Aim To Only Sweat the Stuff You Can Control

I try to be easy-going and not let things bother me.  Oh, problems arise daily, but most of them just require some creative thinking and/or old fashioned hard work and before you know it, the issue at hand is resolved.  I wish that was true of all problems.  We all have issues in our lives that we've prayed about for years that seem no closer to resolution than when they first occurred.  I'm talking about things that no matter how hard you work, no matter how you try to communicate, you're still at a log jam.  I cannot worry or lose sleep over things like this.  It's not that they don't bother me (they do!), it's that I trust in God.  He's told us to lay our burdens at His feet and that's what I'll do.

That being said, I want to discuss with you a couple of things that grind my gears.  The first is a local issue and the second, more of a national issue.  First the local:  We have a ditch that runs across the front of our property.  Although it is a lot of work, I weed eat the ditch twice a month.  We purchased some plastic signs and stenciled the words "NO SPRAY" and stuck them in the ground alongside the ditch.

The photo above and especially the photo below evidences the fact that the parish road crew (in Louisiana they are called Police Jury) ignored our signs and sprayed right over the signs that say NO SPRAY.  Can you see the yellowing and dead grass?  Perhaps they can't read?  More likely, they don't care.  They overspray the ditches and spray directly into the yard, killing St. Augustine grass.  The spray they are using is some type of Round Up (glyphosate) that kills all grasses except for bermudagrass.  It burns everything down to the ground, and we don't want that on our property.

Why?  There are at least a couple reasons why we don't want them spraying their herbicide on our land.  First, the herbicide kills all the grasses providing groundcover, leaving the soil exposed.  When the rains come, and they do (In July we had over 10 inches of rain!), the barren soil is washed down into the ditch.  The roots of the grass that once grew here and held the soil together are gone.  This topsoil runs into the ditch and before you know it, the ditches are stopped up with soil and so the parish police jury comes around with dump trucks and track hoes and scoops up the dirt (MY DIRT) out of the ditch and carries my soil away!  ARGGHH...

The second reason we don't want them spraying can be seen right over the pasture fence.  Our cows, goats, and chickens eat all that grass.  We milk the cows and goats and our chickens lay eggs and we consume all that daily.  We don't want our food contaminated with poison.  Furthermore, if you look in the distance right between the t-posts, you'll see our four bee boxes full of bees making us honey.  I'd rather not have Round Up-flavored honey.  I have a suspicion that some of what is being called "colony collapse" is due to pesticides and herbicides being used indiscriminately.  

A second issue that grinds my gears is more national in nature.  I haven't flown in an airplane in more than 15 years.  After 9/11 and the implementation of the Patriot Act (which I originally supported "to keep us safe" but now vehemently oppose) travelling became such a pain.  Full body cavity searches, taking off your shoes, x-raying all your belongings, getting to the airport 2 hours early?  All that just takes the joy out of flying.  Make no mistake, the radical Islamists won.  We've just chosen to enjoy being local and not traveling but by vehicle and staying close to home.

Well, we dried up the cows and got invited to go with some friends to a western state.  We'll have to fly to get there and of course, my passport expired back in 2018.  Our state did not require the "real ID" until recently.  I realized that I needed to get a new passport.  Well, it takes four weeks to get a passport!  I have my old passport, my birth certificate, my driver's license.  How in the world does it take four weeks?  It's because there is no competition.  It is a monopoly.  There's no other game in town.  The paperwork below actually states, "Your application may not be in process until two weeks after you apply."

The cherry on top, though, is that I am a citizen of this country and have to pay over $100 and fill out forms, take pictures, go through security at the court house to get 'papers' to travel between states within my own country.  And yet, the back door of the country is left wide open and millions of  non-citizens flood through with no papers, passports, no fees to pay, no hassles and are then free to disperse across our country at will.  We live in an upside down world!  

Injustice.  This fallen world is full of injustice.  It's not a new thing, but that doesn't make it easier to swallow.  I guess at the end of the day, it's best to only sweat the stuff you can control.  And the rest?  Leave them in the hands of the Lord who created all and is in control of all.

It's Like A Jungle Out There

Summertime.  The long, hot, steamy, baking days of summer.  The crisp spring days are long gone.  Only the strongest survive.  Let's look today at one of the survivors of the dog days of summer.  This crop scoffs at hot weather.  It thrives in harsh conditions.  If Mars was ever to be colonized, the astronauts would be wise to plant this crop.  I must warn you, this portion of the garden in the side yard is not manicured.  It's not growing in neat, tidy rows.  It's a jungle.

"Kyle," you might say, "You let the garden get away from you.  Weed eat all that down and start planning your fall garden."  If I was to do that, I would miss out on one of my favorite meals.  You see, we're looking at a row of purple hull peas and black-eyed peas.  Okay, I'll admit, there's some morning glory growing in there too.  But can you see the purple hulls?  That means they are ready for picking.

The purple hull peas are planted dangerously close to four hives of pretty aggressive bees, so I've got to be alert, quick and sneaky as I quickly get in the patch and get back out.  Like a special forces operator, I get my gear which consists of a wicker basket I use for picking.  Up and down the rows I go, looking for purple hulls.  

In short order, my basket is full, and I'm on the back patio shelling peas.  Shelling peas is a relaxing and rewarding endeavor.  It's an old-timey activity evoking memories of sitting on a rocking chair on the porch shelling peas.  If you listen closely, you can hear the "ping" noise as the peas hit the bottom of the big stainless steel pot you're shelling them into.  The hulls go in a separate bucket to be composted.  There's almost nothing that we don't compost.  The garbage men must scratch their heads when they pick up our weekly garbage can that's almost empty.

Once you get in a rhythm shelling, it's a rewarding experience rescuing the peas from the confines of the purple hulls.  "Freedom!" the peas yell as they are liberated.

Before you know it, you have a 'mess' of purple hull peas.

I was happy this afternoon when, less than 24 hours from shelling, my wife had a pot of rice going, a black cast iron skillet with buttered jalapeno cornbread cooking in the oven, and a big pot of purple hull peas cooking on the stove with onions, peppers and green onion garlic sausage simmering.  I served a big "ant pile mound" of peas over rice on my plate, and my wife asked, "You goin' on a trip?"

That's a nice way of telling me that I was being gluttonous.  When she was growing up as a young child, her brother, David, was running away from home.  Word had gotten out to Tricia's Dad that David was planning to run away.  In his plan, he was going to eat one last meal - a big one, before running away.  As he sat at the table with WAY too much food on his plate, Tricia's Dad asked David, "You goin' on a trip?"  As for me, I'm not going anywhere, but I'll always serve a huge plate of purple hull peas over rice and homemade cornbread.

Meandering on Monday Afternoon

“How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.” – Psalm 104:24

Lots of work on the computer today, sitting inside staring into a computer monitor.  Once I finished up work today it was time to get outside, touch the grass, and observe real things that are going on in the world right outside your door.  It's easy in modern society to live in monasteries of our own making and wall ourselves off from the real world.  What a tragedy!

Growing up, I watched a television program called Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.  The host, Marlin Perkins and the co-host, Jim Fowler, would wrestle anacondas and watch cheetah's chase down antelope.  I always enjoyed that show.  You know what?  There is a wild kingdom in your backyard.  Maybe we won't run into a rhinoceros or a crocodile, but who knows?  Let's take a walk and see what kind of adventures we can stumble upon in the great outdoors. 

In the back pasture, in what we call "the bull pen," because we quarantine the bull in there away from the cows until they come in heat, we have a water trough.  The bull (we call him Nicky) slowly drinks water from the trough on hot afternoons.  He's not the only one drinking water there, though.  Check out the honeybees that line the edges of the trough, drinking water.

The water trough is about 50 yards from the bee boxes.  If you stand at the trough and look back to the bee boxes, you can see a... beeline of bees.  It is a steady stream of honeybees back and forth, back and forth.  Sometimes some of the bees get clumsy or get knocked into the water.  Look at the poor girl below.  She's fallen in and she beats her little wings, making ripples in the water trying to get out.  Sometimes I'll use a leaf to scoop the bees up and rescue them like a lifeguard would throw a flotation device.

Why are bees drinking water?  Well, they need water like you and I do for hydration.  But on hot days like today when the heat index makes it feel like it is 105 degrees, the bees use the water to regulate the temperature in the hive.  The bees like the hive to stay between 91 - 97 degrees.  If it gets hotter than this, the wax could melt.  The way they cool the hive is that they carry the water back to the hive, spit the water on the comb and then beat their wings.  The honeybees create their own air conditioning!  On hot days like today, the bees will congregate on the outside of the hive.  Just look at them.

While we're looking at the bees, I went inside and put my bee suit on.  I pulled the telescoping lid of the top of each of the four boxes and placed a Swiffer sheet on the very top then put the lid back on.  There is a pest called a small hive beetle (SHB) that cause problems in hives.  If you have healthy hives, the bees are able to take care of the problem.  They'll round up the small hive beetles and send them up to the top of the box.

Here's where the Swiffer sheets come in.  They're used a a trap.  When the honeybees chase the small hive beetles to the top of the box.  When the hive beetles walk across the Swiffer sheets, they get their feet stuck on the microscopic loops in the Swiffer sheets.  It's kind of like Velcro.  The beetles have barbs on their legs that get tangled in the Swiffer by tiny microscopic loops on the sheets.  I opened up the boxes and placed a Swiffer sheet on top of each box.

We'll check back in aa number of weeks and let you know if our small hive beetle traps (Swiffer sheets)
were successful.

The Honey Harvest (Part 6)

After a week we got the honey dehumidified and now it is time for the bottling process.  In order to get the honey marketable, we put it in pint sized jars (22 ounces).  Last year we did this simply pouring it from plastic food grade buckets with a honey gate on the bottom into glass jars.  This year a friend let us borrow his old stainless steel bottler.

You can't see it, but on the back there is a thermostat and a place where you pour about 2 1/2 gallons of water into the back.  This creates a "water jacket" where, once plugged in and turned on, the water in the water jacket is heated to 110 degrees Fahrenheit using a thermostat controller.  You want the honey warm so that it will flow easily through the spigot, but not too warm, where the honey is heated over 105 degrees as you'd cook away the beneficial properties of raw honey.

The buckets of honey are placed in a cradle that allows the honey to slowly drip out while you're bottling.  Here you can see Russ operating the bottler.  As he slides the full jars over, I have the easy job of capping the jar with a lid.

Here is a close-up of the honey flowing as he holds the handle down which opens the valve and allows the honey to flow into the jars.

I'm holding the honey up to the light that shows its rich, golden orange color.  You can't control where the bees got their nectar, but I would guess it is primarily foraged from the flowers of the Chinese Tallow Tree, privet tree, willow tree and white Dutch clover.  One thing's for sure though: it's sweet! 

It didn't take us long with our assembly line process of bottling.  We got all the honey bottled and stacked in boxes.  The buckets are mostly empty, but we put the lids back on.  We'll add a little water to each bucket, cleaning the honey off and pour into remaining buckets.  Then we will feed this "honey water" back to the bees this fall or winter.  They'll take it back to the hive and not let it go to waste.  

Now that all the honey is bottled, we'll put our labels on the top of each jar.  This allows the customer to see the purity and beauty of our girls' honey.

Last years' honey production (2024 harvest) off of 5 medium honey supers yielded 13.5 gallons of honey or 119 jars.

This years' honey production (2025 harvest) off of 7 medium honey supers yielded 20.39 gallons of honey or 178 jars.  We thank the Good Lord for His blessings on our second honey crop and also thank our honeybees for their hard work.

This week we'll put the sign out in the front yard.  Fresh, local, raw honey!  $10 per jar with a $1 rebate if you bring your empty jar back on your next purchase.  That's a sweet deal!

Fall Tomato Plans In Action

 "Always plan ahead.  It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark."  Richard Cushing

It was 94 degrees today with heat index that said that it "feels like 105.  The garden is pretty much done except for okra, peppers, eggplant, purple hull peas and black-eyed peas.  Most other plants have baked in the summer sun.  It's not too early to think about the fall garden.

My LSU vegetable planting guide says the fall tomatoes in my zone (South Louisiana) can be planted from seed between June 1 and July 1 and plant from July 1 to August 15th.  We had a halfway decent spring tomato crop this year.  We ate lots of fresh tomatoes and froze a bunch of cherry tomatoes.  The variety Chadwick Cherry is a keeper!  We were also fortunate enough to can about 18 pints of salsa.  What we're lacking is canning some stewed tomatoes.  That's what we're aiming for for the fall crop.

I like to find things growing "volunteer" in the garden.  Those are plants that grow up that you didn't plant.  I dug up these beautiful tomatoes from the garden and transplanted in pots specifically for the fall crop.  What I like about this is that we're not wasting anything.  Additionally, these plants are strong!  They want to grow, even without us babying and pampering them.  The bad part about these is that I have no idea what variety they are.  They could be all types.  It'll be a mystery we'll have to solve once they fruit.  Just look how healthy they are!

It's hard to get perspective on how big they are.  These are a foot and a half tall.

Finally, here are 25 tomato seedlings of 6 of our favorite varieties that I planted from seed.  I'll soon separate them and transplant them into bigger pots and hit them with some diluted fish emulsion to really get them growing.

Fall tomatoes are a little tricky.  You don't want them to get killed by an early frost.  (It's way too early to even be thinking about that.)  You also don't want them to grow in stifling heat.  It is said that tomatoes will not fruit if the temperatures exceed 85 degrees.  We've got quite a balancing act on our hands.  We have set our plans in motion and we'll see what happens.  Our goal is to can some stewed tomatoes and/or tomato sauce.

The Honey Harvest (Part 5)

Once the honey is extracted, the job is not done.  We left you last when we used a honey refractometer to determine the moisture content of our honey.  We are using a de-humidifier to get it to the optimal level.  While we are waiting, we put all the boxes of (mostly) empty frames out about 25 yards from the hives.  You see most of the honey has been spun out of the frames with centrifugal force, but we don't like to waste anything, and the bees certainly don't like to waste any honey left over either.  If you look closely in the photo, the bees have found the honey on the frames that we robbed.  They are taking back what they can.

The girls are like a clean-up crew and they work diligently to salvage any honey, pollen, and wax that they can get and carry back to the hive.  

Peeking down, you can see a bee that is reaching WAY down within a cell to pull out any honey remaining.  They'll fill up cells back in the bee boxes.  They will use it for food OR we will get it when we pull fall honey.

I want to show you something.  This is what's called "drawn comb."  The foundation is the black plastic portion of the frame that's coated in beeswax.  The cells are hexagonal, or six sided.  This gives it strength and optimal capacity to store honey and pollen.  On a medium frame the bees will draw out 3,100 per side!  That's 6,200 cells per frame.  We use 10 frames per medium box.  The bees fill all those cells with honey and cap it.  In extracting, you saw us cut the caps off to expose and extract the honey.

Another interesting thing about the cells.  I don't know how to show it, but if you look closely, you might be able to make it out.  The cells are drawn out perpendicular from the foundation, but it is not straight out.  The cells are sloped at a very slight angle upward so that the nectar that is put in them don't drain out.  I don't understand how you can be a beekeeper and be an atheist.  Honeybees are witnesses of the order, the complexity, the creativity of our Creator!

Once the bees have cleaned up the frames of any leftover honey, we put the frames into the freezer.  We freeze them to kill any eggs or larvae of any critter that may have gotten in the frames.  Next spring, we'll put these frames in boxes and put out on the hives.  Here's the neat part about that:  Putting frames out with drawn out comb saves the bees time and labor.  Next spring, the bees won't have to use all their energy making wax to draw out the comb off of the foundation.  They'll be able to use that energy and time in making HONEY!

After freezing for a week or so, we'll remove the frames and seal in a plastic bag and store in a tote.  They will be all ready and waiting for the honey crop of 2026!

The Bow in the Cloud

Genesis 9:8-17  King James Version

8 And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying,

9 And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; 

10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth.

11 And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. 

12 And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: 

13 I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. 

14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: 

15 And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. 

16 And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. 

17 And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.

On Sunday morning, Tricia and I exited the barn at around 6:45 AM.  We had opened the hen house and the nesting boxes and fed the chickens.  We fed the Jersey Cows and bull.  We fed the chickens in the chicken tractor.  Finally, we milked the goats and headed inside.  It's been a couple of weeks since we dried LuLu off, so we're no longer milking her.  We do feed her some sweet feed and hay and so when she's finished eating, I walk her out of the barn.  This is the sight just west of our barn.  There we see it.  The bow that God hung in the cloud as a promise never to destroy the earth by flood again.  

It's a double-rainbow.  For quite sometime there have been legends that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  Horsefeathers!  Sadly, in recent years, groups have co-opted the rainbow to completely change the meaning of it.  But in truthfulness, the rainbow was created by God as a sign to man and beast of His everlasting covenant to never destroy the world again by flood.  God always keeps His promises.

As we look upon the rainbow, we're in awe of the awesome God who made all creation and the many promises He has made and will keep. 

The Honey Harvest (Part 4)

Once all was said and done we had all our extracted honey loaded in food grade buckets.  We estimate we have 22 gallons or 264 pounds of honey.  For sure we got more than last year.  We'll know the final tally once we go to bottling.  We're adding a step this year.  Dehumidifying the honey.  Honey is honey when it is between 15.5 and 18.6% moisture.  If it is any wetter, you risk fermentation.  We're not producing Meade.  We want honey.  So we are dehumidifying the honey, stirring twice a day and dumping out the water.

In order to properly determine the moisture level of our honey, we purchased a honey refractometer.  It sounds all fancy, but was only $25.

Here's what it looks like out of the box.  Quite an impressive looking piece of equipment.

In order to work it, you put a couple of dots of honey on the glass portion and close the plastic hinged cover.  When you press the cover down, the honey should cover the glass portion completely with no bubbles.  Allow 30 seconds and then hold up to a bright light and look through the eye piece.

I was able to take a photo through the eyepiece.  The Water % scale on the right hand side is what you are looking for.  On this particular day, the honey is about 19.5%.

We will continue the dehumidifying process until we get the moisture % within range.

The Honey Harvest 2025 (Part 3)

Once we transferred the boxes to the honey house, the work of extracting the honey begins.  Our friend from the bee club has an air conditioned honey house and some expensive equipment.  We are a small operation and haven't invested in extraction equipment.  Fortunately, we have friends in our bee club that generously allow us to use their equipment until we get our feet on the ground.

So here is a medium frame of capped honey.  All of those cells have a layer of white wax that encapsulates the honey inside.  In order to extract the honey, you must uncap it.

There are several methods to do this:  Heated knives, fish-filleting knives, bread knives, and what we call "a scratcher." We used all three.  You stand the frame up sideways over a stainless steel table and begin cutting the wax cap off of both sides to expose the honey for extraction.

The uncapped frames are then placed in slots on the table.  The table has a screen at the bottom that catches all the wax cappings.  The honey that drips out of the frames or out of the cappings flows beneath the screen into a basin below.  There is a honey gate at the bottom that allows you to capture all the honey.

Here is a close-up of an un-capped frame of honey.  Sticky.  Sweet.  Delicious!  

The extractor holds 18 frames.  I think this one costs $1,800.  The frames are set, one by one in the extractor.  The folks at the uncapping table just keep on working and lining up the uncapped frames in the table.  The folks on the extractor spin the honey and continue pulling uncapped frames from the table.  Believe it or not, it doesn't take that long. 

Last year the extractor we used was a hand crank extractor.  We thought it was nice and it was.  This one is a Cadillac.  It has an electric motor and is gear driven and digital.  You can spin it at different speeds.  As you spin, the honey gate is opened on the bottom and the extracted honey flows through a screen into a food grade five gallon bucket.

The screen catches wax and any other impurities or bees that got into the honey.

We repeated that process until we had extracted all the honey from the boxes.  We're not done yet!  Stay tuned for Part 4.

The Honey Harvest 2025 (Part 2)

In Part 1 we talked about putting the 1 way entrance board beneath the honey supers that we wanted to extract honey from.  The thought being that the bees on the honey frames could leave, but would not be able to get back in.  That way, in the morning, the honey supers would have no bees in them and we'd be able to just remove them quickly devoid of bees and we'd take them to start extracting honey.

Well... it didn't work.  We pulled the lid off and the honey supers were full of bees!  Oh well, we were ready for this.  I had made a fume board.  A fume board is simply a board that is the same size as the honey box and it has a t-shirt spread across it.  We use an organic, all natural spray that the bees hate.  This is sprayed on the fume board and the fume board is placed over the top box.  In about 10 minutes, most of the bees will be pushed down away from the scent into the box beneath it.  Then you repeat that process until all the boxes are cleared of bees.

You can see some of the bees coming out of the very bottom.  They don't like that smell. 

We kept working and working, box after box, making our way to the last one.  Try as you may, there will always be a few bees in the box.  They like to protect their honey.  Next year, I'm going to use a leaf blower to blow the last remaining stragglers out.  I just don't think they are going to like the sound of the blower.  It's worth a try.  I don't like to get the bees all riled up, though, or we won't be able to go in the back yard without being attacked!

You'll see in the wagon below we have four full honey supers.  Bees will go back to the honey so the boxes are stacked in a telescoping lid on the bottom and one on top to keep them out.  Boxes full of honey is heavy.  A medium super full of honey weighs between 40 and 50 pounds.  We had to make several wagon loads to the truck.

We are taking the boxes of honey across town to a gentleman in our bee club that has some real nice honey extraction equipment that he offered to let us use.  We like to operate in the black, so we haven't purchased any honey extraction equipment until we pay off the investment in bee suits, boxes, frames, etc.  Here you can see we have 9 medium boxes of honey all stacked up.

In the next installment, we'll show you the honey extraction process!  

Goofus and Gallant

 

Image Credit

Memories
Light the corners of my mind
Misty watercolor memories
Of the way we were

- Barbara Streisand

Memories are a funny thing.  I have trouble remembering computer passwords.  I can't remember any of my loved ones' phone numbers anymore because I just press their names on my phone.  But I can remember all of my grandparents' phone numbers from 1976.  I can remember the strong chlorine smell in the hallway going to swimming lessons at the YMCA in Lake Charles where I learned to swim.  I can remember all the lyrics to Jim Croce songs, John Denver songs, and even "You light up my life" by Debbie Boone.  We sang all these to the top of our lungs riding in the very back of the Oldsmobile station wagon facing backwards as Mom and Dad drove down the interstate.

I can also remember the horror, the absolute dread and fear of going down Oak Park Boulevard as a kid on the way to the dentist.  Dr. Morrissey, I'm convinced, led a double life working for the CIA torturing captured spies for information related to threats against our homeland.  On days he wasn't pulling toenails out or performing Chinese water torture on captured espionage agents, he doubled as a children's dentist.  It was a very effective cover.  

He was rough.  Although, I figure, he was a pretty good dentist, he wasn't compassionate.  I don't think he liked kids much.  I get queasy just thinking about what it was like as a kid waiting in the waiting room for my name to be called. In my mind's eye I could hear muffled screams from the poor kids that had gone before me. There was one thing to pass the time while you waited for the hammer and chisel that awaited on the other side of the wooden door.  There was a magazine called "Highlights" on the table in the waiting area.

I always turned quickly to my favorite section of the magazine.  It was a cartoon called Goofus and Gallant.  It, not so subtly, pointed out good behavior from bad behavior and tried to instill in children a desire to be well-behaved, respectful, and courteous.  Goofus was always doing the wrong thing.  He was rude and disrespectful, mean and selfish.  The point was made clearly by Highlights magazine - Don't be like Goofus!  In all actuality, I figure Goofus is currently residing in Angola State Penitentiary.  That guy, if a choice was to be made, always chose the wrong one, a contrarian by nature.

Image Credit

Gallant, on the other hand, was perfect.  This dude was thoughtful, obedient, kind.  Gallant never picked his nose and never said a cross word.  I wanted to take the magazine back to the dentist chair with me, because if my Mom ever read it and saw Gallant's model of behavior, well, I was in big trouble, because no one could measure up to Gallant.  I wanted to keep the bar low and not have Mom knowing about Gallant.  Why, she'd end up wanting her children to be like Gallant.  That was too high a hill to climb.  

About that time, I would be called back to be water boarded (cavity filled).  I'd walk to the back obediently to face my executioner like I assume Gallant would have done.  I guess there was one other bright spot to the visit than reading Highlights.  At the end of the visit, I would get to pick out a cool looking plastic spider ring out of a big candy jar.  Goofus, I'm sure, would've taken two, but I had been conditioned to be like Gallant and take one and say through numbed lips, "Thank you."  

The Honey Harvest 2025 (Part 1)

 

We started off the year with 6 boxes of bees, having caught two swarms and making two splits.  As things happen in life, you win some and you lose some (and sometimes you get rained out).  One of our two splits was successful - we lost one of them.  And surprisingly, we lost one of the swarms by way of losing a queen.  In the photo above, the swarm box on the far left was so weakened, we stacked the deep box containing the remaining nectar on top of the deep box in the middle (the tallest one).

This left us with four boxes of bees.  The other boxes were very active and healthy.  The medium boxes on top of the deep boxes are called honey supers.  They are called supers because they go on top of the brood boxes.  The brood boxes are separated from the honey supers by a queen excluder.  The queen excluder is basically a screen that has gaps big enough to let all the worker bees go up, but not big enough to let the queen go up and begin laying eggs in the honey supers.  The goal is to have the honey supers ONLY having honey - no eggs or brood.  This makes the extraction process easier.

When you go to remove the honey supers for extraction, there is a problem.  The honey supers are full of bees.  These bees are very protective of the honey.  This is their food source.  This is what they've worked for all spring to produce.  And these humans are going to rob it!  So you must get the bees out.  This is done by using a fume board.  A fume board is basically a board covered with a T-shirt and sprayed with an all natural scent that humans love but bees hate.  You spray this on the fume board and set it on top and the bees move downward.  That's the idea anyway.

A friend of ours introduced us to something new to try.  It is a board with a one way entrance.  The bees that go out cannot get back in.  We wanted to experiment with this new tool that might make the job of removing the honey supers for extraction easier.  So the day before, we inspected each hive and reorganized the honey supers, moving the supers that did not have capped honey down to the very bottom just above the deep boxes of brood and then placing the board with the one way entrance above the supers with uncapped honey.  Uncapped honey will not be pulled as the nectar or honey within them is too high in moisture and you run the risk of your honey fermenting.  We want to make honey and not meade!

So we lit the smoker and smoked the bees and rearranged the order, putting the one way entrance board in.  In part 2 of this post which will likely be posted Sunday night, we'll show you the results of this experiment and go on and show you the honey extraction process.  Ya'll have a great weekend!

Looking For Love In All the Wrong Places

Subtitle: Things aren't always what they seem

As far as birds on our homestead farm, once a year we raise Cornish Cross meat birds.  We always have laying hens of several different breeds.  At one time we had quail, we raised a couple of turkeys for Thanksgiving dinner, and one time, we even had a pea hen that adopted us and moved into our pasture.  We've never had ducks, even though I love to eat ducks and I hear their eggs are rich in protein and make great ice cream, among other things.  I've never wanted ducks because I hear they make a mess and make mud holes on the property.

We do have wild wood ducks that fly across the land, landing in the trees and raising their young.  We also have pairs of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks (Mexican squealers) that fly in daily and land in trees.  So it wasn't too surprising when a large duck flew low across the pasture.  Tricia saw it first and pointed it out.  "That's bigger than a Mexican squealer," I said. "I think that was a Muscovy duck."

The very next morning I walked out to the barn to let the chickens out, feed the cows, and prepare the feed for the goats we would be milking shortly.  Suddenly there was a rush of feathers, and I heard something on top of the barn.  Well, well.  It was a Muscovy duck.  The duck didn't seem frightened of me at all.

The fiddler on the roof

"Who are you and what are you doing here," I thought.  The duck was looking at a big plastic owl we keep on the roof.  The owl is fake.  He is there to ward off predators like hawks that like to steal our chickens.  The owl sits overlooking the hen house.  But the Muscovy duck appears to be over looking at the owl

The duck seemingly wanted to befriend the owl, but the owl kept his back to the duck, ignoring any amorous advances.  How rude!  The duck appeared rebuffed, rejected, and began walking away.

As I watched this failed courtship spiral downward, the poor, dejected duck turned to me and scolded my intrusion into the whole affair, embarrassed that I had witnessed the whole thing.  "Mind your own business," said the duck.  And then he flew off.

As I thought about it, the scene that played out before me was a mini parable on the barn roof.  The duck is us.  The fake owl is all the alluring things of the world.  They look nice from the outside.  We covet stuff, things, trinkets, experiences.  But if one looks closely at the things of this world, we see that it's all fake and plastic.  It has no ability to love you back or bring you any lasting enjoyment or satisfaction.  Try as you may to befriend the things of this world, we find that it is meaningless, vapid, and hollow to expect any real contentment.  Perhaps we should take the old Muscovy Duck's advice and just mind our own business!

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.  Matthew 6:19-21 KJV