Road Trip

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.

First Flowers of the Year

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.

Happy New Year 2011

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.

One of a Kind Show

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.

Gladstone soap

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.