Honey Pie Hives & Herbals

Happy 2012 from Honey Pie!

2012-01-03T22:54:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year to you all! I haven't posted anything in such a long time I've decided to do a brief timeline in photos of what we've been up to since the summer. On the right is a bee tree. The kids and I saw this when we were on the Terry Fox run in Milford. These are honey bees living in a tree just like in a story book. On the left is a honey bee gathering nectar from the goldenrod flowers. This is one of their main sources of nectar and pollen in the late summer and fall.
The end of summer is the time to harvest and dry as many herbs as we can.

We use a lot of mint in our herbal teas. This basket is one of many we harvested and dried this year. We made a pitcher of fresh mint tea after harvesting as much as we could carry.

This is me in our booth at Milford Fair in September. It was a beautiful busy day for us. My honey man was playing the big drum in the parade, I helped judge the art competitions, and we set up our tent with our wares. Luckily for us we had Nana to help keep track of the kids and we started the day off right with pancake breakfast at the fair.

At some point I found time to do my first painting in ages. It was a donation for a fundraiser for the Regent Theatre in Picton. I worked from a photograph I took of a honey bee on a poppy. I usually work from life but in this case a photo was the way to go. It's oil paint on plywood. It's very small - I think a foot square. I was so happy to be painting again, I think I'll use some more of my bees on flowers photos and make a whole series.

We grew a lot of dry beans this year and had so much fun shelling them and sorting them into jars. This kind is called molasses face. The kids would often come home from school and sit down on the floor and start working on the beans. Once Hazel looked up at me while I was explaining something to her and said, "Actually, I prefer silence while I'm shelling beans Mama."

While not a very beautiful photo, this is very exciting for us. These are the first of many experiments in mead making. We used a fun and easy recipe for grocery store mead from here. While the one on the left seemed to be fermenting the slowest it turned out to have the best flavour when we tasted it over Christmas. It was made with our Tea Party tea mixed with honey. The herbs in the Tea Party tea are elder flowers, sumac and red clover. Now we want to try all the teas as mead.

Most of our time in the fall was spent getting ready for the One of a Kind Show in Toronto. This was our third year having a booth at their Christmas show. It was a real marathon - 11 days long - but worth it in the end. We managed to have fun and stay healthy through the whole show! Dressing up helps a lot.

Here's my family with our Christmas tree. We went on a long walk and after much discussion as to it's merits selected this tree. Consensus with children can be exhausting but very worthwhile. We were all delighted with the tree and it was declared 'the best Christmas tree ever'.

Harvesting Herbs

2011-08-15T13:00:00.009-04:00

The honey harvest is in and we are hot and sticky all the time now. I've been experimenting with honey cocktails a bit this summer. This one is our lemon herb tea leftover from samples at the market. I added some honey which had been liquified in some hot water first to help it mix in better. Then I added an ounce of sloe gin that a relative in England had made and brought as a gift. It's made by steeping sloes in gin for a couple of months. I've also added cassis which is made from black currants and I made my own gooseberry syrup from our very small harvest of gooseberries this year. The syrup didn't have alcohol so it was good for the kids too and we could add vodka if we wanted to. I've also used our 5 mint tea as a base for adding to and it's lovely and refreshing.
We've also been tasting some meads which has been lots of fun and is inspiring us to try to make our own. We bought some delicious ones in Vermont when we were on a family road trip at the end of July. We really like the ones that are just honey without any fruit added. You can taste the flavour of the honey better that way. We loved a sparkling one called Melissa from Honey Gardens.

This is a dragonfly landing on a mullein. We were harvesting wild herbs in our field when my honey man spotted this lovely sight. I had a hard time getting a photo because it was quite windy and the mullein was really swaying back and forth. We use the wild mullein in our Queen Bee's Luxury Lotion, all of our lip balms and several of our herbal salves. We make an oil infusion out of it the same way we make all the oil infusions. We pack a mason jar full of fresh herbs and then fill it up with organic sunflower oil so that the herbs are submerged in oil. Then we leave it sitting in the sun outside for 6 - 8 weeks. The heat of the sun gently extracts the healing properties of the herbs into the oil. When we're ready to use the oil we strain the herbs out. The oil is stored with the herbs in it in a cool dark room.

Here's Hazel holding a freshly picked St. John's Wort plant. We tried to get the kids to help us harvest herbs that day but it was so hot all they did was whine about going to the beach. This was a happy moment before we headed back to the house to get our bathing suits on. We harvest the whole St. John's Wort plant to make our Blues tea and just the flowers to infuse into oil for our Aches and Pains muscle rub.

This is the field of buckwheat in full bloom. We got the seed from the Ottawa farmers' market in the spring and had someone grow it for us so we can try again to make buckwheat honey. Last year we tried with no success but we're hopeful that this year we'll have lots of strong black honey once it's finished blooming. A beehive will only work on one type of flower at a time and will keep on it until it's all finished blooming. That's how we can tell if we've got a honey from one type of flower.
This is the lavender in full bloom at the Prince Edward County Lavender Farm. Our bees have been making lavender honey there for a couple of years now. You can buy our lavender honey from us or from the lavender farm. It's the opposite of buckwheat honey - very light in colour and flavour. And, no, it doesn't taste like lavender but it is delicious.

This beautiful photo of my honey man hard at work was taken by Crystal Allbright who was visiting our friends at the Bloomfield Bicycle Company where we keep some of our beehives. She took a whole bunch of nice photos of him but I really like the way the smoke is wafting around in this one.

I'm enjoying Mary Jane's blog Raising Jane. It's all about all things farmgirl. I've added it to my 'favorite things'.

A Swarm in June is Worth a Silver Spoon

2011-07-04T14:12:00.009-04:00

It has been too long since I've posted so I think I had better make several posts so they don't get too big. This one is all about the bees. Not just honey bees but other pollinators as well.

The first photo is of a swarm of honey bees getting ready to land in a tree. They are flying around in what appears to be controlled chaos. It took about ten minutes or so for them to fly up out of the beehive and over to this tree near our driveway - about 40 feet away. They make a really loud buzzing sound and fly in a swooping circular pattern. They all move together as a group and settle onto something - usually a tree branch. This particular swarm actually decided to go back to the hive. I guess they decided conditions weren't right to move house at that time. We had never seen that before so I took a photo of them all crowding back into the hive. My honey man then went in and split the bees into two hives to prevent them from swarming again. When a hive swarms the old queen goes with them and a new queen is left behind with lots of bees and all the larvae to hatch out. They swarm because the hive is really strong and it's getting too crowded. It's good to catch the swarm so you have another hive but it's not always possible. Sometimes we catch them and they decide to leave again anyway. 'You never can tell with bees.' A.A. Milne

This photo of a bee being eaten by a spider is just because. This is the second time I've seen this recently. I wonder if bees taste like honey?

I left a patch of wild motherwort growing in my garden because we use it in our herbal tea, Femininitea which is for PMS and menstrual cramps. Motherwort is a natural sedative which is safe for women to use when pregnant or nursing. It has a bitter taste so we blend it with bee balm as well as cramp bark, bayberry bark, and raspberry leaves in our Femininitea which gives it a flavour similar to earl gray tea. This is a bumble bee on the motherwort flower.

Here is a honey bee collecting pollen from a gorgeous pink climbing rose. I posted a similar picture last year too but I can't resist.

Here is a very strange looking long legged bee or some kind of insect on a purple bachelor's button. I haven't figured out what it is yet but it is new to me. Anyone know what it's called?

I've been making bouquets for the farmers' markets again for several weeks now. This picture is from the Evergreen Brickworks Market. We also sell the bouquets at The Stop's Green Barns market. I use a combination of wild flowers like daisies and bladder campion, herbs like mint and oregano and garden flowers like bachelor's buttons and spurge and leaves like hostas. The varieties change over the season but I always mix them all together. 'Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.' A.A. Milne

We have discovered these amazing organic beekeeping podcasts. I especially enjoy the fat bee man.

Road Trip

2011-05-24T12:58:00.006-04:00

I love the idea of a secret garden and when I stopped by a friend's house to get some rhubarb last week and she wasn't home, I couldn't resist taking this photo of her beautiful garden.

We went on a family road trip a couple of weeks ago to get some things we needed, sell some products and have a visit. First we drove to Les Cedres, Quebec to a farm called Les Huiles Naturelles de L'Amerique. This is the farm where we get the certified organic sunflower oil we use in many of our products - from lip balm to herbal salves to sunscreen and even our Old Fashioned Farm Soap. We gave them a bar of the Farm Soap to try since it's made from their own oil. We got to see how the oil is pressed which was really cool. The husks that are left over are fed to goats and sheep!
We were heading to Ottawa next to visit family and as we drove past Vankleek Hill we saw the sign for Beau's Brewery and decided to stop in for a visit. We got to taste their organic beer including one called Beaver River. We both liked the Lug Tread the best and bought some to take home with us.
Next stop Ottawa to stay overnight and go to Almonte the next day for Handmade Harvest, a fun and busy craft sale we were trying for the first time. This photo is our display at the sale. I went to the craft show with the products while my honey man took the kids to the Ottawa Tulip Festival with my dad. I met them in the evening for a picnic and the movie Fantasia at dusk with the parliament buildings in the background. That was very surreal.
The next day we went to pick up some silver hull buckwheat seed from the Ottawa Farmers Market for our attempt at buckwheat honey. We know someone who will grow it for us and we'll put our hives on the field. We tried this last year and didn't get buckwheat honey. It's easy to tell if you've got it because buckwheat honey is very dark - almost black and has a distinctive smell and taste. The farmers market had a petting zoo that the kids loved. We also bought some amazing hand made ice cream with bananas caramelized in butter, some bison jerky, and a herbed pecorino cheese.

2011-04-28T11:28:00.006-04:00

You know spring is really here when the thunder storms arrive. Right before sunset yesterday we were lucky enough to notice this giant rainbow over our field. It was so exciting for our rainbow girl! She was already wearing her rainbow T-shirt too.

These maple scones are from awhile back when work group made lots of maple baked goods to sell during Maple in the County. We made cookies and cakes and all kinds of other delicious things. We're saving up for something great - we just haven't decided what yet.

The beautiful pear pie was made by our six year old son Rowan and the recipe is from 'The Book' the kids version - Simply in Season Children's Cookbook. Rowan has been trying all kinds of recipes from it and we've all enjoyed the results. It's actually called a pear pancake but it's kind of like a giant popover. It's a new favorite for us and has been tried with apples and berries. It puffs up in a very exciting way.

I've been working on a new recipe for a liquid shampoo lately that's been taking up a lot of my time. I'm trying to make a shampoo that doesn't contain any mysterious ingredients of unknown origin. It's turning out to be quite challenging. I want to include some honey and herbs but first I'm working on a basic recipe. This photo is what the shampoo looks like while it's cooking. I'll post more photos once I have something more interesting to show.

First Flowers of the Year

2011-03-30T12:11:00.009-04:00

The bees are out and looking for flowers. All we have for them so far is a small patch of crocuses. I think I better plant several hundred crocuses this fall. They're so exciting for us as well as the bees.

Here are two soaps that are relatively new. The Old Fashioned Farm soap is made from fat that we rendered into lard. We wanted to make a local soap since usually our soap is made from olive oil from Italy and coconut and palm oils from the Caribbean. So, we used fat from John Nyman in Prince Edward County, organic sunflower oil from Quebec and beeswax from our bees. We scented it with rosemary essential oil just in case it smelled like meat - it didn't. Once the soap had cured the smell was just.... soapy. We're really happy with the way this soap turned out. The bar is hard and lasts a long time. It's very soft on the skin and lathers nicely. Since the price of imported oils is rising rapidly we may start making more variations on this local bar of soap. I want to try rendering the fat over a fire this summer since it does smell up the house quite a bit.

The Beer Bar is a project that has been in the works for a long time. Our friends over at Brewers Crap have been bugging us to make a soap for them to sell for a long time. They sell nifty products made from the waste from brewing beer. This includes using the grain sacks to sew beer different kinds of bags. This soap contains the spent mash from brewing beer, a bottle of beer, hops that we grow, and honey! It's scented with a blend of ginger, orange, bay and fir. It's another 'manly' soap. Both of these soaps are available on our website honeypie.ca.

Also, we're madly cleaning our house to prepare for the Green Homes Tour. It's April 10th and is organized by the County Sustainability Group. We built our straw bale home from 2004-2006. We moved into our house in December of 2006 just in time for the arrival of our daughter Hazel. We've been delighted with the warmth of our house in the winter and it stays nice and cool in the summer. It was a completely new experience for us building a house but we're very happy with the way it turned out. We will have a slide show of photos of the building process during the tour and can answer all kinds of questions about the house.

Presenting Tea Party Tea

2011-03-03T12:38:00.007-05:00

Today I am happy to introduce our long awaited herbal tea for kids - Tea Party! It's a delicious and nutritious blend of sumac, red clover and elder flowers. The tea has a beautiful red colour and a fruity flowery flavour. As promised I'm posting the photo of Hazel's tea party with the bear and the drawing I did from the photo for our label. It will be available for sale on the website this afternoon. This weekend we'll be at the Seedy Saturday in Ottawa with our wares for sale and we'll be giving out samples of Tea Party tea. We had a great time at Seedy Saturday in Picton last week. We didn't have our table set up but went for fun and got some great seeds - some from the swap table and some we bought. I took lettuce seeds I had saved as well as coriander and nigella.

My honey man has been working on a project to turn an old Victrola cabinet into a honey liquidizer. When we have honey that crystallizes in the bucket we have to warm it gently in order to make it pourable so we can bottle it. We don't want to heat it too much or that destroys the beneficial properties of the honey. We had been putting the buckets into a sink of hot water but our well has been dry since July and we have to buy water to fill the cistern so this seemed like a waste of water. So, my honey man came up with this ingenious plan to insulate the victrola cabinet and put a light bulb in the bottom. We use a thermometer to monitor the temperature and a dimmer switch to control it. I am happy to say, after a minimal amount of head scratching - it works!

Happy February

2011-02-22T10:44:00.009-05:00

These rainbow fingerless gloves I made for myself out of the leftover yarn from Hazel's birthday hat and scarf. Rowan likes them so much he wants a pair in green and yellow. Of course it's still too cold out to wear these much but the time is coming!
This giant echinacea flower is at the Brickworks Market in Toronto. We are now going to two farmers markets in Toronto every Saturday. It's slow going this time of year but we are trying to make the most of the drive to the city. The Brickworks is another beautiful urban renewal project like the Green Barns.
This bee valentine is from Hazel and I just found it funny that this was the project they did at school - Bee Mine!
I got this amazingly cute honey pot from a friend recently. Thanks Lori!
Also, I've been lusting after these dresses at Dear Golden. I think I'll have to try sewing a dress from a vintage pattern one of these days.

Tea Party

2011-02-09T10:15:00.003-05:00

I got this sweet little box garden from Santa in my stocking and had to share this photo with you. The garden comes flat and you fold it into this box shape. It's black and white and you get to colour it yourself. Hazel and I did this together with coloured pencils. Then you sprinkle the seeds onto an absorbent pad and water gently. The seeds that came with it are cress which was lovely and spicy. Unfortunately I didn't get another photo of it when the cress was tall and green but I love this one of them just coming up.
The box garden is available at Kelly's Shop in Picton, Ontario.

I'm thrilled to share these photos of Hazel from a photo shoot we did for our new tea that's coming soon called Tea Party. These photos are not the exact one I'll be using for the drawing but I'll share that photo and the label once it's ready. The tea is a reddish colour and fruity tasting. It's healthful and delicious. Once the recipe has been finalized I'll share which herbs are in it. In the meantime I will say there are flowers in it and it's beautiful. Hazel was very cooperative but did consume quite a bit of sugar in her tea while I was busy snapping photos. She told me she promised to be nice though. Sigh. I can see she's got the message that sugar makes you grouchy.

Happy New Year 2011

2011-01-08T21:55:00.005-05:00

Well December passed me by in a whirl of Christmas sales. I didn't have a spare moment to blog about it but here are a few of the highlights.
One of a Kind Christmas Show, Toronto - We did the whole 11 days for the first time. Ten hours a day talking to people about bees, honey, herbs and whatnot... My honey man is so handsome in his suits and is such a great talker - he really wows the ladies. We did really well, sold out of some things and had a great time. I made lots of amazing trades too which is always fun. Check out Sartoria's cashmere and merino goods and Fierce Bunny's angora bunnies. I got my favorite hat ever from Wildhagen.
Busy Hands Holiday Sale in Picton - This is our annual sale in our own town. It was packed with people and had a really relaxed friendly feeling. It is so exciting to see how it's grown since Vicki and I started it 8 years ago in our kitchen when we lived together. We had 43 vendors this year all with handmade goods from Prince Edward County.
As further proof of my obsession with pumpkin pie I made a pumpkin pie soap for a competition at the One of a Kind Show. The theme was love. I had a little sign on it that said 'make pie not war'. The crust is oatmeal chamomile honey soap and the filling is pumpkin pie soap. I didn't get a picture of it at the show but here it is all cut up for my family when they visited at Christmas. I can't wait to take a bath with my slice.
Since Hazel's birthday is Christmas day we have a tradition of making her a gingerbread house as her birthday cake. She had a great time decorating it this year for her fourth birthday.

cider pressing

2010-11-09T14:51:00.008-05:00

We just made apple cider with work group for the second time. We had picked Alice's apples and stored them in her barn. This time I brought my camera and took pictures of the different steps. First we ground the apples in a hand crank apple crusher. That was hard work. The block of wood was to coax stubborn apples into the hopper. Next we transferred the crushed apples into the press with a wooden paddle, put the round wooden lid on, cranked the handle of the press and out came the cider. We poured the cider into a giant glass container in which it will ferment and become alcohol! We made 50 litres of cider. Wow, I love it.

halloween

2010-11-05T14:57:00.013-04:00

Well, Halloween has come and gone and we really lived it up this year. We went to three costume parties in all. These photos are from a big party for kids in Milford that had amazing pirate themed decorations. Hazel went as an evil princess all in pink (of course - how evil) and insisted on wearing her new running shoes . The other girl in purple was also a princess and I think maybe not an evil one. She seemed quite taken with Hazel's look though. Rowan was a pirate and claimed that pirates wear red pants - which makes sense to me. He was astonished to find the party all decked out in pirate gear and asked, 'How did they know I was coming as a pirate?' Life is so magical sometimes. He looked very sweet bobbing for apples and managed to bite one by the stem. Is that cheating?
I have a few work group photos. The scarlet runner beans we
found during a garden clean up at Mary Lou's. They're such an amazing colour I had to take a photo. The leaves turning red on the edges were growing along the walk. And lunch - always a highlight of work group. The table setting was lovely as usual.
Also, we're getting ready to do the One of a Kind Show again this year. It's our first time doing the whole eleven days and we hope we're up for it. Here's our listing on their website. We've been making things non-stop and trying to stay healthy. If you're going to be in Toronto Nov. 24 -Dec.5 come and visit us at booth E-24. We'll be giving out samples of herbal tea or mulled cider.

My uncle and aunt have a lovely blog about their music and market tours in France. This one about a visit to the Sault Plateau to see fields of lavender is breathtaking. You can almost smell the lavender.

Pumpkin Pie!

2010-10-14T10:56:00.008-04:00

I love fall and one of my favorite things about it is pumpkin pie. My children claim that pumpkin pie is the only pie worth eating and after having baked six of them so far I would have to say I almost agree. Although I do love apple pie and Bridget's concord grape pie (recipe from "the book" - Simply in Season - available at Ten Thousand Villages)
We make a pumpkin pie soap which contains real pumpkin as well at the essential oils of the spices that go in pumpkin pie - cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg as well as some lemon grass for that yummy lemoney note. For more pumpkin fun visit us in the Wellington park this Sat. Oct. 16th for Pumpkin Fest! There is a parade of giant pumpkins on trucks and tractors down main street. One of my favorite parts is the giant pumpkin that's hollowed out so that the kids can get inside and you can take their picture.
This pink dalia is the first one I ever grew and it was such a delight for me to catch this honey bee enjoying it so much. I even made a long video of it burrowing into several petals. I won't post it here because it's so long.
The bees made this incredible edible art on the inside of a hive lid. They had run out of space inside the hive and came through the inner cover and started building honey comb inside the lid. It's so beautiful! Reminds me of the art of Aganetha Dyck.
I've added a new link in my 'favorite things' - Style Rookie totally reminds me of myself as a teenager except that was in the olden days before the internet and I have no photos of my fabulous outfits. sigh.

Stinger in the Eye!

2010-09-30T12:11:00.005-04:00

Well, first things first... my honey man has had something in his eye for the past couple of weeks and has gone to the doctor twice about it. They finally sent him to Kingston yesterday to get the serious eye treatment. He had actually been stung on the eyelid several weeks before but it took awhile for the stinger to work its way through to make contact with his eyeball. There it was, scratching away and causing all kinds of grief. He's so happy to have it out of his eye he was singing during breakfast.
I also have more photos of honey bees on flowers. The white daisy like flowers are wild asters which are all around us now and looking lovely. The bees and wasps like them a lot and are partying together as they get drunk on nectar. The mint is still flowering too and attracts a lot of attention from the bees.
This mysterious machine dangling from the tractor bucket is my new hammermill. I bought it on ebay back in the spring and it's taken this long to get a new motor and a switch installed. It's for chopping and grinding the herbs for our teas and seasonings. I haven't actually been able to use it yet but it is now installed outside under a tent so we don't fill our house with herb dust. It will make our lives so much easier- hooray!

Good Food

2010-09-20T10:43:00.005-04:00

I recently made this tomato pie from a cookbook which is so well loved in my family we call it 'the book' in hushed tones. It's 'Simply in Season' recipes that celebrate fresh, local foods in the spirit of More-with-Less. I grew up on the wholesome food from More-with-Less and was delighted when I received 'Simply in Season' as a gift from my mom. My mother-in-law is the one who started calling it 'the book' and we all enjoy our different favorite recipes. It's available at all Ten Thousand Villages stores and the Ottawa Mennonite Church has an annual Ten Thousand Villages sale for the month of November. I also love all the Edna Staebler classics - 'Food That Really Schmecks' etc. - especially for the chatty writing style and the liberal use of butter. Anyway, here's the recipe for Plum Tomato Goat Cheese Pie:

11/2 cups/375 ml whole wheat pastry flour
7 Tbs butter
cut together until crumbly

1/3 cup/75 ml extra sharp cheddar cheese (shredded)
3-4 Tbs water
1/2 tsp salt
Add and mix until dough just comes together, adding more water if necessary. Turn onto floured surface and quickly bring together into a ball. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 min. Roll out pastry on a lightly floured surface into a circle about 15 inches/38cm in diameter. Wrap pastry around rolling pin and carefully lift onto a greased baking sheet.

1 egg yolk (lightly beaten)
3 Tbs dried bread crumbs ( I grind stale bread in the coffee grinder)
2 pounds/ 1 kg fresh plum tomatoes (sliced thick)
Brush most of yolk lightly over pastry. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top, then arrange tomato slices so they overlap in a circle, leaving a wide border.

4oz/125 g goat cheese or feta cheese (crumbled)
Scatter over top of tomatoes. Turn edge of pastry in over tomato filling and brush with remaining egg yolk (mix with a little milk if there's not enough egg left). Bake in preheated oven at 350F/180C until pastry is golden, 30 min.

2-4 Tbs olive oil
handful of fresh basil leaves (chopped)
Remove pie from oven and drizzle with olive oil. Season well with salt and pepper. Scatter basil leaves on top of pie and serve.

This was a big hit with the adults around here but the kids still insist they only like pumpkin pie. I'll post that recipe once I make one. I made my colourful cole slaw to go with the pie. It's just grated carrot and purple cabbage with apple cider vinegar, lemon juice and olive oil and some toasted pumpkin seeds. I also season with salt and pepper although my kids don't like pepper and can tell if there's any in there so we add our own pepper.
The Open Farms tour was yesterday. I included this colour version of the logo since I designed it and I like the way it turned out. We had about 15 car loads drop by and tour our house and garden. That was less than we expected but was a relief since we were so exhausted from Milford Fair the day before - not to mention all the house cleaning all week. It's really nice to have a tidy house now though. I think we will do it again next year.
This photo of a praying mantis eating a yellow jacket is for all you people who are being bugged by yellow jackets this time of year.

Happy things

2010-09-08T15:35:00.006-04:00

To start with today I have a special link. I found this amazing series about insects by Isabella Rossellini called Green Porno. This one is about the honey bee. They are all hilarious and I wish I had made them myself. She is brilliant! The way she uses paper is especially nice.
Also, this photo of bales of hay in a field of flowers makes me happy.
This picture of our display is at Vicki's Veggies annual tomato tasting which was packed with people all weekend. We had a great time - sold lots, tasted lots of tomatoes and saw lots of friends. I painted this banner a year and a half ago and am really enjoying it. I put grommets in the corners to tie it up. It's an old sheet and is painted with acrylic paint. I used a projector to enlarge my logo and some of my drawings of flowers and bees.
This lovely fuzzy plant is mullein which I use in all our lip balms, our queen bee's luxury lotion and some of our healing salves. It is wonderful for healing the skin and folklore has it that first nations people used the leaves as insoles in their moccasins when they had sore feet. The beauty of it is the leaves come in all foot sizes - you just have to pick the best one for you!

Green Barns Market

2010-08-23T12:52:00.005-04:00

The market has been so lovely lately. Our honey looks beautiful if I do say so myself.... The bear jars are super cute. The close up of the bouquet is one of my wildflower bouquets. Gaby looks beautiful among her flowers - Gaby's Babies - she grows for Vickie's Veggies. They're our neighbor at market. Beyond Gaby is the Chocosol tent. They have amazing chocolate as well as tortillas. On our other side is the coffee booth which I don't have a photo of but believe me it's great. Their coffee keeps me awake since I get up at 4AM to drive 2 1/2 hrs. to get there before market opens at 8AM. The drive home is the really hard part. I love our spot at the market. I know I've said this before but it's the Green Barns Market in Toronto on Christie south of St. Clair. Hours are 8AM-1PM.

Honey Extracting

2010-08-21T18:53:00.007-04:00

Here are some photos of the honey extracting process. First I use a very sharp knife (I cut my thumb yesterday on it) to cut the wax caps off of the honey comb. I'm holding a frame that has been completely uncapped. Then they go into the extractor. We have an electric one that holds 20 frames. The extractor spins the honey out of the frames and we put the empty frames back on the hives for the bees to fill with honey again. The wax we've cut off gets melted down in our solar wax melter and used in our beeswax lotions and balms.
You can sort of see our new stainless steel honey tank that my honey man drove to Leamington to get in the left hand side of the photo of me holding the frame. It used to be a dairy tank but the dairy was put out of business by a Shoppers Drug Mart selling milk at ridiculously low prices. You have to wonder why things are so cheap sometimes.....

Open Farms

2010-08-20T12:44:00.002-04:00

I recently designed this logo for a new farm tour in Ontario, Canada, called Open Farms. There's a tour by the same name in England and a group of farmers here decided to try it out. It's an organized tour of farms where people can drive around visiting a whole variety of farms to see where their food comes from. We're on the tour which is Sept. 19th and will be offering samples of our honey and herbal tea, tours of our apiary and gardens and straw bale farm house. For more on Open Farms click here.

We have honey!

2010-08-13T21:08:00.002-04:00

Here is a honey bee on Russian sage. They have been loving the Russian sage and it's right by our front door step so I watch them all the time.

In other news, we have finally started extracting honey!!! I don't have any photos yet but they're coming soon. We bottled the first of this year's honey crop today and will have it for sale at the market in Toronto tomorrow. I'm planning a honey tasting so hopefully the yellow jackets will leave us alone.

Honey Bees on Flowers again

2010-07-22T12:52:00.003-04:00

Here is a whole bouquet of honey bees on flowers. This is the time of the main honey flow so the photos are coming fast and thick. We are hoping to harvest honey really soon - maybe even next week. Everyone is asking for honey and we want honey too. Can hardly wait for the hot sticky sweet days of extracting honey.

Natural Sun Screen

2010-07-11T12:03:00.006-04:00

I've finally done it! Here's the label I just drew for our new product - Natural Sun Screen! Gavin took it to market on Saturday and sold a bunch of them. The zinc oxide is a physical barrier to the sun and coconut oil has natural sun screen properties. It's in a translucent twist up tube like a giant lip balm.

We have tons of wild raspberries taking over the garden. I've tried to get rid of them and even had my very kind brother and sister in law dig them all out a couple of years ago but they are back and covered in fruit. I've decided to enjoy them for now but I will have to keep mowing them down so they don't get out of control. Besides, I need more space for veggies. Raspberry shortcake with Nana's cake and plain yogurt and maple syrup on top ...... mmmmm....

Eating Flowers

2010-07-06T22:33:00.006-04:00

Here we have Matias sampling some wildflowers. I'm getting ready to teach a workshop on identifying edible wild plants so I practiced on our friends who were visiting last weekend. Matias really enjoyed eating vetch but that's water mint he's biting in the photo. There's vetch in this bouquet - it's the purple flower sticking out the sides. Also appearing in this sweet little bouquet are leek flowers, cilantro flowers and an unusually variegated milkweed. We had lots of lavender bunches from The Prince Edward County Lavender Farm this week at market along with my $5 posies. We're selling lavender essential oil from them as well. That's what's in the little jars on the right.
This is my honey man doing his Bill Clinton impersonation. Actually, he's explaining how to put foundation into frames for the bee hives. Check out the piles of new equipment he's built. He's got an awesome tape deck hanging up there too.

Bees on Poppies

2010-06-30T15:17:00.005-04:00

I discovered honey bees on the poppies in my garden the other day! What a discovery. They almost can't seem to figure out how to get into all those ruffly petals. I love sneaking around with my camera waiting for bees to land on flowers. I love the shot of the bee coming in for a landing. Here's a little video of a couple of our hives buzzing along nicely.

Elderflowers

2010-06-24T14:21:00.005-04:00

This is another beautiful work group activity. Harvesting elderflowers to dry for our new tea for kids which will be called Tea Party. I'll post the label design once it's ready. Many of us also made a fizzy drink out of the fresh flowers. It's important to use the European elderflower. Here's the recipe -

Elderflower Sparkler
3 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups hot water
4 large fresh elderflower heads
2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar
juice and pared rind of 1 lemon
4 litres of water

Mix the sugar with the hot water. Pour into a large glass or plastic container. Add all the remaining ingredients. Stir well, cover and leave for about 5 days.
Strain off the liquid into sterilized screw-top glass or plastic bottles. Leave for a further week or so. Serve very cold. Tastes good mixed half and half with fizzy water.

Check out the work of this intriguing artist. Makes me want to try making little scenes to photograph. Alex Mcleod

Honey Bees on Flowers

2010-06-09T16:18:00.007-04:00

This is the beginning of my attempt at photographing the honey bees on flowers. It involves lots of holding still and trying to be invisible. This purple flower at the bottom is creeping charlie. The pale purple is thyme and the pink is a rose from the climbing roses on our porch. I was so thrilled to catch the bees on the roses today. It's been raining so much lately I was afraid the roses would finish blooming before we got any sun.

Bouquets for market

2010-06-06T12:52:00.003-04:00

I've started selling bouquets of flowers at the Green Barns Market in Toronto. They're $5.00 each and are either wildflowers, garden flowers or herbs. Hazel is holding a herbal bouquet with chive flowers, chamomile, mint, oregano, and lovage. They're going over well and it's lots of fun to see how they change each week.

Beer Birthday Cake

2010-05-17T22:43:00.004-04:00

Well, my honey man wanted a beer cake for his birthday so I tried a recipe from Edna Staebler's More Food That Really Schmecks. She's one of my favorites for desserts. This was unusual in that it involved melting the butter with the beer - I'm thinking of Harry Potter- and adding currants and letting them soak. There were also hazelnuts in the cake and the icing was honey mixed with icing sugar. I added some lemon zest and a bit of lemon juice just 'cause I like that. As you can see from Hazel's face it was very well received. My freshly made beeswax birthday candles looked so sweet they almost got eaten. I really could live on cake - oh wait - what about pie......... how about both.

beeswax egg candles again

2010-04-21T15:47:00.011-04:00

At workgroup last week I had to take photos of Alice's egg cups with our egg candles in them. They look so springy and wonderful! The chicken tea cozy was at Gillian's. She had gotten some egg candles from us to surprise her granddaughter when she comes to visit. It reminded me so much of my childhood - chickens are such a great subject.

This is the highlight of work group - lunch! We had venison pie that Alice made, beautiful baba ghanoush by Buffy, coleslaw by me and for dessert a berry cake made by Renata.

sauerkraut

2010-04-16T18:47:00.006-04:00

I went to a fish fry at the South Bay United Church back in the fall and after a wonderful meal the cooks in the kitchen were giving away leftovers. I took home a HUGE tub of shredded cabbage. I decided it was time for me to make sauerkraut. First I did some research - I googled it. Then I cleaned the crock that had been the umbrella holder. Then I just put in layers of cabbage and handfuls of coarse sea salt until all the cabbage was gone. Then I put a plate on top with a jar full of water to act as a weight. After awhile the salt drew the water out of the cabbage and I topped it up with water until the cabbage was covered in water. I left it for about a week and it bubbled away. When mold formed on top I got worried but my research told me to skim if off and wait so I did. Then I packed it all into jars and put them in the fridge and gave a bunch away so I could have other food in my fridge. It tasted amazing and lasted for months. I would definitely do it again and need to as I'm all out of sauerkraut now.

Also, check out Coriander Girl. She has an article in House and Home which mentions us! Her flower shop carries Honey Pie products and is so lovely. If you're in Toronto you should go in and see her beautiful shop.

Work Group 2

2010-04-08T14:12:00.005-04:00

Here are some photos from the archives. We've done so many great things with work group. There's the day we made venison sausages at Renata's house. The chicken's were also done at Renata's. We actually didn't kill them but plucked them and cleaned them - and of course ate them - yum! Renanta's husband Tom built a chicken plucker which involves tumbling them over rubber fingers - wow! The rototilling is pregnant Vicki at Buffy's place.

I was just reading Chritine Renaud's wonderful blog and I think we should make pita bread at our next work group - but only on a rainy day because we have a lot of gardening to do.

Work Group

2010-04-08T13:28:00.003-04:00

I've been meaning to write about my work group for awhile now. It works like this. We are a group of women who meet once a week to work on jobs that are too big to tackle alone. We take turns having everyone over to work for the morning and then have a potluck lunch. There are usually four or five of us so each person gets the group about once a month. We've done mostly gardening but in the winter we paint walls, clean windows, label soap (that's me) and more. These photos are of us making ravioli at Alice's house. We made two kinds - one with spinach and one with squash.

One of a Kind Show

2010-04-07T15:25:00.010-04:00

Well, we survived the One of a Kind Show. It was five exhausting days long. We brought our farm kitchen to the city and were very well received. This was the first time we had honey for sale at the One of a Kind Show and it was the most popular thing in the booth. The herbal tea sold pretty well too since we gave out free samples. Lots of people recognized our handmade soap from the Gladstone Hotel and told us how much they loved it. Gavin's using a streetcar conductor's change machine that he bought on ebay. I like how the word 'free' is so big in the photo of Gavin. Everyone likes free samples. Thank you to everyone who helped us out. Special thanks to Nana who looked after our energetic children the whole time. You deserve a medal - perhaps that will be our next craft with the kids. We got a mention here on a fun and styley blog.

wedding favours

2010-03-22T21:28:00.007-04:00

I've added a page for wedding favours to our website. I took lots of photos of little jars of honey and this one which I like the best is taken on my wedding dress. This is a label I customized last summer. I have several drawings I've done that can be coloured differently and have the lettering changed. The second photo is taken using the train from my mom's wedding dress which I wore as a cape for my wedding. The other jars of honey have our regular honey labels because sometimes people ask for them. We offer beeswax candles and mini soaps as wedding favours too but I think honey is so perfect for a wedding we won't get many orders for the others. We'll see......

egg beeswax candle

2010-03-11T12:30:00.006-05:00

I've just made a new candle mold. It's made from a real chicken egg and I'm making a few sizes just for variety. So far I've got this smallish one. All of our candles are made from pure beeswax. It's so lovely and golden - I'm thinking the goose that laid the golden egg. I need to get my hands on a goose egg. I used to have a pet goose named Google but she alas met with an unfortunate end. So, for now we have chicken egg candles and they will be perfect for Easter. I'm trying to find the perfect egg cup to sell them in that will work as candle holders. This wooden one is too flammable. I've also ordered half size egg cartons so we can sell them in sixes. I'll post a photo once I have one.

peanut butter and honey popcorn balls

2010-03-03T15:55:00.008-05:00

This is a recipe from my mom. I have fond memories of munching on these when I was a girl in PEI. I haven't had them in years but I love anything with honey in it so I had to try. Plus, there's a wonderful source of organic popcorn at the Green Barns farmers' market we sell at- Passion Popcorn.

Peanut Butter and Honey Popcorn Balls
2 quarts of popped popcorn
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup sugar
melt together until boiling
remove from heat and add 1/2 cup peanut butter and 1/2 tsp. vanilla
stir into popped popcorn
butter your hands and form into balls

A cool website I just discovered called Apron Memories - all kinds of great aprony stuff. I love aprons and collect them. I have so many I want to have an exhibition with them. Turns out someone else had the same idea. Apron Chronicles. Oh well, I might have to do it anyway.

2010-02-24T22:22:00.004-05:00

I'm thinking about spring and ordering herbs today. I get herbs from Richters Herb Farm in Goodwood Ontario. They have the biggest selection of all things herbal. We're expanding our herb beds now that we are the proud owners of a hammermill. It's a machine that will chop the herbs for us so we can stop using scissors and giving ourselves carpel tunnel. I'm getting rosemary and lemon verbena and spearmint and some more apothecary roses (because you can never have too many roses). The picture of echinacea was taken by my mom. I scattered lots of echinacea seeds along our driveway in the fall so I'm hoping some of them take. We need lots more of every herb but I'm dividing a bunch of perennials in the spring and that should help a lot.

lavender honey scones

2010-02-02T17:02:00.005-05:00

Here's something delicious to do with lavender honey. Actually, you can use any kind of honey for this recipe but lavender honey is just so perfect.

Lavender Honey Scones
3/4 cup butter
4 cups spelt flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup milk
small handful of lavender flowers
honey to drizzle over top

Cut butter into dry ingredients leaving chunks fairly large - size of a grape.
beat eggs into milk and vanilla and stir into dry ingredients and butter.
Stir in lavender flowers.
Make a circle and cut into triangles.
Bake on parchment paper at 350 for 20 min or until golden.
While still hot drizzle lavender honey over scones and sprinkle lavender flowers on top.
Enjoy!

rendering fat into lard

2010-01-25T15:00:00.008-05:00

Ok, WARNING - if you are a vegetarian this might gross you right out!
I have really been getting into making my own lard. It's great for making pastry and for cooking with. I have been lucky enough to get really good quality local fat that would otherwise be thrown out from John Nyman. All I have to do is render it and this is how I do it. The fat is frozen so you have to let it half thaw out. It's easiest to work with if it's only semi frozen. So, I cut the fat into 3/4 inch square chunks and put them in a pot on the stove on med/low heat. The chunks melt down but never disappear. The length of time this takes depends on how much fat you have. I think it took about 1/2 an hour for this batch. I strained everything through a paper coffee filter into glass jars and ended up with pure white lard. The chunks are called cracklings and we tasted them but thought they tasted too much like chunks of fat. Maybe there's a secret to preparing them to make them taste better - possibly lots of salt. I love having a jar of lard in the fridge - we will make it through the winter.

Coriander Girl

2010-01-04T10:10:00.003-05:00

Just before Christmas we started selling our products at this lovely flower shop on Queen St. W (in Toronto) called Coriander Girl. The charming proprietor, Alison Westlake, sells flowers, antiques and gifts. Check out her shop if you're in the area - 1537 Queen St. W.

giraffe suit

2010-01-01T22:22:00.003-05:00

This is my honey man working on the bees with our son the giraffe. The giraffe suit provides some protection from bees but needs a veil over the face. Luckily he's not afraid and the bees sense it and leave him alone.

Gladstone soap

2010-01-01T22:13:00.008-05:00

We make mini bars of handmade soap for the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. They get our lavender soap and this is what it looks like - labeled and unlabeled. So, we make the soap one day and let it cure overnight. The next day we can cut it. Our friend Sean made us a really cool cutter that uses wires to slice the soap. Then we put the labels on and it's ready to go to the Gladstone.

honey extracting

2010-01-01T21:36:00.000-05:00

Here's my honey man at work extracting honey. Our honey house is festive with Christmas lights even in August which is when I took this picture. The frames are uncapped with a special sharp uncapping knife and then put into our 20 frame extractor you can see in the background. The extractor stopped working this summer and I had to get our neighbor Andrea in to look at it. She took the gear box off and I talked on the phone to a lovely woman at the Dadant parts plant in Georgia who told me what the problem was and what part I needed. I felt so cool when the part arrived and Andrea put it back together and it worked! Yay team!

honey pies

2010-01-01T21:26:00.001-05:00

This is a tray of honey pies I made - actually honey tarts. People are always asking me if I make honey pie so here is the evidence! They are sort of like butter tarts but way better because they taste like honey. Here's the recipe:

Honey Pie

1 cup honey
3 large eggs beaten
3 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
zest of one lemon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 unbaked pie shell

-in a saucepan bring the honey to a boil
-quickly beat eggs into honey
-beat in rest of ingredients
-pour into pie shell
-bake at 325 degrees for 25 min. until center is set.

Many variations are possible including adding 1 cup of pecans or sprinkling coconut on top or fresh blueberries.......

busy hands

2009-12-14T23:38:00.001-05:00

Here's a picture of our set up at Busy Hands. We took three of our five shelves. It was still lots of room.

catching a swarm

2009-12-14T23:13:00.001-05:00

This is the video I took of my honey man catching a swarm of bees wearing only shorts and a T-shirt. That's my cousin Randy helping out. This was summer 2008.

2009-12-11T21:33:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow we have our last craft sale of the year and it's in our hometown of Picton! Vicki and I have been doing this sale for years and it's always a great time and well attended. I drew the picture for this poster - copied from an old magazine cover I found once. We took the green cabinets we made for the One of a Kind so they could have another outing. They're too pretty to leave at home all the time. I guess we'll have to get out our town clothes too so we don't look too shabby next to them. Everything is set up and looks beautiful. I'll post pictures soon.

2009-12-08T10:56:00.000-05:00

Well, we survived the One of a Kind Show! We did the first five days since it was our first time doing the Christmas show. The whole show is eleven days and we'll definitely go for the whole show next year. It was fun dressing up and taking our farm kitchen to the city.

2009-11-19T16:17:00.000-05:00

We were at Vicki's Veggies heirloom tomato tasting this Sept. selling our wares and tasting all the beautiful tomatoes. The tomatoes were sliced on their own plates with sweet little name tags on signs. On our table - a nice display of the lavender honey. We always love the tomato tasting at Vicki's and have been selling our products there for several years. It's always on the Labour Day weekend.

2009-11-19T15:42:00.000-05:00

We recently did a craft sale in Toronto at the CBC building. We had a really great time and were dressed up in our best going to town clothes. Rick Mercer was presiding over us in a slightly scary way.
People were loving our lavender honey. We put some hives on the Prince Edward County Lavender Farm this summer and the bees happily harvested nectar from the lavender blossoms. The honey has a light delicate flavour but doesn't taste like lavender.

honey pie colouring sheet

2009-09-04T16:49:00.001-04:00

Nial Eccles drew this amazing colouring sheet of us for Buddha Dog in Picton. They give out these colouring sheets to kids who visit their local gourmet hot dog shop. The people who supply the produce, meat, bread etc. used in their hot dogs and toppings are featured in the colouring sheets. We have been supplying honey for their fruit smoothies this summer. We love the way Nial captured our booth and our whole family. Thanks Nial!!!

2009-07-29T18:45:00.000-04:00

We have spent a lot of time building frames for our bee hives this year. This is a picture of me and my son Rowan working together. He's peeling the protective paper off of the beeswax foundation and I am using a tool to melt the beeswax onto the wires of the frame. We like to work outside under a shade tent.

2009-07-29T15:33:00.000-04:00

Here are some photos of wildcrafting St. John's Wort. We harvest the flowers and steep them in organic sunflower oil for 6-8 weeks in the sun to make our Aches and Pains muscle rub. These wildflowers grow in our fields and along treelines. I've been known to suddenly pull over to the side of the road when I see an especially big patch of St. John's Wort growing - only on a quiet country road. These yellow flowers turn the oil (and my fingers) bright red.

2009-07-27T19:28:00.000-04:00

This is the beginning of our blog! I have to go pick St. John's Wort now. More later.