Market Friends and Finds

While we love road tripping, we sure love coming home! Getting the bees from Florida is always fun but also a lot of stress since we worry about their well-being the entire trip and you never know what can happen on the road. I have a lot of pictures I need to upload and then I will devote a separate posting just for that since it is deserving of special focus.

What’s with the picture up top? Those are things we got at the Pearl last time we worked it. And you know what? We sure missed good eating while on the road! Can’t wait to get back to market and get some fresh, local foods! Top of the list – Brussels sprouts. And more spinach for this (I call it the Green Thienie Surprise since I sprung it on the men a few weeks ago):

And speaking of market and the last time we worked it, our friend Beatriz gave us this very cool waxed sheet of fabric that we can use as a food storage option – it’s reusable! This was a sweet gift and timely as I would like to learn how to make these also so maybe I will ask Beatriz to tell me more about it next time we have a chance to visit. I saw these on one of my favorite websites/blogs/shops (Food 52) and they had sandwich storage beeswax sheets such as this. I hadn’t had time to follow up with more research and then here we are…Beatriz beat me to it. Thanks, friend!

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A Visit with Granpa

This past weekend we took a break from our busy-ness to see family. Our first stop was in Burnet, which is about two hours north of here. We have not made that trip very often as of late but we really wanted to see Granpa, it had been too long. It was great to also see Mark’s cousin and his wife, who are both also living there in Burnet now, in the house where we used to visit Granpa and Granma. They are actually Mark’s uncle and aunt but we always called them Granpa and Granma. Granma’s gone now and we sure miss her, her cooking and all her game competitiveness. Boy were those fun days. You do remember Granpa, don’t you? That’s Mark’s uncle who started keeping bees with him about thirty years ago. Granpa’s not able to keep them right now but he does enjoy listening to Mark talk about his bees and the business we’re growing. Last year, when he was feeling pretty good, Mark’s other cousin brought him to see us in Seguin and we even got to take Granpa to a bee yard and open up some hives with him. It was so nice to do that together. What a wonderful memory to have; it’s so special to us. We knew there would be a limited number of trips to bee yards at this point for Granpa so we had wanted to make his visit special. It was for us. I think I snapped a million and one photos that visit. We took some treats to Granpa last weekend and we think he liked them. He apparently now loves to put about half a jar of honey into his oatmeal. 🙂 Nothing wrong with that, Granpa!

After our wonderful visit with Mark’s family in Burnet, we went West. Really west. I mean seven hours west. To Fort Davis where our son is living and working now at the Fort Davis Indian Lodge in their restaurant, the Black Bear. It was really wonderful to see Luke and get to know his life out there and it was awesome to see the expansiveness of Texas. WOW. There’s a whole lot of space out there, folks. It made me wonder how we all fought for it. And I thought, it’s so gigantic, I wonder why we all couldn’t just leave each other be and live in the same space. Have you been out there to west Texas? There’s a LOT of space where there aren’t people or homes or buildings or anything manmade for miles and miles and miles. Anyway, when you drive through it all seven hours there and seven hours back…you have a lot of time to talk, to listen and to think. It was so nice.

And then we got home and hit the ground running out in the honey house to fill orders and it pretty much hasn’t stopped since we got here. 🙂 Not complaining, just explaining. That’s what a ballplayer friend of Mark’s says all the time. Love it.

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Gift Basket Prowling

As August is here, one thing comes to mind – my super organized sisters who finish their Christmas shopping in July typically! Really. I used to be that with-it some time ago. 🙂 Anyhow, gift-giving season is right around the corner so we’re trying to gear up for gift baskets this year. Last year we gave gift baskets a try for our family members and it went over very well. Who wouldn’t love a basket filled with our local honey and hand-poured beeswax candles. I think the fact that you know the people making the products and the baskets really makes it special. Anyway, we have been looking at baskets here and there and online as well. Here’s a great one we like but it cost about $15 – no way we can go for that and charge our customers a deal. Mark researched around a bit but can you believe $15 was better than similar baskets found online?? But we did like that it had the nice lid, which would make a really unique container to receive, right? By the way, this is a tortilla basket used to keep them warm. We thought it’d be neat to offer a gift basket in a container that is so unique to South Texas. We’ll let you know how it goes. Mark found several great baskets online and we narrowed it down to three, which we’ll order and test drive. We look forward to developing a few gift baskets from which customers may choose. I love making gift baskets!

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Another Sign of Spring

Today Mark went to look at another potential bee yard and met some really nice people (as usual, I wish I was with him!). Look what they gifted to him for our garden, which we were just planning out this weekend since spring is about here! We have the beginnings of a lovely garden and I can’t wait to get the land ready for these. There’s basil, borage and eggplant. I’m excited to see them grow and super excited to look for an eggplant recipe for this summer. I love eggplant but I’ve never cooked it myself. My current favorite dish is a garlic eggplant with veggies at a nearby Thai restaurant. Maybe they’ll give me the recipe. 🙂

There are so many wonderful things about our bee business but the very best is meeting awesome people and making new friends. Thank you, everyone, for being such great supporters of us and our bees. We really appreciate all of you. Goodnight.

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