drumroll, please … please welcome the 2012 crop of the Best Honey You’ve Never Tasted!

It’s the only time of year when I don’t go over my allotted internet data package: as of yesterday morning, honey extracting has begun, my friends!  And the first honey that poured into my bottling tank yesterday was crystal clear, water white, and certainly the best you’ve never tasted.

For everyone that has standing orders with us for the 2012 crop, no worries, we haven’t forgotten about you, and will get those orders out next week – for now, the crew is pulling honey out in the fields and I’m home frantically preparing for the Red Ants Pants Music Festival in White Sulphur Springs, Montana.  We’ll be leaving tomorrow to sell the best honey you’ve never tasted; golden beeswax candles, ornaments, and blocks; bee-autiful jewelry;  and pretty fabulous hats, hoodies, and tshirts, too.  Hope to see you there – I know I like dancing to Emmy Lou Harris and Corb Lund while the bees are out dancing with the flowers.

Go, bees, go!

2012.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

 

Maggie’s hands

Are tiny, obviously.

Though I swear they grow bigger every day.

I look at Maggie’s hands and wonder about what she will touch in her life, what she will do with her hands, who she will love.

Will those fingers type out the next great American novel?  Will she pluck magenta wildflowers from our fields and weave them into verdant bouquets, like her great-grandmother?  Will we be able to finagle music lessons up here on the 49th parallel, so that pretty music might come from her fingers?

I can see that finding out will be the greatest adventure of my life.

2011.  Glacier County Honey Co.  Photo credits to Jennifer Campbell and Layla Dunlap.  All Rights Reserved.

 

My Old True Love – Sheila Kay Adams

Of the gifts my parents gave me that I couldn’t lose, break, or tire of, the gift of language reigns supreme.  I can’t remember a room in my childhood that didn’t contain a shelf of books, and being read to, reading to others, and reading to oneself were all activities highly encouraged by Mom and Dad.  They wouldn’t buy me jeans from Abercrombie & Fitch, but I don’t recall them ever saying “no” to a book purchase – even if the book was Vol. 2,102 in the Babysitters Club series, and not War and Peace.

When I was very young, my parents enforced a 7pm bedtime for the three of us kids, and now that I am 30 and expecting a child of my own, I can understand that taking a few hours at the end of the day to engage in adult conversation, possibly about books, perhaps over a glass of chardonnay, has probably contributed to the longevity of their marriage, now 35 years in the running.  But as I grew older, I resented that early bedtime with a vengeance that foreshadowed what a teenage pain I would turn out to be.  Skilled generals on the battlefield of Parenthood, my parents struck a compromise with me: I had to go to bed at 7pm, but I could stay up as long as I wished in my room, as long as I was reading.

As a result, I think it is fair to say that I am widely read, that a life without books is unthinkable to me, that if I have no one to chat with and no internet connection, I will read the back of the cereal box at breakfast.  Recently, United stranded me at some-airport-or-another, and so I picked up a new book to read: My Old True Love, by Sheila Kay Adams.

The cover of the book is what caught my eye, as it reminded me of my childhood spent in the shadow of the Blue Ridge mountains, and of the years I spent in law school, living down in a hollow in that tumbled green space, streaked with coal, where Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky all clasp hands.

The contents of the book caught me by the heart – it is presented as the story of one family’s hardscrabble existence in the Appalachians – and of course, of thwarted love – during the War Between the States (that’s the Civil War to you Yankees), but it is not a typical novel about this time period – you won’t find a hoopskirt or noble cause in its lyrical pages.  Rather, Ms. Adams, like so many talented Southern writers before her, sticks firmly to a tale grounded on that all important sense of place – but not the rolling cotton fields, leading to the graceful plantation house.  Rather, she writes of the mountains, and their stores of rhododendrons, spring snows, and lions.  The hills of Appalachia are ever present, an unnamed protagonist in this book, and without them, the mountain dialect and personas of Ms. Adams’ characters might fall flat, or be incomprehensible to Appalachia-outsiders.  But woven together by Ms. Adams, this mountain yarn resonates with veracity, and beauty.

Another quality that puts My Old True Love in a category of its own is the author’s use of music in the novel – apparently, Ms.Adams is a celebrated performer on the clawhammer banjo, and has recorded several albums of what I grew up calling “mountain music.”  Ms. Adams’ familiarity with the cadences of Appalachian folk music create a back rhythm to the storyline that is always authentic, adding to her tale but never distracting from it.  She includes the lyrics of several ancient ballads that tell the age-old stories of heartbreak, betrayal, and love – these words were already time worn in the 1860s, but they still ring true today.

My Old True Love is beautifully written, and a little different.  If you’re looking for a new read, this might be the ticket.

I’m always looking for a new read – what do y’all recommend?

2011.  Glacier County Honey  Co.  All Rights Reserved.

 

on music, of the Christmas variety

I’ve been running around like a maniac for the last week – the holiday season is officially upon the Glacier County Honey Company, and we thank you for your support!  Our first year in the retail honey/beeswax business has been beyond our wildest dreams, and it’s the greatest ride of my life.  Although it’s only the second week of November, orders for beeswax Christmas ornaments, honey stocking stuffers, and gorgeous pinecone candles fill my inbox daily.

Yesterday, I worked in the warehouse all day, melting wax, filtering wax, pouring wax, and packing up honey.  As I worked, I turned my I-pod to my Christmas music playlist, much to Honeydew’s dismay.  Since Howard’s death, I’ve had a hard time with Christmas, compounded by the fact that a few years after he died, the woman who had been my mother’s best friend and a second mother to me, passed away at Christmastime.  So often to me, Christmas is an empty seat at the dinner table, that gift you wish you could buy and wrap and watch be unwrapped.

But despite the grief that will always taint Christmastime for me, its music never fails to lift my heart, and I enjoy it far longer than the average person.  My I-pod is stocked with the quiet instrumentals of Bela Fleck picking away at a banjo version of Jingle Bells, the average Joe vocals of Alabama longing to spend Christmas in Dixie, the soaring synthesizer of Manehim Steamroller on O Holy Night, the crystalline soprano of Dolly Parton lamenting a Hard Candy Christmas, and the spectacular vocals of Mariah Carey, who I really only enjoy when she’s singing All I Want For Christmas Is You.  I have been known to listen to the occasional Christmas song in July, just because I miss them.

As I worked yesterday, my thoughts turned to Christmases before I knew grief, and I remembered the fall Sissy and Grandma Betty came to see us at Blackstone Farms.  We always took a trip to town to visit the Tultex outlet, back in the days when we’d never heard of NAFTA and Martinsville, Virginia, was the sweatshirt producing capital of the world.  Sissy and Grandma Betty and my mom always bought the place out.  Sweatshirts bored the boys and I to tears, but when Sissy gave me the Christmas sweatshirt dress she’d made for me, one that matched those she’d also made for herself, my cousin Brooke, and my mom, my opinion changed.  Sweatshirt dresses! Oh, the ’80s.  It was a very merry Christmas down on the big farm, in Georgia.

Above, my cousin Brooke, me, Brother Dear, and Howard, pose on Grandma Betty’s doorstep, on our way to Fair Haven for church.  To sing beautiful Christmas music, I’m sure.

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

 

Who You’d Be Today

Mom is our guest blogger today.

Like most Americans, for me last week’s September 11 anniversary brought back a flood of memories.  I was working out at the Y when I heard the news, and my family was scattered: my husband, Charlie, was in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with his mother; daughter Courtney was in her senior year at UGA, in Athens; and son Sanford was a freshman at Washington & Lee, in Lexington, Virgina.  We were all frightened and outraged by the terrorists’ actions.

But our youngest son, Howard, was particularly upset by 9/11.  A high school junior, he spent that awful day watching TV news coverage with his classmates.  He was shocked that our nation’s security could be so easily breached and concerned that the terrorists would strike again.

Normally, Howard’s world revolved around basketball, soccer, Scouts and school.  He was 6’3”, a green-eyed, dishwater blonde who loved sports and having fun.  On Sept. 11, 2001, he was a week short of his 17^th birthday and starting to visit colleges.  He hadn’t really given his future much thought, but after seeing our nation’s response to the fall of the towers, he began mulling a career in law enforcement.

A good student, in the spring of his senior year Howard was offered scholarships to two small liberal arts colleges in Virginia   Just when his Dad and I thought he was ready to decide between the two, Howard asked if he might make one final college visit to the University of Mississippi.  Ole Miss, as it is affectionately called, is located in Oxford, a 12 hour drive from our home, and has a political science/criminal justice major that Howard thought could be a stepping stone to law school and eventually his ultimate goal, the FBI.  The visit went well and the beautiful southern co-eds Howard met on campus probably influenced his decision as much as the sought-after course of study.

During his freshman year at Ole Miss, Howard aced history and political science and made the Dean’s List both semesters.  He played intramural sports, lifted weights and loved to hike. He was a happy 19 year old who appeared to be well on his way to a bright future. But then, one week into his sophomore year, Howard’s fraternity house burned down, taking his life and that of two other young men.  Howard was three weeks shy of 20 when he died.

Now when I hear Kenny Chesney’s song “Who You’d Be Today,” I can‘t help but be wistful for what might have been.

Sunny days seem to hurt the most

I wear the pain like a heavy coat

I feel you everywhere I go

I see your smile, I see your face

I hear you laughing in the rain

Still can’t believe you’re gone

It ain’t fair you died too young

Like a story that had just begun

The death tore the pages all away

God knows how I miss you

All the hell that I’ve been through

Just knowing no one could take your place

Sometimes I wonder who you’d be today

Would you see the world?

Would you chase your dreams?

Settle down with a family?

I wonder, what would you name your babies?

Some days the sky’s so blue

I feel like I can talk to you

And I know it might sound crazy …

As your Mom, I can’t stop thinking about who you’d be today.  Happy 26th birthday, Howard.

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.