Green Barns Market

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.