally queen bees live 3-5 years, so there isn't confusion about whether this one with the white dot is from 2020 or 2015.

When a queen gets old, her pheromone levels decrease and the worker bees start cultivating a replacement queen -- read about this process here: https://www.geesbees.ca/post/the-queen-bee

They had honey samples from different pollen that the bees would have fed upon while they were making the honey -- the ones they had were California Orange Blossom, Pacific Northwest Blackberry Blossom, Clover, and Wildflower Blossom. They shared with us that the bee boxes will usually have two compartments - a large one on the bottom (like the size of a regular file cabinet drawer at the front) and one half-sized on top of that (like the size of a business envelope). The bottom one has the food that the bees are sustaining on, and the top one is the one they are currently "making" honey in. They will put a new top drawer in the hive when the season starts for the type of honey they want to collect (the couple we were talking with particularly like the taste of the wildflower honey), and take it out when the pollination for that flower is completed. It isn't 100% from that source, but it has the flavor primarily from that source.

The beekeeper also told us that farmers in California hire beekeepers to bring hives onto their fields to pollinate certain crops - he specifically talked about the almond crop -- that over 2 **million** hives were brought in from around the US to pollinate the almonds. I thought I had mis-heard or mis-remembered, so I just looked it up: https://www.thepacker.com/news/industry/2m-beehives-imported-california-almond-bloom -- check out that article -- it includes what the beekeeper told us and more!

I asked if the almond honey is prized, and the lady beekeeper said that it is not, that it does not have a pleasant taste (to humans), but that it is used in the big drawer that provides food for the hive.

Fascinating stuff!!!

We went to another display, this one from a zoo:

There were sheep and goats and a kangaroo...

There was also a creature that I thought, at first, was a rabbit with short ears...

... but when it stood up, it wasn't a rabbit... turns out, it was a mara, a type of cavy...

I had never heard of mara or cavys - guinea pigs are cavys. (https://www.britannica.com/animal/cavy)

In case you, like I, have never heard the term "coprophagous", I looked it up, it means "feeding on dung"... ick...

There was a ventriloquist "riding" around on his "horse" - he encouraged us to get a picture with the horse...

All sorts of inflatables that kids could play on...

... and a camel that you could ride!

Lots of fun things to see and do at the Lincoln County Fair!

We headed off to lunch at Gyro Guys - a Mediterranean restaurant in Newport...

... delicious Gyro sandwiches!!!

We enjoyed our day out and about in Newport!