Monthly Archives: August 2010

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Retirement

Shame, Guilt, Fear

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Lughnasa                                                  Waning Artemis Moon

While it’s fresh.  A meeting this morning with our financial manager where we went over, again, the various moving parts of our investments.  It resulted in a down feeling, almost defensive.  What was this?  He said we’d be fine financially and I believed him.  We overhauled our whole approach to money now over ten years ago and have a great track record since then.  When I mentioned my feelings to Kate, she said she trusted in our ability to adapt.  Again, I believed her.  We have and will adapt to changed circumstances.

It took a while to delayer my feelings.  First, I noticed anxiety (my unfortunately favorite response to the unknown), as if a vast pit were about to open ahead of us.  A pit of this and then a possible that and more stuff we didn’t know, or have impact on.  A little deeper I recognized a fear about being dependent on a bag of gold held in some financial dragon’s lair and only won back by dint of great effort.  Silly.  Obtuse.  Still, the case.

Pushing a little further, a different layer.  Retirement.  When Kate retires, my long tenuous connection to the world of work would fray, then vanish.  It’s as if she’s retiring for both of us.  Or, rather, that I feel the imminence of retirement perhaps in a manner similar to the couvade, a strange situation in some cultures where a husband takes on the characteristics of his wife’s pregnancy, often placing a heavy rock on the belly near the birth moment and heaving it off.  So, there’s the unknown, the strange sense of money coming in from a pot somewhere far away, a feeling of retiring that is sympathetic or empathetic rather than actual.  But, that wasn’t the end.

What finally came to me was a mixture of shame, guilt and fear, all related to no longer having a viable connection to the world of work.  This is my middle class roots talking.  As long as Kate practices, I have a tangible though fragile link to work and the income it produces.  After she retires, all semblance of that relationship vanishes.  In the central Indiana world where I grew up not to work was shameful, weak, irresponsible.  Kate responded with, “Well, I’m upper middle class and I don’t care! (about the abandoning work)”

All of our life comes along for the ride and we never knew when one part or another will express itself, rise up and claim attention.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, permaculture

A Real Boy

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Lughnasa                                               Waning Artemis Moon

Had an odd experience as I rode the lawn tractor back to the garage after putting all the no longer needed honey supers in the shed, putting the spun out frames back on the hives and heading back along the vegetable garden toward the truck gate.  I felt like a real boy.

A la velveteen rabbit, that is.  Something about having followed the bee-keeping from last year’s single colony, a package that Mark Nordeen helped me hive into hive boxes he loaned me, through the divide and hiving a package on my own this spring, over the course of the summer and the nectar flow, through to this moment, with the honey in jars, stored now at home, in the bee’s care no longer, triggered a gestalt, a deep link between my Self and this cycle of nature in which I had participated.  Somehow that made me feel real.

Now, I don’t go around in skeptical philosophical clothing all day wondering whether or not I exist.  At least not any more.  Joke.  I mean I have a developed sense of who I am and what I am, but this particular feeling, a oneness, an at-one-ment with this place and the work of another species, I’ve never experienced.  It may relate to my relatives who farmed, a now, finally, getting it, what it meant to milk the cows or bring in the corn harvest, even to gather a clutch of eggs in the morning.

Whatever it is, it felt good.  Right.

Bees

Bee Diary: Honey Extraction, Photos

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Lughnasa                                           Waning Artemis Moon

By Kate’s calculation we have 4.875 gallons of honey.  Not bad.  In terms of, say, filling up your car, 4.8 gallons doesn’t sound like much, but in terms of filling up canning jars filled with honey, it’s a lot.  The following photos will give you an idea of how the day went.

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The gear.  I wore the white suit and the gloves for the extraction because it protects me better when the bees get defensive.

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Each time I have tried to work in the hives without this essential tool, the smoker, I’ve gotten stung.  Every time.

400_honey-extraction_02391Doing the extraction. The frames with honey go in the extractor, lid up.  Then they whir around and centrifugal empties them of their honey while leaving the honey comb intact.  That means next year’s bees won’t have to waste energy building comb.  They can go straight to honey production.

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Afterward, my fastidious wife (as she referred to herself), hit the extractor with soap and water.

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The lawn tractor got a workout today.  Here I’ve loaded it with honey supers that now have empty frames.  They go back on the hives for a couple of weeks so the bees will clean them out before storage for winter.

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The bees on the parent colony just before I put back on the recently spun out frames.  BTW:  Kate made all the wooden ware you see here.  I think it’s beautiful.

Bees

Bee Diary: Honey Extraction, Day 2

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Lughnasa                                       Waning Artemis Moon

Artemis Hives have given up their surplus honey, all under the Artemis moon.  We started this morning with Kate putting a plastic drop cloth down on the deck while I went out to the colonies to see what was still there.  The divide had, as I expected, nothing.  That means, oddly enough, that they will need to be fed over the next few weeks before winter sets in.  The parent colony, the big dog as far as honey production, produced a good bit.  Two full supers plus maybe half of a third.  We’re well over three gallons now, probably closer to five.  I’ll get an exact count soon.

Honey extraction has its straightforward side.  Take the full frames, stick them long side up in the honey extractor and turn it on.  If there is a significant amount of 400_honey-extraction_0239capping, there is an additional step, uncapping.  Kate did this chore with the electric uncapping knife.  We had at least one extractor run with 80% or more capped.  This honey was darker.  We can bottle it right out of the extractor after filtering.

(Kate inspecting a frame to see if the honey has been extracted.)

The rest had less to no capping.  That honey has a higher moisture content and, as I said yesterday, has to be heated to kill the yeast and thereby avoid fermentation.  The taste difference is insignificant to my palate.

When we spun out the first six frames, all went well.  We emptied the extractor, took the honey in and Kate heated it.  By the time I brought the next two supers full of honey frames, however, the bees had found us.  It took a bit longer because we were further from the hive than the honey house (at least the building I’d intended to serve as a honey house.), but they found us.  After that, all sticky, sweet operations had numerous bees in attendance.  They were not aggressive, but they made the process a bit more nerve racking.

Once again the heat caused sweat to cascade over my eyebrows and into my eyes, inside the bee suit where the eyes cannot be reached by hand.  I wore the bee suit because the bees are more defensive during honey removal.  Makes sense.  But that damned bee suit amps up the humidity and heat.  Not fun.

We now have half-pint, pint and quart jars filled with an amber liquid, a sweet product made, collected and bottled right here at Artemis Hives.

Bees

Bee Diary: Honey in the Jar

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Lughnasa                                    Waning Artemis Moon

The waning Artemis moon has a golden hue tonight, honey colored, as it sits on the northeastern horizon.  A band of clouds created two dark lines, parallel to each other and about a third of the way down.  It looked like a view of the moon from an ukiyo-e print.

We have bottled our first honey.  Those four frames from the package colony, not even full frames at that, yielded almost a full gallon of honey.  We strained it through a coarse, medium and fine filter and put it into half pint jars for the most part.  It looks beautiful and very satisfying.  Artemis Hives has begun to produce.  I think I’ll tip a half-pint out in the woods to honor the namesake goddess.

Tomorrow I’ll work first on the divide, since I know it has very little honey in the supers.  It plugged up the third hive box with honey back in late May, early June.  After that I’ll move to the parent colony.  The parent colonies produce the most honey because they are vigorous and are not storing honey for the next year.  It will be interesting to see how much we get from the parent colony since next year, if everything goes well, we’ll have two parent colonies and two divides.  Four colonies should produce plenty of honey for our own use and to give as gifts.

It’s going to be hot with dewpoints in mid-70s.  That’s good for working with the honey because it flows well when the temperatures are high; that’s bad for working with the bees because I have to wear a veil at least.

We bolted the honey extractor to the deck instead of using the honey house.  Did that for a couple of reasons.  First, it’s much further from the colonies and second, it’s much closer to the kitchen.  Also, the mess, and it is a messy process, can be contained with drop cloths.

Bees

Bee Diary: Honey Extraction

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06-27-10_package-colonyLughnasa                                   Waning Artemis Moon

The honey extraction has begun.  Kate and I assembled the extractor this morning.  I am not at my best during the accomplishing of mechanical tasks and got a bit testy.  Kate gave me some space; reengaged.  Then I considered aligning myself with the flow of our day–instead of bucking it because I felt incompetent, got my head and heart back in connection and we solved a problem together.  The directions for attaching the power unit were, to be kind, vague.  Bordered on the non-existent, really.  Together, however, we figured out to raise the drive shaft far enough to makes its union with the industrial strength Baldor motor work tight.  It’s a work-around for now, but I’ll connect with the folks at Dadant and we’ll get it done right after we’re finished with the honey harvest tomorrow.

I removed four frames from the package colony, a gift really, since its primary job this year was to grow into a parent colony that I can divide next spring.  The bees do not like it when you take their honey.  I have one sting to show for that.

There were several lessons from the honey super removal.  First, I put the empty super that held the frames after I removed them from the hive in the wagon attached to the lawn tractor.  Worked well logistically for me, but I ended up with an inch deep and foot square pile of mad bees on the bed of the wagon.  I had to use the bee-brush to brush them all onto the ground.  That made them even less happy.  I realized that doing several colonies and working each colony in turn would result in one bee yard full of mad bees.

So, tomorrow I will put the empty honey super on my standby, the wheel barrow with a wire dog crate door on it.  Don’t laugh.  It works.  That way the left over bees will be either in the wheel-barrow or on the ground, not in the wagon bed.

Second, the package colonies frames were not 80% capped, so I had to heat the honey to 145 to kill yeast and avoid fermentation.  Heating the honey turned tricky when it climbed above 145 to 160. I’m sure the yeast are dead now, but I don’t know yet what we’ve done to the taste of the honey.

Our extractor holds six honey super frames and we only put in four so that made balance a little tricky at first.  The extractor is very much like a washing machine, though the extracting baskets rotate rather than agitate.  It acted like a washing machine with a load of rugs, really gyrating at much above 60% speed.  So, we ran it at about 58%.  Took about 20-30 minutes.

We got a lot of honey.  From four frames.  I’m thinking we may have more than I imagined. We’ll see tomorrow.

Politics, US History

Well, You Gotta Think About It.

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Lughnasa                                           Waning Artemis Moon

Went to office max and had the smaller artemis honey labels printed up.  Now it’s time for a workout then the vikes at 7:00.

As to demagoguery in our time.  Glenn Beck and his band of merry men and women, almost all white, want to return the country to the God drenched republic it was in the golden days of the American revolution.  Let’s aside for the moment that the bulk of the revolutionary leadership, among them Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and many others were not Christian, but deists who believed in a watchmaker god, one who set the universe in motion then stood back to watch how things turned out.  Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that Beck show the same date and place as Martin Luther King chose for his rally 47 years ago.

Instead, let’s look at an ancient Greek idea, one that preceded Christianity and Deism, MLK and Glenn Beck, hubris.  Hubris means extreme haughtiness or arrogance. Hubris often indicates being out of touch with reality and overestimating one’s own competence or capabilities, especially for people in positions of power…The word was also used to describe actions of those who challenged the gods or their laws, especially in Greek tragedy, resulting in the protagonist’s downfall.  When a person, or persons, claims to have the mantle of the Almighty around their shoulders and intimates they know what this God wants, then the word hubris applies since that person has pitted their knowledge of God’s will against God.

Demagogues, political leaders who seek support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument, will, as Jesus once said of the poor, always be with us.  A democracy can fall prey to them, witness George Wallace, Huey Long, Nathan Bedford Forrest, David Duke, but the self correcting political process can and usually does reject them sooner or later. Beck’s brand of conservative populism fits into this history and his style, co-opting both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King in one gesture, shows his cunning.

Here’s an example of the though world in his crowd:

Becky Benson, 56, traveled from Orlando, Fla., because, she said, “we
believe in Jesus Christ, and he is our savior.” Jesus, she said, would
not have agreed with what she called the redistribution of wealth in the
form of the economic stimulus package, bank bailouts and welfare. “You
cannot sit and expect someone to hand out to you,” she said. “You don’t
spend your way out of debt.”

Perhaps Ms. Benson and Mr. Beck have not thoroughly read their bible:

Luke 4:

18“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

 

 

Bees, Dogs, Garden, permaculture

Photo Time: Late Summer

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Lughnasa                                            Waning Artemis Moon

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Late summer taste treats.  We have red and golden.

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These are the hives with their maximum honey supers.  We extract honey on Monday.

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This is just one of several deep cave descents attempted by the Andover Speleological Society, Rigel and Vega founding members.

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The newly mulched orchard from the perspective of one of our sand cherry bushes.

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Our fruit trees have not really begun to bear yet, but there are six apples on this tree.  More as the years go on.

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Kate spearheaded this project and it looks great.  Not only does it look great, but it is more functional, too, especially from a weed suppression point of view.

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Kate plants coleus all round the yard; they add needed color to shady spots.

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Aging, Garden

An Aging Bull Moose

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Lughnasa                                    Waning Artemis Moon

Easton and Ray, both soon to be seniors at Andover High, worked this morning, moving wood chips, laying them down on the paths Kate and I cleared of weeds yesterday.  Both fit and energetic they kept at it, moving 9 cubic yards of wood chips with a wheel barrow.  That’s minus the maybe one cubic yard I moved to mulch some parts of the further away vegetable patch.  The orchard looks great and completes a job started by Kate a few weeks ago, one she saw through to a beautiful conclusion.  The orchard looks its best ever.  Right after Ecological Gardens finished the installation now 3 years ago, it looked pretty good, but the trees were small and the  plants in the guilds around them were also young.  Now the trees have begun to bear fruit, the guild plants have matured and the place looks like a real orchard.  Pictures tomorrow.

Working alongside the boys made me oddly competitive.  I wanted them to see me as an old man who could really work.  Not quite sure where this came from but it felt like the aging bull moose in the presence of young, high testosterone males.  Instinctive rather than even subconscious.  It passed, though.

Now, after a day and a half of physical labor, I’m weary, in need of a nap.

Dogs, Garden, Great Wheel, Humanities

For Everything

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Lughnasa                                      Full Artemis Moon

A full day today and another one tomorrow.  Late August through early September are busy times here at 7 Oaks and Artemis Hives.  Kate’s worked like a Trojan, the Norwegians of Greece, pulling weeds, making piles, churning through task after task.  She wears me out.  And she’s older than I am.

Each month has its own qualities, tasks appropriate to the time of year.  August’s tasks include harvest, weeding, ordering bulbs for fall, considering the garden for next year, mulching, honey extraction.  It also includes getting ready for the busy season at the MIA, the school year when students come through the museum in amazing numbers and the special expeditions go up.  This year we’ll have the Thaw collection of Native American Art, Embarrassment of Riches, a photography show curated by David Little and the Titian Exhibition.  The State Fair begins, kids get their last fond looks at the lake or the backyard or the baseball field, and adults take advantage of the heat.  In Minnesota we know that often the best month of the year lies ahead, either September or October.

Just finished a book, Blind Descent, that narrates the search for the world’s deepest cave.  The story line gripped me from the beginning, especially the technical descriptions of work in super caves.  It recounts the culmination in 2004 of two of the most promising super cavers of the current era:  Bill Stone and Alexander Klimchouk of Georgia.  It was Klimchouk’s work in the Arabika highlands that yielded Krubera, the world’s deepest cave, at over 7,000 feet below the surface.  Worth reading.

Vega and Rigel have a new project.  They have dug several holes, some of them deep enough that their heads disappear in them.  I can only assume they’re chasing something that burrows, probably a gopher.  They seem to be doing a good deal more digging than catching.  It was this kind of behavior last fall that led to the two fences that we have now.  Seeing them dig as Kate and I worked in the orchard, inside one of those fences, I was so happy we had them.  Right now Vega barks in her crate, ready to go back and hunt some more.  We’ll wait her out.