Here's to a New Year - 2013!

It's already the end of January but not too late for me to wish you a Happy New Year!  We have so many exciting plans for the year ahead!  We are finally going to open our farm to the public.  We're fixing up the entrance to our workshop and making a little store here.  I have a sign to paint - something I enjoy doing.  It's beautification time at Honey Pie World Headquarters.  No more living in a secret location for us.  We will have an official Grand Opening in June to celebrate all things honey and herbs.  Activities will include a wild herb walk and a herbal tea party under a tent.  Mini honey pies will be served - hopefully by fairies or maybe children if we can convince them to dress up.  Stay tuned for more details.

Here's the winning photo from my photo shoot of my new greeting cards for our website.  I got my favorite photos of honey bees on flowers made into blank greeting cards.  They've been selling very well - I'm so thrilled!  I'm looking forward to more following the bees around this year. I even made a calendar with the photos and sold out!  This year I'll make the calendar a bit earlier in the year - I had it ready by the end of November but that was a bit late for some people.

This is a shot of my calendar in our booth at the One of a Kind Show.  January's flower is a white aster which has medicinal uses as well.  It was a marathon show as usual but we had fun with it and posted daily photos of our outfits on our facebook page. 












 We have two new flavoured honeys available.  They are Ginger and Chocolate.  They've been getting rave reviews and our always popular Cinnamon honey is starting to feel threatened.  I've been giving out samples of honey at the farmers markets now that we're indoors and the yellow jackets aren't a problem.  People are often confused and then amazed by the idea of flavoured honey.  We don't use any flavourings - just ground organic ginger, cinnamon, cocoa etc. The moisture in the honey releases the flavour of the ground spice and it becomes tastier over time.  I like the ginger honey in a cup of hot lemon and honey.

I love this photo of Hazel playing the electric guitar.  She really knows how to hang around all day in her jammies!

When we're not hibernating in our pajamas we do a bit of sledding in Picton.  This is a popular spot for sledding and pretty terrifying for all of us - in a good way.  The thrill is intense.

Spring Things

I've been experimenting with fermented drinks that are not alcoholic.  These are made with the whey from yogurt which you get by draining the yogurt in cheesecloth for a few hours.  From a litre of yogurt you can get over a cup of whey and you're left with a thick cream cheese like stuff that is delicious.  Here's the basic recipe:
1/4 cup of whey
1/4 cup honey
2 litres of liquid - I use herbal tea
optional - 1 cup of cooked fruit - blueberries are good, juice of a lemon, 4 tablespoons of grated ginger
Let it sit on the counter in a glass jar with a lid on for three or four days.  Strain and refrigerate and drink.
In this photo you can see I left the herbs in the tea while it fermented.  You can strain it before or after fermenting and it's fun to try both.  The jar on the right is our Catarrh tea and the one on the left is nettles with ginger and cranberries.  I didn't cook the cranberries but next time I would to get more flavour.

This lovely pink drink is made from our Tea Party Tea which is sumac, elder flowers and red clover.  It was delicious.  Other favorites include blueberry with lemon, ginger and lemon and our 5 Mint Tea.  I got my recipe from Sally Fallon's book Nourishing Traditions and I also tried her recipe for ginger beer which is a bit more complicated but delicious.  It involves making a 'ginger bug' which you feed every day for a week with ginger and sugar.  I used honey instead of sugar and it seemed to work just fine even though honey is antibacterial.  I guess at some point the wild bacteria are stronger.  Here's a great website that tells you in more detail how to do it.  I have really enjoyed the process and have plans to try all kinds of combinations this summer as more fruits are available.  I'm just about ready to try rhubarb ginger next!

The bees have been working away on all kinds of flowers.  Here's a male hazelnut flower with a honey bee on it.  See the spider on her web in the background?  The female flower of the hazelnut is a tiny bright purple hair!  There aren't any in this photo.  The pollen from the catkins blows around in the air and pollinates the female flowers which grow into hazelnuts.  Last year was our first harvest of hazelnuts and it was great fun for the kids.

The trilliums in our woods were attracting a lot of honey bees.  I lay down on the forest floor to photograph them.  The sound of bees buzzing all around me was gentle and lovely.  They were gathering lots of bright yellow pollen from the trilliums as you can see on the bee's hind leg.

You have to walk carefully through the grass when the dandelions are blooming.  The bees love dandelions and harvest a bright orange pollen from them.  We've been eating a lot of dandelion greens this year.  I add them to salad, saute with garlic, puree in soup and bake in quiche.  Dandelion helps you detox so it's a good spring cleanser.

Stinging nettles are another spring green we eat along with the dandelion greens.  When you cook them it gets rid of the stinging so don't try them in salad.  No bees on the nettles since they aren't flowering yet.  I've never noticed them on the nettle flowers before but I'll be sure to check this year.  I think the flower isn't noticeable enough for the bees to be interested though.

I tried a great recipe from Plant Healer Magazine for buckwheat pancakes.  You soak buckwheat groats overnight and drain them in the morning.  Then puree them in a food processor, add salt and thin with water until it's the consistency you want.  Cook like pancakes.  They take a bit longer to cook than traditional pancakes.  They have a wonderful flavour and if you make them thin like crepes they're good for wraps.  I tried them with yogurt cream cheese and sauteed nettles and garlic.  Wow!  For those who don't eat gluten these are gluten free.

Winter Fun and Food

Before I start with the fun and food, we're very excited about a new series of workshops that my honey man will be offering this year.  The idea is to build your own beehive, get the bees to go in it and then learn how to work with the bees and hopefully extract some honey.  The cost of equipment and bees is high but we hope to find some people to help us in our efforts to keep honey bees naturally.  The more people involved in keeping bees the more likely we are to navigate through all of the many problems that arise.

Alright, lets talk food.  I made baklava with almonds and honey.  Usually the recipe says to pour sugar syrup over the whole thing after you bake it but I just warmed some honey a bit to make it liquid and added lemon zest and poured  that over top.  It seemed like the best way to go.

 We've been having such mild weather we've only skated on the pond once this year.  It was early January and we were lucky enough to have a visit from Uncle Seth and Auntie Tera who were lots of fun on the ice.  Other times we've walked down to the pond only to find it wet and dangerous.

We went to Ottawa for a wedding show and a visit with more family.  We figure since we can't go somewhere warm we might as well enjoy the cold.  On the way to Ottawa we went to this beautiful studio called Radiance of the Ordinary where I bought the most beautiful hand made broom.  Of course the kids wanted matching little brooms too but we told them they'd have to save up their allowance.  I really felt like a mean witch but it was my Christmas present from my honey man.

 Here I am with my new broom. 

Ottawa was so extremely cold we were a bit shocked.  My family took the kids ice sliding while my honey man and I gave out honey samples at Wed by Hand.  I had made hundreds of mini scones with the help of work group for people to taste the honey on.  In a world of mini cupcakes I think we stood out.  The most tested honeys were lavender and cinnamon.  The small jars of honey are the most popular choice for wedding favours but we also offer mini soaps and mini teas.

We've had lots of fun with downloading vintage valentines this year.  My favorite site so far is Vintage Holiday Crafts.  Rowan liked the corny popcorn card so much he gave it to everyone on his list.

I love the Victorian ones and this one is quite spectacular. I went a bit crazy one night downloading and printing these out.

Another wonderful work group was spent making garlic jelly.  We made three kinds in a morning with six of us working to peel garlic, measure ingredients and process jars.  We've got ginger garlic, rosemary garlic and lemon verbena garlic.  Next I want to make thyme garlic.  We've been infusing lots of herbs into mead and now I've discovered the fascinating world of fermented soda pop.  This site is especially enlightening.  I can't wait to try making honey elderflower pop!