( a new honeybee haven in the hills )

a new honeybee haven in the hills

by jennifer hetrick

a trained police officer and bagpipe player in a band called the punkabillys, jason marshall is trying out another life-hat in his latest pursuit of raising honeybees just outside of zionsville in hereford township, berks county.

     

while serving with the douglass township police department in montgomery county, marshall stopped to chat a few times with adam nowicki who resides on merkel road in gilbertsville, once handing a jar of his backyard sourced honey to marshall while he was on duty. marshall felt a slow affection brewing for the idea of raising honeybees for himself, someday. last summer, he finally took his curiosity to a serious level, but it was too late in the season to bring bees in for the year. this past may, he had several thousand honeybees shipped up from hardeman apiaries in georgia, building the hives himself.  

marshall’s left arm, peppered with tattoos, often attracts the bees right on the spots where cherry blossom and lotus flowers are painted into his skin. he feels their airy, light pecking from the tattoos confusing the bees into thinking they’re really attempting pollination through the ink.

in the very beginning, marshall parked a chair on his back lawn and sat observing the behaviors of the honeybees, in awe of their way about life.

     

“i love the smell of wax, honey, and wood,” marshall says about the hives. “it amazed me, once you start working with them, how gentle they are.”

     

marshall notes that it’s usually other nearby flying insects which are aggressive and threatening—honeybees will only sting (and then take a turn into belly-up status) if you really anger, irritate, or disrespect them. yellow jackets are often seen buzzing around hives, as unkind stinging winged ones, but they stick around because they, like many humans, want honey for the taking, too.

     

honeybees do their best to defend their territory, their homes, to invasion from not only yellow jackets but unfortunately, also terribly destructive mites and other diseases which sometimes attack honeybee hives.

     

in the first year, honeybees only produce a watery sugar mixture. so marshall anticipates having some honey to jar up next season, if he can keep his colonies alive through the cold of winter, which is one of the hardest trials of a new beekeeper.

     

marshall explains that during winter, honeybees flock together into a softball-sized mass, fluttering their wings closely in the air in order to keep warm, not freezing. if the honeybees only cluster into a golf ball-sized mass, they will not survive, he reveals about small details making a big difference in survival chances.

while researching the lives of honeybees and their connection to people, marshall discovered that some asian countries have such a devastated supply of them that they use chicken feathers to whisk around in place of bees’ work, since pollination can’t usually occur in nature, aside from self-pollinating plants, without the help of honeybees. this says a lot in light of food production for people and the importance of not letting honeybees fall into jeopardy or extinction.

     

in his five hives, marshall houses four italian queens and one russian queen. one of his hives has a somewhat more aggressive bunch of bees to it, which he says is because the feisty queen passes on her genetic traits to them, meaning her offspring will be similarly aggressive. but for the most part, his honeybees are happy, kind creatures.

     

a misconception marshall has seen in some people is that with urban beekeepers, neighbors sometimes get stung and blame it on the honeybees. but ordinarily, they’re being stung by another type of flying insect, unfairly putting the blame on honeybees.

     

marshall has taken several courses in the subject of beekeeping since his start, but he continues to seek out more educational resources for this ongoing learning experience. most recently, he participated in a pennsylvania association for sustainable agriculture-sponsored course called late season care for bees: a hands-on workshop for intermediate beekeepers, hosted at two gander farm in fleetwood.

     

he’s working to become involved in different beekeeper associations throughout southeastern pennsylvania, thankful that beekeeping isn’t a competition but instead something those running their own apiaries are happy to talk about with others in the same field. marshall notices that people enjoy hearing him tell his story of raising honeybees, as they seem to find it a curious labor. it doesn’t hurt that honey is all too easy to love, too. marshall hopes to have a bit of honey for bottling next year if his bees make it through the chilly season. if all goes well, he’ll even have a bit of honey to sell.

     

to reach marshall for a pinch of  honey-speak, e-mail him at dropkickmarshall@yahoo.com. 

( hike your heart on out, a bit )

hike your heart on out, a bit

by jennifer hetrick

set back within a stretch of more than 400 acres in amity township, berks county, is monocacy hill off of geiger road.

the township purchased the land from a quarry in 1967 using federal and state assistance; since then, it has stood as a continued landmark of appreciation for nature and the outdoors to both people living near the hill and trail enthusiasts from around the region.

     

in 1998, the monocacy hill conservation association stirred into existence at the hands of locals who felt a strong need to preserve and care for the area well out of respect for how valuable it is, especially with so much development evident even with the fortunate spans of agricultural sweeps around the douglassville area.

     

the association today has about 20 to 25 active members who volunteer in tending to the trails and landscapes around the hill, but the member lineup actually totals about 90. this is an integral component in the association in that membership is its primary source of funding to continue preserving and protecting the space.

( red trillium, bloodroot, & cardinal flower are some of the blooming 

beauties tucked in along sections of monocacy hill

photos courtesy of risa marmontello )

the association’s president, risa marmontello, points out that active members maintain the parking and picnic areas, along with keeping the trails cleared, which means identifying fallen limb and tree debris after bad storms. the association even added benches as break stops on trails when feet begin to grow tired, and large educational signs about native plants are also scattered throughout the hill’s paths, thanks to the association’s efforts.

     

today, the expanse encompasses five trails totaling about five miles. the longest, lower trail, starts at the parking lot and loops around the base of the hill. creek trail follows the south side of the park and leads to a small waterfall which a lot of people gravitate to when they visit for hiking. monocacy trail is the steepest and leads to a captivating, well-sought after viewpoint over a small portion of the county. stonewall trail connects lower trail in two places, and railbed trail curves around the northern part of the hill near a railroad line which was dug in but never actually used.

( a view from monocacy trail

photo courtesy of risa marmontello )

marmontello is known to be trimming and clipping at overgrown foliage and lower plants when she find herself trotting along the trail, and she’s hoping to do a little more maintenance here and there at the hill this winter if the weather by chance cooperates away from snow-saturated days in the next few months.

     

with several invasive species on the grounds, the association is working to remove them, as time permits. boy scouts have contributed in replenishing native tree seedlings, like oak, maple, poplar and hickory samplings.

     

another detail making the hill indispensible in the local landscape is that, being undisturbed, it holds water better than it would if it were stripped or developed, adding to its ecological significance.

     

throughout a year’s time, the association hosts several fitness walks, along with a native wildflowers walk in the early spring and a fern walk each autumn. annually, a geologist visits the trails to talk about features specific to the hill, and all educational and recreational walks are free to the public. a new history walk is also in the works.

( this mossy water feature sits along creek trail

photo courtesy of risa marmontello )

there is even at least one geocache along the trail; geocaching is the adventurous hobby of seeking out small, hidden containers full of trinkets set out at specific coordinates findable through global positioning system devices, with the specific location information available on www.geocaching.com.

     

to find out more about the monocacy hill conservation association, see maps of thetrails, and keep updated on events revolving around hiking and recreational fun, visit www.monocacyhill.org or search for the association on facebook.

     

and to meet the association’s members, learning more about the trails and volunteering at the hill, stop in at their autumn open house scheduled for sunday, october 16 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

( a visit to wholesome dairy farms’ kitchen, where cows are the real bosses )

by marian wolbers

the big news at wholesome dairy farms in yellow house, pa, is the kitchen—not the perfectly textured yogurt that begs to be placed in a bowl and married to juicy peaches, cherries, ripe blueberries, or tupelo honey.

it’s the new kitchen—not the fact that curds produced there are already driving traffic to philadelphia’s trendiest new restaurant, the blind pig, where hungry canadians are heading, reportedly driving across the border just to get a taste of the poutine firsthand. (poutine is a french canadian dish of french fries slathered in gravy and curd, which takes three days to make.)

it’s the kitchen where dairy manager rebecca seidel performs milk magic, taking the nutrient-rich, raw milk from the farm’s ayrshire herd and creating creamy yogurt, yogurt cheese, ricotta, domestic feta, kefir, and any other yum-food that gets seidel’s culinary talents churning.

in fact, with this kitchen in operation, visitors can soon expect frozen yogurt to make its way into a freezer out there in the lush countryside. and as always, jugs of raw milk are available anytime in the small dairy store, so customers can purchase products directly, right next to the barn. the milk is also sold at kimberton whole foods, echo hill country store, and hershey harvest.

wholesome dairy farms, run by veterinarian-farmer mark lopez, where he settled down with his veterinarian wife, is one of a select number of farms that must pass stringent, state-regulated, twice-a-month safety and sanitation tests month safety and sanitation tests for pure, raw milk straight from grass-fed cows. developing a kitchen has been part of a larger plan lopez had for his evolving business, which he hopes will one day be not just totally natural, but fully powered by solar energy. early on, he knew that his main product, the milk itself, was special: “i love the milk itself. i just don’t get enough of it. this milk is like midas—you know, how everything midas touched turned to gold ? anything you make with this milk is awesome.”

unlike the raw milk, though, products like yogurt and kefir have to be pasteurized. hence the kitchen. it’s not big. “it’s made out of a shipping container,” explains lopez. “at first,  we called it ‘the container.’ then, for a while, it was ‘the yogurt container.’ finally, it became ‘the kitchen.’”

it sits behind the store area, and inside is sink areas, shelving, and a shiny pasteurizing vat, similar in size to a smallish kiln used for making pottery. the remnant chunks of newly made feta cheese—raw milk feta aged for 60 days—lie on the cutting table near an enormous knife, as seidel has just finished processing her latest savory treat.

as lopez and his dairy manager display the kitchen with obvious pride and hope for its future, the kitchen seems to represent more than an officially okayed and designated room that the health department approves of. it is an expression of a continuous, careful, natural, organic expansion of a dairy farm that is udderly dedicated to providing people with good food.

texture is important. so is purity of taste. and, comparatively speaking, processed and over-processed dairy foods cannot come close to what wholesome dairy farms can make in its comparatively tiny kitchen.

( the milk store, fresh feta, mark lopez & rebecca seidel and yogurt & fruit for breakfast - 

photos by marian wolbers; cow-savvy eye-scenes courtesy of www.wholesomedairyfarms.com )

it’s local. it’s tangible. it’s where a simple, healthful, white liquid transforms into a   myriad of partly solid (yogurt, various spreads, ricotta) and solid (cheeses, kefir, squeaky curds) foods that can be enjoyed “as is” or cooked as ingredients in everything from lasagna and stuffed shells to elegant appetizers, spinach-and feta pies, and desserts. 

which is precisely why the farm will not only survive but grow—at its own, good, pace, much like a cow’s own pace: steady, not fast; dependent on good care and great hygiene; calm, free of injected hormones, uncrowded, unstressed.

apparently, having a vet as their owner means living the good life for the 45 or 46 cows that fit into the barn’s stanchions. these girls are well tended, well fed on ample pastureland, and well exercised, roaming outside 7 hours by day and 11 at night. it’s a complete no-brainer, then, that they are relaxed when it comes to sanitizing their teats to prep for the milking machinery, yielding both good milk and an easier milking experience for lopez and seidel at 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. daily.

a dairy farm, as everyone knows, is a fulltime work-life. yet it’s a life lopez loves, evidenced by his giving up a veterinary practice to devote himself to this cow-venture. “you know,” he comments, “i never drag myself to the barn.” summing up, he shares his simple equation for success: “happy cow, happy veterinarian, happy customers.”

it’s a sweet life for a family, too, for this operation exists not just on any old farm, but on the same land where lopez spent happy summer days. it’s not unusual for his mom to wait on you when you drive up to purchase dairy or their nitrate-free meats and free-range eggs. today, the farm is well on its way to becoming a model for green energy and locally produced food, with methane-reduced dairy cow feeding strategies, oil-reclaiming practices, and ever-evolving, holistically driven, scientifically sound facilities and practices.

on a sunlit morning, after all the big-eyed, brown-and-white beauties have gone out to pasture, you might find lopez and his 3-year-old daughter happily scooping up yogurt and granola for breakfast. it’s one of lopez’ favorite things they do together.

thanks to the new kitchen, of course.

how to get wholesome:

for info on raw milk, mark lopez, dvm, can be seen on youtube in “how to milk a cow.” you can also visit wholesome dairy farms in person, or virtually on facebook.

for directions to buy milk and ridiculously sly dairy, see their website: www.wholesomedairyfarms.com. open tuesday through friday from 10  to 5.30 and saturday from 9 to 4.

for fast relief from stress:  click on the “photo gallery” on the farm’s website for a fine album of joyful bovines. you will soon see that just looking at cow-faces—kelly, ivory, gilly, yogi, claire, sheron faye, and all the rest of the lassies—both mesmerizes and relaxes. these indeed are lucky, lucky cows. 

news, not blues volume twenty-four is out !

grab it up ! volume twenty-four of news, not blues is out !

it's quite book-savvy too.

( a place where books hug the heart )

a place where books hug the heart

by jennifer hetrick

it’s only been a few months since boyertown welcomed itself the reprieve of something long overdue—a bookstore, and one with copy after copy at a price that doesn’t pinch wallets in half too hard.

the book nook at 130 east philadelphia avenue, in the old rhoads opera house building, opened its doors to the public april 30.

owner holly wood, who knows her name’s pun-worthy nature will never lose its luster, spent 13 years as a stay-at-home mom and knew that after the stint, she wanted to bring her love of reading into the boyertown community, given that no one else had dived into those proverbial pages of life on the main strip of route 73.

before the business plans had unfolded, holly’s husband james researched to find out if any bookstores, exclusively new or mingled with used copies, had been in the town in the past. he discovered that a stationery store which also sold books carved its history into the town in the 1960s but that nothing else had popped into the picture since then.

with the next closest used bookstore as gently used books in douglassville, wood has etched an important resource into the streetscape in boyertown, already reeling in regular customers who visit her a few times a week to peruse her constantly changing selection on the shelves.

the storefront spans a little less than 1,000-square-feet and has possible room for expansion if needed, wood says. with trade-ins thickening her supply more and more each week, she reveals that she’s noticed mystery thrillers taking quite a hold on local readers with their purchases. classic literature and of course romance are also often-grabbed sellers, and her children’s section has grown considerably since those mid-spring days of operation.

“books are very important,” wood says. “reading is good for your mind, keeping it active, and it’s needed in daily life.”

she has read so many books over her lifetime that pegging one as her favorite is an impossible feat, but she has always encouraged reading fruitfully with her children who are often seen trotting around the store, throwing their mom a hand in helping to organize books on the shelves. out of all the tasks though, spencer, 13, emily, 9, and natalie, 8, gravitate most fanatically to stamping the prices on the books.

the rhyme-happy and easily accessible location of the book nook is all the more valuable in the local landscape for the fact that more affordably priced books are certainly a financial relief in a time when economic conditions are dragging so much down across the municipal, county, state, and national levels. books at sensible prices and within a reasonable reach between running errands in town lead to this storefront standing as quite its own gem in boyertown.

while wood serves to try to keep an eye out for books customers request, the summer reading requirements students in area senior and junior highs are mandated to eye-peruse before each new academic year have become a big hit for the shop, especially via facebook wall inquiries. the idea came to wood because of her son’s junior high summer reading requirement list sitting in front of the family. since the book nook has been receiving such attention for how wood strives to find exactly what people are looking for within the world of books, this is just one more angle of how she keeps shoppers peeling their way through her storefront and is becoming increasingly appreciated by locals, even away from online book-selling sites.

with paperbacks, trade-ins are 25 percent of the lowest cover price toward store credit. hardcover books of fiction and nonfiction, less than three-years-old, are worth up to 50 percent of their selling price and are generally sold at 75 percent of the cover price, with all books taken requested to be in good condition, and luckily, that usually works out, wood says.

up to 50 percent store credit can be applied to purchases and doesn’t expire, wood explains.

some people even stop in to donate their books, not expecting store credit while kindly building the supply on the shelves which is now beyond 23,000 books.

dvds in the front movie (sometimes with the books they stemmed from also on the shelf) section of the store are a popular seller too, with trade-in credit as $1 each.

wood donated several gift certificates as prizes to the boyertown community library with its children’s and adult summer reading program, which has book slips available to be filled out for attempted wins. slips are due by august 16 but can be submitted to the library sooner.

being able to supply people with the exact books they’re looking for is what wood says she appreciates most about her everyday efforts handled one book at a time, making boyertown a bit more wholesome one page at a time.

the book nook is open tuesday through saturday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and sunday from 12 to 5 p.m. search for “the book nook in boyertown” on facebook to find out more. 

$1,250.00+ raised to help an oley family after a house fire.

since an oley valley family's home burned down in late may, their kind neighbors at glick's greenhouse have been raising donations in jars at their cash register counters to help them out. 

the amount they collected in jars via thoughtful-hearted plant-buying customers up their way resulted in $982.35 to donate to the abrahams, the family affected by the fire. glick's greenhouse has amiably agreed to donate the final sum totaling the amount to an even $1,000.00.

we've also sold about $250.00 in soaps, including some monetary donations.

thank you to everyone who has some way contributed and helped this cause for the abrahams !

( our harpist in the hills )

our harpist in the hills

by jennifer hetrick

a cleveland transplant to boyertown’s earl township, betsy scott chapman wears many proverbial job-hats in her life, but one that makes her a unique and seasoned asset to the area is her musical role of harpist.

chapman relocated to bally in 1983 and bought her home in boyertown just six years later.

in 1988 is when she took up the harp as an adult, having wanted to learn it as a child but knowing she would be seriously limited in finding a harp and also an instructor in her hometown back in the 1960s.

“i thought the sound was beautiful, and you don’t have to be really good but can still sound good when you play it,” chapman says with amusement.

“secondarily, i’m a big fan of fantasy and science fiction books, and harps are always in them,” chapman adds. “in those books, harps usually have magical powers, and they’re always in tune—in real life, they go out of tune every time you move them.”

she ordered her first-ever harp from a mail order catalog and found a teacher in wyomissing, and there her studying began.

chapman currently owns five harps; each one is all its own for her different purposes, or at least that’s what she says she tells herself to rationalize having such a number of them. a few months ago, she had six but sold one.

“the earliest sort of pictures that we have of a harp-like instrument are from about 3,000 b.c. from the egyptians in tombs and caves,” chapman elaborates. “we know it started from something like a hunting bow— the old ones were c-shaped with one string, and some then had two or three strings.”

but in contrast, “harps taking on the triangular shape better known today showed up in celtic countries a few thousand years later, able to hold more strings and with greater tension,” she says.

chapman has performed harp music in a variety of countries in different parts of europe, living in france and studying the practice of the instrument there in a conservatory in the early 1990s.

a history buff on the harp through and through, chapman also plays the piano, clarinet, flute, and guitar. she dabbles in percussion and sound effects as well while working at the tri-county performing arts center & village productions in pottstown.

“my dad used to play piano; he could play anything you wanted to hear, but only by ear,” chapman notes. “he never took lessons until after he retired at the age of 62, and he played the piano and organ up to right before he died.”

“i think everybody's a musician,” chapman says. “you just have to find how.”

figuring harpists are few and far between in this area is a bit of a throw-off too, as chapman can name six others in a 10-mile radius who either consider themselves performers or play the harp for themselves and their families.

an unexpected gem of a shop for harp enthusiasts is harp planet in macungie, where chapman is a patron and says the owners are internationally renowned for their dedication to all things harp.

today, chapman holds a heartfelt affinity for celtic harp music and considers it something genetic, as her ancestors are from scotland. a lot of her original pieces often end up sounding celtic, and sometimes she wondered if she was writing already existing music, but her teacher assured her that the sounds were new and uniquely hers.

“when i write music,” chapman says, “it comes to me almost fully formed.”

( photograph by amy strauss )

while she’s at cocktails parties where guests behave stuffily, she’s known to jolt their senses a bit by straying from her regular batch of tunes, instead breaking into song with led zeppelin’s “stairway to heaven.”

she also incorporates radio hits from the past few decades sometimes, including firehouse’s  “love of a lifetime,” aerosmith’s “don’t want to miss a thing,” and coldplay’s “clocks.”

“i like to have fun and not necessarily be the harpist people expect,” chapman reveals with a laugh. 

she even has a cup that says, “it’s not all curls and chiffon,” an ode to seeing value in the harp well beyond antiquated stereotypes.

“in england in 1603, harps were banned because they were felt to be dangerous,” chapman explains. “it was believed that they were inciting the people to rebel, which is not really the vision we have of the harpist today.”

one component of her harp-playing that is invaluable on the local level is her hospice work.

chapman is often brought into the rooms of those who are dying and struggling to let go amidst their fears in nearing the end of the life they’re used to calling their own.

“it's clear—there's a lot of scientific evidence that harp music helps to reduce pain,” chapman says. “it helps to increase oxygenation levels in blood and control blood pressure.”   

chapman plays harp persuasions at the pottstown memorial medical center two mornings each week and is on-call for hospice needs, serving an important and much-needed role in the population for those who are suffering and dying; in this, she says she is grateful to be able to help people pass over more peacefully than if they were without the gift of a harp’s ways on tired souls.

“i hope that people start thinking of the harp in the larger sense, besides looking at it just as pretty background music,” chapman concludes.

to find out more about chapman and hear samplings of her music, visit her website at www.betsychapman.com.