This Month's Special Priced Items
Special price this month on 2 beautiful pillars |
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Special pricing through March & April
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
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Wicks for 6 pairs of candles are on a frame and dipped into hot
wax.
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6 pairs of candles half finished.
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The frame is split in half & only 3 pairs are now dipped.
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The candles are hanging in a rack to cool between dips.
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| 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.
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| "Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet."
Chinese Proverb
The Quotations Page |
Visit
our Candle Shop
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Greetings!
No - You did not miss the February issue
of our newsletter, we were very busy trying to get
our new e-commerce site up and running (it is coming
soon) and completely ran out of time in January.
This is our combination February - March
issue.
Our monthly newsletter will
keep you up to date on farm activities as they occur.
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.
New Addition to Honeyflow
Farm coming next year!! Our daughter,
Mary is now engaged to a fine young man Jason Buyze.
Pat and I feel very blessed. They will be married
next spring.
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This Month in the Candle Shop |
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New e- commerce
site coming soon, main candle tank just failed &
was replaced, busy making candles for this year, New
cinnamon tapers & container candles will be available
soon!
Click here to go directly to our Newsletter Candle
Report.
The past two months have been
very busy for us. Along with normal new year record keeping details we
have been working on our new e-commerce website. In
the past we have used a service called "Bigstep"
which handles our "E- Commerce Store".
We are moving to a new program
that is installed one our own server called "Quikstore."
It will allow us a lot more flexibility. Some of the
main things I like about it are:
More accurate shipping rates
- It will actually go to the USPS & UPS sites
to automatically figure the charges.
A search engine
that you can enter candle info into.
New Items - more
cinnamon & bayberry candles.
Since I can manipulate the
pages, I can make any detailed changes that I like
rather than be contrained to only what was available
on the old program.
We hope to have it up and running
by next month!
**********************
 We just had to replace our main candle dipping tank. The
centerpiece of our candle dipping equipment is a stainless
steel wax tank. It is divided into 4 separate compartments
that fit inside a 55 gallon barrel filled with water
kept at 175 degrees. Each tank is 24 inches deep and
filled with more than 100 lbs of beeswax. More pictures ...
For the past 20 years we
have been making hand dipped beeswax candles in these
tanks. We make them in many different
sizes and put them in most of the gift boxes that we have
sold. We have made the 9 1/2 inch size many years before
the economical 6 inch or the 12 inch deluxe version were
added.
Beeswax candles are started by stringing a frame with candle wicking.
Each frame starts by holding 6 pairs of candles. The
frames are dipped into 175 degrees beeswax, cooled,
and then the procedure is repeated. After the candle
is about 1/2 size, the frame is split apart into two
frames. The dipping procedure is continued until the
candle is finished. Click here for more pictures .....
We have had questions about the "burn" time of our candles.
It is difficult to get a real accurate burn time and
we do not like to give out misleading information. There
are lots of variables that influence how long a candle
will last such as: the size of the wick, drafts, the
weight of the candle and if the candle is burned all
at one time or not. If you want to compare our pillars
to beeswax pillars at other sites you should look at
the size or wax weight.
Many of our candles are even more decorative in nature
and most people will not burn them at all (Nativity
Figurines, etc.)
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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
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This Month in the Vineyard |
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Vineyard in March, Pruning
Season Plans made, MSU Program - "Must analysis",
Better Brew, Cap'n Cork & Motor City
Brewery are busy!
Click here to go directly to our Newsletter Vineyard
Report.
Vineyard Notes
We have made a few trips through the vineyard and
made some plans on how we are going to prune this year.
We had a lot of vine winter damage last year and
will be replacing many of the trunks and "renewing"
them by bringing up 2 or 3 new canes to the top wire.
As usual we will be pruning the vineyard when
our local high school youths are on their Spring Break
- April 5 to 10 this year.
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We just had a new post about what Sandy Paetz is
doing a the MSU Viticulture & Winemaking School
- "Must analysis." Details ....
More details about the MSU program .....
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Many of our local breweries and
winemaking supply shops are retailing or using our honey
in their products. We have just had contact
with:
Cap'n Cork - 16812 21
Mile - Macomb, Mi 48044, 586-286-5202
(supplies for the home winemaker and brewer)
The Wine Barrel Plus - 30303
Plymouth Rd. Livonia MI 48150, (734) 522- WINE (9463)
(supplies for the home winemaker and brewer)
Motor City Brewing Works
- A local Brewery and Meadery that uses our honey in
their products. They recently picked up honey to use
in a Ciser- a mead made with apple cider.
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Feb/March Grape Recipe
Wine Sauced Chicken
Servings: 6
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
Roast Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Click here for the recipe ......
This
Month in the Vineyard
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This Month at the Honey Farm |
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March at
the Honey Farm, Checking colonies, Package Bees and
Breeder Queens ordered for spring, Honey, Have You Considered
Yoga? March Honey Recipe!
Click here to go directly to our Newsletter Honey Report.
I have just started checking our honeybee colonies,
we were delayed because of heavy snow this year.
We have found varying amounts of winter die-off but
not as severe as last winter. Many of our colonies are
very strong and are running out of food (honey) and
we will have to feed them. Pictures of how we emergency feed the honeybees if necessary.
Many people ask me if the honeybees
"hibernate" in the winter.
THEY DO NOT!
The bees will create a "cluster" inside the
hive and keep warm with their body heat by consuming
honey. The air on the outside of the cluster may be
very cold but in the center it may be 80 degrees or
more. The honeybees on the outside of the cluster rotate
with the inside bees so that they do not freeze to death.
On warm days this time of the year they may venture
out of the hive, if it is cold, they stay inside (just
like people).
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We have just ordered some (20)replacement
package bees to replace some of the colonies lost over
winter. They will arrive in early April and
be shipped in a shoe box size screened cage with 3 lbs
of honeybees and a queen in them. Click here for pictures of what we did with them last year ........
We also ordered 2 breeder queens
from Glenn Apiaries in California.
These are special SMR mite resistant queens (1 Russian
& 1 Carniolan) that we will use to raise new queens
for the splits (new colonies) that we will make in May.
This is another way to replace losses and also to improve
the genetic quality of our colonies.
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Honey, Have You Considered Yoga?
from www.honey.com
Life has become increasingly more rushed and
stressful. Why not dedicate this as the month
you start doing nice things for yourself. Go ahead and
lower those anxiety levels. Relax those muscles. Let
some of your worries float away! Have you thought about
yoga? Millions have! In fact, according to U.S. News
& World Report, there are now an estimated 18 million
U.S. practitioners, up from 6 million in 1994. Yoga
is a terrific way to relax and rejuvenate from daily
stressors, as well as being great exercise. Yoga also
provides strength, flexibility and general well being.
Honey is the perfect pre-Yoga energy source
that will keep your blood sugar levels stable throughout
your workout, so you can stay focused and energized.
The rest of the story .....
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Feb/March Honey Recipe - from Honey.com
Busy Bee Bran Muffins
- Makes 16 muffins - The recipe ....
This
Month at the Honey Farm
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From our readers |
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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:
Moving concord vines, ••
making beeswax candles for 10 years, ••
wanted to know it you used cotton, lead free
wicks, ••
watch the beeswax candle dipping process, ••
your honey is wonderful, ••
in the process of developing our own site -
I happened to find yours and found it excellent. ••
revised total on our order, ••
make candles in the plastic molds you see every
where, ••
I'm allergic to bee stings and swell very badly when
stung.Will I show any type of reaction, if i smell
of beeswax candles? ••
a bunch of great questions, ••
science project involving an experiment comparing
beeswax candles to paraffin candles. ••
Your products are very beautiful. Do you have
a catalogue you could send me, ••
What do you charge for picking grapes for home
winemakers? ••
AS A POLISH TRADITION WE BURN BAYBERRY CANDLES
EACH CHRISTMAS EVE, ••
Help Identify grape picture on a cake.
The
"From our Readers" Page
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Candle W*nner & Laugh of the Month |
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Congratulations!
February candle winner: iluvbuks@aol.com
March candle winner: catherinehilker@aol.com
Will this months w*nner,
iluvbuks@aol.com
& catherinehilker@aol.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: Dr. Evil Sadam's Lament
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