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.

A Key Question

A key question we always try to answer is: What are we gonna do with all this stuff?  The "stuff" always changes, but the question remains the same.  The stuff is all the produce coming out of the garden at the same time.  It is a fun puzzle to work out.  We often try new recipes.  Some work and some... well, we don't try again.

Right now, we have an over-abundance of cilantro.  It comes up volunteer every year in the garden, thicker than you can imagine.  We also have lots of tomatoes ripening.  Cilantro and tomatoes.  Hmmm...  That's a no-brainer.  I'll get Tricia to make some homemade guacamole.  Growing up, my mom always ate avocados.  I tried them as a kid and didn't like them.  It's funny how when you get older, things change.  My taste buds have changed and now I like avocadoes.  Mom was right.  Mom's always right.

Let's make some guacamole.  Gather your ingredients: cilantro, tomatoes, lime, tomatoes, avocadoes and some salt and pepper.

Chop everything up in a mixing bowl and squeeze your limes into the ingredients in your bowl.

Such a pretty concoction with vibrant greens and reds catching your eye and enticing aromas assaulting your olfactory nerves.

With a fork, mash and stir.  The vibrant colors will disappear and are replaced by a dull greenish color.  Don't let the dull color lull you to sleep or catch you off guard.  The flavor will wake you up.

Open a bag of tortilla chips.  We've discovered that we will kill the entire bag of chips and the whole batch of guacamole in one sitting.  Sometimes we have attempted to not eat the whole bag, but have determined that resistance is futile.

The "money" shot

If we could grow our own avocadoes and limes, why, we'd be eating guac every other day.  Chips are expensive!  It would throw our budget into upheaval.  We'll continue to enjoy as an occasional treat.  I'm also curious to try to make a pesto with cilantro instead of our normal basil.  As far as the tomatoes, we might be able to can some stewed tomatoes or salsa if we don't get hit with a freeze in the near future.  

If At First You Don't Succeed...

I don't know if you're like us, but things don't always work out the way we planned.  Try as we may, our best laid plans often go awry.  One example is strawberries.  It's always a nice thought to be able to pick bowls of strawberries to snack on or two blend up in a breakfast smoothie.  More times than not, though, if we want to do that, we have to buy the strawberries.  What a shame, too!  I had read that strawberries is one of the fruits that have the most chemicals sprayed on them.

In years prior, as the berries were ripening and almost ready for picking, and then the next morning we go out to pick them and slugs will have eaten big holes in them.  To combat that, a lady in our church saved egg shells all year long for us, crushing them into tiny flakes that you sprinkle around the strawberries as a slug deterrent.  It worked!  But our berries just didn't produce.  Last year on our 7 strawberry plants, I think we harvested a total of 7 strawberries.  Not good.

But we don't give up easily.  We ordered some bare root strawberries again and planted them in the back of the garden.  When the bare root strawberries come in the mail, you simply soak the roots for an hour and then you are ready to plant them.

This year we're planting them in the very back of the garden near the sugarcane.  When you plant, you want to bury all the roots, but leave the leaves and crown uncovered.  In just a few days, you'll see fresh green growth.

This year, I'll add more compost and be more judicious in watering and mulching.  I will also read more publications on success in growing strawberries and try to implement any growing tips we learn.  They say the third time's a charm, but I'm not superstitious.  We'll report back our successes (or failures) and what we learn from our attempts at growing strawberries.

From Least Appetizing to Most Appetizing

We've talked before about how goats are troublesome creatures.  Around this time of year the bucks are, well, there's no other way to put it - they are gross!  They pee all over themselves to (supposedly) attract the nanny goats and they stink to high heavens.  They'll try to rub on you.  It's just nasty with a capital N.  My neighbor walked over the other day.  He's got a little buckling goat that was doing the same thing.  He asked what he could do about it.  

I told him, "I have just the tool for him."  An Ideal Band Castrator.  It is a very old tool I have for emasculating bull calves and goats.  I told him that this is not reversable.  If he wants his goat 'fixed,' I'd be obliged to do it for him.  And so I placed a rubber band on the castrator and walked over next door and stood in front of the little goat who had no idea what was about to happen.  My neighbor held his goat's legs while I expanded the castrator and worked the goat's nut sack through the rubber band.  Then I closed the pliers and the rubber band tightened around the top of the little goat's sack.

It is not supposed to hurt.  The rubber band cuts off the blood flow and in a couple of weeks, the sack just falls off.  I watched the goat over the next several days.  He acted as normal as one might considering having a rubber band around your family jewels.  One day, the sack was gone.  It fell off and although I didn't see it, the neighbor has chickens in there and chickens eat ANYTHING!  The neighbor was offshore so I texted him to let him know that his goat had no more balls.  He was very happy - the neighbor, that is.  The goat?  I'm not so sure he's happy about the turn of events.  Poor Boy.

Speaking of "Po-boys," let's change the subject to something more palatable, shall we?  Right on campus of the University of Louisiana (formerly USL) in Lafayette, is a restaurant called Olde Tyme Grocery.  They are famous for their po-boys.  My favorite is fried shrimp po-boys with a side of fries.

It was a beautiful day and we sat out on the patio.  We split a large po-boy while we listened to live music.  It was a guy playing guitar while singing old songs that everyone knows the words to.  Po-boys were great.  We'll be back.  Someone told me that next time I need to try the meatball po-boy.  Sounds good, but I'm a creature of habit.  Once I find something I like, I tend to get the same thing again and again.

We left there and went to Moncus Park in Lafayette.  It's just a beautiful park with a nice walking trail.  We had to walk off that monstrous po-boy.  The live oaks were strung with string lights to give a festive flair.

This was more than a month ago, but for my birthday, Tricia always asks me what kind of cake I want.  Generally, Red velvet, chocolate, carrot, or Italian Cream.  This year, I said, "I'm a pie guy.  How about a birthday pie instead of a cake?"  She asked, "What kind?"  I replied, "Pecan and pumpkin - both of them!"  Tricia baked them up.  The pecans came from our trees.  Although I tried to grow the pumpkins, I have no success.  The squash borers kill every pumpkin plant I try to grow.  Take a look at the pies!

This right here with a cup of coffee is pure delight!

In this blog post, we've had quite a journey - from the least appetizing subject to the most appetizing.

Southern Lights

Patsy Cline, in her signature emotional voice, sang "Walkin' After Midnight."  So smooth.  Most nights I am out walking, but I don't do any walking after midnight.  I'm in bed.  Walking at night here in the country is peaceful and quiet.  There is less traffic.  But my favorite part of walking at night is the sky.  You can see, over the course of the month, all the phases of the moon.  On certain nights, because we're away from most light pollution, you can see the magnificent stars and even planets in the sky.  

Most nights, I see numerous planes crossing the sky and often wonder who is on the planes and where are they going.  I've seen satellites and shooting stars.  But what I saw the other night is something that I've never seen before.  There is a little course, a trail that I walk each night.  One lap is about 1,000 steps in working toward my 10,000 step a day goal.  Barely had I gotten started when I noticed that something was odd, different.  Was I going crazy?  The sky in the north was red!

It was after 10 pm, and I ran in to get Tricia to come look and confirm that I was not losing my mind.  She was in bed in her jammies.  I told her, "I think you're going to want to come see this."  After much coaxing, I was successful in getting her to come out in the front yard.  She didn't have shoes on, so she jumped on my back and I carried her out near the road and out from under the trees.  I pointed it out to her.  She saw it too!

What could it be?  She got on a Jersey cow website, of all places, in which people from all over the United States were posting pictures of the Northern Lights.  Northern Lights in South Louisiana?  Could it be?  Yes.  We learned that there was a massive geomagnetic storm caused by a solar flare that impacted the earth's magnetic field allowing people like yours truly to witness something that we may never see again.

I quickly got on the phone and called Mom.  She had on her bucket list to see the Northern Lights and even went to Iceland to see them.  She didn't have success.  But lo and behold, she was able to see them here in South Louisiana.  Go figure.  I captured the photo above to prove that if you can't go see the Northern Lights, sometimes they'll come see you.