Ukulele Class Update

   The Live Aloha Hawaiian cultural festival is fast approaching (September 7) and I am still working to memorize both the words and the ukulele chords for the five songs we'll be performing (me along with about 499 other ukulele players)  A month ago I had trouble remembering how the tunes went the day after class. Now I couldn't get them out of my head if I tried.  I'm very comfortable with most of the chords we play. There are a few notable exceptions which are still works in progress. This past week I sat across from another Haole at ukulele class and noticed he was doing this really cool triplet strum when we came to the vamps.  I will definitely have to learn how to do that some day. It's really more like a structured jam session than a class.

    I wasn't sure on the exact definition of "Haole" other than it was used to refer to a white person. One of the Hawaiians referred to me as a Haole and then apologized for having used the term. That made me think the term may have some mild deprecative meaning to Hawaiians similar to  a black person calling a white person "Honky". When I later looked it up on the computer, several definitions seemed pretty neutral while one definition used the term "pejorative" in describing its meaning.  Personally, I'm very comfortable with being a Hawaiian Wannabe and don't mind being called a Haole.  How pejorative the word is undoubtedly depends on the attitudes of those who use the word.

    The Hawaiians in the ukulele class have all been very gracious and welcoming to me. It's been such a fun time that I have wanted to share it with friends and relations. So far I have brought 4 different visitors to class, comprising Linda, grand daughters Luna and Madelynn, and a friend from church. This past week when I brought my grand daughter, Madelynn, she seemed to have been very inspired by the experience. As I drove her home she was trying to think of a way she could arrange transportation to attend the class on a regular basis.

    This past week we spent some time towards the end of the session practicing the music for several hula numbers the group would be doing soon at a luau for the Lake Stevens Senior Center. This included a men's hula dance. I was amazed as one particularly big Hawaiian guy was transformed into the epitome of grace when he started to dance the hula.

   I took advantage of some slow time at the bee booths this past week to practice my ukulele.  At the "outside" booth, located in the Snohomish County Ag Area, we have a live beehive in a double screen tent( a screen tent within a screen tent), I tell fair visitors that the tent is to protect the bees from the fair visitors. They think I am joking, but I think they really do pose a greater hazard to the bees than the bees do to them.  On a few days as things got slow, I sat inside the tent for an hour or so serenading the bee hive.  I didn't get stung on either occasion so bees apparently don't seem to mind Hawaiian ukulele music.  On the other hand, I also didn't notice any of the girls clapping and a few of them pooped on my ukulele. The main reason for sitting inside the tent with the bees is that it seems to attract the attention of the passers by and questions like, "Why aren't they stinging you?" It provides a good opportunity to explain to the public the usual peaceful nature of the bees in contrast to their more cranky cousins,  like yellow jackets and bald face hornets.

    While working at the "Outside" booth one of our visitors had some interesting tattoos. While I'm generally not a big fan of body art, I found it difficult to disapprove of these particular tattoos. I didn't notice until later that one bee had a red bow on its head while the other didn't. Possibly they were intended to depict a girl bee and a boy bee.  Yet the boy bee still had a stinger.  Unlike the bees in the Bee Movie, male bees have no stingers. The only thing they can do when they are annoyed is to buzz angrily.

The Owner of the Beez Neez meets the owner of the bees knees

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Fair Update

    I spent four hours at the Evergreen State Fair yesterday as a volunteer at the Open Honey and Beeswax Exhibit. It was a little slow at times, but was a pretty fun time over all. I answered lots of questions about the observation hive with live bees in it and generally informed the public about the importance of honeybees in their lives. The biggest deal is that fact that about half of our food supply is pollinated by honeybees. We would have a pretty bland diet if we only could eat foods that were pollinated by the wind. Grapes are one of the few wind pollinated fruits. Other than that it would be lots of potatoes, wheat, oats, rice, and corn. It would be a fairly plain uninteresting diet.

    I really need to take a video some time of different individuals' reactions when they look at the observation hive and first realize there are live honeybees in there.  They are either instantly repulsed or instantly grabbed. Many who fall into the repulsed category still can't tear themselves away from staring at the hive. It would be a funny thing to post on You Tube for people guess what the heck these people are looking at. One of my favorite things is to ask the younger kids if they want a bee on their hand. Most don't respond positively until I show them the little bee stamp and the stamp pad. There are a few brave little ones that would be very willing to have a live bee on their hand. Some of those are somewhat disappointed rather than relieved when they discover I'm only offering to stamp a bee on their hand.

    I was gratified to learn that not only did I get blue ribbons for both my extracted honey and my beeswax entry, but the beeswax entry also got Best of Division and Best of Show.  I wasn't as impressed with the Best of Division as there were only 6 entries in the beeswax division. Best of Show is a big deal because that means the entry scored higher than all other entries in the Open Honey and Beeswax Exhibit. I guess maybe I've learned a few things about working with beeswax in the eight years I've had the bee store.

Blue Ribbon Blackberry Honey

The really big ribbon in the back is the Best of Show ribbon

     I started yesterday on my bucket list of Fair Food.  I'm signed up for six volunteer sessions at the Fair.  My fair food selection for yesterday was a nice big pork bratwurst smothered in onions and sauerkraut. That still leaves Curly Fries, a Purple Cow, Crepes, Fair Scones, a Walla Walla Onion Burger, and an Elephant Ear to go. This comes at a time when I've made some recent progress in losing weight.  My eight year old grand daughter, Britton, is really looking forward to the Evergreen State Fair.  As she was talking to her dad the other day, she told him that she had $13.00 saved up and she was going to spend all of it on "Fair Food". 

  The Honey and Beeswax Exhibit was not the most exciting thing for me that happened at the fair yesterday.  The biggest deal for me was that I managed to buy a working antique Fulton hand crank corn sheller. I have to admit that I was a little nervous about admitting to Linda how much I paid for it. I'm very lucky that Linda likes old things (in more ways than one). I considered it somewhat of a bargain as it only cost about half of what it would cost to buy a new one. They are actually still making hand crank corn shellers. I suspect the Amish buy a lot of them. I bought it from a guy at the Western Heritage Center at the Fairgrounds. This is a museum dedicated to things like early agriculture, logging, mining, hand woodworking, trains, and other cool things. It is actually one of our grandchildren's favorite parts of the Evergreen State Fair. Its right up there with the toy pedal tractors.  As we have taken grand children to the fair they have all enjoyed shelling corn with the old hand crank corn shellers.  I grow indian corn for corn bread and have always shelled it out by hand. I grow enough of it that this is not a particularly fun task. My fingers are usually pretty sore by the time I've finished. I'm looking forward now to having lots of young and enthusiastic volunteer labor to shell out Grandpa Jim's annual corn crop.  I'll post a picture after I've got the corn sheller painted and mounted in a wooden box like the ones at the fair.

Entering Honey in the Fair

   I entered honey in the fair again this year.  I'm not all that excited about getting blue ribbons as I am about supporting the Open Honey and Beeswax exhibit at the fair. I think things like that are very good for beekeeping.  While I'm not excited about getting more blue ribbons, I would be crushed if I got something less than a blue ribbon for my honey. That would reflect on me personally as a beekeeper.

I poured five one pound jars like this one and chose the best three for my fair entry

    I did something different this year in that I also did a beeswax entry.  On one hand, I do a lot with beeswax. Together with my trusty minions at the Beez Neez, we rendered out 542 pounds of clean unfiltered beeswax this past winter.  I teach candle classes in November and December each year and I sell a lot of 100% beeswax candles in the store, especially around Christmas.  The problem is that most of what I do with beeswax is not done with beeswax from my own beehives.   It takes a large number of beehives to generate 542 pounds of beeswax and I only have 12 beehives in my back yard.  Usually my personal beeswax gets lumped in with all of the other beeswax. In order to submit a beeswax entry to the fair, the wax has to come from my personal apiary.

    It just so happened that a few weeks back I stumbled upon a large paper grocery bag at the store which contained the cappings from last year's honey harvest.  I put the cappings  into my solar wax melter and was lucky enough to have a good 90 degree day just a few days later.  I ended up with a nice brick of beeswax weighing just a little under three pounds. Being more than a little prone towards procrastination I delayed filtering the wax until yesterday, then had to stay up until close to midnight in order to remelt the filtered wax and pour it into one pound hexagonal molds.  I removed the wax from the molds this morning and chose the best of the two blocks for my beeswax entry.  The block in the photo below is the one which didn't make the cut. It had a small speck of some foreign material. It still looks pretty nice. I have to admit that I am pretty proud of the girls' work.

Baby Ducks and Propolis Varnish Update

     We had some new little baby ducks start to hatch on the morning of August 4th, just as we were leaving for Oregon to go camping at Fort Stevens.  Fortunately, the babies don't require much to eat or drink for the first three days so I was able to postpone putting in chick waterers and feeders until we returned from Oregon.  I don't believe that there is anything on the planet cuter than ducklings.  Out of  eleven eggs the mother duck successfully hatched out nine ducklings, seven of which survived the first week.  I thought we were doing fairly well on letting the mother care for them.  I removed the low water containers from the duck pen so the ducklings wouldn't get stuck in a water dish and drown or die of hypothermia.  I left just one 2 gallon bucket in the pen for the mother duck.  I figured it was high enough that it didn't pose a danger to the very little ducklings.   It turned out that I was very wrong. All but three of our ducklings managed to jump up into the water bucket and drown.  I was as impressed with their leaping ability as I was unimpressed with their decision making. I'm now making the mother duck drink out of the chick waterer for the next few weeks until the ducklings are big enough to be safe from water hazards.

one egg hatching while one duckling hides beneath his mother

Proud mother duck a few days prior to the duckling disaster

    Raising ducklings isn't so very different from raising teenage children. It seems much of our efforts are directed towards protecting them from serious dangers that just look like a good time to them.  I'm glad we successfully survived that time of our lives. I have a lot of sympathy for some of the struggles that our children have with our grand children. I'm glad I did a lot better protecting our children than I have with our ducklings.

     Regarding my propolis varnish.  We have had some unseasonable rain over the past few days.  I had accidentally left one of my wooden folding chairs out in the rain.  The propolis varnish seemed to be just as water proof as had been advertised.  There was no color change in the varnish, nothing whitened or turned opaque.  The amazing thing is that I had only applied one coat of varnish to the chair.  I ran out, of varnish before I even finished one coat on all of the chairs.  Anyhow, the appearance of the chair was unchanged after three days in the rain. I was very impressed.  I think the propolis varnish will work very well on the wood trim on my little row boat.

   I'm preparing this post while I'm waiting for beeswax to melt. I ran last year's beeswax cappings through my solar wax melter a few weeks back and ended up with a nice brick of beeswax weighing a little less than three pounds. I have often entered my honey in the fair, but I have never submitted a beeswax entry. I rendered out over 500 pounds of beeswax over the past year, but in order to enter it in the fair it has to come from my own apiary.  Most of that beeswax came from cappings I had purchased from a local commercial beekeeper.  Anyhow, a few weeks ago I stumbled on a paper sack containing the cappings from last years honey harvest. I had cleaned them, dried them,  put them away and then forgot where I had put them. I found them just in time to take advantage of a nice 90 plus degree day to help me render out the beeswax in my solar wax melter.

   Earlier today I melted the beeswax in a double boiler with an equal amount of water. When the wax was fully melted I poured it through some Tshirt material into a bucket in order to filter out impurities. Now I am remelting it without water so I can pour it into molds for the fair.  I have enough beeswax where I could also do a poured candle entry, but it is too late for that now. I'm just going to pour the wax into one pound molds and pick the best one to submit to the fair.

Ukulele Class

   I took Linda with me to my ukulele class this week. This is a free class held every Tuesday night at the Lake Stevens Senior Center.  This was only the second time I've managed to go, but I'm going to try to make it a higher priority in the future.  We're currently working on four songs for an event at the Seattle Center in September.  Two of the songs are in Hawaiian and two are in English. The problem is I have a very difficult time remembering the tunes when I try to practice them later. The only tune I can consistently remember is "There's No Place Like Hawaii". The other tunes often come to me while I'm driving or doing something at work. I just can't remember them when I'm holding my ukulele.  I was planning to record them on my iPhone this week to help my poor musical memory. However, I apparently wasn't the only one who needed help. They recorded all of the songs this week and are going to distribute practice CDs.  After two hours straight of strumming my little heart out my fingers were pretty sore by the time we drove home.

Recently varnished folding wooden chair

    Before leaving for Wyoming, my friend Quentin gave me six old wooden folding chairs. They looked pretty rough as there was no finish, but they seemed to be fairly sturdy.  I used them at our Pioneer Day booths this past Saturday. Their very rustic nature contributed to the ambiance. On Tuesday I put a few coats of my propolis varnish on a few of them and they were magically transformed.  Linda had seen a few unvarnished chairs leaning up against our big cedar tree and had intended to ask me if she could burn them. Now she no longer considers them to be potential firewood and is actually happy to have them in the house. I'm planning to use a little black rustoleum paint to dress up the metal parts.

      On the subject of Pioneer Day, that went very well. I responsible for our ward's two booths and I also brought an observation bee hive. Since our booths were honey taffy and dipped candles it wasn't inappropriate for me to handle that. The honey taffy turned out great. The observation hive and the candle dipping are always very popular with the kids. What's not to love about hot wax and stinging insects!  My one regret is that I forgot to take pictures for the blog.  In addition to the booths I played my fiddle for about 15 minutes with Brother Huntsman playing the guitar as backup. I played Ashoken Farewell, Saint Anne's Reel, King of the Fairies, and Arkansas Traveler.  I feel a lot more stress playing my fiddle for the public than I do playing the ukulele. It was a very busy day and I was glad I got through it okay.

   I'm going to include the honey taffy recipe we used. It is very very simple. All it requires is honey, some butter, a pot, and a candy thermometer.  I tried out a more complicated recipe which involved honey and cream. It took much longer and the taffy didn't turn out right. It was very delicious, but it ended up perfect for carmel apples. I suspect that was not the recipe's fault, but rather that I misread the candy thermometer and failed to get it quite all the way up to the right temperature.

    HONEY TAFFY

Ingredients:  1 cup honey
                      butter for fingers and to butter the pan, counter, or baking sheet
         
Directions:
  1. Heat honey in a sauce pan, continually stirring, until it reaches 285 degrees fahrenheit (soft crack). After my first failure I didn't completely trust the candy thermometer so I went up to 290 degrees.
  2. Pour hot honey onto a buttered marble slab, baking pan or cookie sheet.  Let it cool until the edges can be touched with your fingers.
  3. Roll the edges up to form a long roll and start pulling the taffy. Continue until the the taffy becomes light colored and porous and small strings start to form.
  4.  Pull the taffy until appropriately sized and cut into pieces with buttered shears.

Linda's Flowers

  My sweet wife has been off in China somewhere doing volunteer work at an orphanage with our grand daughter, Rachel.  I took a few photos of some of Linda's flowers for inclusion in my blog so she could see what they looked like in their prime. At lest that way she can see what she missed. Her peony and the big  rhododendron tree out front both bloomed while she was in Rockville, Maryland visiting our daughter Lia.

A somewhat fuzzy photo of Linda's clematis

One of Linda's Hydrangeas coming into bloom 

Linda's other hydrangea

Lapins Sweet Cherry

    We're doing very well on fruit this year. I've never done so well with my sweet cherries as we have this year. I've bottled cherries, eaten cherries till I was actually getting tired of them, and invited several friends to come and pick cherries.  My best sweet cherry tree this year is an unknown variety. I purchased it from Home Depot labeled as a Montmorency Pie Cherry.  I know it isn't a Bing, Hudson, or a Lapins as it ripens a little later than the Lapins and a little before the Hudson.  I was contemplating replacing it with a pie cherry. Maybe it overheard me mention that to someone. Anyhow it was loaded with fruit. It has a tactical advantage over our other sweet cherry trees in that it is located further away from the Maples where the squirrels have their nests. The squirrels raid the Lapins pretty heavily, but never seem to get over to my unknown sweet cherry tree.

    I have two little pie cherry trees. One is a Morello type named Northstar. The morello pie cherries have a dark red juice so they make a very pretty pie. The other tree is a Montmorency pie cherry which has clear juice. Between the two trees I got enough pie cherries to make four cherry pies. I baked one cherry pie my grand daughter Autumn as a pie making lesson. I gave enough cherries for a pie to a good friend who came to pick sweet cherries.  I baked one cherry pie for myself and I still have one quart of frozen and pitted pie cherries in the freezer. Last year I only got enough pie cherries for two pies. The pie cherry trees are still fairly young so they are just starting to get serious about producing fruit.  I've considered replacing a few of my sweet cherry trees with additional pie cherry trees.  the pie cherries don't split if it rains, they are self fertile so pollination is less difficult, and they bloom a little later so it tends to be less rainy when they bloom.  Even in Western Washington pie cherries usually produce every year, whereas sweet cherries are more hit and miss. The main problem is that the two least productive cherry trees are holding up my hammock.

    Meanwhile, the vegetable garden is doing fairly well.  I have tomatoes ripening, pole beans running up their poles, zucchini and other squash setting fruit, and my Painted Mountain Flour Corn has started to tassle.  I have a second corn patch out back of Reid's Yellow Dent Corn. A good friend gave me the seeds so I thought I should try it. Unfortunately, our former dominant drake trampled a good part of the patch down flat as he was attempting to eliminate his two young rivals.  I was tired of all of his needless conflict so the corn patch was the final straw.  I added duck plucking to my "To Do" list and dispatched him on the spot.  Only a third of that corn patch survived. I planted potatoes in part of the newly opened space. The duck pen is much more peaceful now.  This wasn't his first offense.  We lost more than half of our ducklings earlier in the year due to his bad behavior.  I expected him to be tough as he was at least three years old. He turned out to be much more tender as a roast duck than he ever was as a father duck....

Linda's needy cat attempting to get me to stop picking cherries to pet her.

    One consistent problem whenever Linda is gone for a significant period is that her cat becomes extremely needy. After Linda has been absent for a few days, the cat starts following me around to demand petting. She picks some rather odd circumstances. In the above photo I was picking cherries at the top of a fourteen foot tall orchard ladder when the cat decided she needed petting and she needed it right now. I thought briefly about testing out that old saying about cats always landing on their feet.

Ukulele and an Unintended Vocal Solo

    As Second Counselor in our Bishopric, I have the responsibility to conduct our church services every third month.  I have to confess that  I feel more than a little bit of stress about conducting meetings. The opportunities to mess up are myriad.  My most spectacular foul up thus far stemmed from an unintended spoonerism when I presented someone's name as "Fat Pawcett" rather than Pat Fawcett.  Fortunately Pat is a woman with a good sense of humor and it only took a home baked pie to set things right again.

      On the first Sunday of my scheduled month, I am also responsible for presenting a spiritual message to the children in Primary (ages 3-11). I've always found the Primary message to be a bit of a challenge.  I don't have any problem speaking to the older children, but I have a hard time engaging the younger ones at the same time.  This past Sunday, I had decided to talk about the importance of music. I started by telling them how music can help us feel the spirit and feel closer to God. I also talked about the difference between a regular song and a hymn.  Then I challenged them to memorize some of the hymns from the Children's Songbook. In order to make my message a bit more fun, I brought out my ukulele and led them in enthusiastic renditions of two hymns I had recently memorized from the Children's Songbook, "I Hope They Call Me on a Mission" and "Called to Serve".  The Children's Songbook helpfully includes guitar chords along with the piano music.  I played the ukulele at the podium so the sound would carry better in the large chapel. The children enjoyed it and sang along enthusiastically.  Five minutes later, after the Primary children had been dismissed to their classes, a friend informed me that someone had left on the foyer speakers which had broadcast my performance to the random group of adults gathered there. The mike hadn't picked up the ukulele or the enthusiastic children singing, but just me belting out Primary songs.

     I intend to continue expanding my repertoire of Primary songs that I can play on the ukulele.  My biggest limitation stems from the fact that I only know about a dozen chords.  I also have some difficulty with quick chord changes. Also, some of the songs are a bit high for my bass voice. I'm thinking maybe I should try transposing a few of them to a slightly lower vocal range.  Anyhow,  I think it has the potential for good times with the grand kids.

    My daughter, Sarah, was visiting with her kids for a few days this past week. She had driven up from the Portland area in order to send Linda and her daughter, Rachel, off to China to work in an orphanage for for three weeks.  Yes, that means I will have no adult supervision for the next few weeks.  During her visit, Sarah expressed an interest in learning to play the ukulele. We had a few lessons and now she is off and running.  I think that brings the total of ukulele players in the family up to about eight.  We now have at least one designated ukulele player in each family among my children and grand children.  We have a family campout planned for August at the beach in Oregon. I'll be interested in seeing how many ukuleles show up.

    A few weeks back I attended a Hawaiian ukulele group that meets every Tuesday evening at the Lake Stevens Senior Center. I had an absolutely wonderful time.  There were about twenty people sitting around big long tables singing and strumming their hearts out.  They were working on four particular songs that will be played for an event on September 4th at the Seattle Center.  They will be participating with other similar groups and there are supposed to have about 500 ukuleles in the performance.  It sounded like a fun time. Two of the songs are in Hawaiian so we spent a lot of time learning how to pronounce the words.  Among other things I learned that the word for the rather well-known Hawaiian dress is four syllable word. It is pronounced "Mu hu mu hu" and not "Mu mu".  Best of all, I only have to learn two new chords to be able to play all four songs. I should have taken some photos, but I was too busy strumming my ukulele.