The summertime buzz...

 

This summer has been a big one so far here at Honey Pie world headquarters.  We opened our new farm store which meant a lot of farm beautification.  We finally finished the outside of our basement which is where our workshop and store are.  It was exposed insulated concrete forms for a few too many years.  This photo shows what it looked like with only the last bit of exposed wall.  It's near the porch and is white with vertical black stripes.  We parged the walls with two coats of lime cement plaster.  This is the first coat.  Next I painted a sign to let people know where we are.  No more being a secret location for us.  It was very exciting the day we actually installed the sign at the end of our lane.  My honey man
sat on top of our van to attach it to the posts.  People keep telling us our sign is too small and they drive right by so we've added a couple of flags to it.  I think I'll make the whole thing bigger one day but for now it's going to have to be enough.  It's been fascinating to see how many people find us anyway.  
We are very touched by the concern that our visitors show for the situation with the bees.  The question on everyone's lips is, "What's happening with the bees?"  We wish we could answer this question but it's a complicated situation.  There has been a lot of media attention on the bees this year and we struggle to keep up with all the information that is out there.  We know that GMOs are not a good thing for bees.  Neither are pesticides.  In Europe there has been a two year ban on neonicotinoid chemicals in order to see if the bees recover.  My feeling is that this isn't long enough to see a full recovery.  If you support the ban of neonicotinoids here's a petition to sign.  Here's another one from Elizabeth May.  We have suffered unusually high winter losses this past year and Gavin has worked very hard to build our hive numbers up again.  We don't know exactly where our bees go but we are careful to position them on farms that are not using GMOs or pesticides.  We can only hope that the bees find enough flowers nearby and don't have to venture into dangerous territory. 

We went to my sister's wedding in Vermont this summer and had a great time with our family.  On an excursion to Brattleboro one day I found this amazing product called Fire Cider.  I love the label art!  It's apple cider vinegar with ginger, horseradish, chilies, garlic and I think some other stuff infused into it.  You take a shot in a glass of water when you're feeling a cold coming on.  If that doesn't chase away a cold I don't know what will!  Vermont has a long tradition of using apple cider vinegar to treat colds and all sorts of ailments.  I didn't buy it because I decided to try making some myself.  I've been using apple cider vinegar in this way for years but never thought of infusing all these other herbs into it.  It's funny because I've been making drinking shrubs for a local restaurant - Agrarian Speakeasy in Bloomfield this year.  I soak fruit, herbs or veggies in vinegar and sugar to make a sweet and tart syrup for cocktails.  The most popular one is rhubarb and ginger in apple cider vinegar.

New this year is a Health Canada ban on citronella in bug spray.  We think this is junk science but are forced to comply.  We've made a new recipe using lavender, cedar, eucalyptus and lemongrass.  It smells great and it works!

We have a brand new tea called Lavender Tea.  I've had a lot of requests for a tea with lavender in it so I came up with this formula which I think is delicious.  I've been enjoying it iced.  It's made with lavender, oat straw, lemon verbena, and mallow.  Oat straw is very tasty and high in calcium.

 

 We've been harvesting honey a lot although it looks like we won't have as much honey this year as we had hoped.  This is a frame of capped honey just about to be uncapped and spun in the extractor.  The lavender honey harvest is in and on the shelves at our farm store, the Brickworks and Green Barns farmers markets in Toronto and at the Prince Edward County Lavender Farm.

We even have a new parking sign - things are getting so official around here.  In this photo you can see the finished parging on the basement.  It looks like it's always been there now. 

















 I'm still photographing bees but I don't limit myself to honey bees now. This is a beautiful bumble bee snuggling into a foxglove flower.

Harvesting Herbs

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'.

lavender honey scones

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!

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.

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.