Monday, May 31, 2010

Honey, honey

Apparently, Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends have become the times when we harvest honey. They are times I'm really starting to cherish.

Once we remove the part of the beehives that contains the extra honey, we take it into my parents' basement where we extract and jar it. As we do this, Pop tends to share memories of when he worked bees with his father or some other story from days gone by. We also get to sample the freshest honey ever.

As we insert each rack of honeycomb into the extractor, some of the golden goodness oozes onto the tray where we're working. Each of us takes a turn sticking our fingers into that honey, which otherwise will be washed down the drain, to sample the fresh harvest. The absolute best is when Mom emerges from her kitchen upstairs with warm homemade biscuits to eat with the surgery syrup.

It was interesting this weekend to see the difference in the color of the honey that we harvested compared to the one jar we have remaining from the Labor Day 2009 harvest. Here's the picture - the lighter colored one is the spring harvest.

Unlike chickens, where the breed determines the color of the eggs, the flowers in bloom at the time determine the color of the honey. We have been trying to remember what the bees were working to make this light honey compared to the darker fall harvest.

Spring means they largely gathered pollen from clover and persimmon trees. Last fall, we had planted some buckwheat in front of the hives specifically for the bees. That's what made the fall harvest darker. Some people don't care for the buckwheat honey, but I like it. It's got a stronger taste that is interesting to me.

The extraction process involves removing the top layer of the beehive. This requires encouraging the bees to move downstairs to the lower level of the hive. Usually, this is done by blowing smoke inside the hive with a smoker.

The upper level contains several racks of honey housed within the honeycomb. When we extract it, we use an electric, heated knife to remove the top layer of wax or caps off each side of the honeycomb. The racks are placed vertically inside the extractor. When cranked, like an old-fashioned ice cream maker, the honey flies out of the combs onto the sides of the extractor and slides down into the bottom of it. There's an opening in the bottom with a sliding door that you open to collect the extracted honey into a strainer before jarring it up.

It sounds like a complicated process, but you get into a routine and it goes pretty quickly. Plus, just when I think I've heard every old story Pop has to share, he comes out with another one.

Every time I eat a spoonful of honey, I think about the bees and the harvesting process and our time together. Like Dad, I'm finding the memories make the honey even sweeter.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Ring-necked pheasants


The call came early one morning this week. We'd been anticipating it - the call that the post office had a package for us.

Hatcheries send ventilated boxes of live chicks all over the country. We'd ordered some baby chicks and ring-necked pheasants.

As I pulled out of the driveway I saw Pop cutting up a cardboard box and putting sheets of it along the edges of the pheasant cage. I rolled down the window.

"So the birds are here, huh, Pop?" I asked.

"The little shits are jumping out of the cage," he yelled back, obviously irritated. It made me chuckle.

"Need some help?" I asked, stepping out of the Jeep.

"The holes in the wire on the sides of this cage are too big," he said, still cutting the pieces of cardboard that wouldn't stay in place. "I've already had to catch two of them. You got some tape?"

"Not in the Jeep, but I can run back to the house," I said.

Pop asked me to run up to his garage instead, which I did, appearing shortly with a roll of duct tape.

We taped the cardboard walls along the side of the cage to prevent any premature disappearing acts. They'll leave anyway, but we'd prefer it be in a few months. Last year we raised about 10-12. Eventually, they out grew their cage and moved in with the chickens. They hung out around here for several weeks on their own accord before disappearing into the woods.

We had a few good laughs about them before they vanished. One of the neighbors, who knew we had them, stopped by one afternoon to tell what an aging neighbor had said.

"I met him right down there at the stop sign and he said, 'I swear I just saw a pheasant right down there at Bill's mailbox,'" the neighbor said with a grin. "He thought he was seeing things until I told him y'all were raising them."

One day, Dad was working on the bee hives with one of the local bee experts, who looked down the road leading to the barn and asked, "Are those pheasants?" Dad said yeah and had a rather lengthy conversation about them and the quail.

Mom took dinner to another neighbor one day and heard this, "I looked out that window yesterday and saw something I'd never seen before. Right there in the yard, was a ring-necked pheasant."

As I look into the cage at these new babies, I hope they'll eventually make their way out into the wild, find last year's birds and we'll hear a lot more of those stories. In fact, I hope that eventually we'll have a lot of pheasant sightings.

But for now, the best we can hope is that the little shits don't figure out they can fly out of the openings above their recently erected cardboard walls.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

How about them beans


Recently a co-worker asked me what mouse poop looks like. For a brief moment, I paused and thought,
"Why are you asking me this?" Then I realized that I, in fact, know shit.

Seriously, I have a decent amount of knowledge about poop. I not only know what mouse poop looks like, I can identify chicken, cow, llama, rabbit, horse, deer, cat and dog poop.

If you spend much time with llama people, or goat or sheep people, for that matter, you'll probably overhear at least one conversation about poop. We like to talk about it.

By examining poop you can tell all kinds of things. Runny poop can indicate parasites. Normal-looking poop can be examined under a microscope to reveal less obvious parasites. And, there are different types of parasites found in poop.

Llamas poop beans. Think deer poop or Milk Duds. Beans usually hit the ground individually. If they're clumped together like baseballs you either have a llama that needs water or is eating a lot of grass. Color is a determining factor.

Poop is a good addition to compost. Llama poop can also be mixed with water and made into llama bean tea to feed plants or spray on plants to deter deer. That may be true for other types of poop too, but I specialize in llama poop.

Dogs think any kind of poop is a special kind of appetizer.

I have found that shoveling poop is actually pretty good stress relief. I joke that I shovel figurative poop at work and literal poop at home.

I have made my niece a chocolate birthday cake with Milk Duds piled on top and told her it was from the llamas. I thought it was funny. She was not amused.

We've bagged some poop and sold it. Our brand is "Poo-poo-pee-do." Now come on, that's funny.

I once worked a photo shoot that involved exotic birds. I found out that birds lack certain muscles and therefore poop something like every three minutes. They're not ideal creatures for studio photo shoots.

Having realized that I know shit, I withdrew a Post-it Note from my desk and drew my colleague a picture.

"Here," I said. "Here's what mouse poop looks like."

"Hmmm. I was afraid of that," she said, as she walked away mumbling something about the cabinets in her new apartment.

Friday, May 7, 2010

A Canned Ham Camper

On the way to the grocery store one day, I spotted it - a circa 1970 camper. The once shiny white paint is now rather milky, but I had to take a second look at it as I passed by.

It's J. Moore's fault. My friend J. Moore was on a mission a few months ago to find and buy such a camper to serve as lodging for guests visiting her house by the river in South Carolina. During her search, a holiday catalog featured a canned ham-style camper with Christmas lights strung on it. The look reminded me of what she was striving to accomplish. Another friend and I became rather involved in her search. We all went out to look at one on a Friday after work, and we searched Craig's list for the perfect camper with the perfect price. Finally, she found her camper and set it up as her guest house.

So as I passed by that old camper, I began to wonder how I could use such a camper myself. Soon I had convinced my husband to drive back by on Sunday afternoon so he could see it and I could jot down the phone number. I called and told the owner I planned to come back by to have a look.

One day led to another and it was Thursday before I knew it. I still had not been by to peep inside the camper. No sooner had I realized this on my drive home from work than I found myself making a sharp turn onto Grapevine Road. I parked the Jeep and jumped out.

I tiptoed across up to the camper to keep my high heels from sinking into the moist ground. I opened the door and stepped inside. It was OK, but I knew how this would go if we bought this camper. First I'd fix A and it would cost a couple hundred bucks. Then, I'd want to fix B and that would cost $100 and then C. You see where this is going? A money pit.

I was just about back in the Jeep when the owner pulled up. A man, who I'm guessing is in his late 70s, stepped out and we began to chat about the camper and where we used to camp.

"Where you from?" he eventually asked.

"I live across the river," I said.

"Whose your daddy?" he asked.

I told him, but it was only Pop's last name that resonated with him.

I know some people by that name, he said. Often this type of comment leads to Uncle Ace, so I threw it out there to get it on the table. "Oh yeah," he said, adding that he had painted Ace's brother's garage once. Guess who that is.

Knowing my family, the man agreed to sell the camper to me for the lower end of the range we had discussed. Soon, he was asking me about my great uncles and telling me stories about the neighbors who were either my grandfather's or father's friends. I told him where all their kids and grand kids lived.

I glanced at my watch. An hour had passed. I had long since given up on tiptoes, and it was now taking some effort to withdraw the heels of my shoes from the ground. As I pulled my heels upward and out of the ground, I backed into the Jeep.

"There's an auction on Flint Hill Saturday," I yelled as I climbed into the driver's seat. "You should go and catch up with your old buddies...."

The next morning I was telling my Dad about the man and the camper and the lengthy conversation.

My father said, "Well, now I believe his dad was Jake. I think he used to take Uncle Hubert......"

I glanced at my watch.

Monday, May 3, 2010

Write notable

Several weeks ago we got a call from Brandon of the Cascade Highlands of North Carolina and Virginia Tourism Group. He was scoping out potential places to take a group of travel writers who would be visiting the area on a media tour.

Since we didn't know who the writers would be, we tempered our enthusiasm when we heard our llama trek at Divine Llama Vineyards had been selected for the lunch stop. Saturday was the big event.

The crew showed up and we had a nice time. It was humid, and we had a rookie llama on the trek that was a bit too unruly early on. But, we enjoyed our time with the writers, who came here from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and elsewhere in North Carolina.

At the end of the day, Brandon passed along a list of who the guests were, where they were from and so forth. It was probably good not knowing too much about the group prior to the trek. It would have made me nervous, which would have made the llamas nervous. They pick up on a vibe pretty easily.

Since Saturday, I've been online looking at their articles and publications. I'm impressed by how easy going and unpretentious they are considering they write for or have written for Southern Living, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, WinesDownSouth.com; Upstate Lake Living; The Greenville Sun (Tennessee), Palm Beacher, VisitSouth.com; and more. Plus, they've tried their share of wine and food during their travels.

Lunch was purchased from the Carving Board. Today, I called to tell the manager what nice comments we heard about the lunch. He seemed surprised and pleased.

I snapped this photo over the shoulder of Denise Reynolds as she used her food stylist skills to assemble the wildflowers, plate, wine bottles and such together for a pretty picture. And Doc Lawrence of WinesDownSouth.com inspired the new discussion on Bloomtown Acres Facebook page. Doc hiked down the trail chatting about what was going on a MerleFest and singing a Hank Williams Jr. tune. I told him I had hoped to get out to see Zac Brown perform Thursday evening but didn't make it.

So watch the Web and any number of publications for possible articles about Divine Llama Vineyards. And, go to Bloomtown's Facebook page and tell me what wine you think pairs best with Zac Brown Band and Nora Jones.