August at Honeyflow Farm
August candle winner: ang672@yahoo.com	August, 2004 Vol 4 No. 8

in this issue This Month's Special Priced Items This Month in the Candle Shop This Month in the Vineyard This Month at the Honey Farm From our readers Candle W*nner & Laugh of the Month This Month's Special Priced Items   Bulk Pack of Tealites List Price: $21.50 Special Price: $17.20 9 Inch Cylinder Pillar List Price: $23.50 Special Price: $ 18.80     *************   Special pricing through July & August Complimentary votive's with orders over $25         Monthly Drawing 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 - check for your name each month) Tell your friends about our farm. All they have to do is to subscribe to our monthly on-line newsletter to be elligible. 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.         A few notes about our format: 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" to conform to the specific interests of our readers.                   "Do not protect yourself by a fence, but rather by your friends." Czech Proverb 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. This Month in the Candle Shop    Candle Industry Facts Source: The National Candle Association www.candles.org/ U.S. retail sales of candles are estimated at approximately $2 billion annually, excluding sales of candle accessories. There are more than 350 commercial, religious and institutional manufacturers of candles in the United States, as well as scores of small craft producers for local, non-commercial use.    To continue .......   Download our Candle Catalog This Month in the Vineyard    July/August in the Vineyard, U-Pick Vineyard opens next month, Our Trip to Hunt Country Vineyards, Sulphide Detection and Treatments in wine, August Grape Recipe Click here to go directly to our Newsletter Vineyard Report. July & August in the Vineyard - This time of the year we are trying to keep up with the growth of the vines. New vines are tied to the wires, shoots are adjusted and weeds are mowed. This year I purchased a new "toy" - a 6 foot rototiller for the tractor so I can "clean cultivate" many of the rows. Removing the weeds in the rows is another way of increasing the vigor on some of the vines. Some of the stronger vines will still have ground cover (a fancy name for weeds) down the centers. See our "Year in the Vineyard" page to see more details of grape growing! Typical of small farms is equipment breakdowns. My 30 plus year old Massey Fergussen tractor developed a bad oil shaft leak and had to be sent to the tractor guy down the road. It came back working fantastic for a few days and then the leak started again - I am still waiting to get it back. Oh well - enough of my moaning for now!! ********************** A new Brewer & Winemaking site contacted me from the Chigago area - Bev Art Brewer & Winemaking Supply and they are also opening a Meadery - WildBlossom Winery.     Check them out.   ********************** Our U-Pick Vineyard opens next month on Friday, September 3 and will be open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays only through mid October. Prepare your winemaking equipment for this years crush! ********************** Pat and I went to two vineyards on our trip out east. Hunt Country Vineyard and Swedish Hill Vineyards. This month we will tour the Hunt Country Vineyard.   We brought back many wine samples. Three similar ones were Foxy Lady White, Foxy Lady Blush, and Foxy Lady Red. The white was a blend of Niagara, Cayuga and Seyval, the blush was a blend of Delaware, Cayuga and Seyval and the Red is a blend of Concord, Baco, DeChaunac and Cayuga. These were very nice wines using the same grapes available for you to pick at our vineyard this fall. As I am writing this I am sipping a "Classic Red" which is a blend of DeChaunac, Chancellor and Baco Noir. Hunt Country Vineyard uses many of the grapes that we grow. The rest of the story ..... ********************** We just had another update about what Sandy Paetz is doing at the MSU Viticulture & Winemaking School - “Sulphide Detection and Treatments Regarding Wine” Details .... More details about the MSU program .....   **********************   August Grape Recipe - Pork Chops in Grape Sauce Click here for the recipe ...... This Month in the Vineyard This Month at the Honey Farm    July/August at the Honey Farm, Honey Farm opens next month, African Honey Bee Update, Beauty of Honey! August Honey Recipe. Click here to go directly to our Newsletter Honey Farm Report. In July/August at the Honeyfarm all the beehive colonies are revisited and more honey supers (boxes) are added. I usually add about 4-5 above any previously filled supers. Some of the colonies get quite tall and I have to stand on a few boxes to reach the top. The bees look very strong and we hope to have a good crop. This year I sprayed the weeds around my beehives (2 or 3 ft radius) and it has made things much easier. The weeds can get very tall and sometimes it is harder for the bees to get back into their homes with their harvest of nectar. Click here for more pictures of activities at our honey bee yards .....   ********************** Our Honey Farm opens next month on Friday, September 3 and will be open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays only through mid October. Get your honey containers ready to be filled from our bulk honey tank! ********************** Africanized Honey Bee Update In 1990, a honey bee swarm unlike any before found in the United States was identified just outside the small south Texas town of Hidalgo. With that identification, Africanized honey bees were no longer a problem we would have some day. Africanized honey bees had arrived. Beekeepers, farmers who depend on honey bee pollination for their crops, land managers, emergency responders like fire and police, and the public all wanted to know what they would be facing as Africanized honey bees began to spread. Now, 14 years later, scientists with the Agricultural Research Service and elsewhere have uncovered many answers, but they have also come upon some new and unexpected questions. Africanized honey bees—melodramatically labeled "killer bees" by Hollywood hype—are the result of honey bees brought from Africa to Brazil in the 1950s in hopes of breeding a bee better adapted to the South American tropical climate. These honey bees reached the Brazilian wild in 1957 and then spread south and north until they officially reached the United States on October 19, 1990. The rest of the story .......   ********************** Beauty of Honey!  Honey.com has a great web page about using honey in cosmetics. Cleansers: Keep your skin soft and hydrated with one of these cleansers and toners - gently honey cleanser, cucumber honey toner, facial toner and many more. Visit their site ......   ********************** August Honey Recipe - from The National Honey Board Caribbean Turkey Burgers with Honey Pineapple Chutney The recipe ....   This Month at the Honey Farm 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. Visit the Readers Comments page to view all the content of these messages. Here are samples of this months e-mails:   Niagara grapes,  ••  Starting new business,  ••  Yellow beeswax,  ••  Nativity sets without wicks,  ••  We do not sell bee equipment,  ••  Using pictures from our site,  •• Concord grapes. The "From our Readers" Page Candle W*nner & Laugh of the Month    Congratulations! August candle winner: ang672@yahoo.com Will this months w*nner, ang672@yahoo.com please contact us and so that I can ship your candles. Our list of previous candle w*nners.   Click below for something silly to end this newsletter with. See You Next Month! Laugh of the month: Snowball Fight - Nice cool thing for hot summer month!

::   ::  visit our site phone: 810-796-2344