Those are 55-gallon enamel lined steel barrels, filled with honey, there is another 100 of them in the closed garage to the right. Each barrel holds around 650 pounds of honey (honey is heavier than water.) This was the summer of 1966 as I recall. It was the largest honey crop my father and grandfather ever harvested. The packing houses ran out of warehouse space. The following year, we produced about 60 barrels total, a crop failure. That is farming. Even funny farming.
The red 1965 Ford pickup truck in the background, hung around for a while. When I got my driver's license, my father handed me the keys and a key to the gas pump on the farm. It was very basic, a bit of a handful on a rough road, but it was freedom to leave the farm. The spring after my sister left home, my father sold it to a friend, and handed me keys to his Crysler, the Dodge pickup truck with a 440 engine (oh my that was a real screamer) and an older Chevy flatbed that was often around and said, drive whatever is available. I was 19 before I owned my first car.
Ever seen that much honey in one place?
All those barrels look like the gin out back behind the Casa du Borghese honey!
ReplyDeleteBut I love honey...can eat it right from the jar too.
I thought you had it delivered by tanker truck.
Deletenever. and I bought some honey today; I use honey in my breadmaking.
ReplyDeletemaddie is right about the gin tanks though.
I use very little, maybe a pound or two a year
DeleteNot seen that much honey ever. I wonder what mischief you got up to as soon as you had wheels.
ReplyDeleteI went to a camera store,
DeleteThat's a ton of honey! I love honey and I think it's a better sweetener than sugar. And it makes sense it's heavier than water. Never thought about it.
ReplyDeleteI love the pickup! I really like it when I see one of those 50's and 60's cars on the road, cruising as if fifty years were nothing.
XOXO
The older trucks, in that climate, tended to rust a lot.
DeleteHoney, huh? I thought I was looking at tires! I don't really care for honey. I seem to be in a minority on that. I do like honey buns, though. Balder Half uses it to fight his allergies. It seems to work.
ReplyDeleteDoes kind of look like stacks of tires.
DeleteI have NEVER seen that much honey. My nephew and his wife farm and a few years ago added just three bee boxes to their operation. Your family's operation must have been enormous (which means, GASP, a lot of bees around that farm).
ReplyDeleteVery large, lots and lots of stinky little bugs.
DeleteI bet you had honey on your toast EVERY morning!
ReplyDeleteWhenever I wanted
Delete