Pine Hill Creek is a real place but after a hard-won legal battle by a couple of concerned citizens it is actually called Pine Hill Stream. It runs right under M-25 just north of Applegate Road in Sanilac County. Actually, it has been called several different names in the past but all have “Pine Hill” in it. The legal battle was fought over a land owner who didn’t own property adjacent to the creek wanting to empty “treated water” from a small water treatment plant he wanted to build to service a large trailer park he intended to build.
Through sheer tenacity the landowners along the "crik" won out and the treatment plant was never built. If it had, it would have killed a beautiful stream that held a lot of memories for local residents. When I was growing up and going to the Pine Hill School, which was a one room school house with 8 grades taught by one teacher, we called Pine Hill Creek “the crik”.
The school still stands and is a private residence. It was a great place to learn. As students we were allowed to roam pretty much everywhere we wanted for recess. That included going down to the “crik” to look for crayfish, frogs and water bugs. This also meant slipping in mud and getting “soakers” or wet feet.
Mr. Lentz, our teacher, lived just down the road from the school. That man, and later Ms. Jacki Masi (who were two of the best teachers I ever had for different reasons, would actually take us down to the crik during recess and show us the crayfish, minnows, water bugs, etc. Both were teaching us biology and we never realized it! Did I mention that his family owned most of the property surrounding the school? And we had run of the place!
Baseball was played on the corner field across from his house and he was usually the pitcher. Everyone…I mean…EVERYONE got to play. No favorites. We grew up riding our bikes through the woods and summers on the beaches of Lake Huron.
There isn’t a lot in Pine Hill. A bar, the Pine Hill Store (it’s still open and used to be one of our local hangouts as kids). A great place to stop on the way to or from the beach. It was a great place to grow up as a kid. Everyone looked out for everyone else. We kids never worried about anything really. No one was rich but we were very happy. Now…one of our apiaries is not too far from the crik. We move it around a couple of hundred yards depending if our neighbors planted buckwheat or not or left a field fallow. We’re still working on getting a good crop of buckwheat honey. Maybe this coming year. Hope springs eternal.
Our other main apiary is in Marshall, Michigan on a three hundred plus acre farm next to the Kalamazoo River. The farm has rolling hills and lots of woods. One of the perfect places for bees to live and work. Thankfully, the landowner and great friend, doesn’t mind bees being on his property and has helped us expand our little business every year. Thanks Trev!
The Marshall apiary is our largest right now and expanding. We do move a few hives around that area right now for pollination services for friends and hope to shortly begin to offer pollination on a larger (but still small scale by commercial standards) in the next couple of years.
Our Hastings apiary is usually used as a temporary yard when we hive whatever packages we don't sell, weak hives that need special attention, swarms and cut-outs that we have acquired. I live there and want to be close to these hives to give them more attention as needed. Usually we don't try to get those hives into honey production that first year as we want them to build up to be nice and strong and thereby, hopefully, survive the crazy weather Michigan has been experiencing these last several years.
If you help us build our little business by buying our packages we are going to plan on adding a basic line of woodware made with different types of wood for not only durability but also experimentation.
I’ve built all of my own hives and now build my own internal woodware when I get a chance. Will we get rich? We aren’t planning on it. We actually want to stay kinda small to be able to quickly react to what our customers want, stay in contact and on a first name basis with everyone. We want to be able to pick and choose the quality of the wood we use and the bees we buy to make everyone's beekeeping experience fun and enjoyable. If you have any question please feel free to contact us. Thank you…. Dennis Milburn Pine Hill Creek Apiaries – Owner/Operator.
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