[00:00:20] Keith: good morning with black Friday, right around the corner we were trying to come up with ideas for our family just to create new traditions. And move away from commercialism. And it seems right now there's a backlog of products coming in and a shortage of this and that.
[00:00:51] And when you stop and think about it, it's like half that stuff we really don't.
[00:00:54] Joe: Yeah. I was thinking about that the other day. If all that stuff doesn't make it for Christmas. What's going
[00:00:59] Keith: to happen, who's even going to want it. Exactly. I'm like, I'm really not going to buy a lot of gifts for people.
[00:01:06] I'm going to do things for people I'm going to cook for them, or I'm going to plant a tree for him. Do an amaryllis bulb or something like that. Something that's, that's a little bit longer lasting and that one's more of a
[00:01:17] Joe: memory. I like I have a woodshop in. Last year. I didn't get to do it much this year or two years ago, I built everybody in the family's gifts and it was a blast.
[00:01:26] Keith: Exactly. , it means a whole lot more save any
[00:01:29] Joe: money. No, you don't get
[00:01:31] Keith: to save any money. You're not necessarily going to save any money, you go out and you buy a bunch of presents and a bunch of gifts or a bunch of toys for a kid. . You know what I mean?
[00:01:39] They use them for what they, the kids going to find their favorite toy out of 25, and that's what they're going to play with. And the rest of them end up at Goodwill or pass down to other family members or neighbors or whatever. But if you plant a tree for a kid and you involve the kid in planting a tree, you've taught him something, you've spent time with the kid.
[00:01:56], it's, there's just a whole lot more value there in my opinion. And that, my parents, planted a tree when I was born. Every time we went back by the house, it was, that tree was still growing in front of the house and it was always a topic of conversation.
[00:02:07] So it was always a connection to that house. And it was a connection to what my parents had done for me when I was.
[00:02:13] Joe: That's pretty common or I think it used to be people would plant a tree when they move into a house, so they could kind
[00:02:18] Keith: of right. Track, watch it grow. Yeah. And, plant in a like a one-foot Japanese maple when your baby's born and seeing it grow to 12, 15 feet, as your child grows and it's something that's long-lived and it's, it's a great
[00:02:32] Joe: memory and the kids probably that's my tree when they're out.
[00:02:34] Keith: Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's. A friend of ours had, they've got four boys and they, they planted a tree for each one of the boys. They would argue over which one, their parents, they thought that parents liked this one more than the other one because the tree was better.
[00:02:50] Joe: It was a better tree.
[00:02:57] Exactly.
[00:02:57] Keith: But there was much discussion over why they got that tree. So that was that's one thing you can do planting a tree or baking cookies with kids or that kind of thing, starting any kind of a tradition, but black Friday is always boggled my mind.
[00:03:13] I've never participated in. It just seems like a rush to buy something that would have been discounted or this it's going out a date or that's last year's product. And it's not really necessarily a discount as it's marked down because it's last year's product.
[00:03:29] Joe: I wonder if so it has less appeal to me now than it used to.
[00:03:32] And I was younger because it was a family tradition. So what you're saying is we'd go out on good Friday and shop, and then Amazon came around, and then the family moved to. And I don't go good Friday shopping yet.
[00:03:42] Keith: Yeah. I've literally never done it. And so it's a, it's interesting to me, but I, every year I'm like, maybe I should, maybe there's something I'm missing, but I don't think so. To me, I think it's almost like this year. To fix the supply chain and to revamp your viewpoint go out and buy something locally, shop at a local place, or go to a farmer's market or a small independent store and just skip the black Friday spending put that money in, invest that money or invested in the community and buy local.
[00:04:10] My family, over Thanksgiving, we always my mom was in the florist business and so she always, we always make Rees and it's my uncles and aunts and cousins and we're all just clipping stuff out of the yard. And we make Christmas reads and it's just a creative thing to do.
[00:04:26] And everybody's hands-on and it's. But any kind of crafting project or, something you can do with family and be able to, just to enjoy life and make memories more than buying more crap that it's going to end up in the dump.
[00:04:40] Joe: Yeah. I like the idea of them having an experience.
[00:04:43] It might seem like it's less cause it's not around as much, but at the same time they might be the things that your family members end up treasuring
[00:04:49] Keith: the most. Something, take pictures while you're doing these projects or having an event. Our host to the hive is a way that I think a lot of people do gifting.
[00:04:57] They'll a husband or a wife will buy host to the hive. For a spouse or a family member. But it's, it's a way that you're giving back to the environment. , you can participate in beekeeping and involve your kids in the whole nature of it.
[00:05:09] And it's hands-on learning. You can get out and you can get into a hive and see the bees. Lauren all about bees and not have to own a high of yourself so that, doing something like that something that's pretty hands-on and, but the host diet program,
[00:05:23] Joe: you
[00:05:24] Keith: also get honey. Exactly. And there's a lot of host of hives out there. They range in price from $400 to about $2,000. And the interesting thing about our host to the hive is it's the cheapest. But we also instead of some of the hosts, the hives will be 1200, $1,400. And if you get honey in your hive, you get.
[00:05:46] If you don't. And what we do is we average the honey out. We'll harvest the honey and everybody ends up with 10 jars of honey. You end up with 10 pounds of honey, which is more than most people would use in a year. So it gives you honey, that you could gift as well.
[00:05:59] But it's a sure way of getting honey if you're a beekeeper there are years that you don't necessarily harvest honey. So we work really hard to make sure that the bees are, moved around and in areas that there are nectar flows and stuff like that. So it's a pretty successful way, to keep bees and actually make sure that you're getting honey every year.
[00:06:19] And it's good local honey. So it's, it makes a difference in your health and your, the cold season or allergies or that type of thing. But the other thing that, that, on a list of things that people could do is, working, just working in the garden with kids getting them involved in the garden.
[00:06:33] Hands-on, it's a good mental health thing to do. People are stressed out this time of year going into the holiday season and being able to just get out, put your hands in the dirt. It releases every time you touch the soil or releases serotonins, that kind of.
[00:06:46] Make you relax. And most gardeners will, that just, they know that for a fact, they know when they go out and they start gardening that instantly they have a relaxed, calm feeling about it. Involving people that haven't done that and getting them in that Addicted to that kind of gardening and out and being out in nature and seeing green stuff. And one of those projects that you could do is pollinator gardens, either planting seeds is a really inexpensive way to do it. Get a packet of seeds and prep that soil. Yeah, and literally just scatter the seeds.
[00:07:16], if you involved kids, they scattered the seeds and then they come back out and they get to see the seeds germinating and slowly growing on. And then, it's a long-term process. It's three or four, five months, six months a lifetime, of watching the seed grow and then the plant mature and then flowers come and then the pollinators start to land on those plants and hatch out new, young and whatnot.
[00:07:38] The other thing that, what people can do it, and there's no, absolutely no cost to it is, prepping for the holiday season, getting family pictures and that kind of thing. Come into the garden center and bring your phone. One of our staff can take a picture have your family stand in front of the Christmas display or out in fall colors and snap, a few pictures, spend time with the family, just being out and about either a garden center or a farmer's market or.
[00:08:04] Pumpkin patch, Christmas tree, lot, that kind of thing. It's a great way to spend that afternoon and get some good pictures in. I think back to the supply chain, I think if we just stopped spending for a minute maybe we could fix the supply chain, slow the slow, everything down and enjoy life.
[00:08:21] And things might just come back to normal.
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