The bee move saga continues

What's new on the farm:

We were all set to load the semi-trailer this Thursday when I received a call at 9 pm last night.

A call at 9 pm for work is usually not good news.

When I answered the phone, he was calling from the hospital.

He was doing some checks on his truck before he planned to head out this morning.

The weather was icy, with frozen rain on the vehicle. As he was climbing around, he slipped and ended up in a really bad situation.

I won't go into more details, but he is out of commission until at least the middle of December.

It was a very close call for him. Thankfully, he is alive and able to recover, and it sounds like he is in good spirits.

What that means for us is starting all over again, trying to get set up to go.

I wrote in my last email about how difficult it is to find a qualified driver to take a load of bees.

Unlike in the States, it's not that common to move bees in Canada. There are way less experienced people available. I would guess there are less than 4 or 5 in Western Canada.

Last night, we even started to consider the chance that we had to keep the bees in Saskatchewan for the winter.

After some calls around this morning, there was one other driver who can come next week to move our load.

You can't imagine the relief we felt!

They happen to be available now because everyone else is finished beekeeping by now.

Most beekeepers usually complete their moving and are packed up by the end of October (like we should have been!).

So we were lucky to catch a break this time.

But since we have to reschedule our trip again, we no longer have the labor to help Andrew do the work.

At the end of the season, our beekeeping crew moves on to go back to school or work other jobs.

But two people in our crew were able to come back to help Andrew with the move. Except for one scheduling conflict at the beginning of December.

We never thought we would run into that conflict and move bees in December, but here we are!

Since Andrew can't do it alone, I'll be leaving the production kitchen for a bit and going to BC to do it with him.

Fortunately, we have great people to keep things running while we are gone!

To be honest, Andrew and I are looking forward to it! It's been a while since we have physically worked on the same thing at the same time.

We have more help these days, but back in the day, the two of us took care of everything.

Everything was harder and way more manual back then. We didn't have the equipment we have now.

We used to cart bees around on two-wheel dollies. I have a memory of the two of us digging them out of 2 feet of snow to load them onto our box truck.

It was really crappy work!

Sometimes it's good to take a step back and compare how we used to do things and see how far we've come in the last 10+ years!

In the Kitchen

It continues to be busy in the kitchen as we package as much honey and caramels as we possibly can.

If you live in Calgary, Alberta, we are at the Spruce Meadows International Christmas Market this Friday-Sunday. You can find us at the Riding Hall. This weekend is the final weekend!

We appreciate everyone's patience as we have been receiving such a huge volume of orders! All our creamers and our caramel wrapping machine are running at full tilt while we work to get your sweets to you for the holidays!

Honey-sweetened sandwich bread

American Thanksgiving is coming up in a few days, and you'll need some bread for those leftover turkey sandwiches.

Bread is one of those things we try to avoid buying at the grocery store these days because it's come so far from the real thing.

I haven't been able to stop by a local baker lately, but I remembered it's actually so easy to bake your own bread, you just have to plan ahead.

So this Sunday I tried out this recipe. It uses a bit of honey to proof the yeast, and then a bit more honey to sweeten the loaf. It's moist, rich, and soft.

I used a stone-ground flour from a small-scale miller to get the most nutrients instead of using refined flour.

We were so impressed with the result. It felt so good eating it!

Find the recipe at Tastes Better from Scratch.