Fall Harvest Continues
October candle winner: kathrynsfournier@yahoo.com	October, 2003 Vol 3, No. 10

in this issue Monthly Special Priced Items This Month in the Candle Shop This Month in the Vineyard This Month at the Honey Farm Kalaj Family Winemakers From our readers Candle W*nner & Laugh of the Month Monthly Special Priced Items Special price this month on our Embossed Forest Pillar and our 10 Inch Hexagonal Dinner Candles! Embossed Forest Pillar List Price: $12.95 Special Price: $10.35 10 Inch Hexagonal Dinner Candles List Price: $7.95 Special Price: $ 6.35   ************* Special pricing through September & October Complimentary votive's with orders over $25 One Pair of 9 inch hand dipped beeswax candles are mailed out each month to someone on our mailing list. (If you are receiving this message you are on our list and may soon receive a pair of candles) Tell your friends about our farm. All they have to do is to subscribe to our monthly on-line newsletter. In addition, every week in September we will also be giving away a bushel of grapes if you also subscribe to our September Weekly Picking Update. Tell your friends to SUBSCRIBE NOW   Candle Dipping at Honeyflow Farm Wicks for 6 pairs of candles are on a frame and dipped into hot wax.   6 pairs of candles half finished. The frame is split in half & only 3 pairs are now dipped.   The candles are hanging in a rack to cool between dips.   The finished product.   5 lb Un-processed Honey - $13.00 Have one shipped to you.   "I'm not a real movie star. I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago." Will Rogers The Quotations Page Visit our Candle Shop

Greetings! Greetings from Honeyflow Farm. Our monthly newsletter will keep you up to date on farm activities as they occur. Although the U-Pick part of our farm is only open September to Mid October - our website is open all year!   At our Candle Shop you can purchase candles and honey products any time you wish. In answering questions and in preparing this newsletter our newsletter archive has become a valuable source of material. It may answer many of the questions you have about honey, candles, wine making or about our farm. Click here to view past issues of our newsletter. Click here to view last year's October 2002 Newsletter. A few notes about this issue: Although our newsletter has a "overview" of every article in the issue, a recent survey has shown us that we have two distinct and separate interest groups, a grape and winemaking group and a honey and candle group. Many of the articles in this newsletter have all the text included but sometimes, due to the length, we need to continue the article on a separate page on our website. We have developed our "Vineyard Report" and our "Candle/Honeyfarm Report" This Month in the Candle Shop    THE NATIONAL CANDLE ASSOCIATION The National Candle Association (NCA) is the major trade association of U.S. candle manufacturers and suppliers, and serves as the collective voice of the candle industry. Started in 1974 with 26 candle manufacturing firms, NCA today includes more than 160 member companies, and accounts for 90 percent of all candles manufactured in the United States.    More ... ********************** You can still download our new 30 page catalog with over 90 images. It has every item sold on our site. This pdf file can be saved on your computer. You can print the catalog and order through the US Mail if you wish, although it is still much easier to do it on line. Download the New Candle Catalog This Month in the Vineyard    The Grape crop was very small, but Grape Pails are popular, New Booklet to Download, Do grapes need a frost to ripen? Interview, Chemical in red wine may contribute to longer life, Northeastern Vine Supply, Double A Vineyards The Grape crop this year is very disappointing. The winter damage to the vines reduced our crop more than I thought and we are having more customers than grapes this year. I had to cancel many juice orders. Our grape bags have been popular and useful for our customers this year. Unfortunately, by the time you get this they will not be available due to the short crop, but I thought I would show you some pictures anyway. The grape pails are a plastic pail, with a nylon stainer bag in it, tied with a loose knot, filled with crushed and de- stemmed grapes and quickly frozen. These grape bags may be added to grape juice to add color and body resulting in a red wine, or just used by themselves. They are very handy when you do not have a press - just squeeze them by hand or let them drain - And the strainer bags are re-useable! More juice & "Grape Pail" info .....   We have made a new winemaking booklet for beginning winemakers. We also include one in our "Beginners Winemaking Kit" that includes the booklet, a more comprehensive Presque Isle winemaking booklet, cambden tablets and three types of yeast. Click here to download a sample.   We end our grape season in October when we have a frost. Many people think that grapes do not ripen until a frost - THAT IS COMPLETELY UNTRUE! The idea may have come from concord grapes that ripen quite late. The sun ripens the grapes. When we have a frost, the leaves fall off withing a few days and if we still have warm weather the grapes will start to decay, just like if you picked them and then hung them out in the sun.   **********************   Iris Lee Underwood, a local writer, recently interviewed Pat & I and wrote an article about our farm. It was published in some of the local papers. Iris conducts many seminars and lectures on writing in our Michigan area. Read the article .... Iris's website ........   **********************   Chemical in red wine may contribute to longer life The New York Times Biologists have found a class of chemicals that they hope will make people live longer by activating an ancient survival reflex. One chemical, a natural substance known as resveratrol, is found in red wines, particularly those made in cooler climates like that of New York. The finding could help explain the so-called French paradox -- the fact that the French consume fatty foods considered threatening to the heart but live as long as anyone else.   More ... ********************** Northeastern Vine Supply I received a note from Andrew Farmer, he is the owner of Northeastern Vine Supply, a grape vine nursery specializing in cold hardy grapevines from The U. of Minnesota, Elmer Swenson, and French hybrids in all quantities. He can be reached at: and_farmer@yahoo.com Northeastern Vine Supply www.nevinesupply.com 2494 Rt. 140 Poultney, VT 05764 802-287-9311 ********************** Double A Vineyards I just received the new Double A Vineyards catalog and Pat groaned and kiddingly said "NO MORE GRAPES!!" I tend to get excited about new varieties and want to plant more. (We have our hands full with our more than 20 varieties and almost 8 acres.) Here is a listing of Grape Growing sites that they recommended: L ake Erie Regional Grape Program Home Page Trellising Supplies, Spec Trellising General Supplies, Orchard Valley Supply USDA Hardiness Zone Map - GrowIt.com General Grape Information - GrapeSeek United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Sommer Breeze Vineyard, WinePress.US Grape Cultivars for the Upper Midwest   ********************** October grape recipe - White Gazpacho Ron & Lisa Krueger - Michigan The recipe .....   This Month in the Vineyard This Month at the Honey Farm    The Honey Harvest Continues, Study shows why boy bees have no dads, The Importance of Bees in Wartime The Honey harvest continues September is the month that we first begin to take our honey crop off. Most of what is harvested now goes directly to our sales stand or to road side markets. In October and November the rest of the crop is harvested and stored in barrels. The picture shows frames of honey going into our extractor. Click here for more extracting pictures.   **********************   Study shows why Boy Bees have no dads Birds do it, bees do it - well, perhaps bees don't do it quite like birds and people do and scientists have found one piece of the puzzle. The international team of researchers has discovered the gene that allows male bees to have no father. "We found the section of honeybee genome responsible for the differentiation between female and male," Mr Kim Fondrk of the University of California Davis said, who worked on the study. The discovery helps explain a lot of things that are strange about bees and may help experts preserve endangered bee populations so they can keep the busy insects pollinating crops and wild flora. More ...   **********************   THE IMPORTANCE OF BEES IN WAR TIME by Roger Sutherland - SouthEastern Michigan Beekeepers Association (Part 1 of a two part series) With the war on terrorism and in Iraq fresh in our minds it may be interesting to review how honeybees have been utilized over the years in war situations. Even now scientists are looking for ways to train bees to find mines and explosives. September, 2002, Missoula, Montana (AP) Trained honey bees have shown a remarkable ability to sniff out land mines, suggesting a possible new way to find the estimated 110 million unexploded land mines around the world, according to researchers at the University of Montana. Jerry Bromenshenk has studied bees as pollution sensors and environmental sensors for the past 30 years. He said honeybees have proven themselves to be easier to train, harder working and more accurate than bomb sniffing dogs.   More ..... **********************   October Honey Recipe - Host an Afternoon Tea As the last of the summer slips away, host an afternoon tea party. Honey is a natural with tea and in those scrumptious baked goods as accompaniment. Try "Honey Apricot Cinnamon Braid" with "Honey Tea Cooler." Add some good conversation and a sunny day. Honey and green tea both contain antioxidants - here's to your health!     The recipes ..... From Honey.com This Month at the Honey Farm Kalaj Family Winemakers    Kalaj Family Winemaking Tradition Rrok Kalaj and his mom, brothers & sisters are like many of the customers we see each year in the vineyard. Their family immigrated from Albania 10 years ago and they have a long history of winemaking. Last year they brought us a bottle of Baco Noir (one of my favorite grapes) and it was wonderful. This year they gave us another red that we have not tried yet. Rrok said he prefers to ferment on the skins and stems for about two weeks and then press. From our readers    This is a section for comments/questions/recipes from our readers. Please read the comments & feel free to put your 2 cents worth in. Please send me your comments ...... Visit the Readers Comments page to view all the content of these messages. Here are samples of this months e-mails:   "MEHU-LIISA" pot  ••    Raw honey,  ••   How can i stop the fermentation process with niagara grape juice?   ••    Ice Wine   ••   Science fair project on candles   ••    Making beeswax tapers   ••    Did I lose my free grapes offer?   ••   Damage of last winter on your vines?   ••    Blocks of beeswax?   ••    PDF catalog   ••    Winemaking questions   ••    What is the best way to store honey   ••   We had a good time visiting your farm today!   ••    Weekly drawing   ••    Never received candles? The "From our Readers" Page Candle W*nner & Laugh of the Month    Congratulations! October candle w*nner is: kathrynsfournier@yahoo.com Will this months w*nner, kathrynsfournier@yahoo.com please contact us and send your address so that I can ship your candles. Our list of previous candle w*nners.   Click below for something to end this newsletter with. See You Next Month! Laugh of the month: Vampire Slayer

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