Sweet and Sticky Harvest

Saturday was "Honey Harvesting Day." It was exciting and a lot of work (for Eric and Tyler, not me). It was a really good harvest with about 220 pounds of honey! For those of you who don't know how honey is harvested, here is the Wenger version:

First, they pulled the frames from the hives and replaced them with empty ones. They used the smoker to calm the bees. It doesn't calm all the bees and they get pretty mad when you try to take their honey so I used my telephoto lens and kept my distance.

Eric used an uncapping knife to uncap the honey cells. The knife is not sharp, but is very hot.

Then the frame is placed in the extractor. This one hold 2 frames at a time and is cranked by hand. The frames spin acting as a centrifuge and honey goes to the bottom of the cylinder.

When the extractor gets hard to crank, the honey is strained into a bucket. The strainer in the bucket gets out the wax chunks and stuff.

It is then poured into jars or bottles for consumption or sale.

The final product!

For those of you interested, the prices are as follows:

6oz. bear - $1.50

12oz. cylinder - $3.00

1 quart glass jar - $12.00

Beaver Lake Vacation

Well, we are back from vacationing at Beaver Lake in Arkansas. We had an awesome time. Here are some pix of our fun.






All this food for 11 people for4 days. Oh did I mention that included 2 teenage boys?!

The first day we were there the deer came right up to our cabin. We were within about 10 feet of them.

Tyler and Abby tubing!

Yes! I tubed too!

Lots of fun at the water fall! That water was darn cold! If you look at Tyler jumping ( the 1st one on the left) you can see that he went in face and chest first. It knocked the wind out of him but still did it 2 more times.

Tyler tried water skiing for the first time and got up. We were all so proud of him!

Cedar Lodge, back view

View of the sunset from our deck! Stunning!

We had such a good time. We are definitely going back!

Refreshed...Kinda

For those of you who know me know that I don't really like massages. I know, I'm a total nut job! Well, I went for my very first proffessional massage on Tuesday at the EveryBody Shop in Hesston. Abby had won a 30 minute massage and gave it to me for Mother's Day so I reluctantly made the appointment. It was overall a mildly enjoyable experience. The head and face massage was great and the rest was OK. It was painful at times and a little weird having someone I don't know in a quiet room massaging me. The lady that did it was great and I'm sure she is very good at what she does. It just wasn't my thing! I doubt I would do it again. Now, having a pedicure with a foot and leg massage...I'm in!

Boring Task=Procrastination

I am taking an online course this summer to move up on the pay scale. It has to been one of the most boring classes ever and I just started. I got my first assignment last week, a 3 page paper critiquing a content achievement test and evaluating its use with English language learners. Doesn't that just grab your attention and make you want to dive right in? NOT ME! I read that and almost cried...really. It's been a really long time since I've done any collegiate writing. It's hard and honestly I don't like things that are hard. It was kinda funny, though! I opened the text book for the first time and the quote that began the entire book was from Oprah Winfrey and said,

"Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity.

Don't fight them. Just find a different way to stand."

I guess it's easier for Oprah to "find a new way to stand" when she's wearing really cute expensive shoes! I thought maybe buying a cute binder with matching tabbed dividers for the class would make this pill a little bit easier to swallow...it hasn't.