June/July at Honeyflow Farm
July candle winner: timtoolman173@yahoo.com	July, 2004 Vol 4 No. 7

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.                   "Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book." Ronald Reagan 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. Did I miss the June issue? No - time got away from us so we decided to combine the June & July Newsletter.   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. On on personal note - Our peace and quite around the house is gone but Grandma Pat is happy. Our 3 grandchildren (ages 4, 2 & 1/2) with mom Andrea will be with us this summer while dad Jeff is in Navy Chaplain training during the summer. They will go out to St. Louis in the Fall for Jeff's final year in the Seminary. This Month in the Candle Shop    Shedding Light on the Candle's History For centuries, candles have cast a light on man's progress. However, many people aren't aware of the origin of candles, named for the Latin word "candere," which means "to shine." Although it is often written that the first candles were developed by the Ancient Egyptians who used rushlights, or torches, made by soaking the pithy core of reeds in molten tallow, the rushlights had no wick, like today's modern candles. It is the Romans who are credited with developing the wick candle, using it to aid travelers at dark, and lighting homes and places of worship at night. Like the early Egyptians, the Romans relied on tallow, gathered from cattle or sheep suet (lard), as the principal ingredient of candles. It was not until the Middle Ages when beeswax, a substance secreted by honey bees to make their honeycombs, was introduced. Beeswax candles were a marked improvement over those made with tallow, for they did not produce a smoky flame, or emit an acrid odor when burned. Instead, beeswax candles burned pure and clean. However, they were expensive, and therefore, only the wealthy could afford them.  To continue .......   ********************** Download our 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 our Candle Catalog This Month in the Vineyard    Wet May & June, Bloom, Practical Winery Magazine, Sandy Paetz MSU Update, Interesting Websites, July Grape Recipe Click here to go directly to our Newsletter Vineyard Report.   June & July are some very busy months in the vineyard. After the pruning & planting season is over in April/May the vines (and the weeds) start to grow dramatically. See our "Year in the Vineyard" page to see more details of this. This year with all of the rain, downy mildew and other fungus diseases are becoming a problem. Weeds and vine diseases are controlled by following the Michigan State University recommended spray schedule. Bloom, in late June, is a beautiful and fragrant time of the year. The grape blossoms are not at strong smelling as other crops but more of a subtle scent. Every flower in the cluster produces a berry and the clusters are almost full size during bloom. Contrary to what many people think, I do not keep bees to pollinate the vines. The grapes are self-pollinating and I rarely see a honeybee during bloom. Bloom Pictures .... Practical Winery Magazine, has an excellent website on grapegrowing & winemaking. They have a very good article on Grape Berry Development which is appropriate to this time of the year in the vineyard. This season we are again seeing a lot of damaged vines from the last two winters. A few varieties will be in short supply such as baco, cayuga and some white wine varieties. We will have plenty of most other varieties. Many of these damaged vines are sending up new shoots from the ground and now we have to keep the deer away with them. Usually we use soap bars with twist ties to tie them up and the deer do not like the soap smell. ********************** New Michigan Wine-Related Websites:     MSU Grape Website - Lots of very good information for the grape grower. Weather, vineyard scouting, pest management, cultural practices, links, study & training. Michigan Wine Resources Catalog of resource material from vineyard management to winery design, licensing, sales and marketing and financial management. A 16 page Start-Up Guide to Michigan's wine industry may be downloaded from the site using Adobe Acrobat. www.wineamerica.org/winedata/winedata. htm Information on the wine industry in each of 50 U.S. states. www.marylandwine.com/mgga/index.html Information on Maryland vineyards & winemaking. Understanding Grape Berry Development An excellent article on the growth of a Grape Berry from Practical Winery Magazine.   **********************   We just had another update about what Sandy Paetz is doing at the MSU Viticulture & Winemaking School - “Pre-Bottling Adjustments - Racking / Microfiltration” Details .... More details about the MSU program .....   **********************   July Grape Recipe - Pasta Salad With Green Grapes Click here for the recipe ...... This Month in the Vineyard This Month at the Honey Farm    June/July at the Honey Farm, ARS Discovers Varroa Control Trait, A Spoonful of Honey Helps! Click here to go directly to our Newsletter Honey Farm Report. All the rain we had in May & June made it difficult to get in to some of our Honeybee Yards and we had to borrow a small 4 wheeler ATV to get in to some of them - But the rain made for some very strong plant growth that should help our honey crop. In June we check all the hives to see if the queen cells that we installed in May worked ok. If a hive was queenless at this point, I usually give them a frame of eggs from a nearby hive for them to make their own replacement queen. Honey supers are added at this time to give them a place to put the spring honey that they are collecting. In July we will put another round of honey supers on the bee hives - & sometimes they get really tall. We also started using a "fog" of "Food Grade Mineral Oil and Thymol" (an herb). This is a more natural treatment for the Varroa Mites that have been killing many honeybees in the last 10 years. This fog is sprayed into the front of the hives every few weeks or so with a "mosquito fogger."   ********************** ARS Discovers Varroa Control Trait Agricultural Research Service entomologists have discovered that some bees have a built-in defense against Varroa mites - a trait that can be bred into a bee population. Known as SMR ("suppressed mite reproduction"), the trait protects bees by keeping Varroa mites from reproducing.    Details ....   **********************   A Spoonful of Honey Helps! When it comes to soothing throats, singers have known for generations that a spoonful of honey would sweeten their performance. You don’t have to sing an aria to appreciate the soothing benefits of honey—yelling at a football game can strain your voice and lead to a sore throat.  The story ......   **********************   July Honey Recipe - from Honey.com Honey-Citrus Soother 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. 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:   Grape leaves,  ••  Raw honey,  ••  Purchasing grape vines,  ••  Growing vines questions,  ••  Observation hive The "From our Readers" Page Candle W*nner & Laugh of the Month    Congratulations! July candle winner: timtoolman173@yahoo.com Will this months w*nner, timtoolman173@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 silly to end this newsletter with. Laugh of the month: 30 Animal to Find

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