Lego People in the Family

We had an enjoyable visit with the Tunnells over Christmas. I always love grandkid visits, but it is especially fun to have kids in the house at Christmas.  We all went to see Frozen one afternoon. It was quite the interactive experience to watch the movie with Lucy sitting on my lap. She gets really into the movie and cries at all of the sad parts like a few other people in the family.  We watched a trailer for the Lego Movie then found this large cardboard poster in the lobby with a hole for wannabe lego people. 

Britton Tunnell as a lego person

Lucy Tunnell as a lego person

     I tried a little experiment in apitherapy over the holiday break. I had attended a bee conference a few months ago where the featured speaker was a doctor who does apitherapy. At some point in his lecture he mentioned that bee stings can be used to remove warts. Since I've had a long term wart on my hand I thought it would be interesting to give it a try. You would think that since I do get stung occasionally that I wouldn't have any warts. The point is that the sting has to be immediately next to the wart for it to have any effect.   It just so happened that we ended up with a stray bee inside the shop a few weeks ago. That is a common occurrence for a good part of the year but rather an unusual event in December or January.  I took advantage of the opportunity and Quentin administered the sting right next to my wart.
     Usually when I get a sting, I make a point of removing the stinger right away to minimize my reaction. In this case I left the stinger in my finger until the muscle pumping in the venom stopped pulsating.  As a consequence I experienced more redness and swelling that I would normally get from a sting on the hand. The swelling and itching lasted about three days. After the swelling went down the wart was still there but seemed smaller to me.  I'm going to try this again when the weather is warm and I have more ready access to stray worker bees.

The wart in question

       Another method of wart removal which involves beehive products is the use of a propolis tincture. A Ukrainian customer once told me how his teenage son had been badly afflicted with warts on his head and face. He had taken his son to a dermatologist who had in succession medicated the warts, frozen the warts, and burned the warts. Yet after each treatment the warts had come back. Finally he decided to use the traditional Ukrainian treatment for warts. This consisted of drinking a tincture of bee propolis dissolved in rum.  After the son drank the tincture every day for a few weeks the warts disappeared and never came back.  The Ukrainians usually dissolve their propolis in vodka. I'm not sure why he used rum unless that is the kid version of the remedy.

Beeswax Candles

     I just finished my last scheduled candle class for this year last Tuesday evening.   We've been selling a lot more beeswax candles than years past so I spent most of my time at work this past week making candles.  Once someone has tried a real beeswax candle, it's hard for them to ever go back to paraffin candles.  I've done votives, tea lights, dipped tapers, all sorts of poured candles, and even some hand dipped 1/2 inch diameter tapers for birthday candles. Our newly setup Christmas tree also got me in the mood to do some beeswax ornaments.  I was even able to persuade Linda to let me put some of them on our tree.

Rustic Fern Piller

Hand dipped beeswax tapers

Beeswax ornaments

Votives

Tea lights

     The bee store doesn't make much money doing the candles, but it comes at a slow time of year.  Its good to stay busy at this time of year and anything that brings in a little revenue is nice. In past years, I've used the extra candles from the classes to stock the bee store with candles.  This year, the students have purchased almost all of the candles we have made in class. Consequently, I've had to spend more time at work pouring candles.  I don't know how many candles I can sell at the store, but I know I can't  sell them if I haven't made them.  I usually pass on to the customers a favorite quote from Jonathan Swift; the one where he refers to honey and beeswax as the gifts of  "sweetness and light".

    I have to admit that I really enjoy making candles and playing with the beeswax.  Our primary source of beeswax is cappings that we purchase from some local Ukrainian commercial beekeepers.  I have a cappings melter that does a pretty good job rendering the beeswax. Last year we rendered over three hundred pounds of beeswax.  I say we, but really my minion Quentin did most of the work rendering the wax.  I personally have twelve beehives and I only got about three pounds of beeswax from my own hives. My preferred way to render beeswax is to use a solar wax melter. Cappings wax done in a solar wax melter turns out a light cream color as opposed to the yellow wax we get from the water jacket cappings melter.  The big problem with that is we only have about six weeks during the year when it is sunny enough and warm enough for my solar wax melter to work.  Also we have more time to fool with rendering beeswax in November and December.  Hence most of our beeswax is done with the water jacket cappings melter.

French Christmas Carols

    I've been working on learning French for the past year or so.  This is partly to atone for the only D grade I ever received in my life which was in first year French in the eighth grade. The reason for my poor grades in French are pretty obvious to me now. At the time I had little or no understanding of English grammar and I had very poor study habits.  I was smart, a good reader, and was able to get by just fine in most classes without putting in much effort. Foreign languages on the other hand, were not like most other classes. They require diligent study and consistent effort. I'm sure my high school French teacher would have never believed that I would ever learn any foreign language, let alone two. I'm sure she also would never have picked me as a likely candidate to become a professional linguist. So here I am with a moderate fluency in Italian and Russian, along with a smattering of German and French.

     Last week, as part of my continuing efforts to learn French, I decided to learn some Christmas carols in French. Songs can really stick in our brains. I can still remember a children's song from first year French class, "Sul La Pont d'Avignon".  If a "D" student can still remember a French children's song after 40 years that shows what a powerful memory tool music can be.  I picked three carols to learn this month,  "Angels We Have Heard on High "(Les Anges Dans Nos Campagnes), "Oh Christmas Tree" (Mon Beau Sapin), and one that we don't appear to sing in English called "Il Est Ne Le Divin Enfant".  At least I haven't found an English version of that carol yet.  I found a number of helpful YouTube videos that included the lyrics of each carol.  I just looked up Christmas carols in French and found lots to chose from.

     "Angels We Have Heard on High" is one of my favorite Christmas carols and happens to be of French origin.  I didn't have to look very hard to find the French lyrics as they are available on the LDS.org website.  I simply looked up the hymn and selected French as the language option. I love the bass line in the Chorus of this song.  The church website didn't give me any help with the French pronunciation, but that was easy enough to find that on YouTube. 

     I remember having heard "Il Est Ne Le Divin Enfant" as an instrumental but I don't recall having heard it sung before I started this little project. I don't know what it was titled in English. I think I may even have it on a Celtic Christmas CD.  It is really quite a lovely carol, especially when sung by children.  Maybe I can teach the chorus to some of my grand children who will be visiting us over the Christmas holiday. There is a line in the chorus that translates to "Play the oboe, resonate the bagpipes". The Scots and Irish apparently don't have a monopoly on bagpipes.  Bagpipes were a traditional celtic instrument.  They survive in some form in the folk music of both France and Italy and probably other countries as well.  In parts of northern Italy it was traditional to have shepherds come into town to play music around Christmas. Along with other instruments, they played some kind of bagpipe. A French country bagpipe is called a musette.

     Oh Christmas Tree is an old German carol but I picked it because it seemed pretty easy to learn. The phrase "Mon Beau Sapin" is repeated six times.  Once you have the title of the song down you are almost halfway to having the whole carol memorized.

    I really love Christmas carols in any language. I like to get an early start on singing and listening to Christmas music.  One of the many reasons I enjoy singing in our ward choir is the opportunity to start singing Christmas music in October.  While she doesn't care for my Klezmer Christmas CD, Linda and I both agree on the subject of early Christmas music. My favorite Christmas CDs at present are "Oy to the World" by the Klezmonauts,  "Irish and Celtic Christmas Music", and the Gothard Sisters Christmas CD.

     The Gothard Sisters are from Edmonds, Washington. They combine celtic music with Irish dance. They first started performing as a means to earn the money to travel to an Irish dance competition in Ireland.  They did so well that they forgot about the dance competition. One sister plays the guitar while two of them play fiddle.  Several of them play the Irish drum as well and all three of them do Irish dance. One of the things I like about them is the fact that although their voices are very good, they don't sound professional.  They don't clutter up a beautiful song with all of the "performance" aspects. Its generally about singing the songs and not about showing off their voices. I guess they get the showing off out of their systems when it comes to dancing.  We have tickets to attend one of their Christmas concerts this coming Thursday in Lynden, Washington.  Our schedule didn't work for any of the closer concert locations. We're looking forward to taking some of the Veatch kids with us. It should be fun.  

Oh Christmas Tree!

    We put up our Christmas tree earlier this week. Its a bit on the small side for my taste but it is a very pretty tree.  Linda and I have a running disagreement on the best size for a Christmas tree. She likes them smaller, while I like them larger.  I cut down one of the Dwarf Alberta Spruces that Linda planted some years back. She originally planted them with the idea that they could be used for Christmas trees.  Being dwarf trees, they have grown slowly and are just now approaching six feet in height. They are also full to a fault. While I would have liked a bigger tree, it was very nice to cut one down in the back yard. It was also very convenient.

Our newly installed Christmas tree, yet undecorated.

      Linda took charge of decorating the Christmas tree.  Of course it turned out very cute.  I thought her enthusiasm for decorating the tree was even cuter. I realize that some of our Christmas traditions have pagan origins. However, we can chose to have as much Christ in our Christmas as we want. We can focus on either material things or the true meaning of the celebration. In that vein Linda made some new ornaments for our tree that display 12 names for Christ. She found a font she liked and printed them out on the computer. Then she used some wide mouth canning rings, painted white, which she used to frame them. They turned out very nice. I didn't think to ask if she thought it up by herself or if she found the idea on Pinterest or in Martha Stewart Living. Personally, I think recognizing someone else's good idea is almost as good as having one on your own. Now for a little photographic tour of our Christmas tree.

One of Linda's new ornaments

A tatted ornament made by Grandma Cozy

A tatted angel made by Grandma Cozy

An ornament Beth made at a Relief Society activity

An ornament made by a good friend from an old Christmas card

Another one of Linda's new ornaments

Linda got this at the Relief Society Christmas party

I think we've had this star for a long time.

     Our Christmas tree has a general color scheme of green white and gold. However, it still has a lot of handmade ornaments, many of which came from family and friends. I've persuaded Linda to let me add some beeswax ornaments, natural color of course so they don't violate the color scheme.  The thing I like best about our little tree is that it helps remind us what are supposed to be celebrating, the birth of the Savior.

Our Christmas tree fully decorated

Gratitude

   We had a lovely Thanksgiving.  It was a wonderfully happy chaos with only half of our grandkids in attendance.  One of the things I am most grateful for is my family. How could I not love a holiday which provides quality time with loved ones and a good excuse to enjoy some of our favorite foods.

     I think we showed a little restraint this year in that we only had seven pies this year. I made one heavenly hazelnut pie, three pumpkin pies, and a cherry pie. My daughter, Rachel, made a blender lemon pie and a banana creme pie.  I also made fish eye pudding (tapioca) and Linda bought some Costco pumpkin rolls.  The guest of honor was a pretty good sized turkey, accompanied by the usual mashed potatoes and turkey gravy. We had bought a ham that we didn't use. We also had a lovely fruit salad, sweet potatoes, olives, Beth's dinner rolls, a quinoa dish, Grandma Cozy's scalloped corn, and a number of other tasty dishes. The amazing thing was how much food we had left over at the end.  With a head count of 25 and only one turkey, I didn't expect there would be much turkey left at the end of the day.   Yet somehow I made two gallons of turkey and noodles from the carcass and I am still eating leftover turkey a week later.

Lucy Tunnell helping herself to the fruit salad

Madelynn Veatch and Cassy Parrot

Luna Wessel and Abby Veatch

       Mike Veatch brought his electronic drum set.  After dinner we enjoyed a nice little jam session with Mike on drums, Chet Arnett on guitar, and Madelynn on trumpet.  I was really amazed at how good Madelynn sounds on her trumpet. She sounds like she had been playing it for a lot longer than just a year and some change.  After the big boys were through playing with the drums some of the younger kids gave them a try. John Tunnell was really rocking out. I was so grateful the drums were electronic with a volume control.

Beekeeper Kids

    Linda recently visited some of our kids and grandkids living near Portland.  My only serious regret about owning the Beez Neez Apiary Supply is that it often ties me down and keeps me from spending as much time as I would like with my children and grandchildren.  I'm more than a little envious at times and wish I could pick up and go with her more on grandkid trips. Her latest trip  included spending a day or two with Lance and Luna, seven and nine respectively. Their mother was previously our partner in running the bee store and an avid beekeeper. However, due to a serious allergy to bee stings, she now has to avoid the little darlings. She has made several trips to the emergency room over the past year or so due to inadvertent bee stings. Her most recent incident involved a sting that happened while she was minding her own business, weeding her vegetable garden.

     In spite of their current lack of bees, Luna and Lance are very clear about their continued affiliation with the brotherhood of beekeepers.  Recently, one of their friends from school was freaking out over a "bee" flying nearby. Luna told her "That's a wasp. It's not a bee. We know. We're beekeepers."  I'm very happy that they still use the title of "beekeeper" as part of their identity.

    I have two other grandchildren who are actively keeping bees. I started Chloe and Autumn with bee hives this past spring.  I wasn't able to get down to visit them often enough to be a very good mentor. I don't know whether their bees will make it through the winter. If they don't, I will have to shoulder a good portion of the blame for being such an absentee mentor.  Their major accomplishment this year as beginning beekeepers was to become very comfortable with the bees.  I realized just how comfortable they had become when I received a photo attached to a text message that showed Autumn ready to work her beehive while wearing capris and slippers. Amazingly, in spite of a fair amount of exposed skin when working their bees, neither Autumn or Chloe was stung this year.

Autumn Kang, ready to open a bee hive.

Fishing with Mike and Gavin

    I went  and visited my brother Mike this past weekend.  Friday we made an unsuccessful attempt at turkey hunting near Dayton, Washington. Saturday morning we went fishing for whitefish on the Columbia River. Gavin, Mike's oldest son, came with us.  We put in the boat just upstream from the Vernita Bridge. That is a free flowing portion of the Columbia, upstream of the McNary Pool and downstream from Priest Rapids Dam.   Chinook Salmon spawn in the gravel bottom there and the whitefish come in behind them to eat any loose eggs the current pushes out of their nests.  It is pretty fun fishing as we usually do fairly well. The average size of the whitefish we catch is about 14 to 15 inches long and the limit is 15 fish per angler.

My nephew Gavin

    We got up pretty early so that we reached the Vernita Bridge at about 7:00 am.  It was ten degrees and still, which didn't feel too bad when we were putting the boat into the water.  It was a different story when we started to motor upstream towards the dam.  It felt pretty frigid at that point. I felt sorry for Mike who was steering the boat and had to face into the wind.  At least I could turn around and face the stern. Gavin pulled his head down into his coat like a turtle. Once we stopped and started to drift downstream it felt much better.  I hooked a fish within a minute or so after getting my line into the water.

Another whitefish in the boat

    We always drift fish for whitefish.  We use a couple of rubber salmon eggs for bait on a relatively small hook with several feet of leader.  A slinky weight is attached right at the swivel along with the leader. The slinky weight will drift along the bottom and will rarely get snagged.  For the whitefish our bait looks like just a few more salmon eggs drifting downstream in the current.

My brother Mike has to face into the cold wind to drive the boat.

    There were still a lot of Chinook Salmon in the river, but they were a pretty sorry looking lot.  They looked like zombie fish that were dead but didn't know it. Some of the salmon still had the energy to jump clear out of the water but most of them quietly swam in the current, patiently waiting for the end. There were a lot of dead salmon on the bank and a lot of other animals gathered to feed on them.  We saw a coyote on the far bank and lots of seagulls and Blue Herons on the near bank. We stayed on the shallower north side of the river and the water was very clear. We could usually see the river bottom passing beneath us. In some places the water was only three or four feet deep. At times I could see the schools of whitefish beneath us. Surprisingly, the whitefish I saw in the water looked larger than most of the fish we were catching. I don't know if that was because the bigger fish were merely easier to spot or if it was due to the fact that the larger fish were less inclined to fall for our artificial bait.

The end of the road for the salmon

    We ended up catching just fourteen whitefish. That is a lot less than we usually catch. I brought home eight fish while Gavin kept the rest. I filleted them out and put them in a seasoned brine to get them ready for my smoker. I found a brine recipe on the internet at justsmokedsalmon.com. The recipe I loosely followed was called "Matt's Favorite Salmon Brine Recipe". The ingredients were as follows:

Ingredients:   1/2 cup salt
                      1 cup brown sugar
                      1/4 tsp garlic powder
                      1/4 tsp liquid smoke
                      1/4 tsp Lowry's seasoned salt
                      4 Tbsp molasses
                      1 quart water

Instructions:  1.  Mix all ingredients until salts and sugar dissolve
                      2. Soak fish for 6-8 hours in covered container.
                      3. Lay out chunks of fish on smoker racks and sprinkle with lemon pepper.
                      4. Allow to drip dry for about 15 minutes.
                      5. Smoke for 8 hours.

       Obviously, I modified the recipe a bit as usual. I used knotweed honey in place of the molasses. I did not use liquid smoke but rather used alder chips in my smoker. I also used fresh ground pepper and Trader Joe's "Everyday Seasoning" in place of the Lowry's seasoned salt and the lemon pepper.  Since its rather cold out I wasn't sure the smoker would get hot enough. I finished it up in the oven for about an hour to make sure it was done.  So shortly before the timer dings, Linda calls out "Are you doing something with fish?"  Happily, the smoked whitefish turned out well and even Linda thought it was tasty.