FOOTBALL IS IN THE AIR Vol.121 No. 31 THE BACK MOUNTAIN'S NEWSPAPER SINCE 1889 September 12 - 18, 2010 The DALL POST. Serving the communities of the Dallas and Lake-Lehman School Districts | www.mydallaspost.com 2010 Dallas Harvest Festival offers something for everyone Annual event sees expanded entertainment area, lots to do for people of all ages. By SARAH HITE shite@mydallaspost.com There will be plenty to do at this year’s Dallas Harvest Festival and patrons will enjoy new fea- tures added to the eight-year-old celebration of everything Dallas. From an expanded entertain- ment area to splashy fundraising efforts, the Dallas Harvest Festiv- al will keep anyone who moseys onto Main Street smiling. Family walk On September 18, a day before the festival, patrons can explore the back woods of the Back Mountain at the first Family Fun Walk at the Back Mountain Trail. The event, sponsored by the Back Mountain Business Associ- ation (BMBA), is a chance for families to see what the area has to offer. “We decided it would be fun for families who have not yet walked the trail,” said Diane Dreier, walk coordinator. Walkers will receive a water bottle filled with coupons from BMBA businesses upon their ar- rival to the trail. The trail is also equipped for geocaching, a For complete information about the 2010 Dallas Harvest Festival, see our special section inside today's Dallas Post. worldwide treasure hunt. Geo- caches are containers filled with some sort of “treasure” and hun- ters find them using global posi- tioning devices (GPS). When one finds a geocache, one must place something of equal or greater val- ue into the container. In addition to the quest for keepsakes, the Back Mountain Trail is also associated with the Keystone Active Zone 2010 Pass- port Program. This is another type of scavenger hunt located within Luzerne County and par- ticipants must register online to join the fun. Visitors to the trail can earn points and prizes in this program. The walk will begin at 10 a.m. at the Luzerne entrance to the trail and will end at the Trucks- ville entrance near Pizza Perfect. The walk from Luzerne to Trucksville is about two miles. Photography contest One addition to the fest is the first-ever Dallas Days Photogra- phy Contest. This year’s theme is “Capture the Beauty and Culture of the Back Mountain.” Camera- carrying creative-types of all ages and skill levels are encouraged to participate and photo contest co- ordinator Gina Major Ackerman hopes the display will offer a dif- ferent creative aspect to the fes- tival. “It’s a visual history of the Back Mountain and the festival,” she said. The festival steering com- mittee wanted to try something new this year and since many oth- er area festivals feature art con- tests, the committee wanted to give it a shot. Major Ackerman has a person- al connection to the contest, though it hadn’t occurred to her right away. “In my work-study job at Drex- el, I was a photo lab coordinator,” she said. Contestants will be judged by professional photographers and winners will be picked for first, second and third places. Winning shapshots will be featured in The Dallas Post. Camera clickers have until September 14 to submit their photos at two locations: the Dallas Borough Building at 25 Main St. in Dallas or Andy’s Pho- See FESTIVAL, Page 9 Jim Roccograndi carries the ball in for the first Dallas touchdown against Coughlin on Saturday afternoon. Dallas won the game, 14-7. In the photo at right, Black Knights Bryan Mathers and Tom Chipego turn toward the goal for a first down. Lake-Lehman was CHARLOTTE BARTIZEK PHOTOS/ FOR THE DALLAS POST B oth the Dallas and Lake-Lehman High School football teams opened their 2010 season last weekend. In the left photo, Mountaineer defeated by Old Forge, 21-15. For more photos, please turn to page 10. Horse business is labor of love for these trainers By SARAH HITE shite@mydallaspost.com Enter Heidi Osborn’s place of business at your own risk. Stepping into the stable is no problem, but just before entering the barn, you might see an 800 or 900 Ib. breeze of shiny black coat clip-clop past the door. You might think twice before trotting into the training area unan- nounced. “You have to say ‘Door!’ just be- fore going in,” said one student. “That’s so no one gets hurt.” While the horses kept at Grand Stride LLC may be larger than life, Heidi is a big champion in a small body. She has shown and won in a myriad of horse shows through- out her life and, in early August, all 11 of her students who were el- igible advanced to the Pennsylva- nia State 4H Horse Show in Octo- ber. One of her students, 16-year- old Lindsay Jayne of Dallas, will defend her title of last year’s state champ. CHARLOTTE BARTIZEK/ FOR THE DALLAS POST Heidi Osborn and her husband Bill, of Shavertown, rent and operate a riding stable on Ma- chell Avenue in Dallas. Shown here with Osborn is student Hannah Corcoran riding Pippin. “Oftentimes, if one or two make it, everybody’s thrilled,” said Jane Morris, of Dallas, a horse show announcer and Os- born’s good friend. “It’s quite a compliment to (Heidi). It’s a very See HORSE, Page 9 Bill Perry's buzz? He lives among bees and actually loves it The legacy of Perry Apiaries is still in the family. Some of the Perrys’ children live out of state now, but William Jr., or Will as his family calls him, works with his dad in Dallas, taking care of the bees and driving trailers from Dallas to Florida. Bill has a grandson who is working on a high school completion project Perry Apiaries is based in Dallas but has operations in three different states. By SARAH HITE shite@mydallaspost.com One particular subject that keeps Bill Perry’s life abuzz with excitement is bees. Bill owns and operates Perry Apiaries in three states but his home base is in Dallas. The bee- keeper has been dealing with the buzzing insects since he was a child. “My father had a few bee hives and, when he got married, he abandoned the bees,” said Bill. His brother joined a 4-H club and started a few colonies as well but, after he went to col- lege, Bill took over for his family and his passion grew from there. An apiary is a bee farm or a se- 0981512007989 on ries of bee yards that can contain between 15 and 35 hives. Bee yards must be kept at least two miles apart as bees can fly in a radius of one mile. The distance keeps the bees from over pop- ulating one area. In New York, Bill keeps track of about 44 bee yards and over- sees 140-plus locations in Arca- dia, Fla. Each hive in a bee yard looks like a medium-sized dress- er, but observers wouldn’t want to stick their hands inside the “drawers.” A bee hive is made of at least three sections — two hive bodies, which contain broods of bees, and a honey super, which holds frames to be filled with honey. Each colony may be home to as many as 50,000 bees. Bill and his wife, Priscilla, aren’t bothered by the buzzing broods. Though she isn’t as pas- sionate about the bees as is her husband, Priscilla supports Bill’s attraction to the apiary. “It's a good occupation, if that’s what you're interested in,” she said. “You have to be really interested in it.” Priscilla admits that getting stung hurts, but it depends on what kind of insect does the stinging. Honey bees, the type kept by the Perrys, arent the most painful stings out there. “(It’s like counting) how many mosquito bites you've had in your life,” Priscilla said of how many times she’s been stung. Though there are only five or six colonies at his Ransom Road location, Bill processes honey he sells in a “honey house” behind his residence. After workers have cleared out the bees from the hives, using smoke and oth- er deterrents, they take the hon- ey supers into the house. Heated knives cut the caps off the honey frames and an extraction ma- CHARLOTTE BARTIZEK/ FOR THE DALLAS POST Bill Perry is shown among pots in his honey-combed storage room. chine uses centrifugal force to spin the honey out of the comb. The honey then goes through fil- ters to strain out impurities. After the process is finished, 700-1b. drums are filled with the sweet amber liquid, loaded onto a trailer and driven to Dutch Gold Honey Co. in Lancaster, a company Bill has been working with since he first started in the business over 50 years ago. “When 1 first started selling honey to Dutch Gold and I was going to Penn State, I used to fill five or six 5-gallon cans up with about bees. honey in the back of my car and I'd drop it off,” he said. Bill says Ralph Gamber, foun- der of Dutch Gold, kept a refrig- erator in his garage that he re- wired to keep the honey warm. He would then bottle the honey in his kitchen. Today, Perry Apiaries pro- duces up to 300 tons of honey and six to eight tons of beeswax each year. The beeswax is sold and used in various ways, some of it to The Lands at Hillside Farms where it is molded into candles. Bill also says his compa- ny is the only provider of bees- wax to Hershey's Chocolates which uses the product to coat ovens when making certain candy bars. “They found out that if they coat the oven with beeswax and then run it empty, they can run it all day and (the candy) won't stick,” he said of the chocolate company. “(Cooking spray) will evaporate.” But bees, beeswax and honey aren’t the only aspects of keep- ing apiaries. The Perrys have been living in Florida for six months out of every year since 1955, something Priscilla says was difficult for the couple’s four boys and two girls. “It’s hard when you have kids in school,” she said. “It was hard on the kids because they had to change schools every year.” In Florida, Bill hires workers from countries such as Nicara- gua through a federal govern- ment program called H-2A. This program allows U.S. businesses to hire foreign-born workers for temporary agricultural labor where U.S. citizens might not be See BEES, Page 4 a L
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