Thornhill Farm

Ascending to the Lakes of the Clouds hut, at the foot of Mt. Washington

On July 4, Justin was feeling very patriotic, and in honor of our first president, filled his backpack with a 750 mL of Barr Hill gin and began the ascent to the Lakes of the Clouds Hut, perched on the side of Mt. Washington, which is the highest peak in the Northeast and is named after George Washington.  The gin was a gift for the crew, those who caretake these huts for hikers in the old and continuing tradition of mountain hospitality.

The Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail follows the Ammonoosuc River some of the way for the 3.1 miles from the parking lot to the Lakes of the Clouds hut.
all photos by Justin Gellert

We found the cairns placed above the tree line to be very important as guides on the trail in the fog and rain, and well as inspiration on the sunny days. Old cairns are found on the trails in the high mountains of Scotland and also at Caledonia Spirits in Hardwick.

Inspired by the hut system of the Alps where one can hike from hut to hut and get meals, lodging, and shelter from the elements, the huts of the Appalachian Mountain Club go back 100 years. We started our hike at the Highland Lodge parking lot, only 1.25 hours from Caledonia Spirits in Hardwick. Being located in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, we are very close to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. These are some of our sacred places, the mountains that we first hiked together as a family when our youngest was only 6. We always thought it was cool to skip out of school early on a Friday afternoon and drive to the White Mountains and hike into a hut for dinner. The beauty and glory of the northern summer are truly evident in the high places of these mountains.

We are on the Crawford Path (oldest continuously maintained mountain trail in the USA, built in 1819) from Lakes of the Clouds hut to Crawford Notch, a rugged 7-mile downhill path, where the winds reached 80 – 90 miles on the summit the night of July 4; still very windy the next day.

The Appalachian Mountain Club was founded in 1876, and built its first trail up Tuckerman Ravine of Mt. Washington in 1879 and its first hut at Madison Spring in 1888. In 1911 the AMC advocated with other groups for the passage of the Weeks Act, which authorized the creation of the Eastern National Forests.
www.outdoors.org 

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Send us stories and pictures of your adventures in the special & inspirational places of the world, and include a Caledonia Spirits bottle in the photo. Give us a little history, color, and information on how we may learn more about this sacred earth. If your story is chosen for the next newsletter, we will send or deliver a case of Caledonia Spirits raw honey to your address in the United States, Quebec, or Ontario. Send your photos and stories to todd@caledoniaspirits.com .

Live from the hive: The making of a queen

In this picture you see a “queen cup” — an elongated cell, looking a bit like an ice cream cone, that contains a queen bee larva. The bees are making a new queen, which they do when the queen dies, is failing, or has left the hive with a swarm. A fertilized egg develops into a queen when the workers feed a fertilized egg with a rich food made of honey, pollen, and enzymes, called Royal Jelly. Because she will be a very large bee, she needs a larger cell to grow in.

The queen bee is born with all of the eggs she’ll ever lay in her extra-long abdomen. Once she has mated she deposits one tiny white egg in each cell of honey comb at the rate of up to 2,000 eggs a day at the peak of the spring buildup. But this egg laying is tied to the sun, seasons, and length of the day. The summer solstice having passed on June 21, the queen has begun to slow down in preparation for winter.

The slightly convex cells at the top of the picture are capped honey cells, while the reddish brown, slightly puffy cells further down contain larvae. The uncapped yellow cells contain pollen. Note the “courtier” bees who are tending the queen cell.

The queen bee is just another example of the miracle of the bees and the perfection exhibited in their life cycle.

– Annie Watson, Thistle Hill Studio

the first night of fireflies

is something that I always wait and look for in my life, no matter where I am.  Summer is finally here, the first cut of hay is off, and the vegetables are growing.  The fireflies may have been the portal to my life with honey bees.  As a child, I collected them with my brother and sister and brought them into our bedroom.  They are fun and magical.

Last night the fireflies first appeared at our distillery and later on the farm. Lighting up the night, they flutter around when their season comes, turning on and off with their flight, much as a loon dives under the water and comes up in another place. They come and go with the temperature changes of the night.

There is a rhythm to the seasons that becomes part of your soul. Now the frogs are singing every night, choruses of little peeper frogs and larger tree frogs on the pond and in the marshy areas of the woods. As the temperature rises and falls through the night, the singing moves from one group of frogs to another, just as a conductor points to different members of an orchestra to play through a symphony.

Climbing Barr Hill in the summer is one of my favorite hikes. The juniper berries all over the summit recall the early days when we were hiking here and thought of making gin and finishing it with raw honey. Barr Hill is a thin place. Our ancestors in Scotland call a sacred place “thin”, where heaven and earth are very close and mingle together.

We always anticipate the moment in the summer when we know there will be a crop of honey. I call this “the turning point” – over 12 months of preparation have gone into this moment. The preparation for the next crop never stops; even when you are in the middle of one crop, you are always thinking ahead to the next. I recall one year in the St. Lawrence River Valley of Northern New York. Just as I was seeing 100 lbs. of new honey on hive after hive for the first time, an Amish horse and buggy drove by, with the horses’ hooves pounding on the dry road for a half mile before and after the bee yard. When the crop is on the bee hives, we breathe sighs of relief and gratitude.

This past weekend a swarm moved into some bee equipment on the farm. All the colonies in this bee yard had died this past winter, and that was tough. As I was too busy and bees were not available for purchase at this late date, it was time to surrender. I left a pile of bee equipment outside in hopes of attracting a swarm. When a neighbor came over to borrow bee equipment for her swarm, I noticed a lot of activity in this hive, and sure enough, a swarm of bees had come and made a home in this hive within the last two days. There were just a few eggs, and the next day I found the queen.

“A swarm in May is worth a load of hay
A swarm in June is worth a silver spoon.
A swarm in July is not worth a fly.”

Timing is everything in agriculture, and we are grateful to have the bees back on the farm. There will be squash and berries to pollinate this year, and apples next year.

These are the rhythms of the season in a place that we love, and it is an honor to move through each of the four seasons in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

thank you for your interest in and support of our work with organic honey, grains, and elderberry,

Todd D. Hardie
CLICK HERE to view the complete June 2014 Newsletter