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Bees on the Highway, The Liturgy of the Land and More!
311 Plays9 months ago
Mathew interviewed Thomas Van Horn, one of the authors of The Liturgy of the Land: Cultivating a Catholic Homestead. They spoke about bees, authorship and much more.
Be sure to check out The Liturgy of the Land: Cultivating a Catholic Homestead by Jason Craig and Thomas van Horn
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Motivation
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast. Little Way Farm and Homestead is a regenerative and educational farm in southeastern Indiana. Motivated by the Catholic faith, we strive to inspire, encourage, and support the development of homesteads and small-scale farms in faith and virtue. I'm Matthew. And I'm Carissa. We're excited for you to join us on the podcast.
00:00:24
Speaker
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast.
Meet the Authors: Matthew and Tommy Van Horn
00:00:28
Speaker
We have a great episode here with Matthew and Tommy Van Horn, one of the authors of Liturgy of the Land, Cultivating a Catholic Homestead from Tan Books. Find the book today at theliturgyoftheland.com.
Homesteading Challenges and Real Estate Partnerships
00:00:40
Speaker
Before the episode begins, we know finding land for homesteading and trusting those involved in the process can be a challenge. We're happy to encourage people to consider real estate for life to help make the transition simple.
00:00:53
Speaker
Real Estate for Life is a brokerage with over 1,400 pro-life real estate agents worldwide. They've completed over 10,000 real estate transactions and they report 65% of their revenue goes to a pro-life or Catholic apostolate. You can quickly find an agent near you through their website at realestateforlife.org. And if you let them know that you learned about Real Estate for Life from Little Way Farm and Homestead, that helps support our family in continuing the work of Little Way Farm and Homestead.
00:01:21
Speaker
If you are considering moving, buying land, and seeking out the homestead lifestyle, choose Real Estate for Life to help you make that move.
Unexpected Beekeeping Journey
00:01:40
Speaker
Tommy Van Horn, thank you for joining us on the Little Way Farm and Homestead Podcast. Excited to have you here today and learn a little bit more about bees and your story down there. Awesome. I appreciate it. If you guys are having us online, we look forward to sharing our story. Awesome. Let's get started. So sometimes I'll look at people's websites and be able to pull something right from it that's so eye capturing or catching that want to expand on that.
00:02:03
Speaker
If you click on your website, Ambrosian Candle Company's website, and you hit our story, the first sentence goes something like this. It all started with a nearly wrecked car and 40,000 Bs on the I-10 Interstate Bridge over Pensacola Bay.
00:02:16
Speaker
That's a mouthful. Awesome storyline. What's the story? Yeah, it was just how Providence works. It's kind of funny. You know, you never would imagine a certain event would kind of change your life's course. And it was not really even me. It was kind of a, it was a friend of a friend. He was moving from Jacksonville to San Diego.
00:02:37
Speaker
And like any crazy, you know, committed beekeeper, he wanted to bring his bees with him from Jacksonville to San Diego. He only had a couple hives, so he put them in the back of his sedan and you can reasonably do it. I mean, you can kind of enclose the hive and usually they have enough stores as long as they have airflow, they're not going to, you know, suffocate, but you always wonder like it.
00:02:57
Speaker
Are they going to fall? Are they going to, you know, break loose? Anyhow, he was driving and the semi swerved in front of him on the I-10 bridge of all places, you know, about six hours into his trip. And to avoid the crash, he had to make a sudden, you know, lane change. And in doing so, both the hives toppled over inside the car. And he literally had, I mean, each hive has about 40,000 bees in it, give or take. So he had like 80,000 bees in the back of his car. He had no, you know, bale on, no suit on.
00:03:27
Speaker
And so he called my good friend Frank. It basically explained the situation. Frank literally lived right off the interstate, like just like probably a mile off the interstate at that exact spot. So he was able to kind of come and rescue the bees. And then subsequently Frank used those bees and kind of got us started with beekeeping through the salvaging of those colonies.
Learning Beekeeping
00:03:51
Speaker
So at the time I was working for fraternus full time. We just got it started. I've been doing that for four or five years.
00:03:57
Speaker
It's kind of just, he, Frank was a mentor, we call him a captain, a volunteer captain within Fraternus and he knew I liked the outdoors and I liked gardening and whatnot.
00:04:08
Speaker
And so, he basically introduced, you know, had me over one day for a beer and he's like, let's extract some honey, I'll show you some bees. And I was just fascinated by the whole thing, just to see the whole inner workings of it. So, basically, we got our equipment and started up a couple colonies. Was completely clueless in the beginning, like any beginning beekeeper, there's a lot to it.
00:04:29
Speaker
Yeah, that was kind of how we got our start and the whole beekeeping thing. So I'm just curious, what is that? How do you get bees, they spill on the highway. How do you get them back? How do you reasonably get bees off the ground or what does that even look like to capture them? Yeah, it's a mess, honestly. And we've done it since then, several times with erect, there was a rec semi that we had to pick up.
00:04:51
Speaker
Basically, what you do is you put all the combs back in the hive and you try to find the queen. And if you find the queen and you put it in the hive, they will smell her pheromones and they will just instinctually want to be with her. So, finding the queen bee who's about twice the size of a normal bee, which to the beginning beekeeper, you can't tell the difference. But for someone that's been seasoned and knows what they're looking for,
00:05:16
Speaker
Usually they can find the Queen and then the colony will kind of usually follow suit. Sometimes it's just a guessing game and you just hope that you have most of the bees back in the hive and the Queen's in there and if it's a dire situation, there's cars driving by, you just got to do what you got to do and do the best you can. But ideally when you have like a hive that's toppled over or fallen off the truck or
00:05:37
Speaker
If you can find the queen or if you're relocating a hive from someone's Eve or soffit, you can find the queen. Then usually all the workforce and the worker bees follow suit. It's remarkable to watch. They just literally kind of follow right into the hive.
00:05:53
Speaker
Is this one of those situations then too where you have been, you're a seasoned beekeeper, you've been stung so many times that now you're resistant to it that you can just walk out there on the highway and pick up bees, or are you getting stung all over
Challenges of Beekeeping
00:06:06
Speaker
the place? I'm trying to imagine, I mean, I understand maybe catching a swarm in a controlled, calm environment, but the idea of just a strewn about set of bees all over the place. Firstly, I don't know how you find the queen. I mean, I understand what you're saying, but
00:06:20
Speaker
I don't know how you find her in the maze of the ground like that, but if I recall the situation properly, I mean, I think he just did the best he could. I hope that he had her in there. And if worse comes to worse, if you don't have the queen, but you have a, you know, critical mass of these, you can always.
00:06:35
Speaker
produce another queen or graft another queen from another colony and put it in there and they'll kind of accept that as their new queen if they are actually queenless. So there are some kind of caveats to the situation where you can kind of salvage the hive without capturing the queen. But yeah, nine times out of ten, you just try to pick up as much as you can, pick up the mess you got and get everything out of the way. Because it's a hazard to people driving by as well, of course.
00:07:03
Speaker
Yeah, but it's a mess. So that happens. And now, fast forward to the present day, you are operating Ambrosian Candle Company.
From Hobby to Business: East Hill Honey
00:07:14
Speaker
But obviously, a lot of time probably between these two points, what does beekeeping look like for you in the beginning? How did you get started? How many hives do you start with? What's that progression look like? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, the first year I started with two colonies, which was recommended by Frank. He's like, you know,
00:07:33
Speaker
Even if you want to have a hundred, just start with two. Because if you don't understand the basic principles of keeping two colonies alive, you're just going to fail more miserably and lose more money the more you have. Which his advice is, I highly recommend that to other people as well. When people buy these from us, that's kind of our advice. Just start with two colonies. And we owned a little house in downtown Pensacola on a tenth of an acre.
00:07:57
Speaker
And there was kind of, I guess at that point I was kind of having a, you know, so to speak, an agrarian conversion or an agrarian moment where I was just married or married with about a year, just had her first child.
00:08:12
Speaker
there was this, I guess, desire to raise my family in a way that was kind of connected with reality. I mean, this was 2010, 2011, 2012. So you're starting to see the effects of just technology really
00:08:28
Speaker
taking people out of reality with the iPhone and all this other stuff, just kind of permeating our lives and reading different things. Emily and I really wanted to kind of have a more natural lifestyle. We couldn't really put it into words really, but this is like, this is what we want. So the B thing kind of came in and we produced about 150 pounds that first year and I sold it to my neighbors in about a week and a half.
00:08:52
Speaker
I'm like, well, maybe there's something to this. This is a desirable product. It's easy to sell. I thought, well, this is easy to produce. I mean, it was kind of just beginner's luck, in all honesty, in hindsight. So we started to build a network of other beekeepers in the community who had no interest in marketing their honey. They just wanted to keep bees. And they had honey that they would keep in 55 gallon food grade drums.
00:09:19
Speaker
And so we basically would aggregate their honey in addition to our honey, and we started creating this brand called East Hill Honey, which was kind of a throwback to the neighborhood that we lived in. It was East Hill Pensacola. And so we started this urban bee company in downtown Pensacola, and we're selling honey at the farmer's market online, grocery stores, boutiques, basically anywhere. And it just took off because no one in Pensacola at this time was really pushing local honey
00:09:47
Speaker
In the way that we were and so it just yet over period time we were selling tons of honey literally. At the same time these guys that i was buying the honey from the supplement and augment our production were also mentors to me.
00:10:04
Speaker
So they really kind of took me from keeping two hives and having no idea what I was doing to mentoring me on like actually not only how to sustain an apiary, but to grow it within without having to buy outside resources, how to graph my own queens, how to chase these different honey flows and time everything properly so you can capture all these different nectar sources and these different kind of microclimates that we have in Northwest Florida.
00:10:30
Speaker
So it was that from 2011, 2012, I was no longer the executive director of fraternus in 2012 and I went full time into basically honey selling and honey making.
Business Demands and Transition to Candle Making
00:10:45
Speaker
Did that from two thousand twelve two thousand twenty and we were kind of all things honey for the first i guess eight years. And it was exhilarating but it was exhausting because we were doing the farmer's market hustle every saturday i was managing at the end of it in twenty twenty i was managing about four hundred colonies on my own.
00:11:03
Speaker
And we had part-time help packing the honey, delivering the honey, doing the farmer's market. There was just a lot of moving parts. And in reality, what we really wanted to do was kind of simplify our life and just embrace the more of the homesteading way of life. Because we were really just honey people, which was a great thing, but it was crazy. And we had four little kids in 2020. And a friend approached us who was new to beekeeping, but very entrepreneurial.
00:11:32
Speaker
And he asked if we'd ever consider selling the brand. And I was like, absolutely. We're actually considering selling the brand. So it kind of worked out in the fall of 2020, where we sold East Hill Honey to a family there in Pensacola. And we were able to kind of
00:11:50
Speaker
invest more into kind of the homesteading way of life because the beekeeping became actually seasonal. Bees run down here in Florida, February through July is kind of our main production. And then it's kind of maintenance and it slows down considerably in the late summer or fall and winter so that we can spend that time in the off season. That's actually the best time to garden down here. We have a milk cow, pigs, chickens, all that other stuff.
00:12:17
Speaker
Um, so there's time and energy in my chair that has to go into that kind of thing. Um, so we've been doing that for the last four years is kind of, you know, this, there's more of a seasonality to our work. We're not just kind of constantly hustling from one market to the next. I mean, it was great. I love the interaction with the people, but it was just, it was a lot with a young family. And, uh, I mean, if the kids were 10 years older, it might be a different story, but at this point in time, it just made the most sense to kind of transition from.
00:12:46
Speaker
from Eastil Honey to the Ambrosian Bee Company that is, or Ambrosian Candles now. So, yeah.
Ambrosian Candle Company and Lifestyle Choice
00:12:53
Speaker
Well, I think what you're talking about, like the seasonal nature of work, I almost is pushing more towards that idea of subsistence farming or subsistence living. And I think there, it's a topic that continues to emerge across, I think this podcast, it's definitely something that we talk about in our family is working through the production time of the year and then finding a time that is,
00:13:13
Speaker
able to be a little bit quieter where you can spend some more time just, you know, in prayer and thought and reading and with your family. And I think it's a good goal for many people and something I imagine is going to continue to emerge. Yeah, absolutely. But I learned about, I don't know if you're familiar with like the West D12. It's a, I guess a world-class beer. I don't know if you've ever had it, but it's brewed by these Trappist monks in Belgium, I believe.
00:13:38
Speaker
And they had this motto. We don't brew beer. We brew beer to afford to be monks. We're not monks who brew beer. And they set their budget. And they sell only so much beer a year. And even though it's world-renowned and highly demanded, they don't care. They're just like, this is what we need for this year. And then they just shut it off. And as laymen, that really kind of had a profound
00:14:06
Speaker
impact on my the way I viewed money and business was like, I'm not just trying to go out and gain, you know, huge market share and, you know, have all this and all that, and be in all places. But really, it's like, what do I need? And, and, you know, with a little bit to set aside, and then beyond that, it's like, is it is it really detracting from my life? And or is it really enhancing my life? And basically, what I kind of concluded was like, it was taking away from our quality of life, you know, trying to be in all these different places and all these different stores. So
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, so the sustenance farming is kind of a simpler way. I mean, we still have the bees that make our cash, but we're trying to supplement more and more with what we're producing on the farm for our family.
00:14:53
Speaker
Right. So what is Ambrosian Candle Company then now? What do you all... I mean, obviously it's kind of in the name, I'm guessing candles, but what all exactly is Ambrosian Candle Company now? Right. So like I said, in 2020, when we kind of pivoted from being a retail farmers market wholesale honey company to just producing honey, and actually now we sell to people who distribute the honey locally.
00:15:20
Speaker
So, we're kind of more of the producer and less of the distributor, so to speak, at the point in time. And there were some years there that we were a little tight financially because we weren't producing as much as we needed. And we had this stockpile of like 10 years of wax that I hadn't done anything with.
00:15:43
Speaker
And so, and it was something Emily always wanted to do was to make candles, but we were just so busy with just the actual honey that I just, I didn't have the time for it in the mind share or we both didn't, you know, and so we, yeah, just started making candles for our chapel.
00:16:00
Speaker
and friends and family for the first couple of years. It was really this past year that we started making more of an online presence and selling it through our store, through Etsy. Now we have some people helping us part-time, but it's actually very seasonal and it fits really well with the bee thing because most of the candles sell during Lent.
00:16:29
Speaker
I'm sorry, during Advent and Christmas and then kind of preceding to candle mass. That seems like when most Catholics buy the candles. So it works out really well with our busy season with the bees. We're busy February through July and then have some time to make some candles and then sell them in the winter and fall. I mean, we sell them year round, but most of the candles seem to sell in the wintertime for Advent and Christmas.
00:16:53
Speaker
Yeah, I imagine even, you know, as we think about here buying candles by beeswax candles and having them on hand, that seems to fit pretty squarely with where, you know, we would buy them as well. Although I will say after looking at y'all's website, I am inspired more so to just start buying more and more candles and have them a bit all the time.
00:17:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's other motivators, you know, I mean, it's not necessarily approved, but the whole three days of darkness thing is there's I mean, there's a lot of people that buy them out of that, you know, concern. And really, just for private devotion, like, I mean, we, you know, we've built a little home altar and have candles when we say the family rosary. During Lent, we've been cutting out artificial light in the home and using candlelight that was kind of motivated by the kids. They wanted to, like, completely cut off all that. Well, we need to, you know,
00:17:38
Speaker
We don't have a larder or a root cellar down in Florida, so we probably still need to keep the refrigerator plugged in. But just trying to integrate it more into life. But yeah, they're really nice. It's kind of like a little ritual for the children. They take turns lighting the candles for the rosary or whatever at night. And it's a nice supplement to life, to the spiritual kind of ebb and flow in the home.
00:18:04
Speaker
Now, one thing about bees that a lot of people might be new to or unfamiliar with as they consider starting with bees is that there's a lot of terminology that goes into bees. There's different, you know, there's almost this entire societal structure within a colony. What insights can you provide about maybe the way that bees function, like as a unit, different roles, how they operate?
Bee Colonies and Mentorship
00:18:26
Speaker
What should someone expect? What could they know going into beekeeping that might be helpful to them, even just for understanding certain verbiage or naming structures?
00:18:34
Speaker
Right. So I guess preceding all that, I would say the best thing, someone who's sincerely interested in keeping bees, because there's two worlds of beekeepers, so to speak. There's bee havers and there's beekeepers. And I was a bee haver initially, and I had no clue what was going on, but once you
00:18:54
Speaker
and you kill a lot of bees, the bee havers, because you just don't know what's going on. So to kind of bridge that gap into actually being a beekeeper, you need a physical mentor. I mean, YouTube, there are useful things on YouTube, but the crazy thing is just like, you could be doing the right thing at the right time, but because you're in Indiana and I'm in Florida, you're going to kill your bees.
00:19:20
Speaker
So, it's very localized and it's very nuanced to the local area. So, the best thing that a beekeeper can do is find a local mentor in your community because there's so many nuances with bloom schedule and just winterizing the bees, all these different things. But to kind of get to your question, I would say, yeah, there's
00:19:42
Speaker
There's basically three types of bees in a colony. There's the queen bee, and then there's the worker bee. So the queen bee and the worker bee are female. The queen bee is fertile. She can lay eggs. The worker bees are virgins, and they don't have the capacity. Their ovaries were never developed to lay bees, to mate. And then the drones are the males.
00:20:09
Speaker
And you can tell the difference primarily by, you know, by the head and then the body. The queen bee is very long, has a really long thorax, real long body. And that's, I mean, she can lay up to like two to three thousand eggs a day. It's crazy that she can do what she can do.
00:20:27
Speaker
And then the worker bees are the typical bees you see flying around and they only live about four to six weeks during this season. And they're smaller and they literally work themselves to death. The first two weeks they spend kind of tending to the baby bees inside the hive. The second two weeks they kind of are moving honey and nectar from the field force up into the hive. Then the last two weeks of their life they spend out actually foraging and collecting pollen and nectar and water for the hive. So they have a very
00:20:56
Speaker
simple but hard life. And that's like the workforce. And then the drones, they can't collect pollen or nectar or water. All they do is eat, and then they mate with the queen outside of the hive. And they actually
00:21:14
Speaker
they meet in drone congregation areas throughout the area. Basically, all the drones will hang out at a certain light pole, wait for the queens from different hives to come, and they mate in mid-air, and then after mating, they die after mating. It's a pretty short-lived life for the drones, but a very necessary role. Each queen will actually mate with
00:21:35
Speaker
They've done some different studies, but anywhere from six to 40 different drones, they kind of have this, I guess it's just for genetic purposes to not have inbreeding in a particular area. So there's a lot of dynamics at play and we don't control those. We just try to work with nature as a beekeeper.
00:21:58
Speaker
But there's a lot, there's a lot to it. So that's why it's like having a mentor and being a part of a local community of beekeepers in person, not just online is like, it's, it's irreplaceable for the craft.
00:22:12
Speaker
Yeah, I'll give a plug for that too, because when we started raising bees, I had no idea what I was doing at all. And the very idea of opening up the hive itself and trying to find the queen or look for evidence the queen was even alive and laying eggs was daunting. I had no idea what I was looking for. You know, when you're looking at those thousands of bees, they all, like you're saying in the beginning here, they all look pretty much the same initially.
00:22:38
Speaker
But one thing that was really helpful to me is I have someone in the neighborhood here who owns a store was able to come over and also keeps bees. And he came over, put a suit on with me, walked out to the hive, opened it up and started looking through it, showing me different things here and there. And two things I remember distinctly that were interesting was that
00:23:00
Speaker
He was pointing out how some bees would stay on the deck of where they come in and out, and they would turn around so that their backside was in the air, and other bees would almost hit the deck and check in with them of some sorts. They were defending the hive. And then he was also showing me how different pollen, or how pollen came into the hive. And you can see the different colors of different pollen, so you can have an idea of what pollen is coming in from what types of flowers, or roughly. And that was so cool.
00:23:33
Speaker
You have to know your bees, you have to know how to keep your bees and what the instincts that the bees have. But you also, yeah, I mean, obviously equally and just as important, you need to understand what mother nature is producing, what pollen is coming in, what nectar is coming in, what's about to come in. And that's all going to dictate how you manage the colony with superannin and all that different stuff. And then you have to understand the pests. Unfortunately, the baroamite is a huge issue.
00:23:54
Speaker
Oh, yeah. No, it's fascinating. I mean, there's really a kind of
00:24:00
Speaker
pretty much worldwide now. I think there's a couple remote islands that don't have Varroa, but they introduce all these parasites and disease into the colony.
00:24:11
Speaker
and weaken the immune system of the bees. And it's probably the biggest reason why most hives collapse and fall apart. So understanding all these different dynamics at play, and like you're saying, it's like when you open this colony, it's really overwhelming initially. So having someone to kind of walk you through that, it really helps shorten the learning curve.
00:24:34
Speaker
Hey, thanks for listening to the episode. We hope you've enjoyed it thus far. There's more coming, so be sure to keep on listening.
Catholic Values and FIDE Email
00:24:41
Speaker
During this break, we encourage you to check out FeedA email. We recently switched our farm's email address to FeedA email. We were able to keep our custom domain at littlewayhomestead.com, and the switch was simple. They offer emails for individual users and for businesses.
00:24:55
Speaker
FIDE email represents much of what we hope our partners represent, the commitment to the Catholic faith including the way the business operates. We cannot recommend FIDE email enough and we hope you choose to switch to FIDE email for your current email provider.
00:25:10
Speaker
Now I've heard or seen marketed before different flavors of honey based on the forage that's available to them, like a lavender honey or a buckwheat honey.
Forage Influence on Honey
00:25:18
Speaker
How much does that forage really affect the flavor profile of the honey or the color of it or any other, you know, output of that honey? Yeah, it's substantial. I mean, it's, it's, it's, you know, from a Merlot grape to a Chardonnay, you know, uh, it's, it's all in the grape. It's the same thing with the honey. It's all in the flower. So.
00:25:38
Speaker
It's hard in most places to get a single floral variety and legally what's considered a single floral is 51% or more of that nectar comes from a particular flower, so like orange blossom honey.
00:25:54
Speaker
51% or more has to... But until you really get about 80%, the purity is not as noticeable. So once you get to about 80%, then it's like, wow, this is orange blossom honey or wow, this is too blow honey. It's easier to make single floral varieties in the monocultures, like in the orange groves or in the almond groves or probably on lavender farms. I don't have any experience with pollinating lavender.
00:26:22
Speaker
It's harder to do it in nature. We have these river basins down here where the white Tupelo gum tree is like the prized honey down here. And some years it just works out where the gallberry and everything else doesn't bloom at the same time as the Tupelo and the Tupelo just explodes and you get this beautiful honey that's just
00:26:43
Speaker
I mean, it's remarkable. It's exceptional honey. And everyone goes bonkers over and it's twice as expensive as the normal wildflower honey because there's all these things that go into it that have to line up to make it happen. But yeah, every flower definitely has a different profile like the almond honey out in California. A lot of beekeepers send their bees out there.
00:27:06
Speaker
to pollinate the almond groves and the honey is absolutely disgusting. Like you literally cannot swallow it. It's so bitter and it has just such a, you know, just a really strong acidic taste to it that
00:27:21
Speaker
Most people, yeah, would never even consider eating it. Some people apparently do put in their coffee and stuff, but yeah, it's very different. Buckwheat is really, really dark, you know, whereas Dutch clover is extremely light in color. So there's all these nuances and variances, which I really love. I mean, because you can kind of find bees only pollinate within about two to three miles of their hive. So if you literally move the colonies, you know, two or three miles, you can have a completely different profile and taste
00:27:49
Speaker
compared to another location. And we were doing that in Pensacola, or like the Gulf Breeze was an island, essentially a peninsula. And their honey completely tasted different than what we made in downtown Pensacola. And people were all about this neighborhood honey. And we're like, oh, I want Gulf Breeze honey. I want Pensacola honey.
00:28:07
Speaker
Um, and it, but it really was different. I mean, it was substantially different, but the taste and the profile, um, based on if there's enough distinction in the microclimates. So yeah, it's pretty cool. If someone were starting like a commercial venture for honey, is that something then they would consider, you know, as a dry, not just the property, maybe they have access to, but in this instance, would they drive around and try to figure out what the forage looks like in that area before establishing the colonies?
00:28:33
Speaker
For sure. I mean, it's as critical as understanding how bees propagate and work and everything. I mean, understanding what your forages are. Because you can be the best beekeeper and have the worst locations and be bankrupt in a year. Or you can be a decent beekeeper and have the best locations and be profitable. So location is everything and where you put them.
00:28:58
Speaker
We keep some bees around our shop, but we travel.
Location's Importance in Beekeeping
00:29:01
Speaker
We have about 800 colonies currently, and we travel up to about an hour from the shop, from our house, from our homestead, and we have colonies 40 here, 50 here, and we drive up to about an hour, hour and a half and sometimes.
00:29:15
Speaker
to find the best locations. And then a lot of it's trial by error, but a lot of times, you know, I'm driving around, I'm using Google Maps, kind of analyzing what is blooming in the area. A lot of times river bottoms, river basins are really good. There's a lot of good flowering deciduous trees along the river bottoms and pretty much all North America. So yeah, it's definitely a trial by error, but and kind of dialing it in and keeping the best locations and kind of letting go of the worst ones. So these to me have been
00:29:45
Speaker
I think you mentioned this word exhilarating. I find them to be absolutely fascinating the way that they interact with one another, the different roles they play, the way they work in the environment. I think these are uniquely intriguing amongst enterprises or amongst ventures on the homestead. Just absolutely fascinating.
00:30:05
Speaker
So I'm going to switch gears here just a little bit.
Upcoming Book: 'Liturgy of the Land'
00:30:08
Speaker
You have a book coming out that you co-authored this last year that's coming up in April, I believe, The Liturgy of the Land Cultivating a Catholic Homestead by Tan Book. Let's talk about that. What is the premise of the book? What would that look like to write a book? Was that your first book? Yeah, it was my first book and I co-authored it with Jason Craig, who was
00:30:33
Speaker
I've been a longtime friend since 2007, 2008. And myself, Jason Craig, and another gentleman, Justin Byance, the three of us started Fraternus kind of back in the day. And Jason still works for Fraternus full time and homesteads and has a small dairy. And he's written several books. So in all honesty, he was kind of a mentor to me in the process of writing this book.
00:31:02
Speaker
Um, and, and it's been really, I mean, really enjoyable to kind of learn the process. And, uh, there were certain things I underestimated and certain things that about lined up. Um, but the, the purpose of the book is really to, I mean, I guess it was kind of written, Jason and I both started kind of, we were, we both grew up either.
00:31:25
Speaker
not homesteading or not in that way of life at all. I grew up in the suburbs of Northeastern Texas. Jason grew up in Ohio and North Carolina, kind of back and forth a bit. And both of us kind of were new to this whole thing, you know, 15 years ago, 10, 10 to 15 years ago. And so in a way we were kind of writing it to that person that we were, you know, in the beginning 10 to 15 years ago, like very, you know,
00:31:52
Speaker
had a very romantic idea of everything and probably simplified everything initially and made a lot of mistakes.
00:32:01
Speaker
And so, yeah, the purpose of the book is really to kind of like to take a step back and look at what the knowledge and experience we have, you know, from doing it the last 10 to 15 years. This is how we would propose maybe going about it initially. And it's kind of a shift. I mean, the biggest thing is like there's a shift in the way you view your homestead versus the way we view everything in life. There's like almost a conversion, so to speak, needed in the way you view your work, you know, and how you
00:32:28
Speaker
It's not just like this punch in punch out, you know, it's not a time clock. It's a season. You're approaching everything with a seasonal lens rather than, you know, a time clock lens. And there's all these different kind of changes that really have to take place to, I think, successfully navigate the homestead way of life. It's kind of basically. And we really, I guess the main thesis is we propose is
00:32:50
Speaker
that the homestead is actually the most natural and historically normal way to raise a family. Most people were farmers or had some agrarian experience in one way or the other historically, and we've, you know, in a large way, got away from that as a society today.
00:33:10
Speaker
What was the process of writing a book? What did that look like for you? Was it an enjoyable experience? Does it take longer than someone might think? How do you set out on a venture to write a book? Yeah. I mean, so basically we pitched the idea and the fall of
00:33:30
Speaker
it'll be two years this fall. So it was that fall of 22 and then we basically started writing the out creating an outline for it and started kind of putting flesh on that in the wintertime and I had more time in the wintertime but it's yeah it's definitely and I find
00:33:51
Speaker
I think every person that works, you know, a mind worker that puts, you know, authors, it's gonna look a little different, kind of finding your time that works the best.
Writing Process and Overcoming Challenges
00:34:01
Speaker
But what I found that actually worked for me was two different things. One, to having a dedicated like, okay, I'm just gonna basically
00:34:09
Speaker
put thoughts down and words down on this particular topic and it doesn't have to be perfect for about an hour and just kind of get it out there. And then once it's out there, then you can kind of massage it and work it and organize it and make more sense of it.
00:34:25
Speaker
For me, the biggest challenge was just like, I feel like it had to be perfect initially, you know, but actually what Jason proposed was like, just get everything out there on a piece, you know, on, you know, on your laptop or whatever, and just start putting stuff down there. And then we'll kind of start making sense of that and organizing or cutting stuff out. So that was kind of, you know, took down the barrier of like, okay, this has to be perfect, you know, right when I'm putting it down and like this, you know, well organized thought. And the second thing was I, my, I actually, there was a period of time where I went away for about a week.
00:34:53
Speaker
My uncle has a farm up in Georgia. He has no Wi-Fi and horrible cell signal. And I went away up there for about a week and just was able to kind of get away from my normal way of life, you know, as far as like the responsibilities and distractions down here.
00:35:08
Speaker
And kind of like, you know, I guess a writer's retreat, so to speak. And that was really helpful as well. I only did that once though. So I hear some authors that actually have, that's like their way of, that's how they do it. And I could see the benefit of that. Like that's going away for months and writing in a place where you're not distracted. But the main, you know, work of it was, you know, an hour, hour and a half in the morning, just trying to get stuff out there, regardless if there was inspiration or not.
00:35:38
Speaker
And at this point, you've been homesteading for a few years, you've run, you know, it sounds like a very successful bee company in the beginning that was then sold, and now you've got a candle company still working with the bees, hopefully more time at home, balanced lifestyle, the faith is there.
Homesteading and Family Life
00:35:55
Speaker
Do you feel now that the idea of homesteading fits really well inside that framework, that other people should be invited into that, that it's something that is possible for others?
00:36:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's definitely possible for others. I think there's a lot that has to be weighed and considered with everyone's situation. Do you have student debt? What kind of mortgage do you have? What kind of lifestyle expectations do you have? Are you willing to live in an RV or a mobile home for a year and a half while you're building a home or saving money to build a home? There's all these things that I think have to be considered. It's hard to say.
00:36:29
Speaker
Should everyone just do it principally speaking? Yes, there's realities that exist on the homestead that you're not going to get in the suburbs. I mean, my son's up there milking a cow right now. He's 10 years old. He's milking our family cow.
00:36:46
Speaker
I mean he's one he's actually responsible for everything i don't have to create this false sense of responsibility for him like. I can you go do this cuz i need you to be responsible no it's like yes actually go milk the cow that's in that milk is sustenance for our family and he sees that you know.
00:37:03
Speaker
But as far as actually can everyone do it, I would say that at this point in time, I mean, maybe everyone can't do it. But I think people who are inspired to do it and have the means to do it or at a place in life that can, I think it's definitely a worthwhile proposal. Yeah, it's definitely been life changing for us and it's been extremely beneficial for us and raising the children.
00:37:29
Speaker
Did you have children prior to moving out to the homestead and beginning some of this work or were they already born and then they were brought with you? Yeah, so we started the B Company in 2011-2012 and we had
00:37:43
Speaker
three children before we bought this particular 10-acre parcel of land. We moved out here in 2016, there was nothing out here. We built an RV or we bought an RV, a small RV bumper pull and we built the honey house and I was working on our little house with the help of some friends and a couple subcontractors.
00:38:05
Speaker
And we had our fourth child out here at the farm. So yeah, we had three before, but they're all young and they were all willing to kind of like.
00:38:16
Speaker
They didn't really know anything different. They didn't have these expectations of Little League sports and all these different activities in town, which are good. But it's hard to have a life in town 45 minutes away and also have a life on the homestead and have some sense of sanity. For us, it's not really possible to do both things to the degree that we want to. So we've chosen this way of life. And it's having the children
00:38:43
Speaker
experiencing it at a younger age. Now, it's like this is what they know, this is what they love. And then all their friends from church want to come out to the farm. It's like, let's go hunt in squirrels or let's go feed the pig. Because it's just that they don't have that reality and they love it. It seems like children just love the interaction with the natural world in that way.
00:39:04
Speaker
Yeah, they definitely seem to, it seems to fit perfectly for what a child wants just naturally is this ability to be free and creative and it just seems to fit very naturally with a good way of raising a family.
00:39:22
Speaker
I'm thinking about the amount of work that goes into producing something from a homestead or even at a commercial venture. And if you're doing Honey, it is an example of a commercial venture. And I'm thinking of the use of that thing within the home and how much more impactful and how much more
00:39:39
Speaker
I want to say proud, but I think that that is probably an appropriate word, but proud. It might feel to be involved in producing something that then your family uses in its normal, everyday life. Talk about that experience, how it relates to honey and any of the other, maybe the candles and looking up, you know, praying the rosary and seeing that that's a candle that you help to produce. What does that experience
Pride in Homestead Production
00:40:00
Speaker
look like? Because I think a lot of people are yearning for that experience too.
00:40:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's you kind of stumbled on the word proud. And I think that's interesting because in the English language, we don't have there's a there's, you know, being prideful is bad, but being proud of, you know, who we are is is good, you know, having a sense of dignity. And I, I wish there was a different word. I think I think in French, there is actually a distinction between bad pride and good, good pride.
00:40:29
Speaker
But I think it's good, especially again for children, but also for us as parents to not only understand where things come from, but to
00:40:40
Speaker
There's a greater appreciation, I would say, is one of the greatest fruits of creating something. You're less likely to waste it, or if there is waste, you look for a creative way to put it to use. I mean, a pig is a perfect example of that, like any of the waste that the house, the kitchen makes goes to the pig, and the pig comes back to us in the form of bacon and pork and whatnot.
00:41:09
Speaker
There is, it's just a man was created to work, but we're also, you know, created for God. And there's just a, it's more of an integrated way of life, I guess is the best way to put it.
00:41:24
Speaker
You know, I could go off and get a paycheck, come back, slap it on the table. She goes to get groceries. You know, the kids are off doing this with this sport. And that's where we have to pay for that and this and this. And we all are kind of living this, we sleep in this house, but we live our lives outside of the home. Whereas homesteading, there's just as much work, if not more work, but it's, we're doing it together. I mean, there's a sense of like,
00:41:44
Speaker
And I think there's, you see that culminate when you actually produce a good that benefits, like when my son Gabriel is milking, and last night we had a summer at my wife's birthday, we made ice cream with the cream that we produce, the honey that we produce, the eggs that we produce.
00:42:02
Speaker
We had steak from our cow. We had mashed potatoes from the garden and arugula salad. And it's like, we don't eat every night, like 100% from the home, but the kids really wanted to make that a thing for my wife. And there was just...
00:42:19
Speaker
Yeah, a great appreciation for the sacrifice of the cow and the work that went into everything as a family that I don't think would be there if everything was just bought. I mean, it wouldn't be there. And I think it integrates, it brings everything closer, like the family becomes more of not just like this
00:42:45
Speaker
group of people living and sleeping in the same house, but it's actually like we're dependent upon each other as an economic unit.
00:42:54
Speaker
And not just, you know, so I can pay for everyone's things, but it's like, we need everybody to participate in this, to live, to live our life. And there's a simplicity in that, but there's also a joy and a great appreciation for what we produce, but also for the other person that helps produce it. Well, off that, because you mentioned ice cream and honey, here's a super personal question. Do you put honey on top of ice cream?
00:43:19
Speaker
No, we actually made it in it. I mean, it was like in the cream and then the butter and then before we put it in there. But no, it was all blended in together. But yes, as far as the topping goes, actually, I prefer maple syrup. It's kind of funny, but yeah, I prefer the maple syrup. But the honey ice cream was excellent. It was really good. It sounds great. My favorite ice cream topping is honey. So you don't hear it come up too often, but it's absolutely delicious.
00:43:49
Speaker
All right, last one I got for you then, maybe round out the whole interview combining the book and the beekeeping and the home setting. Let's say someone wants to get into beekeeping.
Faith and Beekeeping
00:43:58
Speaker
What are some of the lessons that hopefully they can take away from the art or the practice of beekeeping to help them better understand the faith? I mean, on a very simple level, I guess I would just kind of, yeah, as far as the bees go, there is just a,
00:44:17
Speaker
There's a complexity to it, but there's a simplicity to it that just, I mean, obviously it points to, you know, to God, to a creator. I mean, I've known people who are atheist or, you know, kind of whatever, agnostic, who got into bees and they've literally had a conversion to,
00:44:40
Speaker
to the faith because of just the intricate nature of the whole thing. I mean, it's just remarkable how it all works and for it to just be half in stance and just because, you know, whatever. It's impossible to explain it, you know, so there's just.
00:44:55
Speaker
I would just, yeah, the beauty and the simplicity of the beekeeping way of life, but also the homesteading way of life is just, it's something that is definitely worth pursuing. If one has the means, even if it's on the hobby level, it's just a, it's a way to, I guess, to ground our life in a way, in a world that's kind of spinning out of control in a lot of ways. So yeah, highly recommend it if possible.
00:45:21
Speaker
Awesome. Where can people find you, your website and the upcoming book?
Where to Find Products and Book
00:45:27
Speaker
Yeah. So Ambrosiancandles.com is our website and we have links to a couple of social media platforms that were on there. And then Tan Publishing was our publisher. And so they have the book on their website, but I think they also have it listed on Amazon as well. And we'll have it listed on our website if you can buy direct from us for a signed copy.
00:45:53
Speaker
Great. Well, hey, appreciate you joining us today, talking all things bees, the faith, and hope to talk again soon. Absolutely. We appreciate it, Matthew. Thank you for joining us on another episode of the little way farm and homestead podcast. Check out the show notes for more information about this episode and be sure to tune in next week.