Glacier County Honey Co.

When wearing my Honey-Bottler-and-Beeswax-Crafter-In-Chief Hat, I love making our 100% beeswax ornaments more than anything else.  How many of your ornaments are 100% natural and made from a renewable resource that smells like sunshine and honey?  Hmmm.  I thought so.

Early in the morning, in the quiet cool of what we call the Beeswax Room, I flip the switch on my portable burners, and set the golden wax to melting over a double boiler.  In an hour, the scent of summer fills the room, and I prepare the molds to receive ornaments for decorating, blocks for almost anything, and candles for lighting.

We offer a wide variety of ornaments, with more to come, but the ones that Don Grant, an artist and great friend of ours from Great Falls, recently crafted molds for, are my favorite ones of all.  While we’re not the only beekeepers who offer beeswax ornaments for sale, you can only find this particular set of eight ornaments at Glacier County Honey Co.  They’re significantly bigger than any other ornaments I’ve ever seen for sale, and I think they will be an incredible accent to your tree, chandelier, or topiary.

What do y’all think?

Tree.

Large grizzly bear track.

Small grizzly track.

Glacier National Park, with the Many Glacier and Going-to-the-Sun roads beautifully etched into the ornament.  Logan Pass is marked with a star.

Montana, with Glacier National Park marked with a star.

Montana, with Yellowstone National Park marked with a star.

Montana, with Babb marked with a star.  Dare I say these are one of a kind?  I’ve never seen a Babb ornament before!

And my favorite, a skep (old fashioned bee hive), proudly bearing the Glacier County Honey name.

Click over to www.glaciercountyhoney.com to get your orders in now – and if you enter EARLYBIRD in the comment box, I’ll refund you 10% of your total order.  And yes, that applies to anything you order, not just these new ornaments, as long as you have at least one Don Grant Collectible ornament in your order.  Offer ends at midnight mountain time, Wednesday, November 2, 2011.

2011.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

When I went to the Post Office on Monday, the lovely ladies who are filling in between the retirement of our old postmaster, darling neighbor Steve, and the eventual hiring of the new postmaster, were up to their necks in sheer chaos.  Though you might think that the Babb post office would be a sleepy, rural post office threatened by the deficit chopping block, you would be wrong.  Babb’s proximity to the border means that legions of Canadians keep post office boxes in Babb, to enjoy cheap shipping from Amazon.com and the like.  The Babb post office can be an insanely busy place, and Monday was no exception.

The credit card machine was down and the lovely ladies were trying to install and learn to run the new retail system, which I imagine everyone reading this blog has been used to for years, i.e. the computerized post office where all packages are scanned and you get an itemized receipt at the end of your exchange.  We have not had this until recently.  Anyway, pandemonium, and here I come staggering in the door with four 35# buckets of honey, along with three 12# buckets and about 15 boxes for Priority Flat Rate shipment.  I needed insurance, I needed delivery confirmation, I needed a roll of regular stamps, I needed postcard stamps, I needed a second window. Long story short: I was in there for about 45 minutes, as the line of Canadians snaked ever further out the door.

At the end of my visit, I headed for the door, and the sweet interim postmaster suddenly yelled out, “Honey lady, wait!  You’ve got a package.”  And so I once again returned to the head of the very long line of Canadians already irate with me for having such a prolonged, complicated transaction.  And the nice postmaster handed me a mysterious package, with a return address I did not recognize.

Returning to my car, I immediately began ripping into this package, and unearthed four of the most beautiful jars of hot pepper sauce I have ever seen.

Turns out, a blog reader who once was Brother Dear’s youth soccer coach, is a gourmand who puts up his own pepper sauce, and he read of my infatuation with the peppy condiment, and sent me a treat in the mail.

Kevin Reed, thank you so very much.  You made my day, along with reason #1,234,567 I love the internets.

Now, y’all better gitchu some pepper sauce, too.  But I bet it won’t be nearly as pretty – or tasty – as the sauce currently serving as the fall centerpiece for my dining room table!  Thanks again, Kevin!

2011.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

I celebrated five months of Life With Maggie Rose this past Friday.  Oh, where has the time gone?  And nary a word in the baby book yet!  And she’s our first baby.  Oh, dear.

Honeydew, when informed of this milestone, became very quiet and said to me, in a low, measured tone he rarely uses, “Do you realize that if we only have eighteen years with her, then that’s 36 six month periods, and she’ll be six months old on November 21, so we’ve already spent almost 1/36 of our time at home with her?”  Oh, dear, indeed.  And, side note, may Maggie Rose inherit Honeydew’s head for figures.

But.  Though the time may fly, as my own mother predicted, I’m enjoying each new stage more than the last.  Especially this new Eating Stage.  Maggie had her first bite of “solid” food last week – rice cereal mixed with breast milk …

And her reaction was hilarious …

From birth, I’ve called her my little Hoglet – just like her mama, my baby loves to eat.  But the initial introduction into the land of hallowed rice cereal definitely did not bowl over my Maggie Rose.

Fast forward a week.

Yup.  Baby Gal is like me, after all.  Mmmmmmmm.  Food.  Is.  Good.

Just wait, baby.

There’s a whole world out there of pomegranates (which your Big Mama just sent me more of in the mail), bawled p-nuts, uncle Brother Dear’s fried chicken, raw oysters with hot sauce, Big Mama’s luscious caramel cake, crab dripping with butter, lettuce out of the garden, your Daddy’s seasoned elk steaks, huckleberries on the trail to Ptarmigan Tunnel, your Sissy’s key lime tarts, sweet potato biscuits, your Pseudo Sista’s Knock-You-Naked brownies, Dixie Pig bar-be-que, cupcakes at Cupcake with your cousin Ty, shelled English peas, Going-to-the-Sun rolls at Wasabi, your aunt Cathy’s cranberries, Georgia Belle peaches dripping down your face, and your Nan’s lamb …

Yes, baby, life is good.

2011.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

With the help of the Random Number Generator, I am pleased to announce that commenter #37, Greg Culligan, is the winner of the Spooktacular Giveaway Gift Basket!  Greg, please send me your mailing address and preferred t-shirt size: S – XXL.  (courtney [at] glaciercountyhoney [dot] com)

Commenter #13/33/34, Adele, contributed so many great ideas that I’m going to send her one of our new half pound containers, too.  Adele, please send me your mailing address!

Thanks so much to all of you for your comments – they really are helpful, and I’ve got some new ideas cookin’ for the website!

On a side note, when I suggested “children’s books,” I meant stocking the website with bee themed children’s books written by Real Authors, not by me.  But y’all may have inspired me to try my hand at such a feat, when I get a little free time down in California.  Thanks so much for the votes of confidence!  What English major wouldn’t want to be published?

Back to work, here.  Have a wonderful Tuesday!

And yes, it snowed here yesterday.  So it begins.

2011.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

There is so much going on with Glacier County Honey that I can’t wait to share with y’all!

Famous Dave’s BBQ in Missoula and Kalispell picked up our honey for use in their kitchens and for sale in their shops. We collaborated with Bon Lemon on another bee-autiful piece of jewelry – one that’s made in the USA, we’re proud to add! Our dear artist friends in Great Falls created new molds for the coolest beeswax Christmas ornaments you’ve ever seen – we’re talking Babb, Glacier and Yellowstone themed. And, as y’all know, we finished up our comb honey harvest last week.

Whew! So we’ve got a lot of pictures to take and add to glaciercountyhoney.com.

While we’re working, leave a comment telling us what you’d like to see us offer on the website – beeswax soap? more jewelry? children’s books on bees? – and you’ll be entered to win this spooktacular gift basket I threw together last night. It contains 3 pounds of the best honey you’ve never tasted, a block of beeswax, and a Glacier County Honey Co. tshirt – you pick the size. Just comment, and we’ll announce the lucky winner on tomorrow’s blog! Good luck!

COMMENTS WILL CLOSE AT MIDNIGHT, MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME, TONIGHT, MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2011.

2011.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

On this blog, we tend to focus on the work of pollinating almond orchards in the spring and extracting honey in late summer and fall – no small tasks, those – but rest assured we stay plenty busy the rest of the year, too.  This past week, we’ve been scraping the last of the honey off every surface in the Warehome, getting it right and tight for winter, which is making a delayed appearance in Glacier County this year.  I wore sandals yesterday, y’all.  In late October.  Whoa.

Anyway, we also spent part of this week preparing our comb honey for market.  Like everything associated with comb honey, such preparation is a major, time consuming pain.  But isn’t it worth it?  Isn’t comb honey gorgeous?  Not to mention delicious!

And doesn’t it make one heckuva mess?

Here’s my workbench: stacks of Bee-O-Pac and Ross Round comb honeys.

And here’s what the Ross Rounds looked like when I was done.

Maggie helped.

As the holiday shopping seasons approaches, please think about supporting those retailers associated with the Made in Montana program – we’re the best!

2011.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

First. Acquire happy baby. Insert into Patagucci hand-me-downs.

Second. Insert happy baby’s feet into more Patagucci hand-me-downs.

Third. Admire happy baby’s precious Patagucci-ed behind.

Fourth. Mix things up a little by adding a precious non-Patagucci strawberry stocking cap, courtsey of the proprietress of Bon Lemon, to the head of said happy baby.

Fifth. Return to stack of Patagucci hand-me-downs. Add zippy green jacket, hooded, as is proper for the near Babb gal.

Sixth. Smile at happy baby, and apologize to her for raising her in The Coldest Land on Earth (or, at least, south of Canada), but promise her that she, too, will come to love it, especially if Patagucci takes note of these photos and offers her a gear testing gig.

‘Cause that’s the end of the hand-me-downs.

Any questions?

2011. Glacier County Honey Co. All Rights Reserved.

We hear from our sweet friends in East Glacier that Kathryn of Park Cafe fame claims the colors this fall are the prettiest she’s seen in 30 years.  After Saturday’s drive to my backyard, Many Glacier, I’m going to take my ten-nish years of Montana-year-round and agree with her.  There’s more than a dusting of snow in them thar hills, and against the clarity of cornflower blue skies, the snow highlights mountain peaks we seem to miss the rest of the year.  The aspen are wearing their golds as beautifully as I’ve ever seen, and flaunting some deep rust shades I’ve never before, too.

The Salamander Glacier is a little less defined with the recent snowfall.

Honeydew’s sharp eyes spotted a big ole griz, snacking on the sunny slopes of Mt. Altyn.  We stopped to gawk and it, and take this terrible picture, and then noticed another mama griz with her three cubs, curled up into piles in the rocks just above the dark spot (the 1st griz) in this photo.  A photographer from Helena pulled in behind us and then let us borrow his spotting scope, and we all agreed we’d never seen bears acting so Buck-like.  Adorable.

Mt. Wilbur always impresses.

Maggie Rose likes seeing bears from the car.

To compare pictures of Many Glacier this year with some we took last year, on a hike to Grinnell Glacier, click here.

Ah, fall.  I’m glad you’re here.

2011.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

When we leave for vacation, I always fret that I’ll get a call for The Big Honey Order, or the contract to sell candles through Neiman Marcus, and that I’ll be too occupied with frolicking to bother to check my voice mail, and that I’ll miss the opportunity.

Such a scenario has never actually happened.

To the contrary, it always amazes me how the glaciercountyhoney.com orders drop off when we’re away – it’s like y’all have a sixth sense that we’re on vacation!  Spooky.

What does happen while we’re on vacation: the phone rings incessantly with summer neighbors calling about our dawgs, Buck and Roy, who patrol our dirt road community with diligence and sharp noses for which neighbor is grilling ribeyes.  If you live here year round, which a tiny handful of us do, you are more familiar with Buck and Roy’s presence on your porch than you would like to be, and you are unconcerned.  If you do not live here year round, you are not used to their incessant Neighborhood Watch, and you are probably used to living in an area where people leash their dogs.

And so you call me, only while we’re on vacation, worried about our dogs.  “It’s pretty cold today,” you tell me on the phone when you call the number on their collars to inform me that they have taken up residence underneath your grill.  I’m at my grandmother’s house in Georgia, watching the weather channel, which she has programmed to near Babb.  Highs in the 50s, I note.  Light winds of 20-25 MPH.  You continue kindly,  “And mighty windy.  Those dogs look cold to me.  They’re not bothering me, but I’m worried about them.  Do you want me to give them a ride to your house?”

And in my head, I’m thinking about the first week of December, when the mountains are hunks of platinum set against endless expanses of sparkling white and forty-degrees-below-zero blue, and how the dogs will scratch at the door to go out, their joy over chasing icefishermen on Duck Lake nearly palpable.  And I will laugh and try to reassure you that they are fine, that our Darling Summer Help is home to feed them and scratch their ears.

And then I will come from vacation and watch my baby fall in love with these smelly dogs who cause me such trouble while I’m vacationing, and my heart will soften and I will ask Honeydew if we shouldn’t get the dogs booties to protect their paws from the ice this December.

And he will laugh.

* Disclaimer – this vignette is not about any one neighbor at Duck Lake, and is only meant to amuse.  We appreciate y’all worrying over our dogs, and they appreciate y’all feeding them steak! *

2011.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.

Introducing your baby to your best friends’ babies.

In Tennessee, Maggie met Henry and Joseph, above.

In Virginia, Maggie and Libby were informed they would be best friends forever.

And Libby’s big brother, my precious godson, watched carefully over the new friends.

In Georgia, Maggie met her darling cousin Mackenzie, on the same front steps where so many iconic family portraits have been taken.

And Ellis, the daughter of the gal who, among other things, first accompanied me out west for the job that would change my life, and give me Maggie.

And so Maggie is introduced to the world of making friends – rarely easy, always worth it.  One day she will know more about the many facets of happiness, which for me could never exist without a cadre of dear friends.

2011.  Glacier County Honey Co.  All Rights Reserved.