You know spring is really here when the thunder storms arrive. Right before sunset yesterday we were lucky enough to notice this giant rainbow over our field. It was so exciting for our rainbow girl! She was already wearing her rainbow T-shirt too.







These maple scones are from awhile back when work group made lots of maple baked goods to sell during Maple in the County. We made cookies and cakes and all kinds of other delicious things. We're saving up for something great - we just haven't decided what yet.







The beautiful pear pie was made by our six year old son Rowan and the recipe is from 'The Book' the kids version - Simply in Season Children's Cookbook. Rowan has been trying all kinds of recipes from it and we've all enjoyed the results. It's actually called a pear pancake but it's kind of like a giant popover. It's a new favorite for us and has been tried with apples and berries. It puffs up in a very exciting way.

I've been working on a new recipe for a liquid shampoo lately that's been taking up a lot of my time. I'm trying to make a shampoo that doesn't contain any mysterious ingredients of unknown origin. It's turning out to be quite challenging. I want to include some honey and herbs but first I'm working on a basic recipe. This photo is what the shampoo looks like while it's cooking. I'll post more photos once I have something more interesting to show.

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.

Presenting Tea Party Tea

Today I am happy to introduce our long awaited herbal tea for kids - Tea Party! It's a delicious and nutritious blend of sumac, red clover and elder flowers. The tea has a beautiful red colour and a fruity flowery flavour. As promised I'm posting the photo of Hazel's tea party with the bear and the drawing I did from the photo for our label. It will be available for sale on the website this afternoon. This weekend we'll be at the Seedy Saturday in Ottawa with our wares for sale and we'll be giving out samples of Tea Party tea. We had a great time at Seedy Saturday in Picton last week. We didn't have our table set up but went for fun and got some great seeds - some from the swap table and some we bought. I took lettuce seeds I had saved as well as coriander and nigella.

My honey man has been working on a project to turn an old Victrola cabinet into a honey liquidizer. When we have honey that crystallizes in the bucket we have to warm it gently in order to make it pourable so we can bottle it. We don't want to heat it too much or that destroys the beneficial properties of the honey. We had been putting the buckets into a sink of hot water but our well has been dry since July and we have to buy water to fill the cistern so this seemed like a waste of water. So, my honey man came up with this ingenious plan to insulate the victrola cabinet and put a light bulb in the bottom. We use a thermometer to monitor the temperature and a dimmer switch to control it. I am happy to say, after a minimal amount of head scratching - it works!

Happy February

These rainbow fingerless gloves I made for myself out of the leftover yarn from Hazel's birthday hat and scarf. Rowan likes them so much he wants a pair in green and yellow. Of course it's still too cold out to wear these much but the time is coming!
This giant echinacea flower is at the Brickworks Market in Toronto. We are now going to two farmers markets in Toronto every Saturday. It's slow going this time of year but we are trying to make the most of the drive to the city. The Brickworks is another beautiful urban renewal project like the Green Barns.
This bee valentine is from Hazel and I just found it funny that this was the project they did at school - Bee Mine!
I got this amazingly cute honey pot from a friend recently. Thanks Lori!
Also, I've been lusting after these dresses at Dear Golden. I think I'll have to try sewing a dress from a vintage pattern one of these days.

Tea Party

I got this sweet little box garden from Santa in my stocking and had to share this photo with you. The garden comes flat and you fold it into this box shape. It's black and white and you get to colour it yourself. Hazel and I did this together with coloured pencils. Then you sprinkle the seeds onto an absorbent pad and water gently. The seeds that came with it are cress which was lovely and spicy. Unfortunately I didn't get another photo of it when the cress was tall and green but I love this one of them just coming up.
The box garden is available at Kelly's Shop in Picton, Ontario.

I'm thrilled to share these photos of Hazel from a photo shoot we did for our new tea that's coming soon called Tea Party. These photos are not the exact one I'll be using for the drawing but I'll share that photo and the label once it's ready. The tea is a reddish colour and fruity tasting. It's healthful and delicious. Once the recipe has been finalized I'll share which herbs are in it. In the meantime I will say there are flowers in it and it's beautiful. Hazel was very cooperative but did consume quite a bit of sugar in her tea while I was busy snapping photos. She told me she promised to be nice though. Sigh. I can see she's got the message that sugar makes you grouchy.

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.

cider pressing

We just made apple cider with work group for the second time. We had picked Alice's apples and stored them in her barn. This time I brought my camera and took pictures of the different steps. First we ground the apples in a hand crank apple crusher. That was hard work. The block of wood was to coax stubborn apples into the hopper. Next we transferred the crushed apples into the press with a wooden paddle, put the round wooden lid on, cranked the handle of the press and out came the cider. We poured the cider into a giant glass container in which it will ferment and become alcohol! We made 50 litres of cider. Wow, I love it.