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This Month's Special Priced Items
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Special pricing through May & June
Complimentary
votive's with orders over $25
Monthly Drawing
All subscribers to our newsletter are
eligible to receive a pair free 9.5 inch beeswax
candles. We hold a drawing and then print the
person's name in every issue.
Watch for your name - You may have
already won!
If you are on our picking updates
list you may also win a bushel of grapes. Four
bushels are given away each season.
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 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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| "I don't know the key to success, but the key to
failure is trying to please everybody."
Bill Cosby
US comedian & television actor
(1937 - )
The
Quotations Page |
Find
out more....
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Greetings!
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.
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At
the Vineyard
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Pruning, planting completed!
Crusher-stemmer now available.
Click
here to go directly to our Spring Vineyard Report.
We had good weather after Easter this year
and had about 20 high school youths, who were on Spring
break, out to work in the vineyard.
 It was a busy time for us. Our daughter, Mary, was married
on Saturday, Sunday was Easter, and Monday we started
pruning.
Another half acre of concord and niagara
vines were planted. Along with the 20+ other
wine varieties we grow, niagara and concord are very
popular and we needed more of them. They are planted
in rows 13ft apart and 8 feet between vines in the
row.
Click
here for all of the pruning/planting pictures......
A grape crusher-stemmer (Not a press) will
now be available for customers to use at the vineyard
in the fall. We plan to create an outside
area that you can use, you bring your own containers
and handle the must yourselves. We will have more
information available later in the season.
During May and June our main concern in the
vineyard is safely getting through the spring frost
period. We have been using a cultivator between
the rows which along with increasing vigor in the
vines will keep them slightly warmer during freeze
cycles.
The next two months is a period of very rapid growth
in the vineyard, the vines will very quickly flush
out in new growth and the new crop will be in bloom.
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Click
here for the recipe |
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Winemaking
Notes
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Australian Closure Fund’s
First Study "Proves Oxygen Not Necessary for
Ageing Bottled Wine"
From
Wine Business OnLine
MEDIA RELEASE, On February 1, 2005 Allen Hart, Southcorp's
Research & Development Winemaker, released the
findings of his study into "the role of oxygen
in the ageing of bottled wine" at an intimate
presentation for the Wine Press Club of NSW (WPC).
Click
here for more.....
I found lots of interesting
things useful for the grape enthusiast at Homestead
Harvest. Check them out.
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At
the Honey Farm
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Large honeybee losses across
the country. Package bees installed.
Click
here to go directly to our Spring Honey Farm Report.
We are hearing of very
large honeybee losses across the country over the
winter. Honeybee colonies are being decimated
by varroa mites. Varroa mites are a mite the size
of a pin head that grows on the honeybee pupae and
causes the honeybees to weaken and die.
More
about varroa mites and how beekeepers deal with them......
Bee killer imperils crops
A tiny parasite, colloquially known as a 'vampire
mite,' is devastating honeybees. That worries experts
because honeybee-pollinated crops are valued at more
than $15 billion a year. Click
here for this article in the Palm Beach Post...
We have lost over 50% of our colonies this
year. Some of the colonies will be replaced
by making splits (splitting 1 colony into 2), some
will be replaced by package bees and some will not
be replaced and we will just have less colonies this
year to produce honey.
We purchased and installed 40 2lb packages.
Each package includes a can of sugar syrup to feed
the bees during transit, 2 lb of honeybees and a queen
in a special queen cage.
More
about how we installed our honeybees.
During May all of our colonies are split
(for increase) and all of the packages that we installed
are checked to make sure the queens are laying eggs
properly.
During June all of the colonies are checked
again and the first round of honey supers are added.
Spring Honey Recipe
Barb Stopinski, one of our readers sent 2
great recipes. A remedy for coughs &
colds and another for a face mask for the ladies.
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Click
here for the recipe |
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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.
Send
me your comments/questions/recipes!
Visit the Readers
Comments page to view all the content of these
messages. Here are samples of this months e-mails:
Wants to start a vineyard ••
Honey Bee Wax for sealing/finishing brick
floors ••
Raw Beeswax sales ••
Grammar correction ••
Pruning vines ••
Honey/Soap comments and new recipes ••
Raw beeswax ••
Observing honeybees ••
Thanks for the fast shipping and a quality
product ••
Availability of de-stemmer and a crusher ••
Double trunk vines ••
Candle making supplies ••
Ordering grape juice ••
Tealite wicks.
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The
"From our Readers" Page |
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