The Honey Harvest and Sweet Gifts

I haven’t written in a while, having taken some time to grieve, reflect, and celebrate the holidays over the past several weeks. We’re not at all sorry to kiss 2015 goodbye and are hoping for better in 2016. 

One thing worth celebrating was our first honey harvest, which we only recently finished crushing, straining, and jarring up. In all, it was about 20 pounds of honey, all of it now in wide-mouth mason jars. Honey doesn’t ever go bad, so it’s very easy to store — we just poured it into clean jars and put a lid on it. 

Because it lasts forever, honey also makes a nice gift. Back in December we had a little holiday workshop going in the dining room:


I couldn’t share these before Christmas and risk ruining the surprise for the recipients, but now that it’s well and truly January, our holiday gifts looked like this: 


The tag features Tiegan’s artwork; the cute silicone honey dippers are from the Stonewall Kitchen downtown. 

We still have plenty of less artfully decorated jars in the basement, so we’ll be rich in honey for some time. Also in the basement is a five-gallon bucket filled with beeswax waiting to be rendered. That will wait for a couple months until maple sugaring rolls around again and we can take advantage of the outdoor fire to deal with so much sticky, melty stuff.  

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