Well, I guess this post will show you exactly how my mind wanders. It took me a year to write the first blog post and although I promised to myself to write one per month, here I am almost three years later finally updating the website with my SECOND blog entry. I’m going to have to develop a reward system for myself to keep me writing here monthly. Haha.

A lot has happened in the past few years. My children have grown tremendously and so has our honey farm. We purchased a farmstead in Turtle Lake, North Dakota in late 2022 and spent all of 2023 working on the new honey house. I just sent in my first tax payment for the property (very late) because it turns out that my property taxes ARE NOT paid along with my mortgage so that’s something I am grateful I caught on to sooner rather than later. We bought a brand new honey extractor from Cowen Manufacturing along with all the shenanigans that go along with it–honey & wax separator, heating unit, wax melter, etc. The delivery of the honey extractor was an epic story in and of itself.

For starters, we are talking about a machine in the six figure range. This was such a huge deal for us, a big investment and very exciting. Last time we ordered a brand new honey extractor was in 2011 so it had been a few years since we had received shiny new equipment. We called the gentlemen at Cowen to let them know we had sent our truck driver on his way and he would show up the following day. As so often happens, life and traffic interfered with our plans and our driver, Tony, showed up one day late. I wish I could have seen the faces of the guys over at Cowen when they saw the truck with the “JP HONEY FARMS” logo pull up! Any guesses on why they were so shocked? The story is almost so ridiculous that it is hard to believe. A truck had pulled up the day before (when we were supposed to arrive) to pick up the load. Cowen Manufacturing didn’t have any other shipments for the day so they assumed it was a truck we had sent and loaded him and sent him off. When Tony showed up, they were in disbelief. I remember being at a car wash in Minot when my husband Jose called to tell me our extractor was missing. For about an hour of our lives we were all in a state of panic, anger, disbelief. So many racing thoughts. For a few minutes I was convinced this was a conspiracy. Another beekeeper must have known we were picking up and showed up right before our driver. I questioned my husband, “Who did you tell? Which of your beekeeper friends knew you were picking up yesterday?” I just about called the FBI. I am laughing to myself recalling the events. How can I possibly think a million thoughts within a span of a few minutes. I knew that I had to establish a 200 mile radius around Parowan, Utah and find all of the truck stops and weight stations to ask and question whether any truck with a honey extractor had passed by. This was a heist. There was no other explanation. Also, who is responsible for this? We had already paid, would we get reimbursed? Why are the cops not shutting down every freakin interstate and hunting this guy down??

It turns out this was a typical case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time combined with a very ignorant driver. The driver that picked up was lost. He had to pick up a load in another city over 20 miles away and because of a cruel prank courtesy of his gps system, he ended up at Cowen Manufacturing and said “I am here for the load.” He clearly signed a bill of lading. A bill of lading with our customer name on it. A bill of lading with Cowen Manufacturing logo on it, with the city they were located in written on it–a bill of lading that clearly indicated this shipment was to delivered in Turtle Lake, ND not Riverside, Ca which is where we found our machine almost an hour after we all had mini heart attacks. The truck driver was so upset that he showed up with the wrong load and would not get paid, that he was unwilling to drive the machinery back to Utah. We didn’t care. Tony hauled right on over to Riverside, California to pick it up. But I have so many questions. Didn’t anyone contact the driver to let him know his original load had not been picked up? Did he get fired? This is not an “uh-oh” mistake this was a huge mistake. I am just so grateful the machine was located and that our honey house was able to pull our first honey harvest in North Dakota this past Summer. Whereas before we had to ship our honey supers to our honey house in California, we were able to save on freight and extract right there.

Currently, we just wrapped up almond pollination a few weeks ago, hauled a couple thousand hives to Washington for apple pollination and are in the process of bringing those bees down to California again to produce Sage honey. We are getting ready to head back to North Dakota this Summer and will start sending the bees there in May. It is definitely a cycle, these bees are very well traveled.

I am going to wrap this up before it gets to exhausting to read. I promise myself a very nice dinner at Harris Ranch if I follow up with a blog post next month. Lol. Best wishes to you and thank you for reading.

-Jess