Buzz of Sweetness

We go to a honey festival.

It was my wife’s idea, formed while in traffic day in and day out with the help of a blinking sign over the Lincoln Tunnel that told her it would be FUN FUN FUN. So she decides, “we are going.”

The kids scream with excitement and I begin to daydream and decide I like the idea of beekeeping. It makes me think of Sherlock Holmes and the apiary covered island in Skyrim. I want to write about a beekeeper valiantly trying to keep his bee population alive in an ever-volatile climate change environment. This festival also gives me hope, because it makes me think wax paper sacks filled with honeycomb might be available. My mouth actually waters. Is this a thing? It would be sweet and crispy and natural and I’ll immediately say yes and buy four regardless of price.

Day of we pile the kids in the car and begin the drive to upstate New York.

The drive up 87 is green and hilly. We get bagels for the road and covered in crumbs turnoff near Bear Mountain.

Bear Mountain is a place I equate with sking.

 

I do not recommend. But the town around the mountain seems quaint in that don’t-even-bother-trying-to-befriend-the-local’s way. They all seem tough and capable with family roots that go back thousands of generations.

GPS guides us to a country road, there are signs for apple orchards and fresh produce and when we roll down the window the sound of insects and other farm type wildlife fill the car.

Our destination looks to be down a windy gravel road and with thoughts of Burt Reynolds and Deliverance we find it marked by one badly hung vinyl sign that flaps in the wind. We can only read one word, ‘honey.” So we go to where the arrow points with our hearts set on golden goodness.

We park and follow our three-year-olds as the trundle towards the excitement.

Around a red barn, that makes me wonder why all barns are red, I count twenty booths filling a replicated 18th-century town square. Notable booths include the jerk chicken place we did not eat at,  the cupcake booth which made me violently hate cupcakes, (I seriously thought twinkies would make them even better!) various charities selling popcorn that make me feel guilty for refusing eye contact, and breweries dishing out mead, or some other honey related oddity.

Sadly the fest was almost void of actual honey. There were two booths I walk past that seem promising. But all was for naught because all I got was a few quick pictures of the bees they each had on display.

They had products made of honey, but all seem produced in a factory and none were honeycomb.

I don’t even remember any specifics.

The only cool thing about this festival is it was held on the grounds of the New York Heritage Museum.

Dude, they have a mastodon.

The heritage museum was interesting. My kids (me) loved the taxidermy exhibit.

Here are some other interesting tidbits I grabbed pictures of:

 

All in all, I will say the honey festival was not horrible if you don’t buy the cupcakes.

In October they did a chocolate festival at this same museum. We did not go.  I never mentioned it to my wife and she never mentioned it to me. It’s not that I find commerce sad, but only that this museum is stuck doing horrible weekend events like this to get people interested in visiting their history.

It was a pretty cool place even without the fest.

They have live demonstrations like blacksmithing.  They even have an actual apiary that I did not photograph out of apathy.

But the worst thing about the whole trip? Sadly wax bags filled with honeycomb are not a thing.