Happy New Year, 2011! We are making progress just like stepping into a new year. We started this journey not knowing where it will take us, only knowing that we wanted nature to step forth and play a bigger part in what we do, like a splash of water on your face when you wake up. In my world it does not get any better than the Texas Hill Country to make that happen. With the challenges of power and water solved it was time to learn more about the land. I learned a lot about land conservation, and caring for our limited resources in my youth growing up with a family that had a ranch in East Texas outside of Jacksonville, now it was time to focus on the Hill Country. I had spent enough time visiting friends’ places in the Hill Country to have been fortunate enough to have heard of the Bamberger ranch more than once. Any time there was a serious conversation about the Hill Country, and learning about the land, the name Bamberger would come up. I never got any specifics, but, it was always, “you just have to go check it out!” After hearing this for about a year, that is what I did. I had driven down Miller Creek Road outside Johnson City many times where the Ranch is located, I had a friend with a place on Miller Creek, but even he had not been to the Bamberger Ranch. In early spring of 2006 it was time to make the trip. I did a little research and signed up for a class on the Bamberger Ranch in land stewardship - perfect.
I had no idea what to expect. I showed up early one Saturday and was directed to a building called the “The Center.” It sounded like the home of a cult. But nothing could be further from the truth, the Bamberger Ranch is a 5500 acre ranch south of Johnson City, essentially an environmental teaching ranch with working ranch elements, and areas set aside to save endangered species, places for school children to visit and learn, places for demonstrations, and “The Center” was where a decent sized group could gather and spend the day learning how to take care of the land that takes care of us. The Bamberger Ranch was started by J. David Bamberger over 40 years ago - now that is some vision! J. David founded Church’s Fried Chicken and took the money from that success, and set out on his mission and passion of improving the land and teaching others how do it.
To break the ice, everybody introduced themselves and said where they were from and how much land they had. Folks had come from all over the state. I was impressed. Then they gave away door prizes, and I was lucky enough to receive one. I had the choice between an endangered plant the Texas Snow Bell, and honey that came from bees on the ranch. I love honey, and use it every day, so the choice was clear, honey it was. Little did I know where this would lead!
I soaked it all in that day, learning about caring for the land, and took away a valuable lesson: being a steward of the land is a serious responsibility, and to be good at it there needs to be a passion for it. I knew I was on the right track because I had passion for learning about, and caring for the land. When I left that day, I took my honey home to Austin, and part of my heart stayed in Johnson City.
The next day I tasted the honey, holy shit that was GOOD! It was like nothing I had ever experienced, flavors exploded in my mouth! Tasting that honey got me to thinking, I wonder if I could get some bees and be a bee keeper, and make my own honey. The wheels started turning. I knew that Colleen Gardner who is the executive director at the Bamberger Ranch, was the resident bee keeper, and I had met her at the class at the ranch. I got in touch with Colleen, and asked if I might watch her doing her bee thing sometime. We talked, and emailed and I ended up back at the ranch learning about bees. She guided me in the direction of where to get the bees, bee supplies, and she had me observe bee keeping activities with her. Eventually I was convinced that I could do this, (bee keeping). The following winter of 2007 I ordered my package of bees. A package of bees is 3 pounds of bees and a queen; there is only 1 queen per hive. I ordered my stuff, and the bees, and I just had to wait for spring to get things set up. I provided a wildlife water tank so the bees would have water, and I went back to planning more future projects.
We had our 25 acres, and now I was going to raise bees on the property, we were making a dent in the Cedar, and we had a base camp with power and water. I decided to go out on a limb and come up with a name for our property. Some thoughts came to mind: We had a little ranch, with little critters, and we over looked the valley of Tow Head Creek. So it was naturally going to be the:
TOW HEAD VALLEY BEE RANCH
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