(upbeat music) - Hello.

And will you "Consider This", four generations of farming in central Illinois, Stark County.

And I have these two wonderful people with me: Sean Morrissey, you're fourth generation.

- Yep.

- And your mom married into third generation, Jill Morrissey.

Well, thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having us.

- Yes, thank you.

So we're gonna talk a little bit about you guys and the farm and what you do there, and then we'll get into what you're up to these days.

How's that?

- Sounds wonderful.

- Okay, so let's start with you first, Sean.

You are farming, what crops are you growing?

- So we do about 50/50 corn/soybeans with a little bit of corn on corn rotation.

And then we do a couple hundred acres of wheat every year as well.

- Okay, that's wheat or winter wheat?

- Yes, winter wheat.

- Okay.

- And we bail that for straw.

- Aren't you proud of me that I knew that?

- Yeah, you nailed that one.

- Being the city girl I am.

Right?

And Jill, what do you know about farming?

Have you always grown up in the farming community?

- I have.

My dad farmed, not as much as Morrissey Farms.

He was a smaller acres of farming.

But yeah, I grew up on a farm and so I was familiar with a lot of that.

So to marry a farmer was, that was fine.

- [Christine] You knew what was expected of you.

- I did know what's expected, so.

- Alright, so do you have to do a lot of the bookkeeping and that kind of thing too or behind the scenes?

- No, that was always my mother-in-law did all that, for the whole Morrissey Farms.

And now I know they have it done professionally.

So no, I didn't ever get my fingers in that, so.

- Okay.

But you learned how to cook and bake and do all that extra stuff that you needed to do.

- Right, exactly, exactly.

- And can, canning.

- Alright, well, Sean, so you work the farm and tell me about how you very first started.

Did you get to ride on the tractors?

- Oh yeah, I remember being a little kid, riding the tractor with my dad all day long, and didn't have a seat there.

There was a cup holder with a back on it said I'd have to sit on that all day long.

You'd be falling asleep, then bang, just smack your head against the glass.

- But at least you had an enclosed cab.

Yes, well there was cabless tractors I'd ride on.

My dad told me if I fell off, got ran over, he'd kick my butt after I got ran over.

So I don't fall off the tractor.

- [Christine] So you took him seriously?

- I always took them seriously, yes.

- Good, good, good.

All right.

So that's when you started.

And then what was the first thing that they allowed you to do?

- Oh, discing.

So just back and forth in the field, some fall tillage, then getting into grain bins, helping shovel 'em out, things of that nature.

I also showed cattle in the summertime, so spent a lot of time on the farm, blowing out, feeding, stuff of that nature.

We had some hogs, so just general small things to do around the farm as a kid.

- Alright.

- Then as I got older, more actual field work, I had to get my CDL at some point so I can drive semis for the farm.

Just, you know how natural responsibility comes with age, kind of a thing.

- Okay, well that's, it's nice of you to admit that, yes.

And mom, you did a good job teaching him that responsibility comes with age.

- Well, his dad did a great job too.

- Okay.

- Ingraining it.

- Ingraining it.

Okay.

Alright, so it's been fun growing up on a farm and it has your name on it and everything.

And so your dad started, well, or did your grandfather have bees?

- My grandfather was allergic to bees.

He didn't want anything to do with bees.

That's what happened was we kept hearing about this population decline of the bee over time.

- Right, right.

- And so dad said, he goes, because we are very good stewards of the land, my great grandfather helped start the soil and water conservation office in Stark County.

We're very big on conservation where we are.

- Good.

So that means not tilling a whole lot or?

- Well, we do tillage, yes.

But we do it in a very sustainable, manageable way to where it's not detrimental to the soil.

It's a way of helping the soil break down the organic matter of that for the next year.

- Alright.

Alright, good.

So back to the bees.

But thank you for explaining that.

- Yes.

Sorry.

So we kept hearing about this population decline and we go, well, we wanna take care of the bees because we do care about the environment.

So we thought we'd get a beehive, and so- - [Christine] And you need 'em for pollination?

- Yes, we do.

They are incredible little animals.

They really are.

So I got the beehive, started learning about that, went to the seminar, and they started talking about how with the bees, there's not an actual decline.

It's because World War II came around and so people were rationing sugar, so they'd get beehives as a sweetener, and then the wax could be used for bullet products, like for coverings.

Well now World War II's gone, we don't ration sugar, we have synthetics for the bullets.

And as the older generation passes away, the kids don't keep the bees.

So it's just a natural, it looks like a decline, but it's not actually declining in a real way.

- Interesting.

Interesting.

- But that didn't stop us.

So my dad, we keep bees, you know, me, because he wasn't putting a suit on.

So started that about seven or eight years ago and then had a couple struggling years, you know how it goes.

Just learning curve and collected the honey.

Got about five gallons of honey because I have eight hives now and didn't know what to do with the wax.

And then talked to a lot of people that just throw it away as a byproduct, which I didn't wanna throw it away.

So I started doing some research and I refined it down to a pure form and then tried to find out what to do with it.

And lip balm just seemed like a good fit.

And spent three or four years just kind of messing around, making things until I finally got a really good product.

Had some friends that were gonna be partners with me, that just kind of fell through.

And then my mom, I was about to give up for the most part.

My mom goes, "Well, I'd love to be your partner."

And she's been helping out ever since, does a wonderful job.

- All right.

So what is your role in this?

This is called, It's The Balm Diggity.

And you're making lip balm.

- Yep.

- Right.

Along with farming and everything else.

So your mom kind of has to do a lot of that stuff.

So what role do you play in it, Jill?

- Well, Sean and I are, we're basically cross-trained in what we do, and I can get everything melted down and actually make the lip balm.

'Cause he's shown me how he does it.

And then I do all the labeling, we do all the labeling ourself.

We do everything by hand.

- It's a lotta work.

And then also we decided to put a shrink wrap on there just for protection.

If I go in a store, I don't want to pick up something- - That's been open already.

- That somebody else has touched or- - It might be tainted.

- Right.

And so we just thought that's a way to just ensure that everybody knows that it's good.

- [Christine] So you shrink wrap too?

- Oh yeah.

- Label and shrink wrap, wow.

- Yeah, there's a white tube that we get.

So then we have to melt it all down.

We have these big molds that hold 225 each.

- [Christine] I think you sent me pictures of those molds.

- [Jill] I did, yeah, I did.

- So you pour those and then you have to freeze 'em, scrape 'em, like, make 'em look pretty.

And then you have to pull 'em all out.

You have to cap 'em all.

We have a labeling machine, so then you have to label 'em all and then cover 'em to shrink wrap, then heat, shrink, wrap all of 'em all by hand.

It's a lotta work.

- So just the two of you?

Do you have some help?

- Just the two of us.

- Just two of us.

- Really?

Now your sister came up with the name It's The Bomb Diggity.

And what does that mean?

Because I'm older generation, so I'm not sure.

- Back in, my sister Sarah's five years older than me.

When she was in high school, if something was cool it was the bomb diggity.

So that's what that meant.

So I just- - But it was the bomb diggity back then.

- The bomb diggity, yeah.

- But now it's balm.

- It's a play on words.

- Balm diggity, yeah.

- Okay.

All right, I got it.

Well that's very interesting.

And then you have different fragrances for the lip balm.

And very few ingredients.

So there really no chemicals it it.

- Yeah, there's only five ingredients because I want you to be able to count them all in one hand because there's other ones out there that are all very good products, but they have up to like 14 different ingredients.

It's not a bad thing, it's like stabilizers, emulsifiers to give 'em a long-term shelf life.

But I just want you to know everything that you are getting when you bought something like this.

So you can look at the back and there's just five ingredients and most people know what they are for the most part.

- [Christine] Right.

Well, jojoba oil.

What?

There's beeswax, jojoba oil, shea butter.

What are the other two?

- Coconut oil.

- Coconut oil.

And then- - And then just the fragrances.

- Okay.

- The natural flavors.

- And where do you come up with the natural flavors and the fragrances?

- Well- - You don't grow those.

That's a whole bunch of research online and a whole bunch of trial and error on our part just to get once, 'cause we'd look for companies that had just natural products and then we would order some, you get some and we would smell 'em and think, oh, that's not what we're looking for.

And so just a lot of that.

So that all takes a lot of time to get that and find just the right products that you want to use.

And the thing about the jojoba oil that you were talking about, jojoba oil is a liquid wax.

So here's the cool part.

So you have the bees wax and you have the jojoba oil.

So those are a nice, they protect your lips.

So when you put the shea butter and the coconut oil in there, that moisturizes.

And then the waxes, the jojoba oil and the bees wax, that kind of is more like a sealant.

It keeps it there.

So it has that staying power.

It stays on your lips nice.

- Hmm.

That's great.

- It actually, it doesn't melt in your car either.

It can be like 90 degrees outside.

It'll get soft, but it won't melt and leave a big puddle.

- Right.

- It softens yeah, but not, yeah.

- That's a good thing.

That's a real good thing.

Alright, so now you also, you do your farming and then you also make honey, you're, I don't wanna say you're a beekeeper, but- - Apiarist.

- An apiarist.

Okay.

All right.

And you studied to do that?

Or how did that come about?

- Well, yeah, honestly, I have a book called "Beekeeping for Dummies" is the first thing that I got.

And it's very informative, but it's one of those things where learning curve, you know, you just gotta, I go to a lot of meetings.

There's the farm bureau office here in Peoria.

I went to a couple winter meetings there, Princeville at Wineinger's feed store.

They have a guy come in from up north that has, I don't know how many hundreds of beehives.

And so he'll give seminars.

So it's all about talking to the people local and just learning and going about it the right way and just studying.

Yes.

So it doesn't come natural.

There's a lot of different things that go into it.

But, just a lot of research and paying attention.

And you can just like any other animal in a sense, if you pay attention, you can tell kind of what they're doing, what they're feeling.

- So, you know when they're angry or you know- - Oh, you know when they're angry.

Yes ma'am.

- So how do you know?

I mean, what did they do when- - So you can get right up to a hive usually.

And you can open 'em up if you're very gentle.

What bees work on are pheromones.

So that's why you have the smoke that goes in there because they work on pheromones to where they smell that.

And if one bee is feeling attacked or wants to attack, they release a pheromone to the rest of the hive saying that we need to go attack something.

- [Christine] Oh!

- So if you breathe into a hive, it'll set them right off.

So you just gotta know how to handle 'em.

- So you learn that, so you have the whole little hat on with the screen?

- Mask, yeah.

- Okay.

- But yeah, like right now what I'm wearing, just this, you can go up and you can open 'em up gently and just not make 'em angry and they're fine.

But yeah, if you wanna actually open up the entire thing, you need to have the whole suit on.

But yeah, you can tell like any type of livestock, if you know how to work with them and you train, then yeah.

Sorry.

- Then you can do it.

Yeah, wow.

Interesting.

How many times have you been stung, either of you?

(Sean laughs) - In a one day period, or?

- Well, you can tell me that too, but yeah.

- I think the most, I got stung in one day.

I was trying to, I was new at this and somebody had a tree fall down with a hive inside of it I just wanted to relocate it.

And I think I counted like 30 stings in one day.

- Oh gosh.

So did you go to for some medical attention after that?

- No.

No.

- So you think you're okay, you don't think that you're, that that 100th sting is gonna make you allergic or?

- Well actually that is interesting because you do not build a tolerance to bee stings.

It's the reverse.

You become more susceptible to bee stings as you get stung.

- Oh!

- So yeah.

- So no EpiPens or anything like that are gonna work?

- No, I haven't had one yet, no.

- Okay.

- But yeah.

So if you get stung once and you're fine, no big deal.

But the more you get stung, the more susceptible you are to anaphylactic shock over time.

- Okay.

- But I've never had an issue with it.

I'll swell up here and there, it's like little spots.

But within 15, 20 minutes it usually goes away.

- Jill, how about you, have you been stung?

- Not with what he does, no.

I don't wear the beekeeper suit and that's just Sean.

- That's his specialty.

- Yeah.

- [Christine] You're in charge of all this pretty stuff.

- Right, right.

And that's what I told him when we- - She did.

- first had that conversation about me coming on board with him.

I said, "You know what Sean?

I'll tell you what."

I said, "If you can make a good product, I can make it pretty."

- [Christine] I like that.

That's teamwork.

- Yep.

- So now show me what the beeswax looks like there.

- So when you harvest the honey, you gotta scrape the caps off of the top.

- And so that's what, and then you put it into a centrifuge, it spins it around and that's what gets all the honey out of the comb without destroying the comb.

- Alright.

- And then you get a lotta the wax off the top.

So this is what it looks like when you put it all into a big bucket for collection.

And so then you take this, which I could probably get a little more honey out of it.

And then you soak it in water just to get the rest of the actual honey out of it.

And then it's gotta go through a heating and refinement and purification.

And it's basically like cheese cloths down to like coffee filter size.

Just keep refining, refining until you get all the impurities out of it and then get it hot, get all everything dead in there.

- Okay.

Well you said that there's- - Yeah, like there, there's a- - Little bee carcass in there.

- Yeah, I mean it's just everything that's in the hive that you're pulling out at one time.

- So what actually happens then, once you get all that out, what happens to the comb itself?

Do you do anything with it?

- Well, like I said, this is just that cap off the top, Well that comb, it's on a slate about this big.

And so all those honey combs are still intact on the back of that.

They're still the shape of the honey comb.

- So they can still use them.

- So you just put those back in there and then they refill those for wintertime food.

- All right, so how long a process is it to take all that down and purify it?

- So you start off with, I think last year for honey we got 27 and a half gallons of honey.

And so that takes about two days of just getting it out of the combs into the centrifuge and then getting it down and the separation of the wax and the honey.

Then to do this, to get the actual raw wax into purified wax, that usually takes me a couple days.

You don't get a whole lot of wax out of it, as much as you would think, but it takes me a couple days just because you gotta heat it up and cool it.

And purify it.

- So you have a big stove, a big pot that you put it in?

- Basically.

Yeah.

- Alright.

- Because yeah, you basically just, the first step is basically put it in hot water and melt it all.

And then all the impurities settled down to the bottom so you just keep cutting that off.

And then you have to put it through bunch of different types of smaller and smaller filtration systems to try and get it perfectly pure.

I should have brought some, because what's cool is it's flexible when you're done with it.

- [Christina] Oh, kids would love that, huh?

- I do.

(women laugh) - You're a kid.

You're a kid.

And then, so there's your honey.

So show us the two honeys there.

- So this is this year's honey.

- And this is, and tell us about the different colors of honey.

- Yeah, so this stuff, it's older, so it's crystallizing like that, which is a really good representation of that.

But all it is is it just gets, it's just hardened honey.

And so you can take a pot of water, just get the hottest water in your sink and fill it full of that and set in there and goes right back to this.

- Okay.

- Honey never goes bad whatsoever.

I will say this that you need to know, you cannot give a child under a year old honey because it can cause basically baby version of botulism.

- Yeah.

- It's very dangerous.

- The spores.

- The spores do.

- All right.

Interesting.

And then, I had learned that you're never supposed to take honey with a metal spoon.

- Yep, 'cause it can kill like those spores in there that are beneficial to you- - For your allergies.

- Yes.

- And this is good for, and Jill, you said you have allergies?

- I do.

I do.

- So you take the honey and it's locally grown.

- Right it especially helps with my fall allergies of ragweed and goldenrod.

- That's what I was trying to get to was, I'll have this with a bright golden color and that's the earlier honey from your dandelions and then the later season stuff, like at the end of the year, your ragweed, goldenrod, it's a really, really dark intense color that crystallizes fast, but it's really good for your allergies for that reason.

- Okay, and so you really wanna have a couple of different kinds of honey on hand at home then.

Right?

You wanna have the spring stuff for the spring allergies and the fall stuff for the fall allergies.

- [Christine] It has a different taste too.

- Okay.

Yeah.

'Cause I, I would imagine if it's, if the bees are finding some lavender or something, does it kind of take on that taste?

- That's really interesting because I had that one hive at your house and she has a bunch of wild black raspberries at her house.

And I harvested the honey and it was weird 'cause you could see these like purple streaks through it.

And I think it was because of the raspberry, - And you could taste it.

You could taste, you had like, you'd taste the honey first and then you would get that aftertaste of the black raspberries.

It was the best honey we've ever had.

- Oh really?

Well you need to plant some more black raspberries then, right?

Or something.

- Well, we don't plant 'em, they just all grow wild there.

- They just, oh.

- It all just grows wild.

- Okay.

- At the edge of the timber.

- Alright, so what you did, you said 27 gallons of honey last year.

- [Sean] Last year?

Yes.

- And that was between spring and fall?

- Yes.

- Alright.

And when do you start in the spring and then when do you start in the fall?

I mean how do you know again, I'm a city girl.

- Well, it's basically whenever they fill up, because you have a bottom brood box, where the queen lives and has the babies.

You have a box above that where they have all their food and some more- - [Christine] Those are the worker bees?

- Yes.

And some more babies usually.

Then there's a box on top of that and that's the box that you get your share out of.

And you can have a spring and a fall harvest pending, 'cause if they make it, they winter fine and they get after it early in the spring, that top box can get full very fast.

And you can add one on top of that too, if you'd like, just to keep it going.

And so I'll do that a lotta times and then just check, like right now is actually when I'm about to start harvesting my honey.

Because you want 'em to be able to rebuild their food for winter time 'cause you don't wanna starve out.

I've had that happen where those, they'll go from the bottom up, they'll eat everything and then they just starve through the winter time.

And then you have to start all over.

And I don't wanna starve the bees out, you know.

- No, you're a very good citizen.

- [Sean] I try, I try to be.

- Care for your community.

So how about, how do you determine who is the queen bee when you start a new hive?

- She's about twice the size of all the other bees in there.

She's much bigger.

And when you go and you buy a hive, it comes with a queen bee.

And she lives about five years usually.

And when she dies- - They have to replace her?

- They do.

- All right.

So there's- - And the other bees are accepting of this?

- Well when they kind of have like a gladiator moment where a bunch of different, 'cause actually all bees, all worker bees are all female bees.

Every bee in the hive is a female.

There's only one male bee.

And actually if you go back in time far enough, the Catholic church kind of thought that they were miracle insects because if you have a queen bee that has fertilized eggs by the one male, they're all female bees.

Now, if there's no male bee there and she lays eggs, they become male bees.

So they don't actually need a male there.

So they kind of thought of an immaculate conception kind of thought process on 'em.

- Sure.

Yeah, okay.

- Which, yeah, that's what they thought.

But if that queen does die, a bunch of 'em do kind of go to war to try and figure out who will be the next queen.

- Wow.

Have you experienced that?

- I have not right off, but it sounds like it's pretty intense from what I hear.

- Alright, so to become this beekeeper and have acquired all this knowledge, where did you study it?

Or did you go to a beekeeping school or this is just, again, it's just from reading that book, "Beekeeping for Dummies"?

- Well, that's how I got my very first start was that book.

It's a really good book.

Any of those for dummies books are very, just basic knowledge.

But like I said, like Wineinger's food store in Princeville, they put on a seminar every year and they have all the supplies for your beekeeping as well.

So they do a very good job there.

I'd go to Peoria to your farm bureau and there's a guy, I can't think of his name, I wanna say Harvey something, but he has like 40 beehives himself.

He's a cat engineer and learned a lot talking to him.

So it's just about reaching out, going to these different seminars, talking to other beekeepers.

- Alright.

- And things of that nature.

- But you didn't have to go to any specific school or anything?

- No.

- Or get a diploma?

- No, I didn't have a GED in beekeeping, no.

- Okay.

(laughs) Well what do you plan to do next?

I mean you have your farming, you have your lip balm, you have your honey.

What else is there on your radar?

- Well I think you're thinking about doing lotions or a body soap bar or something.

- Yeah, I was thinking lotions.

We go back and forth on what we wanna do.

We just kind of, we throw ideas, he'll bring me something to try and we've got something up our sleeve right now, but we're not gonna tell you what it is.

- Okay.

You don't have to, you don't have to.

But if you use those, maybe most of these same ingredients that might be really good for moisture and things like that.

- Oh yes.

- And we definitely need that because, you know, none of us is getting any younger.

We need to try to, you did say now honey, I guess honey is good.

Well you said it never- - Never goes bad.

- Never goes bad if it's real honey.

- Right.

- And in the pyramids they found some honey.

- Yeah they found honey in the pyramids and technically they could just reheat it and melt it down and it'd be edible.

- Really?

- Which is incredible, yes.

- It really is.

So what is your favorite honey recipe, if you have one?

Or do you?

'Cause we were discussing before we came into the studio real quickly about how this, when it gets crystallized and everything, when you melt it down sometimes it makes like rock candy.

- Yeah!

- Yeah.

What I'm actually big on is I like to do canning and jams and things like that.

So I'll go to the farm and I'll pick, we have a bunch of raspberries there, so I'll just pick a bunch of raspberries.

I'll do jam with just the honey and some vanilla and cinnamon, just do stuff like that.

That's the way I like to use honey.

I'm not a big straight honey person myself.

- Aren't you?

No.

- I'm a straight honey person.

- You are?

Okay.

- I love it.

Yeah.

I like it.

I especially like it when it's crystallized.

I mean, the thing is too, when it is crystallized then you know, without a doubt that it's raw, unprocessed, natural honey.

And that's exactly the best honey that you wanna get.

- Right.

And it's the best for you too.

- Yes, yes.

- Okay.

And then now let's talk about, so you have four generations that have farmed this land.

- Yes.

- And you have a couple of children?

- Yes, I have a daughter that's three years old named Lowen and a son that's a year and a half named Axton.

- [Christine] Alright.

And so they have been riding on the tractors and things too already?

- Yes, they absolutely love it.

Every time my son goes outside "The tractor" at the end of the driveway and he just has to run as fast as he can there.

We got a big four wheel drive tractor, he has to sit in the wheel every time.

And my daughter just, I have a couple semis and she loves getting in there and trying to honk the horn.

And then when there is air in there just scares herself to death hitting that horn every time.

- Well, you know, but that's important when you're growing up.

You gotta own it.

- Yes.

- Right?

- Right.

- Right?

Okay.

Well that's pretty exciting.

So what are you gonna do with this then?

- That I'm going have to take home and refine it.

I gotta take that, put it in water, get the rest of the honey out of it, and then heat it up.

- [Christine] Get the little carcass out of there.

- Yeah, most people don't like that in their chapstick, apparent, lip balm apparently.

(women laugh) - Right.

So you'll you'll melt it down and you will use this, it'll turn into- - Yes.

It'll turn like this into pure wax.

- Alright, and then you have all of these different kind of fragrances.

We have this one, which is... - Raspberry.

- Raspberry and coffee.

I can tell that one.

What's this?

- Pineapple.

- Pineapple, mint and?

- Strawberry lemonade.

- Strawberry lemonade.

And then apricot peach.

- The apricot peach is one of our newer ones.

And also there's watermelon.

I don't know if we have a watermelon out there.

- Nope.

- I don't think there's- - We don't, but watermelon is one of our newer fragrances too.

- So how do you come up with those?

You just dream 'em up or?

- Either he or I, we will kinda talk about it, we'll kinda get some thoughts and- - It's also seasonal, like what would you want this time of year?

- Right.

- Like I wanna do pina colada one kind of a thing for summer, but we didn't get around to it and - Well we went with the apricot peach instead, but- - Well then, so for the holidays, you know, the winter holidays you'll do something that's... - And fall.

- Okay.

- You know, fall is good for, I always like pumpkin- - Pumpkin, pumpkin spice.

- Right, right.

- Yeah.

- [Christine] Well that'll be fun.

- Sorry that was, pumpkin spice is a little overplayed in my opinion, but people want it, I'll make it.

- I know there are people, you know- - I want it.

- A little bit goes a long way for me.

I gotcha.

I gotcha.

Well thank you so much for sharing the story, the story of the farm, the story of the family, the story of beekeeping, that I really didn't know anything about.

And I'm glad that you aren't allergic yet.

- Well thank you very much for having us.

I appreciate that.

- Yes, thank you so much.

- Y'all keep up the good work.

Thanks for joining us.

Hope you enjoyed this.

And again, consider this, everybody's got a story.

If you know somebody who's got a story, if you have a story like these guys did, get ahold of me here at this station.

Again, be well.

(happy music) (exciting music)