Springtime at Honeyrun Farm

Well, it's definitely springtime in Ohio!  Rain.. rain... and more rain... with a few beautiful days in between.  Becky has planted a lot of root vegetables, lettuce, greens, and peas, and I have gotten some potatoes and onions in the ground.  It is exciting to see the freshly tilled soil (weed free at the moment), and to think of the possibilities to come.  Blackberries, raspberries, black raspberries, and asparagus will be planted within the next week (weather permitting).  Although we won't be able to harvest any of those until next year, it gives us a lot to look forward to.

Our 13 month old Mason has been keeping busy, helping out in the greenhouse and wandering into the nearby wheat field while I work on seeding and transplanting.  His favorite chore is filling pots with soil, although he is not the most efficient worker as he prefers to do this one fistful at a time.  In the greenhouse, we have onion transplants that are ready to be put out in the field... as soon as it gets dry enough to plant.  This year we be selling a wide variety of potted plants from the greenhouse: heirloom tomatoes, culinary and medicinal herbs, perennials, annual bedding plants, hanging baskets, mixed herb planters, and even some "living" wreaths.  We will be posting market dates and locations for April and May soon, and you are always welcome to stop by the farm and check out what is growing!
I decided to include a picture of the bees, so they would not feel left out.  We heard them out buzzing when the Willow trees were putting out pollen.  It is an amazing sound to walk out of the house and hear thousands of honeybees going to work, gathering tiny little grains of pollen to carry back to the hive.. trip after trip... all day long.  We all could learn a little about work ethic from watching the bees.  
On another note, we have some new Golden Buff chickens that are amazing layers!  We are getting about 18 eggs a day, and have plenty to sell at the farmstand to our friends and neighbors.  We will be getting 15 Plymouth Rock chickens at the beginning of the summer, and will be selling the eggs at the North Market on Saturdays.  Here is a picture of the chicken coop that Isaac built last fall.  He used the windows from his Grandmother Barnes' old brick house that was destroyed in a fire years back.  I don't know of any other chickens who have it this nice... what a view.
Our goats, Gilly and Honey are both pregnant and due in about 2 months.  Honey, who has always looked pregnant, appears that she may be having twins or triplets.  Gilly, who tries her best to compete with Honey for food, is actually putting on some weight and developing an udder.  We cannot wait for the baby goats to arrive... I believe they are the cutest farm animal around.  Here is a picture of Gilly from last fall.  She's always looking for someone to pick on.  
Bottom Three Photo credits:  Kenneth Lilly

Soapmaking 101

Well, here is it:  a post about how we make our handcrafted cold-processed soap.  We get so many questions about how our soap is made I thought it would be fun to take pictures during the process and write a little tutorial on how soap is made - the old-fashioned way.  Yesterday I made four batches - Oat and Wheat Bran, Cedarwood and Cornmeal, Raspberry, and Cinnamon Spice.  These pictures primarily show the Oat and Wheat Bran Soap.
First I weigh out the oils using a digital scale.  We use palm oil, coconut oil, soybean oil, castor oil, and olive oil for special recipes.  The oils are mostly solid so we have to melt them on the stovetop.  We add blocks of beeswax during this time, since beeswax helps create a hard, long-lasting bar of soap.  The beeswax is from our own beehives - (how I clean it and get it into these little bars is another post - for another day).
Here is a picture of what the oils and beeswax look like when they are almost completely melted.  At this point we take it off the stove and use a kitchen thermometer to check the temperature.  We let it sit and cool until it is about 100 deg. F.  

The next step involves sodium hydroxide (the fancy term for lye).  Real lye is made from wood ash, and this is what was used in the old days.  We buy our sodium hydoxide in pelleted form, and it is caustic so you have to wear rubber gloves and goggles when handling it.  I didn't take any pictures during this step because I couldn't hold the camera and do the step at the same time.  Basically what I did was measure the lye on a digital scale, and then measure the distilled water in a pitcher on the same scale.  It is very important to follow recipes and use a good scale to ensure the soap will come out like you want it to.  Too much lye can create a harsh, abrasive bar of soap.  
I slowly added the lye to the water and stirred (I do this outside - to prevent inhaling the fumes).  This is a picture of the water after I added the lye.  The chemical reaction causes it to heat up very quickly, so we leave it outside to cool.  We also wait until it reaches 100 deg F so we can mix it with the oils.
Once both the oils and the lye/water mixture have reached 100 deg F it is time to mix them together!  This is a picture of what the mixture looks like right after I added the lye.  Now the stirring begins.  When we first started making soap we stirred it all by hand, and it took us HOURS of stirring to get it completed.  Finally, we wised up and bought an electric hand mixer, which saves us tons of time and makes beautifully blended soap.
Here I am mixing with the blender.  I am blending until the soap reaches "trace" which is when it gets to a pudding/custard consistency and you can see a trace of soap on the top of the mixture when you stir it.  At "trace" we can begin adding the fun ingredients - exfoliants, essential oils, and honey.  

Here I am adding honey to the soap.  Honey is great for it's anti-bacterial and moisturizing properties, and also adds a hint of sweetness to the scent.  Luckily as beekeepers we have honey in abundant supply.
Here is a picture of the exfoliants I am adding to the Oat and Wheat Bran soap - all pre-measured with the scale.  Pictured here are Oat Bran, Wheat Bran, and Whole Oats that I have turned into a fine powder with my food processor.
Here I am adding the exfoliants.
The next step is to pour it into the molds, which I have lined with parchment paper.  I am lucky enough to have a husband handy enough to make all of our wooden molds and soap cutters.  They work great!  This is the final step for the evening.  After the soap has been poured, I put another sheet of parchment paper on top, cover it with the wooden lid, and let it sit and harden overnight.  Twenty-four hours later I can take it out of the mold and cut it into bars.
This is what the block of Oat and Wheat Bran looks like the next day.  That is one big bar of soap!  We cut these blocks into two long slabs (pictured below) using a soap cutter made from a guitar string.  
Next we cut these slabs into individual bars using another soap cutter that Becky made (also with a guitar string).  Pictured below are individual bars of soap as they are curing.  They must sit and harden for four weeks to ensure that the bars have completely saponified.  This means that all the lye has combined with the oils to create soap - no more active lye is present in a fully cured bar.

Aren't they beautiful?  The possibilities are endless when it comes to creating scents.  Have any ideas of scents or exfoliants you would like to try?  Post a comment or send us an email!  We would love to hear your ideas.

Winter Greenhouse Lettuce

The Lettuce is growing!  It seems the warmer weather the past few days has helped the lettuce put on a few more inches... although it still seems painfully small compared to the beautiful Spring greens we grow around here.  We have not been heating our greenhouse this winter, but nevertheless the lettuce continues to survive.  We will be selling it this weekend at the Worthington Winter Market, which we attend every other Saturday (2nd and 4th Saturdays Jan-April).  You can find us there between 10:00-1:00, at the Griswold Senior Center at 777 N. High Street in Worthington.  We also will be selling our Pure, Raw Honey (extracted last summer) and our handcrafted soaps. 

We will be firing up the heat in the greenhouse next week so that we can start our herbs, bedding plants, onion sets, and a few other odds and ends, so hopefully this lettuce will take off.  We can't wait till Spring!

A Bit about Honey Extraction

I thought I would write a little about honey extraction, since a lot of our friends and customers have asked us how we get the honey from the hive to the bottle.  First, Isaac gathers the full supers from the bee yard.  A super is the top box on a beehive, and contains no brood (baby bees) since the queen cannot get to the top of the hive to lay eggs.

Next, the frames are taken from the hive and the top layer of wax is scraped off using a fine comb or a heated knife.  This allows the honey to come out of the capped off comb when it gets spun inside the extractor.
The final step is to place the frames upright into the extractor, and Isaac spins a crank on the top of the machine, allowing the centripetal force to sling the honey out of the comb.  As the honey hits the sides of the machine it will drip down and flow out of the spout, into a large basin.  We use a wide mesh screen to filter out the beeswax, propolis, and dead bees.  What is left is pure, raw honey... straight into the bottle... direct from flower to you! 

Photo Credits:  Courtney Hergesheimer, Columbus Dispatch

Reflections from Beekeeping in 2008

Looking back on this past year of beekeeping, it seemed to be a successful year!  We had a wonderful Spring bloom with the Black Locust trees providing abundant nectar for the delicate light honey we always anticipate.  We aren't always able to extract Spring honey, so we considered ourselves very fortunate to have enough to "steal" from the bees.  The dry mid-summer allowed the bees to gather enough clover and Canadian thistle to keep them happy and well-fed, and to fill up many of the comb honey boxes that many of our customers anxiously await.  Sadly, we did not get to extract honey in the fall, as the bees did not make enough for us to take the Goldenrod honey away from them.  However, we hope that leaving it for them to eat will allow them to survive this harsh winter!