My Mom

My Mom is still with us and I am very grateful for this, she lives with us part time and is returning to be with us in a few weeks. She turned 86 this year and still drives.  She stays active in her California Church and has a church family here. She loves our Savior Jesus Christ and has tremendous faith.

Mom grew up on a farm in Idaho and later in Oregon. She experienced the Great Depression and speaks of it as something that shaped her character. She has fond memories of her youth despite the hardships.

I got to experience what her life was like when I was allowed to visit her parents during several summers when I was young. I love the farming life and still think this is what I would be doing today had she not moved to California.

I think this picture is from one of her first jobs she had in the Southern California area.

Mom and Dad taught me many things but one of the greatest attributes they instilled in me is a strong work ethic. They both worked full time to provide for my brother and I. Living in So Cal is not for the faint of heart due to the high cost of living. 

My fondest memories growing up were our frequent trips to the beach. Seal Beach was the destination of choice for them and it is where I gained my great love of the ocean. It seems like we would make a dozen or more trips to the ocean every summer. I would spent hours in the ocean body surfing and later took up Scuba diving. I also love deep sea fishing. I am grateful that her and Dad gave me these opportunities of great enjoyment playing at the beach.

My Dad

Bobby Ray Shaw is not my birth Dad but he is my true earthly father. He was born in 1933 and grew up in the eastern part of Tennessee. He passed away in 1994 at the young age of 61. I miss him a lot, he was a quite man and while we did not talk all that much when I was growing up my love for him has grown over the years.

Dad was a veteran and served in the Korean War. He was wounded in that war when he was shot in the shoulder. He never talked about it with me but Mom has told me the story. He was part of a tank crew and they had stopped to have a smoke and were ambushed by a sniper. His injury was pretty bad and left him with a badly damaged left arm and hand. He spent two weeks aboard a ship on his return trip from Korea and was sea sick the entire time. I talked him into going on a deep sea fishing trip one time and he got sea sick on that trip.  My guess is he never got over the experience as that was the last time we fished on the ocean but he was willing to try one more time for me.

He loved my children and was always so good to them. He was always so kind and loving to my Mom. He set a wonderful example to me and my brother on how to treat the women in your life. He would buy my mom clothes to include some very nice dresses.

My Dad loved to go camping and fishing and taught me how to fish at an early age. I loved to get away on our camping and fishing trips. He would also take my brother and I to sporting events. I must say that his love of professional and college sports did not take with me. I still am glad we had the opportunity to be together during these times.

My teenage years were hard on my Dad as I was very rebellious and gave both him and Mom much trouble. I regret having been this way with all my heart but feel like things got so much better between us once I grew up and started acting like a man. Once I left home for the Air Force and got married to Teri things really got so much better. Talking with each other became so much easier and I felt a great bond between us.

I have so  much more I want to say about my Dad and this post will grow with time. I have some great pictures to post here of him and will do so in the coming months.

My Home Town

I was born at Rio Hondo Memorial Hospital in Pico Rivera California. If you were to look closely at my birth certificates you would see that one of them lists my birth city as Downey. So I decided to do a Google Search for the address listed on my second birth certificate. It does show that address as being in Downey. The picture below shows the hospital being between Pico Rivera and Downey. When asked where I was born I have always stated I was born in Pico Rivera so I will continue to do so.

The home that holds the most memories for me was located in West Covina, CA. It was a modest 1500 square foot home in a sea of homes in the Southern California area. My earliest memory of living at this house was on my fifth birthday. My birth dad Joe Sattler came by the house to give me a birthday gift. We stood at the front door of the house and he handed me a box that contained a brand new transistorized radio. That was the last time I ever saw him. 

I lived in this house till I left for the U.S.A.F basic training at the age of 22. My parents sold the house in 1990. 

There were so many homes in this area it was not too hard to make friends since there were a lot of kids my age on my street. My friends lived across the street and in the house next door to ours. Now that I think back my early childhood was a very small world compared to how many people that lived around us.

I did have other friends that did not live on my street but did not really get involved with them until I started Jr. High. 

The summers in Southern California were hot and very smoggy. As a kid we would go swimming at my friend Bob Hillenburg's house. Bob lived right across the street from us. After swimming our lungs and eyes would be burning from all the smog. The mountain range to east was only about 10 miles away yet was normally shrouded by the air pollution. When the Santa Anna winds would blow and after a winter rain storm the smog would clear and the mountain range would become vibrant and really stand out.

My Birth Name

The church that I belong to encourages up to keep a journal for our descendants to know a little something about us. They have made it easy for us to do this by giving us a list of 52 questions to answer on the Church web site.

I will attempt to answer one question  a week for the next year so that my future posterity can know who I was and what my life was like. So here goes with the week one question.

What is your full name? Why did your parents give you that name?

I have two birth certificates that  shows that I was given the name of Douglas Phillip Sattler on one and Douglas Phillip Shaw on the other:

As you can see I was born with last name of Sattler. I can only assume that my middle name comes from my birth father Joseph Phillip. My mom had another birth certificate made in 1967 that shows my last name to be Shaw. Joseph was my birth father but Bobby was my real father. 

When asked my Mom stated she liked the name Douglas and and so I was named Douglas Phillip. 

Update

Been a long time since I posted to this blog. So much has happened in the last 4 years. We moved again and live in Arlington TN. We like the place loads of privacy and wildlife, just last night we saw 4 deer.

My job as an aircraft instructor for FedEx has taken me all over the country this year and two times to Paris.

Paris Crew

I am scheduled to go to Manila in December. I don't mind the travel and even get to take Teri with me from time to time. We are going back to the Gulf Coast in a few weeks.

 Ryan and Ashley had another child, a sweet granddaughter. Got to see Laura and her girls twice so far this year and had a wonderful vacation with them this summer. I am so blessed to have such wonderful children and grandchildren. Wish we were closer.

Abby and Lily

Ryan's Tribe

Earlier this year I learned about another brother and sister of mine. Teri and I were able to visit them last month and get to know them and their families. My only regret is not getting to know them much sooner than this but am grateful to have them in my life now.

One very sad event happened this year. My buddy Argos got out and made it to the road and was hit by a car.

He was a great friend and helped me through a very dark period in my life.I miss him dearly.

New Garden Plans

Finally have an idea for the garden out front. Will be based on the picture above. Will have a double fence surrounding it. This will be the chicken moat (run). Will place a chicken coop in the back corner and place the bees in another corner. This design should keep out the deer and coons. Might use an electrified net for the inner fence this will ensure that the chickens and coons will stay out of the interior of the garden.

Plan right now is to have 8 to 10 4 by 8 ft boxes. Will repeat grape trellis on the west side of the garden much like we had in Greensboro.

Feeding Bees 7-4-11

Last weekend I was able to harvest about six gallons of honey from two medium supers. I put up 18 quarts and have started to give the rest back to the bees. This top feeder seems to work the best as the bees will line up like cattle at a feed trough.

Greensboro Garden April 2011

Going to miss this place! Have learned some great lessons and we are ready to take it to the next level. Will do more square foot gardening and less fruit trees, too labor intensive for the return you get. Have a rotation plan in mind for chickens and goats. Eric and I are going to start a meat goat operation in Tennessee. Will start small and see how it goes. Wanted to log these pictures as a reminder of what we had here.

Grape crop should be excellent again. Might not be able to enjoy them this year.

Apple tree loaded with fruit.

Strawberries that my friend Bill gave me last year. Bumper crop.

 Argos kept the rabbits and deer out of them.

Second Inspection Late Winter 2011

Great day to take a look at the home hives. Noon time temps were in the mid 60s today. Honey from from the dead-out hive is almost all gone the bees have been very good at taking it. Looks like the strategy worked.  Removed one frame from the middle of the bottom brood box of hive 1 and it was full of capped brood on both sides of the frame. Laying pattern of the queen in this hive is excellent. Top super still has plenty of capped and new uncapped honey stored. Population of this hive is great with lots of bees in both boxes. Added a empty medium super so the bees will have room when the brood hatches out. Will add a few jars of 1:1 sugar water when the weather warms back up in the next day or two. This should stimulate the bees to draw out the comb in the top super. High hopes for this hive. I will need to watch for signs of swarming and make sure they have plenty of room to expand. This hive might be a split candidate.

I had reversered the brood and super boxes on hive two a couple of weeks age. Still not much action taking place in the brood box. Still a lot of small hive beetles (SHB) in this hive. Pulled one frame from the bottom box and there was a good pattern of capped brood on the frame. Pulled another frame and tapped off the bees due to the high number of SHB. Tapped all of the SHBs out of the cells as well. Installed a beetle blaster trap in the top outside edges of both boxes. Moving this hive into the sun should help but need to control the beetles before they ruin the comb.

Hive three looks just as good as hive one. Took the half  full honey super from hive four and placed it on this hive. Did this because they looked like they needed the room. Bees all through this hive so I decided not to pull any frames. Just pulled the top super and had a look at the brood box it too was chocked full of bees. Hope that they will move into the top super as they need more room. Will monitor this hive for signs of swarming and split it if I can.

Hive four is still very weak with very few bees in the upper two supers. Removed the newspaper from between the brood box and full honey super. Only three frames had bees on them in the brood box. Saw capped drone cells and a few supersedure queen cells being constructed. My guess is the queen is weak and she is being replaced. Going to let this hive and and nature run its course. This was the hive that was re-queened last fall. Like Bill Hansen's hive at the Brown yard it looks like the queens we got last fall  may not have been very viable and or well bred.

Bee Update

Bees from all four hives have almost taken all of the honey from the Brown hive. Video Link. Weather has been great. Saw bees bringing in pollen another good sign as they do this to feed the brood. Will need to remove the newspaper and inspect hive four sometime this week.

Winter 2011 Hive Inspections

Inspected the 4 hives in the home yard today. The Brown Hive had died and I had brought that hive back to house 3 weeks ago. I opened this hive and the bees from the home yard hives have been taking the honey. Still have 5-6 frames of honey in top super.

Bees are not interested in pollen patty. More than likely they are getting all the protein they need from the honey.

Had also moved hive one to the other side of hive 2 so that they could get more sun. Hives one, two and three all appear to be doing good coming out of winter. Plenty of stored honey and some capped and open brood. Not much yet but some none the less. A good sign of things to come. Found the queen in hive three, she looked good. Reversed the brood box and medium super on hive one as most of the bees were in the top medium super. Also took top super that is full of honey from hive 3 and placed in on hive 4 the weakest of the hives. Did  a newspaper combine on this hive.
Surprised to see so many small hive beetles. Need to set some traps for them.

Eric's High School Graduation

Eric did it!! We attended a very nice graduation ceremony tonight. We received his final transcripts and he finished with a 3.95 GPA and was ranked #3 of 428. I could not be more pleased.

Dogs

Argos is a big boy now. Eric and I think he is close to 85 pounds. Shelby tolerates him but just barely. She is approaching ten years old and has no time for his foolishness. Shelby suffers from occasional neck problems she had us all freaked out last Saturday night when she could not walk. Half a muscle relaxing pill from the Vet and she was doing much better.

Rooster

This is the yet to be named Rooster. I think Abby needs to name him. He is now the head rooster in my flock of 10 birds.

Bee Inspection 11-14-10

Looked at the hives one last time for this year. #1hive is the one on the left in the picture below.

Hive #1  is still a hot hive. Not happy to have me looking at them. Lots of honey stores and bees. Need to move it into the sun this winter as there were loads of small hive beetles (SHB) in this hive. Inner cover had close to 50 of them. Tapped off the bees and tried to snuff out as many SHBs as I could.

Hive#2 decide to leave them alone. Previously  looked at them at the end of October and they were doing fine. They are still a bit on the weak side. They have a full medium super of honey. Just going to keep my fingers crossed and hope they make it till spring.

Hive#3 is the strongest hive in the yard. They have two full honey supers above them. I decided to leave an extra super on for emergency feeding in the spring.

Hive #4 is doing good. I had thought of combining this one with the #2 hive but decided against this after looking at them yesterday. Both hives 2 and 4 have a new well mated queen in them. Previous inspections revealed good brood patterns being laid. These are the queens from Wayne's stock.

Brown Yard Hive is doing good. Currently feeding this hive some more 2:1 sugar water. They have plenty of room for more. They are still taking it and hope they get it all in the next week or so before it turns too cold.

Nice October Days

 We have had a nice fall so far this year. These are from a Saturday outing to local garden center.

We made a trip to the Blue Ridge the next Saturday.

10-23-10 Beautiful Blue Ridge Day

Fair Day 9-2010

Spent a nice day at the fair with Terry, Eric and Abby.



Bee Inspection 9-10-2010

Did the following today:

Hive One - Removed a full super of honey and replaced it with an empty drawn super. This hive has a strong and rather aggressive population of bees. Bill and I think there may be some Russian blood in these. This hive has good brood in the brood box and a full super of honey. Not feeding at this time.

Hive Two- Placed a new queen into the brood box and the full super of honey from hive one on top. Blue dot queen is from Wally's Wayne's Bees Stock. Drove the bees from the super from hive one out of the box with a fume board of Bee Gone. Entrance reducer in placed to the narrow opening. Added two quarts of 2:1 sugar water.

Hive Three- Looked for the queen on Wednesday and did not find her but did see a good amount of brood , pollen and honey stores. Currently has a brood box and full super of honey.

Hive Four- Decided against combining hive two with this one, which I had done on Wednesday. This hive is strong and has good brood in the hive box. The queen looks like she might have been released already. She is a marked blue dot queen that is from Wally's Wayne's Bees Stock. Added 2 more quarts of 2:1. They had consumed both quarts from the feeding on Wednesday. They had also tore all the newspaper from the combine on Wednesday. Seems really fast. Hope to find the blue dot queen when I look again in seven days. Entrance reduced to large opening.

Hive Inspections

Removed the queen excluders and several boxes in preparation for the winter. Hive two is still small and weak. Will need to combine them with another hive. All of the other hives are very strong and full of honey. Will do a mite count shortly to see if they need to be treated. Due to lack of a flow right now all of the strong hives were a bit aggressive. Considering this normal for this time of the year.

Honey Harvest

Bill and I harvested some honey from our hives. Hives one and three yielded up about four gallons.