Transition time

-Posted by Isaac

Well, we did the pumpkin thing,

and we did the trick-or-treat thing…

In fact, many trick-or-treat things.

Remember when Halloween consisted of just one glorious evening of walking around town? Maybe you’d spend a few hours (not days!) fretting over a costume. Remember the good old days when it was short and sweet? And made for kids? I know I sound like a grouch, but this business of adult Halloween parties, school candy parties, and no less than three or four kids events is complete BS. It takes a full week! What a bunch of crap.

In so many ways, I feel like my parents’ generation had it easy. I mean, compared to what we have to go through. In holidays, in sports, in politics, in school… in their three TV channels and two newspapers and two genders… in their wall hanging dial phones, no internet, limited fast food choices and 55 mph speed limit… they had it easy! It really makes me wonder.

What will little Arlo be complaining about at 42?

Your guess is as good as mine.

As I write, a cold, hard 22 degree wind whips and screams. There’s ice on the doorstep and the eggs are soon to crack unless I get out there. Winter has arrived.

The wood stove whistles in the next room. We are definitely transitioning. Jayne is on her early Saturday trip to the Worthington Market. Two weeks ago they moved inside, but poor poor sister Becky is still outside at Clintonville. Hope she bundles that baby.

As usual, I’ve got the kids. And as usual, for November, we’ll probably jump into cutting firewood.

We’ve been at it for at least a month. Saturday afternoons. I’ve got to say, I’m impressed with how enthused they get. In about an hour we can do a full load. In another hour, it’s all on the porch. And they stay happy the entire time. Apparently nobody has explained that this is work.

On Wednesday, as the kids were moving another load onto the porch, I took the opportunity to check the election results. The real results. As in, who’s ticked off, who’s happy, who’s pleasantly surprised, who’s talking trash, and who’s moving to Canada. Yes, this can all be done through Facebook.

I came across useful data in the form of a pie chart:

According to Jayne, this is something I need to keep in mind as we move toward 2020.

But that’s a long way off. And in the meantime, we’ve got a lot to do.

As you can imagine, there isn’t much in the way of bee work with this weather. The girls are hopefully fat and happy and clustered for a long winter’s nap. I haven’t peeked in a hive for over two weeks and I’m suffering withdraw. Fortunately I have the wax to keep me busy.

All the cappings are now being rendered into blocks. This is an involved process.

A process with certain perks.

If you’re at all interested in this wax processing, I explained some things in a blog post back in 2016: Wax 101

I can do just a few blocks every day, and I need to hustle along because the candle orders are picking up.

Here is where you find the real work, and the real transition into winter. Pouring and wicking candles, making soaps, salves, lip balms. Packing honey, arranging gift sets…

Jayne, Katie, Kristen and Petyn run around on the many daily tasks.

Lafe and I try to stay out of the way… just keep the floor clean the the wax blocks coming.

The orders come streaming in and we know that the stream will soon become a river. The river will swell into an ocean about a month from now. Everyone wants their holiday beeswax candles.

I guess it’s just something that goes hand in hand with the season.

No, not that. We’re past that spooky season.

I’m talking about the truly scary one. The one where we all go insane.

And on the side, wish for world peace.

Until next time, as Bridger would say, “Peace brother.”

carpe diem

-Posted by Isaac

This week I’ve got a couple videos for you. One at the beginning, one at the end. In the first, Maizy practices her bucket filling:

Yes, we’re completely finished with the fall honey. And it feels good.

The last few frames have to be pushed through because there’s nothing coming from behind.

Every year I have a pretend race with the grain farmers. Who will finish first? Judging from the amount of corn still standing in the fields, I’m guessing we beat most of them. My brother Justin ran the combine late into the night and finished his last field an hour before the rain this morning.

Now we both enjoy our respective tasks. As he moves grain from field to semi truck to grain bins to elevator, we move honey from hives to barrels to bottling tanks to grocery stores.

And at the honey house there’s a lot of shifting. A couple big loads of supers go out and into storage…

…the very next day, a big load of bottling supplies gets moved in.

While the farmers start thinking about Florida, we start thinking about the Christmas rush.

But before anything can really be accomplished, the place needs a good cleaning. All the equipment, the pumps, the lines, the tanks and the floors. This takes at least a week.

But the honey harvest is finished and the pressure is off. The cleaning could take a month for all I care. It gives a small feeling of accomplishment to clean just one thing then move on to something else, something different. Whatever the day has in store. There’s no rush here. In fact, it could be something totally unrelated.

Like one day this week- Jayne and I were invited to hobnob with the politicos. Someone must’ve been reading this blog and pegged me for the radical leftist that I am. We were invited to a small gathering, listening to Beth Workman and her endeavors in running for an Ohio House seat here in District 92. Workman is a Democrat.

A Democrat! Would this little soiree be dictated by mob rule? Violence? The activist screaming of snowflake/hipster/entitled millennial mobsters? Driving there, I anticipated we’d soon be smoking joints and burning flags, donning the pussyhats, staging protests, reading up on Marx.

You can imagine my utter dismay in finding only quiet and reasonable middle-aged people. They served us Texas sheet cake and there was a lot of yammering about education and health care. Certainly not the Democrats of Fox News lore. Is this really what Democrats are about? Education and health care?? What a complete and total disappointment. What a letdown. (It wasn’t even pot Texas sheet cake.)

Hey Beth Workman, how ’bout we work on a real solution for society’s ills?…

Another day of slacking this week- Kristen Baughman’s famous apple butter party.

I blogged about this last year, and just a few weeks ago Jayne did a bit about Kristen’s business- Curly Girl Farm.

Kristen’s party gets a star on the calendar. In recent years it has become one of those ‘must attend’ events. She and Doug, her apple farmer boyfriend, take about nine bushels of apples and turn them into sauce. Then on the big day, they light the fires, hang the big copper kettle, add a bunch of sugar and grab a bunch of help. The cauldron needs continually stirred for about eight hours.

(But there’s still time to check Facebook.)

During those eight hours, we eat and drink and play.

Plenty of entertainment for the children.

But it’s not all play. Once the apple butter gets jarred up, everyone must grab a freshly baked roll and help clean the big kettle. My kind of cleaning.

It’s a satisfying task. As I filled my already bursting stomach, I couldn’t help but recognize that same feeling of accomplishment I get after cleaning the extractor or honey sump. A job well done.

The usual reward for our accomplishment is more food and more beer. But this year, compliments of Doug and via some deer hunters from Maine, we were treated to something special:

An awesome day followed by a gut buster evening. Carpe Diem.

Ok, your second promised video- Jayne and Kristen at the head of the line.

Finished!

-Posted by Isaac

Well… finished pulling honey… not finished extracting.

October is such a blur. Cool mornings, sunny days and busy, busy. Yard after yard, it’s a rush to finish up with the bees. Why the rush? Because we’ve got to get the girls ready for winter long before winter gets here. The first step is taking off the fall honey.

When I pull into a yard, it looks like this:

Some time later, honey pulled, honey loaded, bees fed, bees treated, brood inspected… it looks like this:

About the only thing that’s really noticeable is that top super is gone. And we hope that super is filled with honey.

This year, most of them were.

The goldenrod was good to us. And not only with the honey. The bees brought in more goldenrod pollen than ever this year. Every other day I’d make the collecting rounds- four pollen yards.

Sometimes I had company.

Eden serves as insightful conversationalist / entertainment / sideshow / taste tester / inspector / quality control. Much like my little girl, goldenrod pollen is just brilliant.

And so too, goldenrod honey. You probably noticed how the bright yellow wax jumps out at you.

Of the three, the fall is my favorite honey pull. What an awesome day job… I get to pop lids all day and see that! It’s still a surprise every time. Put’s me a good mood and keeps me there… which is rare… I can’t help but smile and mumble, “Oh yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ about…”

We still had a frame of spring honey in a display case. Here you can see the difference— Spring on the left, fall on the right.

And the resulting honey:

In more ways than one, goldenrod colors the season. What a wonderful weed!

Another fall wonder— pumpkins!

Circleville’s big extravaganza comes to us every year in late October. It’s a good calendar marker for being finished with the fall honey. If I can beat the Pumpkin Show, we’re in good shape with the bees. This year, just by coincidence, I pulled the last yard on Friday morning and had a chance to check out the craziness that afternoon.

Could there be a better place to celebrate being finished? Especially if you’re hungry??

I don’t think so.

A quiet celebration— We took our Texas tenderloin and pizza and fries and hot dogs and pulled pork and noodles and stromboli and pumpkin pie and elephant ear to an alley away from the hordes.

Then it was back into the fray.

But don’t worry, we were careful to separate our recyclables and put all that food garbage out of sight where it belongs.

Curly Girl Farm

-posted by Jayne

Today I want to tell you a bit about one of our retail partners, Curly Girl Farm. In this case, “retail partner” is just a fancy word for “a friend from college who sells our honey.” Kristen Baughman, fellow Wittenberg grad, is the “curly girl” referenced in her farm name. At the farmer’s market in Zanesville, she quickly became known as the “farmer with the curly hair” and thus changed her farm name from “Kristen’s Old Fashioned Produce” to “Curly Girl Farm.”

Kristen sells quite a bit of our honey (as you can see by her enormous honey display below). If you ever find yourself just east of Zanesville on State Route 40, you should stop by and check it out.

Kristen is the type of person that is always busy with a new project or a idea. She hosts flower arranging parties at her house, allowing her guests to wander through her fields and select any flowers they want to create their own arrangments.

She grows multitudes of fresh tomatoes using organic methods.

Pumpkins and squash are another specialty. She can tell you all sorts of fun facts about the different varieties and their best uses. (although decorating is always my favorite use for them!)

Kristen throws a pretty awesome “Hoe-Down” each fall, complete with pie eating contests, an apple-butter stir, and the best potluck I have the pleasure of attending.

Since farming slows down by the beginning of November, Kristen finds time to head over to Honeyrun Farm for 3 days a week to help me stay caught up with our holiday orders. Last year, I put her in charge of making the beeswax Christmas ornaments you see here.

If you can’t tell by now, I have a lot of admiration and respect for Kristen. Which is why I felt pretty bad about my “friendship skills” a few weeks ago when Kristen, myself, and my other friends Becky and Angie went hiking in the Hocking Hills. We have this annual tradition of taking a backpacking trip each fall. (pictured below was our inaugural trip to Dolly Sods, WV).

Left to Right: Kristen, Angie, Becky, and I

A few weeks ago we were getting started on a hike into the woods near Becky’s cabin, which sits just a few miles from Old Man’s Cave. There was no trail… we were making our own trail, as the land is covered with beautiful waterfalls and rock formations. It wasn’t long after I stepped into the woods that I felt this horrible stinging sensation. My first thought was stinging nettles (but they hurt more than any stinging nettle I had ever felt before). My second thought was that I was in some sort of magical, painful, forest similar to the Hunger Games. (I am not even joking… this thought went through my head). I screamed and ran, because the pain was becoming so intense. I didn’t bother to look behind me and see that Kristen had fell onto the ground. My “flight” response had taken over and I was running for protection. It wasn’t until I reached Becky’s cabin that I realized we had been attacked by a yellow jacket nest! We were a panicked hysterical mess, to say the least. The yellow jackets had even followed us into the cabin and were still attacking us. My grand idea was to jump in the shower with my clothes on… because… you remember… all those cartoons we watched as kids that showed characters jumping into water to escape the swarm of angry insects?! It only kind of worked. Mostly because the majority of yellow jackets were still in the next room attempting to sting Kristen, Becky, and Angie. We decided we had to leave due to the amount of aggressive yellow jackets still in the cabin, so we headed for the local gas station to try to create a poultice of baking soda/water. We brought a new wave of hysteria into a normally very sober gas station environment. The man next to us was casually ordering gas for pump 2 while we frantically explained to the next cashier that we had been attacked by yellow jackets and needed baking soda and ibuprofin STAT. Luckily, none of us had an allergic reaction and we all were fine. We ended our trip with greasy food and drinks at the local favorite, JimBo’s Tavern in South Bloomingville.

The moral of this story? Well…. first of all, if you ever want to know whether you have more of a “fight” or “flight” response to a threat…. you will find out if you stumble upon a nest of yellow jackets. And next time you stumble upon a hive of “bees” in your wall or barn, you can refer to this handy guide before calling us:

You do what with that black stuff?

-posted by Jayne

Activated Charcoal. It’s gaining popularity these days for a variety of home remedies and skin issues. Made from coal, wood, or other natural substances, it can be used to remove toxins and drugs from the body. I spotted it in a soap about 8 years ago when I was traveling and visiting a farmer’s market, so I decided to try it in a recipe for myself. After creating just one batch I was hooked, as were our customers. Our activated charcoal soap has become our second best-selling bar of soap (the first being Lemongrass). Pictured below is a bit of our soap making process-- the last step- cutting it into bars.

An 8 lb. block of soap ready to cut into two logs of soap.

Isaac fashioned this log cutter from a guitar string. We have used this for the past 11 years.

The individual bar cutter- cuts the logs into 3.8 oz bars.

At the Lithopolis Honeyfest a few weeks ago one of our friends (a fellow Scioto Valley Beekeeper Club member) came to our booth and said he was going to buy a bar of our soap for the very first time and wanted to know which one I would recommend. I told him about our two best-sellers, and asked if he was aware of the many uses of Activated Charcoal. He looked at me kinda funny and said, “Well, I’ve heard that some people use it in their pants….”

I was a little puzzled at first, but then I remembered reading the reviews on Amazon when I bought my first bag of Activated Charcoal, and started laughing. Some people actually put activated charcoal in their underwear to dispel the smell of their gas. There is even a product on amazon called “Subtle Butt: disposable gas neutralizers.” I’ll let you follow that link if you need a good laugh… and be sure to read the reviews.

I regret to tell you- he ultimately settled on the Lemongrass soap and left our Activated Charcoal soap for the next (more adventurous) customer. Is that you? If so, you’re in luck. I have our Activated Charcoal with Rosemary and Eucalyptus Soap on sale until Monday at 5 p.m. Normally $4.50 a bar, I have it marked down to $3.00 (this discount is available online only).

And if you’re wondering why you’re getting a post from Jayne and not Isaac- I’m giving him a break as he is recovering from his Ultra race this past weekend. He ran the Vermont 50 Mile Run in 7:33:19. The hilly course had a 9000 foot vertical, so he is a little sore. 4th place! And he was 1st in the masters category so we were rewarded with some maple syrup and a shiny medal.

Next week on the blog: Stay tuned for a tribute to a few of our partners that sell our products in locations around Ohio.