Glacier County Honey Co.

Sorting through the afternoon mail, I came across several cards addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Honeydew, and I paused.  Why would my lovely grandmother Ivey and Honeydew’s mother both be writing to us?  Had we been bad newlyweds?  Had we neglected a thank you note for some kind action of theirs?

And then it dawned on me.  Next week, we will no longer be newlyweds – my grandmother and my mother-in-law were both writing to congratulate Honeydew and I on one year of marriage, this coming Sunday.  We’ve nearly outlasted 90% of Hollywood marriages!  A celebration is definitely in order.

So, at the risk of losing all of my male readers, I am going to do several posts on our weddin’ this week, as putting it together with my mom, my aunt, and my grandma Betty was simultaneously one of the most joyous and and awful tasks I’ve ever dealt with.  Honeydew and I were married at home, and we did nearly everything for our wedding ourselves.  And by that I mean that we gave Honeydew marching orders and Dad the invoices and Mom, Pseudo Sister, Sissy, Grandma Betty and I obsessed over every detail for six full months.  Here are a few:

Here I am with my sister-in-law bridesmaid, left, and my very best friend in the world, my matron of honor.   Look closely at my bouquet to see the something old – I am carrying my great-grandmother’s sterling silver card case, and in it, photos of my beloved Pa Pa, and my darling brother Howard, both of whom passed away prior to my marriage.

Something new – Honeydew bought me custom cowboy boots with my new monogram.

Something borrowed – I wore my mom’s beautiful wedding hat, that she wore when she married my dad in the fall of 1975.

And something blue – mom also lent me her gorgeous sapphire ring, on my third finger.

More weddin’ details to come – I know you boys can’t wait!

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

This winter, we had our trucks painted with our Glacier County Honey Co information, and I wrote that I felt like we had just pressed our hands into a cement star!

This week, we poured the cement pad that Glacier County Honey World Headquarters will sit on, and we did press our hands into the pad:

We feel very famous, indeed.

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

We tease Dish, our Darling Summer Help, that his resume is going to be 10 pages long when he leaves us at summer’s end.  Since his arrival, his duties for Glacier County Honey Company have ranged from actual beekeeping (the glamour: checking hives – the drudgery: scraping frames), lawn care, grocery fetching (hey, anyone going to an actual town, or coming from one, gets put to this task), gopher hunting, peak bagging, 4 wheeling, photographing, and others too menial to even mention.

Not long after Dish arrived, he and Honeydew walked out to the Big Field to check our home bee yard.  One day, we plan to market a limited edition honey from this special yard and call it Hillhouse Riserva – perhaps next year.  This year is centered around The Construction Project, unfortunately.

At any rate, Dish and Honeydew went out to the Big Field and Honeydew’s sharp eyes immediately spotted a problem with the home yard.  Nope, not a grizzly bear having a snack.  Not even a skunk trying to infiltrate a hive.  Do you see the problem?

That’s a swarm of bees.  They’ve grown weary of their hive, and absconded.  Naughty, naughty bees.  Sure to get coal in their hives for Christmas this year.  Actually, Honeydew says that is not true – swarms are just a hive’s way of reproducing and finding a new home to live in.  But I think it sounds better the other way.

I think swarms are like teenagers … they think they want to leave home and live their lives out there in the real world, just as they please.  But they don’t, not really.  The real world is a cold, windy, mean place.  These bees just need a little more space, a hive of their own, so to speak.

So, Dish prepared to add Forklift Operator and Swarm Rescuer to his resume.  Such a task involves using the forklift to lift Honeydew some thirty feet off the ground, along with an empty hive.  Honeydew will then attempt to coax the swarm of bees into their new home.  Interesting work for Dish, who had driven the forklift a total of maybe 10 minutes before being asked to lift his bossman thirty feet off the ground.  I was at home cooking dinner during this decision making process, or I might have objected.  Vehemently.  Not that I don’t have complete and total faith in Dish, but still …

Roy Rogers, our #1 beekeeping dawg, assisted, of course.

Sorry.  Puppies distract me.

Back to the task at hand – Dish lifted Honeydew up into the tree on a pallet, with the empty hive.

I don’t know what magic words Honeydew whispered to this swarm, but soon enough, he had coaxed them into the hive.

And Dish put the camera down to deliver Honeydew safely to the ground.  Thank you, honey.

That is quite a hive of bees.  Hi girls!  Welcome back to the fold.

Teenagers.  Sheesh.  What, do they want to go on a field trip to Abercrombie & Fitch?  Is life near Glacier National Park not enough for them?

Odd.  I feel like I’m having future deja vu.

Happy Friday!

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  Photo credits to Jeff Street. All Rights Reserved.

Y’all may recall a dark period of my life last month when I used this blog to vent my absolute and utter frustrations with the red tape involved in building Warehouse No. 2.  I am happy to say that when I left for work this morning, I stopped by the construction site, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a concrete truck … and two miniature reindeer!  Yes!

Just kidding on the reindeer.

But, after weeks of grading and graveling and leveling and regrading and regraveling and releveling, and then placing plastic sheet and rebar and foam board in preparation for the radiant floor heat system, and then installing the wondrous radiant floor heat system, we were ready for the concrete.  At long last.

Can you see the layers of gravel, plastic sheeting, foam board, rebar, and tubing for the heat?  Hooray!

A radiant floor heat system needs a boiler room with which to control it.  Here, where the tubes are all capped off is where our boiler room will be.

And here is the first glorious layer of concrete, the foundation to our honey house and to our livelihood.

In the next few days, we’ll pour the rest of the concrete, and then the building will begin to go up … what a very fine day that will be, as was today.  Thanks as ever for your virtual love and support!

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

Two nights ago.  Thunderstorm near Babb.

And then sunset.

Have I mentioned how in love I am with July?

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

I could easily be dictating this from a burn unit in some flashy hospital in some big city far, far away from my beloved Hillhouse.

Shortly after the 4th of July, I found myself working from home, as I often do, being that I live 70 miles from my office and my law firm is hardly profitable if I drive to Cut Bank every day.  At lunchtime, I resolved to take an hour to have what I like to call the Near Babb Gal’s Power Lunch – working like a devil in the yard during the lunch hour, trying to burn some calories.  I planned to put all the chairs back in their proper places on various patios and fire pit areas, wind up garden hoses, schlepp items from barn to barn, water the garden, weed the flower bed, etc.  Before I got going, I noted that the ever present winds were on a brief hiatus, and so I began loading up our burn barrel with a holiday weekend’s worth of paper and cardboard.

But I couldn’t get the burn barrel to light.  Impatient and ready to move forward with my cardio hour, I look around for some lighter fluid, boy scout magic, to get the barrel burning.  All the bottles were empty.  I tried again.  No flame.  At that moment, I noticed the small gas can we use to fill up the weed whacker.  I should have just noticed it and kept on about my business.  Seven years of higher education and thirty years of l-i-v-i-n should have intervened.  But I decided to pour just a splash of gas in the burn barrel, to speed matters along.

The next thing I knew, I was laying on my back on the ground next to the burn barrel, looking at the cerulean sky.  The clouds were innocent, sugar spun and frothy.  All of a sudden the realization of what had happened slammed into my foggy brain.  Clearly, I had already managed to get a small flame burning in the bottom of the barrel, where I couldn’t see it, and when I added the gas, it had caught with such a fury that it knocked me backwards.  Second grade washed over me and I thought, “stop, drop, and roll,” and I rolled from my back onto my belly.  Then I jumped up frantically and ran into the house, stripping as I ran, desperate to get the oily stench of the gasoline and the heat of the flames off of me.  I looked into the bathroom mirror and realized that I looked like Doc Brown from Back to the Future, with my hair standing straight up and frizzly gray.  I thanked God that all of my skin appeared to still be on my face, though I felt like I was on fire.  I jumped under a cool shower and clumps of my hair began circling the drain.  I perched tentatively on the shower bench, shaking with adrenaline and fear and gratitude.

Exiting the shower, I noted that my famously low hairline, that I loathed in high school and once waxed off in an attempt to have a “normal,” even hairline, was just how I had wanted it to be at 16 – even to the edges of my face.  My eyelashes were of varying lengths.  My thick eyebrows were trimmed down to their nubs, though still intact.  No other hair remained on my face, which caused me to crack a somewhat painful smile.  Small blessings.

The worst of the burn was concentrated on my right hand, peeling across my knuckles as I type this, a week later.

But I’m fine.  Wiser, and less hairy to be sure, but fine.

Today, Honeydew returned from the post office with this package:

Look closely at how this package is addressed:

“Browless Courtney Stone Fullerton.”

Inside the package, my dear friend Daryn, who always does the right thing, sent her love to my eyebrows and eyelashes.

Brow Defining Powder and Brow & Lash Growth Accelerator, from drugstore.com.

As Randy Travis sings:

Honey, I don’t care

I ain’t in love with your hair

And if it all fell out, well,

I’d love you anyway

I know you love me anyway, D.  Thanks.  I’m gonna love you forever.  Back to practicing patience and gratitude, here.  And learning how to use brow powder.

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

For my thirtieth birthday, my parents gave me a mysterious small box.  I love small boxes.  My engagement ring came in one.  Bequet Caramels from Bozeman come in a small box, as do truffles from Posh Chocolat in Missoula.  Real vanilla extract comes in a small box.  Small boxes are good things.

Inside the box was this necklace:

It is comprised of beautiful, irregular amber beads:

And it belonged to my great-grandmother.  My parents discovered the beads, loose in an old envelope, along with a needle and thread that great-grandmother had apparently tried to restring them with, in the bottom of that old trunk I wrote about earlier.  Knowing my love for all things old and well loved, Mom and Dad had the beads restrung for me, and I’ve been wearing them proudly ever since, whether I’m in court or pouring beautiful beeswax candles.

The beads are imperfect, unmatched and bumpy in spots.  Clearly, great grandmother loved them, as they are the sole material thing of beauty in the entire trunk of her memories.  Did they belong to her mother? Did her husband give them to her after the birth of their first son?  Did she buy them for herself, as a widow?  I’ll never know.  I wear them and know that there are mysteries in life that remain unsolved, that make the last tangerine stroke of sunset, the last platinum fire of starfall before dawn, that much more illuminating.

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

My world was rocked yesterday when I realized that I am not the only girl in the world who finds Darling Summer Help … well, darling.  Yesterday, DSH, or “Dish,” as we’ve taken to calling him, journeyed to the big city out on the prairie to pick up his … Darling Girlfriend.  And it turned out that Darling Girlfriend’s birthday is today!

So, Pseudo Sister and I set out to make a special dinner to commemorate her arrival to near Babb.  We visited the “wedding gifts closet” and selected a darling cake pan for Darling Girlfriend’s birthday cake.

And then we called my mama for her fabulous Rum Cake recipe … if you’re gonna eat cake, it better be rum cake!  Rum cake is absurdly easy to make and guaranteed to impress.  It took less than 5 minutes to whip up, and in those 5 minutes we were distracted by the Bacardi and forgot to take pictures.  While the cake was baking, we prepped elk medallions, spicy-steamed-green-beans, potatoes-n-vidalias, and green salad.  Mmmmm.  Have y’all figured out yet that we’ll seize on any reason to cook a good meal at Hillhouse?  Especially for a birthday!

The cake finished baking, and Pseudo Sister and I poked holes in it and poured the rum-butter-sugar glaze all over it and tried to restrain ourselves from gobbling down the whole thing.  We sliced a little bit of cake off each half in order to put the two halves of the beehive together, and were impressed with the finished product, though the bees themselves are hard to see in this picture.

Pseudo Sister and I were models of self restraint yesterday.   We had to sit there and smell this cake for hours before DSH and DG returned home … but the look on Darling Girlfriend’s face was worth it when we served her the cake!

Happy birthday, Darling Girlfriend!  We appreciate your sharing DSH with us this summer.

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

This is a question I am frequently asked in Cut Bank, where I keep my office, some 70 miles from Hillhouse.  It is, of course, a question with many answers, depending on the time of the year, and the time of day.

This time of year, after whatever configuration of present Hillhousers has laid away their work for the day, whether that work be eradicating the various noxious weeds trying to invade our property; scrubbing floors, windows, and cabinets; tending to 1,000 hives of bees; distributing marital estates; ridding the cabin attic of guano; changing oil in various rigs; overseeing the construction of an 80 x 120′ warehouse; ironing, mending, and washing; or teaching the new puppy old tricks, we like to gather around the fire pit, and fill each other in on the details of our days.

We’ll watch the sunset together.

And we’ll ask the dogs about their day.

And we’ll watch the Mirror play.

Sometimes well into darkness.

And suddenly the day has come to an end.  And we get up the next day and do it all over again.  And that’s what we do near Babb.

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

You’re at the grocery store, on the honey aisle.  Being an educated consumer and devotee of this blog, you know that honey is good for you in so many different ways.  It has minimal effect on your blood sugar.  It may alleviate your allergies.  It is clearly delicious and your children will eat it and beg for more honey instead of more plastic-y “fruit” snacks.  Its purchase helps support the honeybee, the very backbone of agriculture.  It is estimated that one in every three bites of food you eat are directly traceable to pollinators, so many of which are honeybees.

So there you stand, looking at the different labels, the different containers of honey.  Do you want a bear, a bucket, a fabulous flip top squeeze container with a no-drip vacuum seal?  Perhaps, if you’ve become a honey snob (our favorite kind of person), you examine the color and clarity of the honey, and you give some thought to the honey producer’s location …. hmmmm, near Babb, Montana?  Delicious alfalfa and sweet clover nectar sources!  But in these economic times, I know you’re also looking at the store’s price sticker, trying to determine how to get the most bang for your buck.  And my friend, I do not blame you.  I’ve become a Coupon Queen, a Comparison Shopper, a Recessionista myself.  But I do believe that eating well is much cheaper in the long run than a wrecked body.

However, I don’t want you buying what’s generally the cheapest honey on the shelf, often generically labeled “Grade A,” with precious little identifying information.  I want you to buy your honey from an actual beekeeper or reputable honey packer who labels his honey with its place of origin.  Of course, I have a vested interest in you buying Glacier County Honey, as it pays my light bill and keeps me in pretty shoes and the dogs in puppy chow, but really, I just want you to make sure that when you purchase honey, you are not contributing to the Chinese honey laundering epidemic.

In a nutshell, Chinese beekeepers trying to get around stiff US levies on cheap Chinese honey are shipping their honey off to places like Venezuela, changing the country of origin on the label, and getting this honey into the US on the sly.  Why do you care?  Because China doesn’t care how its beekeepers keep their bees and as a result Chinese honey is often loaded with antibiotics and other ickiness.  I’ve heard of honey inspectors finding 55g drums of Chinese honey mixed with high fructose corn syrup, to make the honey go further.  Gross.  And certainly not what you’re looking for when you’re standing in front of the honey shelf at the grocery store, no?  But of course, using dangerous antibiotics on your bees and adding syrup to your honey are both easy ways to make the price per pound of Chinese honey far cheaper than American honey.

So, if you’re buying honey, please support the U.S. honey industry, and not China.  Haven’t we given them enough of our money?  And haven’t they consistently repaid us with products that our dangerous to our health, and our children’s?  I say yes.

This has been your occasional public service announcement from the woman who extracted over 125,000lbs of honey on her honeymoon.  From where I’m standing, we are giving it away!

2010.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.