Bee My Honey, Please

Dear Reader,

I find that life is full of average moments and super-than-average moments. The super-than-average can range from intense, melancholy in which each fiber of the world physical and metaphysical is colored deeply and strongly. The super-than-average can ALSO slide over to the surreal in which the heart is bursting for unbelief that this experience is actually happening.

Maybe that was a little dramatic, but wouldn’t you agree? If we are the sum of our experiences, is it not best to notice them and roll along-good, bad, average.

Yesterday at the farm we harvested the honey. This process was definitely a communal effort; at one point we even took shifts so everyone could rest for lunch.

Two guys who are largely heading up the project, Jon and Kris, have been checking on the bees periodically, and yesterday the fruit finally came in edible form.

Jon, Kris, and a couple other farm folks geared up early before breakfast to load up the bee boxes. Once the boxes were brought down to the processing house and all of the extraction equipment cleaned and manned (or womanned), we and the bees got down to a dance.

Each box had about ten frames inside, and typically each frame had a honeycomb on each side. At first the majority of the bees hung out where their boxes used to be, but as time progressed they started figuring out that their homes had been moved. By the end of the harvest, we were walking in the middle of about one thousand bees, or so we estimated. They tended to congregate around the boxes.
 

Pull frame from box, brush of honey-gorging bees, slice off wax caps from comb with heated knife and fork, spin frame in a large barrel to extract, filter honey twice, jar and cap and label and sell.

Taste testing occurs mostly in the slicing off of wax caps to be sure the honey is not bitter. These bees were living around mesquite trees, and oddly enough, their honey has a light, lemony flavor. 
 

I started off forking the wax caps while Kris knifed them. Then Will knifed and I forked. Then I knifed while other people forked. The bees seal off the individual combs with wax to keep the honey safe, and we have to remove the wax in order to extract the honey. This leads to some wax combs with honey falling into a pail. This honey covered wax was the edible treat of the afternoon. Toddlers, teenagers, twenties and up were reaching in for morsels of wax to chew for the honey. Delicious.

When we got to the last five frames, Jon and I decided we did not need any protective gear because we just wanted to get in and get out. Unfortunately since these were the last frame, most of the bees were concentrated all in the small honeyed spaces we were trying to get to. Slowly, smoothly, and without flinches, Jon would reach for a frame, pull it out, and I would take a soft brush and brush off at least two hundred bees from each side of the frame. A Swarm does not seem to give the feeling justice. We were standing in the middle of hundreds and hundreds of bees, circling and flying around. I could feel them land in my hair, brush against my arm, suck honey off of my sticky fingers. One stung Jon in the forehead, but I finished unharmed.

That was one of those surreal moments. The good, inward bursting kind. And no one was around to take a picture, but I am working off of sensory memory anyways now because there are too many moments to capture around this place.
 

Amanda Becker, who moved from New York with her husband Chris a couple weeks ago, took some beautiful shots of the first part of the day. I snagged a few form her blog to let you see. Check out her site though because she has much more visual media that is well worth viewing.

Heat Relief

Simultaneous sorry and thanks for reading the previous post entitled “Temporary Confusion” which I have judiciously deleted.

Sometimes emotions just get a little too much and typing out is much quicker than handwriting out.

Today the temperature high is 101, but I do not think it actually is getting that high.

I spent the first half of the day at a coffee shop reading about urban chicken raising, mushroom growing, and aquaculture. Delightfully two friends from Denton, who were originally from Waco, stopped by to meet friends. It was a rare pleasure to say hi to friends I have history with.

The second half some fellow-farmers and I met up at the dollar movie to sit in a dark, air-conditioned room during the hottest part of the day. The consensus was to watch Baby Mamma for some humor. I am still holding out for some good martial arts in Forbidden Kingdom, hopefully someone will want to go for that one.

Tonight is a bar-b-cue birthday at the farm. One of the directors is turning thirty, so we’re heating up the slaughtered cow.

Farm to Fireworks

Fourth of July Eve found me sleeping on the ground outside of a fireworks stand between two very sleepy friends.

Chris (an ex-farmee) took a temporary job managing a fireworks stand. Although the week and a half preceding the Fourth rarely brought customers, the 3rd and 4th reportedly are so busy, Chris needed to hire extra workers. The farmees had the 4th off of work, so I packed a bag Thursday after lunch, met T.J. in town, and we drove fifteen minutes out to the stand after loading up on food.beverage supplies.

The business started rolling around six and rolled until sometime after dark. T.J, Chris, and I snacked on fruit, nuts and Coca-Colas (boys only). I brought a flowered sheet from the dorm to drape between the two vehicles for a shade structure under the blazing Texas sun. Fireworks stand, country field, old beat up van, flowered sheet over metal folding chairs….you tell me what we look like.

Sometime in the early morning hours we awoke to a coyote howling in the distant field. Ants crawled over the ground blanket and onto our sleeping skin. The nightime brought an unexpected chill that I was not prepared for, but Chris, the safest of all, slept for the eleventh night on a pallet on the floor of his van.

Friday morning T.J. and I made a run into town for coffee. We looked for stop after stop, not willing to sacrifice too much on bad coffee and ended up back in Waco at one of the only open establishments around. After all of that driving the coffee was still mediocre, but I had a quick bathe down in the women’s restroom and changed clothes.

Quickly put, we sold fireworks to the most diverse crowd of people I have ever seen in one place from around ten until midnight. Families, rednecks, thug pretenders, kids, angst teens, drunk men, business men, army men, all mostly friendly and glad to be around. Ellie and Allan came around four to add extra power to the selling team which was much needed. Buyers came in busy waves, three to six carloads at a time.

Around seven or eight a crowd from the farm came bearing beer, heifer meat, watermelon, and a monster grill. While we worked, they set up camp the lawful fifty yards from the stand and turned out dinner. No Fourth of July ever felt so festive, and the connection was as strong as family ties. That is what living and working in close proximity does to people.

My favorite moment of the night was when Toby, the farm managers three year old, finally warmed up to me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to a bare patch of ground to lounge in my lap for watching city fire works, repeating ‘watch,’ ‘fire,’ and ‘pretty.’

After inventory and packing, we five did not leave until after two A.M, and I did not make it back to the farm until three.

Favorite Moments of the Week.

Thought you might like to see a little visual aid.

Cheers,

Let’s Relive the Past.

Remember when Benjamin and I climbed a lot together in early spring? I miss that. 

 

Sharing not Reflecting

Instead of telling you my thoughts and happenings, I leave you with a quote from Thomas Merton’s book No Man is an Island.

 

pg. xxi

” It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be bale first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an appraent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be “as gods.” We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficienceies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another. 

Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and “one body,” will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives [...] the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my own achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of m achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time. It is seen, above all, in my integration in the mystery of Christ.”

also pg. 8

” The destiny of each one of us is intended, but the Lord, to enter into the destiny of His entire kingdom. And the more perfectly we are ourselves the more we are bale to contribute to the good of the whole Church of God. For each person is perfected by the virtues of a child of Go, and these virtues show themselves differently in everyone, since they come to light in the lives of each one of the saints under a different set of circumstances.”

 

Some thoughts that have me chewing this week.

 

Sunflower Tuesday

At the farm on Tuesdays, everyone wakes up at 6:30 a.m. for harvest/CSA day.

CSA: Community Supported Agriculture; a group by which members, for a reasonable fee, pick up produce directly from a farm supplier. Simple definition, but you get the idea.

On Tuesdays we harvest whatever is ready that week, bunch and weigh the produce, separate for different drop locations, and members pick up produce from three convenient locations.

Close to the Nicaragua house exists a large area of sunflowers, far too many to count, that we will be mowing down very shortly. I grabbed some pruning shears and filled buckets of water and snipped 1 foot to 1 1/2 foot long sunflower stems.

If you have ever seen wild sunflowers growing along side the road, remember that they are often 6 feet or taller, and they enjoy growing densely. I waded, fought, pushed my way through a forest of sunflowers. Does this sound picturesque? The sun was rising at about this time, morning soft light bringing out deep colors of yellows, blacks, and greens.

300 sunflower stems (not even a dent in the forest was made). Arms, hands, fingers covered in sunflower sticky sap and bristles that 3 times of scrubbing could not remove. Legs and toes cut by Nightshade and various ants. I filled five buckets full of sunflowers and took a picture. Sadly, I can not find the camera cord.

The CSA members were surprised and glad for the flower treat. One guy commented that most CSAs charge extra for flowers.

So I am off to an  ice cream/Balderdash party in the dorm. Farewell.

P.s. did I mention we tie dyed today on the front lawn? All in a day’s work. Mine definitely did not turn out well, oh well, I have the sunflower story

Cheers.

Coming Sooooooooooon

I am thinking I will configure a post soon.
Not that you’re reading (oh uncommunicative reader….I mean, are you even out there, or am I chronicling for my peace of mind)

Something else to look forward to……pristinely shaven…shoven….shaved legs in 1,2,3 days.

Cheerios

Farm = Home

Day One at World Hunger Relief. (click on link)

Arrived at 2:00 p.m.
Ryan helped me carry in things.
Met two of the girls I am now rooming with.
Ate a Guatemalen leftover that Christine made last night.
Two new room-sharers and I rearranged the entire first room of the girl’s dorm.
I have the top bunk.
Hung pictures, textiles, keys. Stowed belongings in drawers.
Rode bikes two miles down the road to a pond. Swim in sunset.

New people, new community, new feeling. Same goats though.

Galveston Afternoon

The island of Galveston, Texas has had quite an illustrious history.

In the mid 1800’s people gaffed at the idea of building a city on a flat, windswept, puny island. A late 1800’s American capitalist never says never however, and the city was built on dry goods commerce. Mostly tradesmen who traveled to and from various cotton, meat, what have you cities set up their trading posts in Galveston because of the port. Goods came and went from the eastern port, and a downtown of solid brick was built. Slowly people, mostly wealthy families began peopling the island, building homes, schools, monuments, hospitals, gardens, hotels.

A few storms shook the island from time to time, but people recovered quickly. By the time the storm of 1900 hit, the city was in full swing of commerce and culture. The storm went on record with lowest barometric pressure readings, strongest winds, highest tide. Unfortunately for the non downtown portions, the buildings were timber, and remember, the land was flat, sometimes sinking below sea-level. Tide rose almost 20 feet, wind smashed buildings into toothpick parts, wind and water tore up railroads, roofs, and destroyed parts of brick buildings. People floated in the ocean, because no island existed for hours, holding onto debris, trying to avoid being smashed with flying pieces. By the end of the storm, only brick buildings stood and two-thirds of the inhabitants were dead. Hence the seawall, raised grade island, and levees that we all know and love so people can continue living on the “healthful” (an actual quote from a newspaper before the storm) paradise.

History lesson aside. Galveston has truned out quite differently than its founders imagined. We as a family know two people closely who have moved to Galveston for the drug/homeless/alcoholic scene. My mother and I rode bikes for an hour and a half around the island and waved at man and woman walking the streets or sitting in groups around the cemetery. Rundown, falling apart, condemned looking houses are situated beside gentrified historic homes painted yellows, blues, reds. This would be a place for a co-op.

I jumped in the ocean during the bike ride, not knowing when I would get to get in another one. It is easy to look past the brown, muddy water and plastic soda bottles and soak in salt and sun and gulf-clouds. The clouds here are worlds apart from North Texas clouds. In the evening they glow golden yellow, giant fluffy clouds.

Galveston is growing again, better than when I was a kid. Downtown has the Mod, a tiny coffee shop with patio tables on the corner of a street. Art galleries, cafes, bakeries, step over one block and the run down houses are easy to see.