Trimming the Tree

Nope, this post has nothing to do with Christmas trees even though it's that time of year.  I know that "Tis the season to be jolly," but jolly wasn't the emotion the other day.  I've posted about this long ago, but let me give you a little back story to set the stage for this event.

My Dad graduated from USL in Lafayette.  The University of Southwestern Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns.  They've since changed the name to UL.  Back when Dad graduated from college, they had the neatest thing ever at USL.  As you walked across the stage to shake the University president's hand and receive your diploma, they would give you a coffee can with some dirt in it and a live oak seedling from one of the old live oaks on campus.

Being in his early 20's, Dad wasn't enthusiastic about this 'gift' or understand the importance of the memories of this little tree.  He brought it home, gave it to his grandmother and forgot about it.  Well, my great-grandmother lived right smack dab in the middle of the town of Kinder at the intersection of Highway 165 and US 190 right across from the police station.  She planted it right in her yard.  And it grew, and GREW, AND GREW.

Sixty years later, it is a big live oak tree, providing beauty and shade.  My great-grandmother's home is long gone, but the tree remains.  Kinder has changed a lot in 60 years.  It boasts a couple more red lights, an overpass over the railroad tracks, a McDonald's and a casino now, but the tree remains the same standing in all it's stately glory, anchoring down the past, holding tightly to nostalgic memories while pointing confidently to the future.

Until last week...

No, the tree didn't get cut down.  It's not ALL gone, but it got one heck of a hair cut.  I remember being in elementary school and getting a haircut that I didn't like.  I was embarrassed to go to school.  I ran and hid - under a car, if I remember correctly.  How long would it take for my haircut to grow out?  Well, the old oak tree got a bad hair cut - a massacre, a butchering, you might say.

You see, there is a sign in the foreground and a larger outdoor advertising sign in the background.  The tree had grown to block the view of the signs.  A big miscommunication happened and someone had Dad's tree trimmed without his permission.  Branches were stacked alongside Highway 165 four feet high.  The tree trimmers gouged a big chunk out of the middle of the tree before passersby in town stopped the crew and asked if they had permission to be doing that since the tree is on private property.  It caused quite a stir.  Telephone calls were made and sincere apologies given, but the damage was done.

The tree is okay, and the bad haircut will eventually grow out - albeit a little longer than it takes for us.  Oh, live oak tree, Oh, live oak tree, how lovely are your branches...

A Postscript on the Bees

A few final notes following the pulling of fall honey from our hives.  We had mentioned a while back about small hive beetles and the damage that they can do in a hive.  If you have a strong colony, the bees will do a good job of fighting them off.  The guard bees run them out of the frames.  We help the bees out a little bit.  We learned a trick from our bee club that is doing the trick.

Swiffer sheets.  Yep, you heard me right.  Those sheets that you put on a dust mop to clean your kitchen floors have a dual purpose.  They will catch and kill small hive beetles.  We put a sheet on the top of the frames. The bees run the small hive beetles out of the hive and up to the top.  When they run across the Swiffer sheets, their little feet get caught in the microfibers and they are stuck together like velcro.  They end up dying.  Look at all the small hive beetle carcasses on the Swiffer sheets!: 

Tricia began rendering the beeswax from the cappings from our fall honey pull.  It only consisted of 21 frames, but we still save every bit we can.  Tricia puts all the cappings along with some water into a crock pot and lets it all liquefy.  This is then poured through a muslin cloth that acts as a filter.  We do this process twice to get a lot of impurities out of the beeswax.  It looks like a brick of gold.

We're saving all this beeswax for candle-making and making lip balm.  We are getting quite an inventory of beeswax and there are so many uses for it.

Once the beeswax has been filtered and removed from the crock pot, what remains is some honey that was trapped in the wax.  That honey, however, is mixed with water.  We tend to feed all this back to the bees.  In very early spring, we'll pull this out of the freeze and feed the bees.

So many uses of all the by products in honeycomb.  Not much goes to waste.

A Hit Or Miss Type Deal

Growing tomatoes in the fall is a hit or miss thing.  You are in a race with time and if you hit it right, it's a lot of fun.  Spring tomatoes can be good, but the battle with stink bugs, heat and humidity take a lot of luster off of the undertaking.  Fall tomatoes can be heartbreaking, too.  Several years ago we had a beautiful crop of big, healthy fruit on the vines... and then an early hard freeze came in November and dashed our hopes.  We ended up canning many jars of green tomato sauce that year.

This year the crop looked good.  No hard freezes to date and we've been picking lots of tomatoes.  Between what we've harvested and what's left on the vines, we could actually see a better harvest this fall than we did this summer.  In late summer I planted about nine varieties of tomatoes from seed.  We also had some that came up volunteer that I potted and nurtured throughout the dog days of summer.

One variety that has been SO productive are Chadwick Cherry tomatoes.  I didn't order these.  They came as a packet of FREE seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom seeds.  Boy, am I glad I planted them.  Every day we pick them.  The fruit are larger than the normal cherry tomato you think of.

Chadwick Cherry

We also have larger tomatoes as well coming in: Creoles, Black Krim, Black Tomatoes, Cherokee Purple, Campari, Pink Brandywine.  Just this afternoon, we cut these up and made some Pico de Gallo that we promptly devoured with some chips.

Along with eating them, we're also putting some up for later.  With the Chadwick Cherry's, Tricia washes them up and freezes them whole.  She finds them easy and delicious to quickly thaw out and use as a base for cooking sauces for pasta.

The vibrant red color of the tomatoes really pop!

Today we talked about processing some of the tomato harvest and canning a bunch of jars of tomato sauce or perhaps, salsa as we still have a lot of tomatoes on the vine.  I think the 10 day forecast isn't anticipating any freezes.  If things hold up like they ought to, we'll put up a bunch of jars of tomatoes in our storage pantry this year.  And in just 30 more days, I'll be planting the spring tomato crop by seeds.  How nice to stretch out the tomato harvest almost year-round!

We Dig Sweet Potatoes

Just prior to Thanksgiving, I got busy digging up sweet potatoes from the "jungle" that grows up each and every year.  Well over a decade ago it all started with a Beauregard sweet potato thrown in the compost pile.  Since that time they have come up on their own every year.  At some point, maybe 10 years ago, I planted some Golden Wonder heirloom sweet potatoes that I got from a guy named the barefoot farmer up in Tennessee at a sustainable agriculture conference.  Those things were prolific.  They ended up crowding out all of our Beauregards.

Golden Wonders are smaller sweet potatoes, but they are delicious.  I told Tricia next year I'm going to get the Beauregards reestablished in the garden.  Here is a photo of all the sweet potato vines just prior to our digging.

Years ago, I dug up the whole sweet potato patch with a shovel, but I learned quickly that some garden forks do the job better and easier.  The only thing you really have to watch out for is forking right through the middle of a big, fat sweet potato.  

This is the standard size of a Golden Wonder.  The flesh is a light orange color.  The Beauregard is a bigger sweet potato with a deep dark orange color.

I generally begin digging on the south end of the patch and dig in three foot swaths, putting the sweet potatoes in a wagon and the vines in a big blue tub that I toss over to the cows.  The LOVE sweet potato vines.

Pretty soon, after some back-breaking labor, the sweet potato patch has been completely dug up.

We then sort the sweet potatoes.  The huge ones on the left.  The large to average sized ones in the middle.  The small to tiny sized one in the red bucket.  The ones in the red bucket will be fed to the cows.

Finally, I got the rock rake and leveled out the freshly dug earth.  This will be planted this week with spinach, mustard greens, radishes and turnips.

Overall, it was an average crop.  I'm not going to complain.  We used several nice ones to make the "Ruth's Chris Steakhouse sweet potato casserole" recipe for Thanksgiving.  It was a tasty side dish for sure.

Thanksgiving 2025

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  It puts things into perspective.  Things may not be perfect.  They aren't.  In fact, they never are.  However, pausing to count your blessings and name them one by one is a good exercise.  Focusing on the blessings you have instead of the imperfections, trials, and disappointments we all experience in our lives takes the emphasis off of us and instead directs it toward the Giver of all good gifts.

The Flannel Channel

We had (and I hope you have too) a wonderful day with beautiful weather, delicious food and fellowship with those we love.  Material things depreciate.  I always think that junkyards and landfills are full of items that were once assets that held the potential to bring happiness and joy.  Maybe they did, temporarily, and now they are rusting out in the corner of a weed-filled lot and forgotten as we shifted to new shiny things we hope will make us happy.  They never do, do they?

Russ, Tricia, Benjamin... and Belle

One of the things that don't depreciate, but instead appreciate in value is memories of time spent with family and friends.  I began to think today of people that have made a difference in my life.  True friends that have been there and remained close, even though we may be distant in miles.  Kind words said, encouragement given, lessons about life taught, time spent that made a real difference.  We gathered around the kitchen, as is tradition, circle up, hold hands and offer sincere thanks to our benevolent God for the many blessings He's given us.  He's given us things and love we didn't deserve.

A feast!

Twenty four years ago, we stenciled Proverbs 15:15 above our kitchen table that says, "The cheerful heart has a continual feast."  It's true!  There are people that are hungry tonight, people that don't have a close family, those without friends, people that are lonely, and people who are sad.  It makes me humble and even guilty, because I have been so blessed.  God is so good!  I'm so thankful for a loving wife.  A true Proverbs 31 woman.  I pray our three kids will find a faithful, Christian spouse like He gave me.

My smiling wife

God's also given us time.  As a child, when we were sick and stayed home from school, we'd watch Bob Barker and "The Price is Right."  Then around lunchtime, the 'stories' would come on TV.  You know, the soap operas.  There was one called Days of Our Lives.  It started out saying, "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives."  Oh, how those sands flow quickly.  In fact, we don't know when the last grain of sand will fall.

I read a novel the other day that had a quote in it that was meaningful.  I kind of collect quotes I like.  It said: "Life is short.  Love who you are.  Love what you do.  Make everyday count."  I'm reminded that God has blessed us with time of undetermined length and we would be wise to be good stewards of it.  We should tell people we love them and appreciate them.

Family is important - so important.  I'm so thankful for Mom & Dad.  People who loved sacrificially and supported us even when we were... turds (ha ha!)  I'm grateful for good examples in my Mom and Dad.  They modeled the good life and gave us a target to shoot for, to aspire to, and for that, I'm appreciative.

As Thanksgiving 2025 comes to an end, I feel I'm drinking from my saucer, 'cause my cup has overflowed.  Thank you, Lord, for your blessings on me!  Thank you for Jesus.  May God give you assurance of salvation through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ!

Nothing Goes to Waste with the Bees

Beekeeping is a hobby in which nothing goes to waste.  After pulling honey, there is a use for everything.  Let's look at the cappings, for instance.  The cappings are the wax cap that seals off the honeycomb.  In order to spin the honey in the extractor, you must use a knife to cut the top cap off in order to expose the honey.

Once the honey drains off of the wax, you are left with this.  We'll warm this in a crock pot with a little water, the wax will liquify and rise to the top.  We'll skim that off to make candles and chap stick.  The honey will be cooked out of the wax, leaving a honey/water mixture that we will feed back to the bees in the winter.

The frames that we've extracted the honey from still have some honey on them.  Unfortunately, you cannot get every drop.  That's okay.  We set the boxes and frames out on a bench about 15 yards from the hives, and the bees come back to reclaim what's rightly theirs.  Hundreds and hundreds of bees fly around the boxes, robbing the honey to take it back to the hives.  

After cleaning the honey off of the extractor with a water hose, the honey/water is put in a bucket and the bees come drink the sweet water to take back to the hive.  We put a float for them in the water so that when they step on the raft to drink, they don't drown.

Here's a photo of a couple of the frames that we extracted the honey out of and the bees have had a couple of days to clean them up, removing all the remaining honey from the frames.

They do such a great job on removing every useable bit of pollen, nectar, and honey from the frames. All of those products are carried back to the boxes and put back into "inventory."  We will put these cleaned up frames in the freezer for a few days to kill any hive beetle eggs that may be on the frame.  Then we'll store in a tote and these frames with drawn comb will be put back on the hive in the spring.  The bees will spend most of their energy making honey versus making honeycomb since most of the honeycomb is already constructed.

We poured some honey from the bottom of a bowl into a jar lid.  The bees quickly found it and have made it their ambition to rob this honey back and return it to its rightful owners.

The uncapping tub and filter still was quite sticky with honey and comb.  Rather than wasting time and energy scrubbing and cleaning, well...  We'll let the bees clean up the sticky mess.  You can see them scouring the screens, and uncapping tub.  It will be spotless before you know it.

Here is that jar lid that used to be full of honey.  The bees in a mater of just a few hours, have cleaned it all up!

Bees are really unique creatures.  They leave nothing, cleaning up after themselves and also will work for you as well.  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  They do it all.

Pulling Fall Honey

We pulled honey in the summer in early July and got 20.5 gallons of honey off of our four hives.  We've never pulled fall honey before, but this year we decided to see what we could get. Join us while we show you our extracting process.  First, we got the smoker going and went out to the hives, opening the boxes and going through each frame, pulling out only the frames that were completely capped.  

We used an organic compound on a fume board to push the bees off of the honey.  Then about 20 yards away I had a leaf blower ready and we blew the remaining bees off of the frames and then carried the boxes of honey in the garage.  We ended up getting 22 frames of honey.  Full boxes of honey are heavy!

We don't have our own extractor or uncapping trays, so we borrowed from a friend and set up in the garage, blocking off any way for the bees to follow us inside.  The previous day we had cleaned all of the extracting equipment.  Now, it is time to get the show on the road.

As mentioned the honey is all capped.  That means the moisture percent is correct and the bees have put a protective layer of beeswax on top to seal it off.  In order to extract it, you've got to take the cap off first.  Tricia accomplished this with a sharp knife.  The was falls into the tray along with some of the honey that drips out.

The uncapped frames are placed in the extractor.  It holds 8 frames at a time.  This extractor is manual.  That means you turn the crank by hand and the frames in the rack spin. Centrifugal force causes the honey to be slung out of the frame and on the walls of the drum and it drips down to the bottom.  When the frames went in, they were heavy, but once you're done, the frames now empty of honey are light.

Once we've spun 8 frames, we opened the honey gate at the bottom and a rich, sweet flow of fall honey comes out where it goes through a double screen before ending up in a food grade 5 gallon bucket.

These are the cappings in the uncapping tray.  Honey drips out of the wax into a reservoir in the tray below from which we drain the honey.  The beeswax will be rendered and we'll make candles and lip balm with it.

Once we emptied everything, we had roughly 5 gallons of honey for our fall honey project!  We are pleased with our first fall honey project.

I took a picture of our spring honey and our fall honey side by side.  What is easily seen is the difference in the honey.  The boxes are in the same place.  What's the difference, you may ask?  It's what the bees are foraging on in spring versus fall.  In the spring, the bees are largely getting nectar from Chinese tallow trees, privet and white dutch clover.  In the fall, however, the honey is mainly derived from wildflowers and Goldenrod.  This generates a darker, stronger honey.

Spring honey on left, Fall honey on right

Our fall honey pull yielded a little more than five gallons.  That's a success in our book.  In the next post (or the next) we'll finish up talking about honey.