February 2016

 I guess I've been using our Honey Pie Facebook and Instagram pages instead of this blog to share photos and info for the last couple of years.  I decided it would be nice to get back to writing a bit more so lets see what has happened at Honey Pie Hives & Herbals since 2014.
We've added a few more varieties of mead to our selection. Since we already make and sell herbal teas which are popular we decided it would be interesting to use these teas to flavour our mead. There is a tradition in mead making of adding herbs to the fermentation and the resulting mead is called metheglin. Interestingly, the word comes from the same root as the word amethyst. The word meth means drunken and people used to believe that wearing amethyst could prevent you from getting drunk while drinking. Pictured here on either side of our Wildflower Mead are, on the left Picnic Mead, made from our Tea Party Tea containing wild sumac berries, elderflowers and red clover blossoms and, on the right, Lovers' Mead made from our Lovers' Tea containing ginger, basil, ginseng, saw palmetto berries, damiana and horny goat weed. It's a sweeter mead and very complex in flavour while the Picnic Mead is dryer and has a delicate flavour.

 Starting last spring in 2015, we built a stone patio outside our farm store. It was a lot of work but I love it so much! Here it is at the end of the season once the flower bed at the back had grown in nicely. We've got a few tables and chairs set up for customers to relax and taste the mead. We get a lot of cyclists who like to have a place to eat their lunch as well. We didn't serve any prepared food on the patio last summer but this year we plan to offer pie and scones to have with cups of herbal tea. Eventually we'll offer mead by the glass but we're not there yet.

 This sign has been out on the road at the end of our long lane to help get the idea across. I'm in the process of painting a bigger one for this year. We're on a curve in the road that makes it a bit too easy to drive right past our sign without noticing it. I'm also painting a few signs to put out a bit before our lane to give people more notice that it's coming up. I love the gold paint for the mead chalice - it looks like the holy grail.

 We took part in Taste - Community Grown in September as well as the Great Canadian Cheese Festival in June last year. We were so excited to be able to sample our mead at these big food and wine events in the County! This is Gavin pouring mead at Taste. It's great to be able to offer something new for people to sample. Many people have never tasted mead before so we love to explain how it's made and the history of mead.

 Our sunflowers were giant last summer and the bees loved them as usual. Here are a couple of big ones with our warre hive. As I mentioned before, it's an experiment to see how well the bees do in a top bar hive. So far they've stayed alive for two winters which is great. Since we only have one warre hive it's not a very scientific study. We have 100 langstroth hives which are the industry standard. Over the last three winters we've lost an average of 50% of our hives each year. We've rebuilt our numbers each spring through splitting existing hives and buying new bees. This loss is consistent with provincial average losses and is the reason the Ontario government has decided to phase out a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids for agricultural use. Studies have established a link between these chemicals and the weakening of honey bee health leading to high winter losses.

 Here is a pic of my honey man working the bees during one of his beekeeping workshops. He isn't wearing gloves here because he's just observing the bees and checking on the queen to see if she's laying eggs. It's possible to work slowly and carefully and avoid squishing bees. It's much easier to be careful when not wearing gloves.

 Gavin took a selfie at Niagara Falls in August 2015 while at the Eastern Apicultural Society Conference at the University of Guelph. He went on a bus tour to Niagara Falls with a group from the conference. He was invited to give a talk about mead making at the conference which went over very well.

This is a beehive carved from the trunk of a tree. Gavin saw this on a farm tour during the EAS conference. I'd love to have something like this at our place. I have been thinking for awhile now that I want to have more outdoor art along the theme of bees and honey and flowers. If anyone has any ideas they'd like to propose don't hesitate to contact me!

Mead is here at last!

Finally! The news we've all been waiting for - the mead is ready for sale!! Here it is in all it's farmy, old timey glory. The back label reads, 'Mead is a traditional wine made from honey, long ago considered the drink of Kings and Queens. Enjoy the delicate, complex floral bouquet of our Wildflower Mead with meals or on its own. Handcrafted in small batches on our family farm in Prince Edward County.' You can buy it at our farm store at 705 County Rd. 24 or through our website.

This beautiful basket of flowers is bee balm or monarda. It is also called bergamot and Oswego tea. Talk about the herb with a thousand names! We call it bee balm of course. Is has the flavour of earl grey tea which is why the pioneers called it bergamot. Bergamot is actually a citrus fruit from Italy which is used to give earl grey tea it's distinctive flavour. We use bee balm in our Femininitea, a herbal tea for female complaints - good for PMS and menstrual cramps. We've had lots of great feedback about how well this tea works - it really helps if you have someone to make it for you as remembering to take it when you need it is the biggest challenge.

We caught a lot of swarms of bees this summer and finally managed to get one into our Warre hive. This is a top bar hive that a friend made for us. We use the standard Langstroth hive which is designed for honey production. The Warre hive is an experiment we are conducting to see if the survival of the bees is improved. There are many who claim this is a better way to keep bees but it seems that there would be less honey production. We will see how they overwinter.

This is the Warre hive later in the summer. It's well established and overflowing with bees. We added two more boxes and the peaked roof. The colour is closer to the actual blue we used to paint the hive in this photo. Looking good bees!

We had the pleasure of attending a medieval reenactment this summer. We had just discovered the world of larping (Live Action Role Playing) through our 10 year old son and then got to see it in action with knights in armour and ladies drinking from goblets. It was done so thoughtfully and with so much attention to detail. I was entranced by the canvas tents and wooden furniture.  

There were lots of children in costume too. We really wished we had some costumes to wear. Better start planning for next summer right away! I want a green dress and a tent.

These people definitely need mead! The elegant woman in the red dress looks like she already has a mead in hand.

This summer has been a difficult one for my family. We lost my mother Patty Woodyard after a brief battle with  pancreatic cancer in June. This photo was taken the last time I saw her up and outdoors - on Mothers' Day. My mother was well known for many things, her generosity, her hospitality, her creativity, her love for her family and for those who came to visit her, her thankful book. She asked everyone who was in the house every evening to tell her three things they were thankful for and she wrote them down in her book. She left behind so many books spanning years of gratitude. I can still hear her asking me, "What are you thankful for this day?"Today I am thankful for my wonderful mother, my whole family, and my beautiful home.

Springtime and things are green

 When we bought our farm in 2002 we fell in love with it on first sight. There was a small mature hardwood forest, a pond, hay fields and some areas that were starting to go wild. There was a definite lack of evergreen trees though - except for junipers.  We have added to the fields that were already going wild as well as thickening up our tree lines. We have planted hundreds of tree seedlings that we bought from Quinte Conservation over the years. Varieties include, white pine, jack pine, spruce, birch, butternut, black cherry, nanny berry, tamarack, viburnum, cedar. It has been so exciting to watch the trees grow. Our goal is to always be contributing to the diversity of species on the land. It has been an ongoing project for us to 'rewild' our property. We like to plant things that are native to our area and would possibly have grown here before the land was cleared for farming. The first picture is of ramps or wild leeks that I planted in our woods last year. They seem to have taken to their new home very well. We won't harvest any for a few years to allow them to establish.

 This photo of a jack pine was taken in early spring and shows how most of the field has grown up in junipers but we've added in a few other evergreens. It's hard to say how old this tree is.

 We have been working on making some new display beds for herbs in our garden. They'll be used for harvesting and drying herbs for our herbal teas and seasoning too. We're even making name tags for the herbs so people can go on a self guided tour of the garden. Emily was our wwoofer (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) for the month of May. She did most of the hard work of preparing the beds. Since Hazel thought everything Emily did was awesome she even spent a few minutes helping! Thanks Emily!
The blue and white truck is my new herb dryer/greenhouse. It's a work in progress but I finally have someone working on it for me since I don't seem to have enough time to do it myself. More details and photos once it's done.



We have been very fortunate to get a lot of great press this spring. Food and Drink magazine featured us on their coveted inside back page. This involved us driving in to Toronto and bringing several costumes for them to choose from and getting a lot of makeup done. It was fun to see how it all happens. I got the job of holding the bountiful basket of goodies which weighed a ton while my honey man stood there with his hands in his pockets! Every few minutes I'd have to put the basket down on a nearby stand. Honey is heavy!

The question everyone asks us is 'when is the mead coming?'. We keep saying soon but we really do think it should be ready to sell from our farm store in the next couple of weeks. We have a couple of things left to do but the permit is in place and the labels are approved. I'll make another post all about the mead once it's ready. In the meantime here's the label design for our first variety Wildflower Mead which is a traditional style mead made from honey, water and yeast. I've designed five different mead labels over the last few months and am so happy they're finished and I'm out in the garden!


Here's our best family portrait yet- taken by my sister on a recent visit to Ottawa. The tulip festival was on and we made the most of it.

The Mysterious Buckwheat Honey

 The honey crop was wonderfully dark and delicious this year.  We've got stacks of buckets of honey waiting to be bottled. This bee is enjoying the nectar of the borage flower  - used in our Blues Tea.

I love the fuzzy stems and leaves of borage - known as the glad herb.  For some wonderful history of the borage plant check out A Modern Herbal.  I took lots of pics of the bees in the borage patch.  One of them made it to our new series of blank greeting cards - available directly from us at markets and fairs. Coming to the website soon!

At last, we have buckwheat honey!  After trying for too many years to admit, we have finally managed to get our second ever crop of buckwheat honey.  The first one was back when we were starting out and worked purely on beginner's luck.  What we have learned over the years is that the flowers of the buckwheat don't have a lot of nectar.  So, if you put your hives on the edge of a field of buckwheat in full bloom in the dark of night and expect the bees to wake up in the morning and get right to work making honey from the strong smelling nectar, you may be disappointed.  The bees, in their infinite wisdom, will choose the best source of nectar they can find, not the closest.  This year because of the drought there was nothing better for them so they went for the buckwheat.  We are delighted to offer this pungent, dark, strong honey.  The buckwheat was grown by the good folks at Cherry Vale Organic Farm just down the road from us.

This is our second year harvesting hazelnuts from our trees.  We planted them about five years ago.  They are beautiful in their husks - like fairy hats.  I would like to make a hazelnut cake with them for Hazel's birthday this year.  They should be cured just in time for her birthday which is Christmas day.

The kids and I had such a great time at Small Pond Arts scarecrow festival.  We made this handsome fellow on a very windy fall day.  Hazel drew the face onto the cloth head before we stuffed it with straw.  You can tell by the orange mouths on the kids they were having fun.  We've enjoyed all the events we've been to at Small Pond, including making shadow puppets, watching a shadow puppet show, Stickfest, Cornography, and just going for a walk in their woods on the art path.

I just couldn't resist snapping a photo of the laundry line full of napkins and tea towels and things with the fall colours looking so beautiful.  The path into our woods is right under the laundry line so I always feel like the laundry is a kind of fluttering banner pointing the way into a magical world.
Our woods is the kind of place you can find giant marshmallows growing, I mean giant puffball mushrooms.  We told Hazel and Rowan we would sell any puffballs they found and they could keep the money.  They sure were excited the day they found about fifteen puffballs between them.  When we sold all but the very biggest ones at market the next day they were even more impressed.

I am raising money to go to Australia!  I've never been there before and when the opportunity presented itself to go to a yoga retreat with some friends I decided to go for it.  So, in order to make this happen I am selling some of my paintings.  I have several that I am willing to part with.  I keep telling myself that I can always make more.  This painting I did in Halifax many years ago in the fall.  It's oil on board, 11"x23", framed - $600.  You can contact me at honeypiehh@hotmail.com if you're interested in this painting or in seeing the other paintings.

Summer Delights

Summer has gone beyond full blown as we've passed through a drought and into a second flush of flowers. This is a sumac flower with a honeybee on it, taken before the drought.  The bees love the sumac flowers and we have so many of them you can hear a constant buzzing when they're working the flowers.  Now the sumac flowers have matured and turned bright red.  They are just about ready to harvest for our Tea Party Tea.

We decided to add some colour to our hives this year.  They've always been white in the past and I had painted a few flowers on some of them.  I think it looks so beautiful with all the colours mixed randomly in the field.  This is my honey man with the hives at the Prince Edward County Lavender Farm.

Here's our Hazel posing at the Lavender Farm's lavender festival.  We had a great time there trying lavender lemonade and lavender scones and seeing how lavender essential oil is made through steam distillation.

Here I am doing my thing.  This was at Vicki's Veggies spring seedling sale.  I've been doing so many sales this year but this is the only good photo from any of them.  We were also at the Midsummer Herbfest in Almonte and in Picton at the Women's Institute Craft Sale.

We're building a new solar herb dryer.  This is the beginning of the process. We put down cardboard and landscape fabric and got a load of gravel dumped on top. This is to keep the weeds from growing through the gravel.  Stay tuned for more photos of the process.  We have come up with an original design that we will share with you.

We have a wonderful new employee this summer named Katie.  Here she is uncapping a honey frame with the uncapping knife. She has done a lot of honey extracting this summer and it's not over yet.  It's hot, sticky work but she's so happy about it she wants to get her own bees!  We love you Katie!

Here's a recent shot of honey bees collecting nectar from an oregano flower.  We use this oregano in our Spicy Italian herbal seasoning.  It's so interesting to see the relationship between the herbs and the bees.

I had posted in the winter that I was ordering some new roses.  This is the new Apothecary rose with many pollinators on it.  I didn't manage to catch any honeybees on it but I think they did visit the roses.  The Madame Hardy rose I ordered wasn't available because of a crop failure.  I'll have to try again next year.

Thinking About Herbs

I've been thinking about herbs a lot these days.  I've just placed my annual order with Richters Herbs of Goodwood, Ontario.  I buy lemon verbena and a few other herbs every year from them.  This is a picture of my lemon verbena crop last summer.  Lemon Verbena (Aloysia triphylla) is a woody shrub that overwinters in warmer climates like California but here in Ontario we have to plant seedlings each spring and harvest the leaves before frost.  You can bring a plant inside for the winter but be warned, the plant will drop all of it's leaves when you bring it in and then grow new ones.  Lemon Verbena has a wonderful lemony flavour that's fresh and light.  Medicinally it's used for digestion, headache and fever.   We use it in our Lemon Herb Tea and our Lemon Herb Pepper.
The photo below is lemon basil  (ocimum x citriodorum) which we also grow for the Lemon Herb Tea and Lemon Herb Pepper.  We get Vicki Emlaw of Vicki's Veggies to start the seeds for us in her greenhouse.  If all goes according to plan we hope to build a solar herb dryer/greenhouse this year so we may be able to start our own lemon basil as well as other seedlings this year.  It's very lemony as well but with the spiciness of basil.  I harvest the flowers every few days during the summer.  The flowers have a wonderful intense flavour and this also encourages the plant to grow bushier.

This gorgeous double rose is an old fashioned rose we ordered from Richters Herbs (their photo) called La Reine Victoria.  It's described as having a sweet fragrance and continuous blooming.  I also ordered the Apothecary Rose and the Maiden's Blush Rose.  I planted 3 Rosa Rugosa - in the photo below with lots of pollinators- last year and thought I'd try some other varieties this time.  My plan is to harvest the rose hips eventually but for now they're still not producing very many.  We use rose hips in our Catarrh Tea for their high vitamin C content. 

These are some herbal oils I made last summer.  (Photo by Lisa Kannakko).  They're made by filling a glass jar with fresh picked herbs and then covering them completely with oil - I use organic sunflower oil - and then leaving them sitting in the sun for 6-8 weeks.  This extracts the medicinal properties of the herbs into the oil.  From left to right they are plantain, St. John's Wort and Arnica.  I planted arnica for the first time last spring.  It's a perennial so I'm hoping the plants will be bigger and have more flowers this year.  I also ordered another plug tray of them from Richters Herbs so that I can produce more oil.  I had been asked to make the oil for a friend and she bought all that I made last year - which was only one jar.  This year I plan to make a salve from the oil to use on injuries, bruises and sprains.
I saw this fun idea to make an Herbarium on the Northern Ontario Plant Database website.  It is, as they say, 'a collection of pressed and dried plant specimens mounted on sturdy paper'.  It would be fun to do with kids.
I've also discovered an emagazine called Plant Healer Magazine which I've just subscribed to.  It looks full of info and beautiful artwork and photos.  I'm really excited to see how the new March issue looks.  They also have a cool looking magazine for kids called Herbal Roots Zine.