April 27, 2011
Brother Dear’s adventures on Divide Mountain weren’t the only Awesome Activity he indulged in over the weekend …
My dad’s beloved 1987 Chevy Cavalier convertible – nothin’ fancy, but it’s been runnin’ and sunnin’ for 24 years now, from South Carolina to Montana. This jaunt marked its first trip to Many Glacier in April … here’s to many more!
2011. Glacier County Honey Co. Photo credits to Sanford Stone. All Rights Reserved.
February 5, 2011
Brother Dear is a Renaissance Man, a bit of a lawyerin’-brewin’-woodworkin’-cookin’-writin’ philosopher. His brain is very tightly wired, and works completely differently than mine. This makes us excellent law partners.
This also makes him Really Weird about other peoples’ illnesses.
Case in point: Pseudo Sista was sick and in need of nursin’ and company. So she came over to watch football and rest.
As the game wore on, Brother Dear even added a paper towel filter behind his face mask. I don’t know what to say about this wellness strategy. I’m more of a eat-more-fruits-and-vegetables-than-meat-and-walk-every-day strategist. Perhaps Brother Dear can explain.
Be well.
2011. Glacier County Honey Co. All Rights Reserved.
January 2, 2011
Unlike Southern bridal showers and Montana baby showers, I can’t pen a How To Ring In the New Year Near Babb blog. To experience the slide of one year into the next in the center of the universe, you have to personally join us. But I can give you a glimpse of how we bid 2010 au revoir in the Warehome.
We arranged for our favorite birthday girl to return from tropical paradise to spend her birthday, and New Year’s Eve, in the subzero temps with her favorite pseudo-family.
And her favorite pseudo-puppy, too. Happy birthday, Pseudo Sis!
We recruited our #1 Holiday Consultant from Atlanta, and reunited her with her beloved Sanchez, to whom she became close after my wedding.
Sanchez’s lady friend, Margarita, provided plenty of entertainment for Brother Dear and my niece.
Tom made up a batch of martinis.
Brother Dear provided quality control testing.
As the night wore on, we each pitched in $5 and bet on our good luck in 2011.
Only one of us didn’t regret that bet, of course. But as we were eliminated one-by-one from the poker table, a dance party ensued. And that’s pretty clutch in the How To Ring in the New Year Near Babb lexicon.
And as the clock wound down on 12, I poured myself a very small glass of very fine champagne, and toasted to all that 2011 will bring.
Happy New Year!
2010. Glacier County Honey Co. All Rights Reserved.
December 26, 2010
Brother Dear has really been feelin’ the Christmas spirit this year.
He bought Honeydew and I matching Snuggies for our stockings.
We’re invisible!
Oh, if only we were. Hope your Christmases were … snuggly.
2010. Glacier County Honey Co. All Rights Reserved.
December 24, 2010
A pheasant in a non pear tree!
What a gift, huh?
Seriously, though, Honeydew and Brother Dear went pheasant hunting with our sweet friend Hank, down near Valier, and returned with quite a beautiful Christmas gift for me.
Look at those colors … we humans have nothing on the bird race … this photo hardly does Mr. Pheasant justice … the back of his neck was that peculiar blue-green one normally associates with the Caribbean, or maybe the middle fork of the Flathead river in late August. I marveled over the way those turquoise colors flowed beautifully into his coffee-and-cream patterned feathers at mid back, and further, into the terra cotta hues of his tail feathers.
Trouble with my gift is that Roy thought that it was for him, and that he had suddenly morphed into a bird dawg.
On a different note, how does one determine which day of Christmas it is, anyway? Do you count backward from the 25th, making the 12th day the 25th, and today the 11th? Such queries keep me up half the night, when I should be dreaming of pheasants and lake trout and elk and other bounty gathered from the Rocky Mountain Front.
Merry Christmas Eve, y’all. And happy birthday to my daddy, too.
2010. Glacier County Honey Co. All Rights Reserved.
November 17, 2010
Brother Dear speaks.
Woke up this morning, had you on my mind. Sounds like the blues, right? Yesterday, we woke up to the oft-witnessed gray-blue morning of a chilly little snowstorm here in Glacier County, as Courtney mentioned. We had legal clients on our minds . . . but, the weather was bad and getting worse, so we opted for a day of things-that-needed-doing around Hillhouse over whiteout-in-the-wind between here and Cut Bank.
We only got 5 or 6 inches, but it drifted in pretty good around Hillhouse. A couple passes with Dad’s rear mounted tractor snowplow made short work of all that. The ole John Deere performed very nicely, so hopefully we’ll be able to get out all winter, no matter what. That two-wheel-drive can be a little tricky going up hills, pulling snow behind you, though, so we’ll have to get a heavier snow to really see where we stand. Anybody got some old tractor-tire chains they aren’t using?
Once the road was clearish, we all set to work on various projects in the warehouse. Courtney poured candles and ornaments while decked out in a coat and stocking cap . . . and flip flops. She seems to really like that radiant floor heat. Greg framed kitchen cabinets and did some plumbing. I finished up my brand-spanking-old storm door.
The “new” one is on the left. The “old” was a faithful, and necessary, part of the cabin since I’ve lived there and helped to keep the cabin cool in the summer and warmish in the winter. Unfortunately, it got hit by a stray gust of wind (which it had always handled with calm, if somewhat violent aplomb) and was bent all to Canada and back, if you know what I mean. I took it down, fixed all the bent parts I could, and then rehung it with some neat ole hinges from the Bar X Six. They were a little too “ole” and two days later the hinges themselves got bent all the way to Canada and ripped the inside of the door at a rather awful angle. Time for a new door.
The picture doesn’t really do it justice, but the MDF under all that cheap vinyl was fairly unfixable. Plus, it was a little too modern for the “Chief Mountain House” anyways.
So this is my new door. I salvaged some of the hardware from the old door, mainly the spring-handle, the main plate of insulated glass (and the framed screen, which I will pop in for a couple months next summer), and the aluminum edges. Although the frame of the door is just plywood that I cut to size and then rabbeted out space for the glass window, the fascia is clearly the main attraction here. I was at the Babb dump a couple years ago, taking out the trash, when I saw a roll of old fencing. The fencing was twisted wire with a 1.5 inch wide strip of weathered, once-red planking every few inches. Greg told me today that he and his dad used to use the same stuff for fencing in beeyards, and several neighbors around Duck Lake have it outside their houses. This particular fence was very old, but the wood worked great for a couple picture frames that I sold at Babb’s own Duck Lake Lodge. (Happy Anniversary, Terry and Allen!) I think it makes a pretty nice door too, but the next one is gonna have to be ripped and sanded Aspen . . . but this isn’t too bad for finding the materials in the trash!
Buck was not very helpful during any of our projects. Cain doesn’t really enjoy two-feet-deep snowdrifts. Roy enjoyed himself thoroughly, but was no more helpful than the other hounds.
This photo is a preview of my next non-paying project. It’s going to be a work of art. And science. And only used when there is a foot or so of ice on Duck Lake. C’mon out and visit if you want to (fish and) listen to satellite radio in a lighted, heated, and all-in-all awesome Honeycutt Rodeo icehouse.
2010. Glacier County Honey Co. All Rights Reserved.
November 8, 2010
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.
November 1, 2010
Yesterday, we discussed how we packed up our bees and sent ’em south to California for the winter. Several pictures of Brother Dear and Honeydew, cautiously walking around on top of three pallets of bee hives on the flatbed of a semi, at least twenty feet off the ground, led to several emails to me today. How do they get down? the emails asked.
Very good question.
Brother Dear will demonstrate. Therefore, his mother should cease reading this blog. Thank you, mother.
I rather inexpertly drove the forklift over to the semi and raised the forks to collect Honeydew and lower him to the ground. I did not do a very good job. In fact, Brother Dear will give his version here:
“It was utterly macabre.”
As a result, Honeydew took over control of the forklift from me and raised the forks and then thrust them over the top of the semi and the hives for Brother Dear to climb onto. See, above picture.
Honeydew then retracted the forks to lower Brother Dear safely to the ground. I don’t think OSHA or our insurance provider would have been too impressed by Brother Dear’s antics on the way to the wonderful, solid Earth, but they amused me greatly as I snapped away.
As he approached the good, solid Earth, Brother Dear then gave me a goofy hand gesture which I interpreted to mean: hey, aren’t you glad you and Honeydew played by the rules and paid into Worker’s Comp for the 4th quarter?
And then Brother Dear stepped off the forks onto the welcoming Earth and we all went to breakfast, while Chuck and the bees went to California.
And that’s how you dismount a flatbed semi loaded three hives high.
2010. Glacier County Honey Co. All Rights Reserved.
October 31, 2010
In the mid nineties, when I was not quite fifteen, I got really, really sick. I don’t remember my ailment, but I do remember that I was sick enough to stay home from school for several days, something that never happened in my family. If we weren’t deathly contagious, we were going to school.
While home, I curled up on the couch and explored the channels of the satellite television my dad had recently hooked up – I grew up on a little farm on the Virginia/North Carolina line, too far from town to get cable or order pizza. At the time, these facts sometimes seemed outrageous to me, as though I believed I had a personal bill of rights entitling me to at least a thin crust Hawaiian and MTV on Friday nights, especially since my parents were too strict to actually let me leave the farm.
By the time satellite TV dropped in price enough to entice my dad, I had already spent 14 years in a mostly TV free existence, and I have come to believe that the reason I have never been a big TV person is because I spent 14 years entertaining myself in other ways. At 14, I wanted to read and ride my horse and catch a ride to town. So when we got satellite, I was content to let my brothers become couch commandos, and in all the years since, I never learned the correct combination of remotes to turn on the TV at Blackstone Farms. When my parents sold the farm earlier this year, I remember walking through the den one last time, looking at the wicker basket of remotes, and thinking to myself, Guess I’ll never figure it out now.
Country music was not considered cool by my peers, and so I grew up listening to a mix of oldies and Broadway show tunes (when with mom and dad) or rap and pop (when with anyone else). That day, laid out sick on the couch, Dad turned the TV on for me, and I discovered that even with satellite, we didn’t get MTV. But we did get CMT.
I must have been so sick that my attention span wouldn’t allow me to focus on sitcoms or movies, because I found myself sucked into CMT. I eventually watched about 3 straight days of country music videos, dozing in and out of my fever. And so it was that I fell in love with country music, a love affair that continues to this day, which is a good thing, as I now find myself living on a bee farm in an area of the country so remote it makes Blackstone Farms look like Brooklyn.
After I recovered, I bought Suzy Bogguss’ Aces, and I sang plaintively in the shower along with her to Someday Soon, Letting Go, Outbound Plane and the title track. When Suzy released her next album, Voices in the Wind, I rushed to buy it, and discovered Suzy had covered John Hiatt’s Drive South – she hit #2 on the country charts with her quick, catchy version.
I didn’t say we wouldn’t hurt anymore
That’s how you learn you just get burned
We don’t have to feel like dirt anymore
Though love’s not learned baby it’s our turn We were always looking for true love
With our heads in the clouds
Just a little off course
But I left that motor running
Now if you’re feeling down and out
Come on baby drive south with the one you love
Come on baby drive south
I’m not talking about retreating no sir
Gonna take our stand in this Chevy van
Windows open on the rest of the world
Holding hands all the way to Dixie land
We’ve been trying to turn our lives around
Since we were little kids
It’s been wearing us down
Don’t turn away now darling
Let’s fire it up and wind it out
Come on baby drive south with the one you love
Come on baby drive south
I heard your momma calling
I think she was only stalling
Don’t know who she’s talking to
Baby me or you
We can go south with a smile on
Ain’t going to pack my nylons
Just leave these legs showing
It gets hot down where were going
We were always looking for true love
With our heads in the clouds
Just a little off course
But I left that motor running
Now if you’re feeling down and out
Come on baby drive south with the one you love
Come on baby drive south
And now, each fall when we round our honeybees up and ship ’em, 408 colonies at a time on the back of a flatbed semi, south to California, I find myself singing Drive South to myself as we work.
I wrote about the ins and outs of how this process works earlier this year, when the bees came home from California, so if you weren’t reading our blog back then, check out that post. Loading the bees is not unlike unloading the bees, just in reverse of course. Much was the same – our wonderful truck driver, Chuck, arrived at the holding yard with his flatbed; Honeydew used to the forklift to load the hives, 4 per pallet, 3 pallets at a time, onto the back of the semi, and I placed entrance reducers at the entrance to each hive. The only thing particularly different was that Brother Dear assisted us, which was wonderful. He spent most of his time walking carefully across the tops of the hives on the flatbed, about twenty feet off the ground, placing the spreader boards, unrolling the nets, and generally giving his sister a heart attack. I thought it was bad watching Honeydew, a professional commercial beekeeper, perform these tasks. It was much worse watching Brother Dear, apprentice beekeeper, high up off the ground. And I don’t even want to talk about my blood pressure during the time that Honeydew and Brother Dear were both up on top of the semi.
Here are some shots from loading bees in Fall 2010:
We began at first light.
Some of us are cheerier than others. I’ve got my arms full of entrance reducers, here.
Brother Dear helped with the entrance reducers, too.
Honeydew whipped around like a crazy person in his forklift, knocking over only one hive of bees, which were thankfully too cold to put up much of a protest.
Then Brother Dear got up on top of the hives to help get the spreader boards in place.
Then Honeydew joined him, and Chuck assisted from the ground.
This is my new favorite picture of the brothers-in-law.
And here I am, of course. Supervisor in Chief. So happy not to be walking around on top of bee hives, twenty feet off the ground!
Right now, just under half of our bees are on their merry way to northern California. We’ll repeat this process and send the rest of ’em at first light Wednesday. In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed for their safe travels, and Chuck’s.
2010. Glacier County Honey Co. Some photo credits to Brother Dear. All Rights Reserved.
October 19, 2010
An artificial fly is pulled gently over water so clear it appears filtered; the mellow deep sound of chords from the guitar fill the outdoors around the camp fire; the aroma from that old blue pot on the stove filled with beef barley soup fills the senses like only it and bacon can – these are just a few of the talents that my son Sanford has acquired. But he did not acquire them from me, because even though as his father I should have been teaching him how to fly fish, play the guitar, and prepare food as only a gourmet chef can, I could not teach him these things because I could not do them myself. And so it was that Sanford learned them on his own because he is good at learning things and teaching himself what he wants to know.
It is very Southern not to toot one’s own horn, and very Southern not to brag on the accomplishments of one’s close kin. But most Southerners allow as how on some rare occasions, a proud father is forgiven his misstep if he lets slip how proud he is of his children. I remember that San was about five years old when he came to me and asked me to teach him how to fly fish. I am still embarrassed that I was unable to do so, but if one’s own father did not utilize a particular talent, then it often is not passed down from father to son. I did not have that talent. So San went to the local library and checked out a video on how to fly fish and taught himself what his father could not. And over the years I have taught him what I could, but he, and his sister as well, have the most valuable of talents in the ability of self-education. Now the daughter and the son teach the father and who can be prouder than that?
But San was drifting after college; not a bad thing in itself, for when else in life does one have the leisure of drifting? There was no plan that his parents were aware of (although San, like most males, keeps his cards close to the vest), and we were worried that some drifting might turn into more drifting, which is not a good thing. As my beautiful mother of 93 years can attest, a parent really never finishes helping his or her offspring. So we suggested he try some more education because he has many interests and hobbies, and as we already knew, he could teach others how to do these things. Law school was not on the horizon as both Courtney and San, after seeing what I did everyday, had early on verbally expostulated that they would never become lawyers – one need be careful about what one says about one’s own future! He thought about it some and may have been influenced by the fact that his sister had done well in law school and seemed to enjoy her practice in Missoula; or maybe the fact that his brother had expressed a plan to go to law school in order to be an FBI agent influenced him. But his brother had died early and tragically. And that was something else I could not teach him – how to grieve for his brother, for I did not know how to grieve for him myself. At any rate he reluctantly agreed to leave the cool clear mountains, lakes and streams of his beloved Montana and travel back across the country to the crowded, humid, cacophonous street sounds of Charleston, South Carolina. I don’t think he did this for me; and I don’t really think he did this for himself. I think he did this for his brother, because his brother now could not do it for himself. San dedicated these three long years of his life to his brother, Howard. I was not a particularly good student during my education days and even though I knew Sanford had the ability to be a top student should he so choose, I was not expecting him to shine academically. I took Latin in high school and, again, I was not a top Latin scholar. But Sanford graduated Summa Cum Laude from law school, whatever that means. I think it means he did pretty well.
On October 18th, 2010 my son Sanford, on the special motion of his sister Courtney, was sworn in before the Montana Supreme Court as a member of the state Bar of Montana and also before the Federal District Judge in Helena as he was admitted to practice before the Federal Bar.
It was an especially emotional moment for this father to watch his children appear before such august bodies, as did his grandfather, father, sister, uncle and first cousin before him. So please excuse this proud father for writing of how proud he is of this fine man and this fine woman. Hark, America, “things are gonna be fine” as we say in the South; for there are many other fine men and women like Sanford and Courtney throughout the country. America is in good hands with talented individuals such as these. We love you, Courtney and San.
2010. Glacier County Honey Co. All Rights Reserved.
Glacier County Honey Co. 
