Honey extracting season in Virginia

Golden and Delicious Pure Virginia Honey from Hickory Green Farm.

The first of July in Virginia is an exciting and busy time of year for beekeepers. This is honey harvest time!
Beekeepers in Virginia typically extract their honey once a year, giving the honey bees the rest of the summer to build up a healthy food supply for the winter.
At Hickory Green Farm we plant a variety of nectar rich plants to provide our honey bees with  a bouquet of nutrition to make their honey. Each year the honey has a unique flavor depending on many natural variables such as the amount of rain fall, temperatures, and the variety of available blossoms.
We encourage you to visit your local farmer's markets and produce stands to purchase local honey and taste the unique and delicious differences.

Yipee...rain in the barrel...of salad greens and basil, and petunias....hey wait a minute....do I see a weed sprouting too... "no fair!" Can't we have rain with out weeds germinating too.

Oh well I guess one man's weed is another man's salad, flower, or turf. After all it's only turf fescue sprouting in the chard.

Lavender is in full bloom at Hickory Green Farm this week. After a record breaking snowy Winter and roller coaster weather this Spring all the plants on the farm seem to be blooming in a different rhythm this year.

Zinnias are sprouting from seed,

and a few petite tomatoes are

forming on the vines.

The emergence of plants

and burst of blooms are more

miraculous this year to me

after the snow storms of last Winter.

I bet the produce will be more

flavorful this year too.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

Chefs and Growers Feast and Hoedown at Manakintown Specialty Growers

A wonderful evening of fresh local food created and shared with Manakintown Specialty Growers "groupies"

It was so nice to slow down and saver what we grow and cook with others who enjoy growing and creating good for you food too.

Thanks Jo & Robbie for mentoring & networking so many people in the local growers and creative food business in Virginia.

A Pearl View of Labor Day

Pearl says, "After directing the planting of the Fall vegetable garden, chasing squirrels off the farm, and herding up the turkeys for my family I need to find some where I can chill-out. Hey... Dad... how do feel about filling this wash-tub? I need a drink .... please....pretty please...the hose is right here....

Ahhh a Mud Bath...a great way to make the best of what I have on fur.

A perfect fit for "Pearly-Locks" to cool off after a hard day of farming."

First rays of Autmn

This Honey Bee is shimmering in the twilight of a Autumn evening on the rays of this copper sunflower. Autumn's new light patterns and reflection give a beautiful patina to all the colors in the garden. I feel I must rush outside as soon as I can each day to soak up all that I can of this pink and amber light of Autumn, as I know it passes so quickly, this season of patchwork mountainsides and confetti forest I love so much.

Honey comb frames... so perfect, so organized, so sweet, a work of art in liquid gold. While the honey houses filled with bees are beautiful, clean, well organized homes...mine is kaos during July...The long daylight hours of summer turn my kitchen into a bounty of harvest to sort, divide, cook, freeze, bottle, can, package,... the harvest then creeps out into the dinning room, sprawls across the dinningroom table and benches ...and it comes to the point I have to get away for a few hours so I run upstairs to sew and quilt...and that room turns into a frenzy of fabric and thread. If I only had a system like those worker bees...but would I have as much summer time fun, would the creativity flow like honey?

I think it's time to make a honey cake....