-Posted by Isaac

We're here! We've arrived! Finally made it to the promised land. This is the year that we get to send all four of them off to school.

Seeing the ripened fruits of our property taxes. Thank you Westfall Schools!

So Jayne and I get to act like kids again.

We had all the kids in school, and we had an anniversary. To celebrate, we made it down to Lewisburg, WV to catch our favorite band.

Front row seats to see Shovels and Rope at the historic Carnegie Theater. What an awesome gift Jayne got herself. As always, I'm happy to be along for the ride. And what ride it is! I borrowed the title of this post from one of their songs. It seems fitting for this time of year. For all kinds of reasons.

Do you agree?

Lewisburg is a small town cultural hub in southern West Virginia. Lots of Civil War history down there. In fact the morning after the concert, we were hiking in a nearby state park and stumbled on the reenactment of the Battle of Scary Creek.

Neither of us yankees had ever been to a reenactment. We spent a couple interesting hours walking through the Confederate camps, talking trash, quoting Abe Lincoln. 

When the battle finally happened, it occurred to me that life as a Civil War actor was probably much more comfortable than life as a Civil War soldier. 

This battle happened in July, 1861. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed that the 2018 reenactment may have lost some of the original edginess.

It was a fun trip, but we couldn't play forever. All four of our little soldiers are in soccer this year. This means practice almost every evening, and the chaotic Saturday routine of waking up and putting on the armor. Ready for battle! (It's now 6:50 a.m. and the rush begins in about 5 minutes... I just heard someone stir.)

Jayne and I are clueless coaches this year. But I've learned from years past, you don't have to be a soccer genius to coach 4 year olds. You just spend more time on directions- like which direction to kick it.

Let's hear some bee news...

We finished up with the summer honey extracting last week. No sooner had the last frames run through, and I finally got the call to move the last thirty hives into the pumpkins. We have about 48 on various farms already. This group came from our home place, and it was sure hard to take those girls away from the beautiful buckwheat.

But they had work to do.

They say that honey bees are not as vital to pumpkins as they are to other crops like apples. This may be true, but every year I see plenty of evidence that they still work hard on those big orange blooms. Within 20 minutes of me setting the hives down, every flower within walking distance had several bees pecking around.

And finally...

Got the pollen traps on! This is never a job I look forward to, as it takes several days and the bees are never happy. They just don't like those things. It takes them a few days to figure out how to work the traps.

Some learn faster than others. The above shot was taken four days after the traps went on. You can see the hive on the right is starting to figure it out.

Hopefully as the goldenrod comes on, they'll all jump on that learning curve. Even the dummies.