September rally

-Posted by Isaac

Starting with the Honeyfest, September is the month for festivals. We all have our favorites. Here’s one in southern Ohio that our family will never miss:

…As long as our kids are young. It’s great free entertainment. We go for the music and the bouncy houses. And of course the pawpaw food and pawpaw beer.

It’s more of an Earth loving, science loving, hippie, peacenik crowd. The first thing I like to do is research the parking lot.

Most years we camp with our hippie friends.

And we enjoy hippie things like pollinator appreciation.

But the Pawpaw isn’t the only rally for pollinators. Not to be outdone, the Farm Science Review just north of London holds its own brand of science and pollinator appreciation. Later in the week, we made our way to a small green oasis in the middle of the Big Ag extravaganza.

We hear all the time about how we need our pollinators and how honey bees account for about a third of the food we eat… but in the midwest they certainly don’t account for a third of the Ag economy. Around here, Corn is King.

It’s a corn driven economy, and that becomes very evident at the Farm Science Review.

It takes big machines to handle all that corn. We see the future on display at London, and we see the present on our drive there. Corn is most definitely King.

It was somewhat empty at the FSR this year.

Partially because the farmers were all in the fields. Harvest has come early to central Ohio. But another more ominous reason for the lack of attendance was the present price of the commodity. When corn falls below $3.00/bushel, basically below the price of production, farmers are not quite as interested in looking at shiny new machines.

Not even shiny new monster trucks.

I’ve had my criticisms of Big Ag before, and as you may know it’s landed me in hot water. I won’t go there this time. Let’s just hope that the price of corn goes up. It’s scary that so much of our food production lifestyle here in Ohio depends on communications with the world. A lot hinges on the Big Ag economy.

Plus, Lord knows, we all need to eat. And communicate.

Speaking of eating… speaking of good eating… the goldenrod continues to be fantastic! Our bees are getting fat.

Just look at that pollen!

On the pollen runs this week, it was all I could do to keep up. Every other day the traps needed emptied.

Between the running and collecting, I plugged away with the mite treatment. Finished up with the last yard yesterday out at Circle S Farms.

I dropped these bees in early August and was happy so see that they did their job. Pumpkins everywhere! It was hard not to trip. I was even happier to see that most of the hives had also made a box of honey.

Some lucky years, if the stars aline and the weather is perfect, we get to double dip with the pumpkin pollinators. Hey, we’ll take it. Better for the bottomline. No, that’s not pumpkin honey. Judging from the smell, I’m guessing that the bees found the goldenrod in nearby Battelle Darby Metro Park.

We’ve got bees in five different pumpkin locations. As it’s not my normal route between yards, usually I’m able to see something new or different on the drive. This time, sightseeing on my way home, I couldn’t help but stop to admire the showcase of some true patriots.

Is that a threat or a promise?

Had to stop the truck for this one. I really wanted to capture that big Confederate flag in its full glory, but the wind wouldn’t cooperate. After a few long seconds of photo taking on the sly, it occurred to me that these folks were most likely very strong supporters of the Second Amendment. I’d best get a move on.

Luckily I didn’t see a soul.

Maybe they were all at the rally?