Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Finally it has rained on Honeyrun Farm!  We have had a pretty dry summer, and luckily on Saturday we finally received about 2 inches.  We've been so busy we haven't had much time to publish to the blog.  Here is Becky's field... showing the sweet potatoes, onions, hot peppers, and basil and eggplant under the blanket of white floating row cover, which keeps the bugs out, but lets light and rain in.  The sweet corn has also begun to mature, along with a handful of red tomatoes.  We need some of that traditional hot July weather to help them turn bright red!  Becky has recently joined a new market in Dublin on Wednesdays from 4:00-8:00.  Today she will be selling some delicious Ambrosia sweet corn, along with an assortment of purple and green bell peppers, zucchini, onions, carrots... she has such a wide assortment she can hardly find room for everything on the table!  
Gretel from Sunny Meadows Flower Farm came to help make soap last week, and toured the farm with Becky to talk about new ideas and the progress of the crops.   The lack of rain has made the Sunflowers shorter than normal, but they are still blooming beautifully!
On another note, Isaac has started to prepare the ground for the building of our new 'honey house.'  This will be a new location for us to extract and bottle honey, as well as make soap and other honey products.  We have been planning this for quite some time, and it is hard to believe that we are actually beginning to break ground.
A Columbus photographer, Catherine Murray, visited the farm this week to take some photos.  Here is a beautiful shot she took of a frame of honeybees, including the queen near the bottom edge of the picture.  It is often hard to find the queen, so we were really glad she was able to shoot this photo!  Notice the queen's enlarged abdomen, as compared to the rest of the bees.  This allows her to lay the 1,000-1,500 eggs she produces each day during this time of year.
And finally... our son Mason as he enjoys the Spring Black Locust Honey.  It is such a light, delicate flavor... our family's favorite of all the honey we produce.  We are currently selling it at the North Market on Saturdays, but plan to keep one bucket reserved for our customers at the Lithopolis Honeyfest, which will be on Sept. 12th.  Hopefully Mason can restrain himself from eating too much of it before the festival.
photo credit:  Courtney Hergesheimer