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So…how does one thank hives of bees for their award-winning efforts at the show and for their contribution to our lip balms and goats milk and honey soaps…and toast of course? It’s not like you can shake their hands! So I decided I’ll plant some more special bee-loving bushes and flowers for them so they have even more fantastic forage year round. I took the “champion” ribbon out to show them today (of course this is crazy as they can’t read, but I did want to acknowledge their efforts and thank them). I don’t know what nectar they’ve been sipping on, or if they were just awed by their prize, but they were placid to the point of dopey! They were so SO calm! Maybe just lapping up their win! Anyway, it meant I was able to bring in more boxes of honey for extraction and for that ever so special beeswax. Then Rod the Bee man popped round later in the afternoon to help reaffix a small hive beetle trap that I fill with olive oil to keep the little bugs (or is that buggers?  ) under control. Rod is the best and most generous mentor ever and a great bee coach if you’re in need of one! He runs courses here for novices and one of the ladies from last week’s course sent us this note:
“I think you run a great show . Everyone really enjoyed it…I have to tell you that ( after 26 hr for me, 50 hrs for the rest ) in Nabiac doing the bees and staying at your farm … I felt like l’d been away from Sydney and work for 3 weeks – it was sooooh relaxing…”
The rest of the day was spent making goats milk soap. And then – with help from Miss 9yo – collecting pine needles for the bee smoker. We have a nice big bag now, so that should be enough fuel for the next few months of beekeeping. If the pine needles run out…there’s always bracken fern if we’re desperate…though it does burn very hot so it’s the last option…might just need to hunt down some more pine trees.
 A bee investigates its prize ribbon!
Just back from another day at Carole Willman’s cheesemaking course. The two days were held at Duck Under the Table at Wingham, NSW.
First day: Camembert, Quarg, Ricotta & Mascarpone (yum, yum, yum and yum). Second day: goat’s cheese & fetta.
All was going well until our group messed up the temperature for the fetta…whoops! So great being able to learn from the experts, see what to do and make mistakes that someone can explain! Carole has a great, fun style. It’s so enriching to realise that big business has the wool pulled over our eyes….I mean: us mere mortals can actually make things ourselves…camembert seemed like something only an expert could pull off, but hey…the 16 lovely people at the course all seemed to be able to manage with just a little bit of tuition. And fresh quarg on scones…yummmm!
To buy Carole’s “Home Cheesemaking Book”, pick up supplies or just to see where her next cheesemaking courses will be, visit her website at www.cheeselinks.com.au . To learn how to care for goats and milk goats, book into the farmstay www.countryroads.com.au for some one on one training.
We’ve just had a fun few days with long time family friend Uncle Geoff who gave me a taste for farming when I was young. As a child and young teen I used to visit his property out at Bakers Swamp near Wellington, NSW. A true gentleman, Uncle Geoff built and lived in his own mud brick house and was fairly self sufficient before it was even trendy. Now we get to repay the favour with visits to our farm! What better product testers than he and my mum!
Both in their 80’s they weren’t so sure about trying our Cleopatra Indulgence mask…a combination of fresh raw goats milk, (newly minted) award winning honey, and other secret ingredients…but the pictures speak for themselves! This face mask leaves skin so soft and smooth, I don’t actually need moisturiser until about two days after using it!
 A natural face mask should work wonders on this pair!  Testing on older people is kind of fun!  Happy customers after their goats milk face mask
Yay! Our beautiful bees have won first prize for honey at the 2010 Wallamba District Show. The judge awarded joint first place to our jars of January and February honey, as well as a first place to our candied honey. Okay…so there was no competition (literally as we had the only three entries! )…but…the great news is that the honey was awarded “Champion” of its section, which meant the judges of the jams/preserves/honey/cakes/bread decided that overall Honeycomb Valley honey was the overall ’champion’ produce….which means it was super good. Yay!
 Some of the prize winning honey that goes into our lip balms & honey goats milk soap
What an amazing couple of weeks we’ve enjoyed. We’ve handspun more honey, hosted another beekeeping course, collected and filtered our beeswax in the solar cooker and blended our raw honey and beeswax into a natural range of non-toxic lip balms…and then we sold them at farmers’ markets to a great response as people enjoyed the natural flavour and texture of a non-synthetic lip balm. Yay!
Our first farmers market was such a proud moment knowing all the work that had gone into caring for the bees, the manual labour of the honey spinning, the careful melting of the beeswax, the hand grating of the wax so we could melt it at a lower temperature to retain its best properties, the sourcing and adding of the organic oils and essential oils…and the blending in of our beautiful raw honey. Sure, we didn’t make a lot of money, but there’s an unquantifiable pleasure when you witness someone enjoying the fruits of your labour.
In addition to milking goats, making soaps, vegetable gardning and farm work, we’ve been working on the business so thanks again to Robin our Canadian WWOOFER who helped us do the graphic design for our new logo. A while ago we decided to rename our farm and farmstay from “Country Roads” which was the previous owner’s name for the acreage to….drumroll…”Honeycomb Valley”. We just think the new name really suits what we’re trying to do, plus, we love our honeycomb, and the view from the bee hives down across our valley is just so beautiful. We hope when people enjoy our goats milk soap, our balms and other products, that the name Honeycomb Valley will end up standing for natural, hand made, and well cared for and loved animals, land and people.
For those of you who can’t make it to the farmers markets at Gloucester and Nabiac, we’re also developing a new website for Honeycomb Valley so we can sell our products online. From honey & goatsmilk soap, through to a special moisturising balm we’re calling “Honey Liquid Gold” that we blended for our daughter’s eczema (using our February honey harvest which according to Rod the Beeman (aka mentor of the universe) was “Jelly Bush”…or for us regular folk…from the flowers of the tree leptospermum scoparium (the Australian equivalent of the healing Manuka Honey).
So…beekeeping. It’s intensely satisfying. Not just knowing how important bees are to our food supply thanks to their pollination efforts, but also to know that if you plant flowers and plants for them, if you help keep their pest enemies down with natural methods, they’ll reward you over and over with the most delicious honey and useful wax. I am nervous about the threat of varroa mite to Australia, but we’ll have to deal with that when it comes.
At the Pacific Palms market on the weekend, I met three people who all said that beekeeping was on their list of things to do before they die. If you’re even the slightest bit interested in bees…or just after a good read, can I recommend two books: The Honey Spinners (non-fiction) and The Secret Life of Bees. We also have a beekeeping course you can do here on the farm and at a commercial apiary, as well as an introduction to beekeeping DVD that’s worth a look. If you’re looking for a new hobby, beekeeping might just be the most satisfying pastime you ever take up!
It’s so cool when the universe works! A few weeks ago we received a call out of the blue from a Canadian backpacker who was struggling to find work in Bondi. She was looking for work in return for room & board. She sounded lovely and as luck would have it, we had no guests in one of the farmstay cottages for 10 days, so it was a big yes.
10 days later and it’s the last night of her stay. We’re going to be really REALLY sad to see her go. Robin has become part of the family during her stay and helped out across the farm doing everything from weeding, mulching and animal care through to goats milk soap making, honey pouring….and even creating a new logo for our business! Talk about a contributor. She’s also contributed to the eating of our homemade ice cream and a bottle of mead! Onya Robin! “Wwoofing” stands for “willing workers on organic farms”… an official program where travellers exchange hard work for good food and a natural farming experience. We haven’t signed up for the program as yet because we rarely have a farmstay cottage available for any length of time, but after such a great experience with Robin, we’re seriously thinking about it.
Robin, we’ll miss you!
Robin on her last night at “Honeycomb Valley Farm”.
 Wwoofing around Australia
What do you do when the grass is growing like crazy and you’re lawnmower breaks down? It’s called “Goat Picnic Day”… those special days in the year the goats don’t hang out in the animal paddocks, but actually get to roam the house and farmstay area nibbling everything in sight. It’s so fun to see them hoeing into everything…except the macadamias of course. So, tonight they all went to bed very, very satisfied…I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a fridge full of goats milk tomorrow they’re tummies were so large!
 The goats out for a stroll  Hanging out with the chicks  Even on picnic day they can't resist swinging by the feedshed  "I wish I had a key to this place"  "I'll try again later"
What on earth is synthetic beeswax and why on earth do we need it? That’s the question I asked when I checked out the ingredients on one of my daughter’s chemist-suggested eczema creams only to discover it said “synthetic beeswax”. It got me wondering…who makes it? (perhaps Cyborg bees?). What’s in it? (perhaps petrochemical honey & plastic flowers?)… and what does it mean for my little one’s skin and overall health :) .
So, after a day out with the real bees today, collecting fresh honey and non-synthetic beeswax, I started doing some research.
First up though, here are some pics from today’s excursion to some of the hives. It was time to extract some honey and collect beeswax to add to the stockpile we’re using to make our lip balms, skin balms, goats milk and honey soap, essential oil balms and beeswax furniture polish.
 Ready for beekeeping, including two smokers because we're "nervous puffers"  Our bees have a great view, a nice shady tree and water nearby  The bees have made some beeswax in the couple of days the clearer board has been in place.
 Using the hive tool we collect the excess wax
 A frame of capped honey. You can see on the edge where we have scraped wax from the sides of the frame and the honey is exposed. We saved this wax for our balms, and then extract the honey too.  Having extracted the honey and wax, we return one of the "supers" back to its hive...a couple more to go before the day is done!  The bees enjoy some of the honey drops on the clearer board So…synthetic beeswax…the best information I found was at the Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database. Here I discovered that synthetic beeswax – as opposed to natural and normal honeybee beeswax – is a synthetically derived wax consisting “chiefly of a mixture of esters of even-numbered, straight chain acids and alcohols containing 16-36 carbon atoms”. Now, there’ s not a lot known about the effects of this wax as there haven’t been enough studies done (why not!?!), but a few have shown that synthetic beeswax:
- may have a skin irritating effect
- is suspected of being an environmental toxin (aquatic)
- caused diarrohea in rats and skin irritation in bunnies
hmmm….another reason to make our own creams and balms! Another reason to check the back of the creams and lotions and potions you use to find out exactly what’s inside. Our skin is our biggest organ, so wherever possible I want my kids to be using something made by nature not something made in a lab! Tomorrow I’ll hopefully be able to blog about how we wash, dry and then solar melt the wax for use in our balms and soaps, it’s lots of fun to do and the smell is just delicious.
I skipped this year’s gourd planting (too busy making goats milk soap), but last season I planted heaps of varieties in mini raised tyre garden beds (I figured it was okay to use tyres because we weren’t going to be eating the gourds). The tyre beds were the easiest way for me to get the gourds growing without worrying too much about the boggy clay paddock. And they were the cheapest too as the local mechanic was only too happy to donate the tyres for the purpose.
So…if you’re planning on planting gourds, get ready for some work! They need good soil, good bug management and then lots more work at harvest time (and unfortunately, some of the seeds didn’t even sprout). But…the real work starts after you’ve dried the gourds thoroughly (ours have been in the shed for a year!) Yes, the real work starts when you need to clean the gourds! Yikes!
If they’re still whole, you need to soak them in warm water for 20 minutes
 Scraping the gourds If they’re not whole ie: if you got excited and cut one open to make yourself your first bowl, you should first scoop out all the innards or they’ll become a smelly mess on soaking. It’s best to scoop out the inside of the gourd with something like a melon baller or specialised gourd tool, but we only had a teaspoon available!
 One scraped gourd! One sore hand! So…after soaking for 20 minutes, the real work begins. Detergent doesn’t help, you just need lots of muscle power, scrubbing brushes and steel wool to get the mould off. Now I know why washed gourds are so expensive…first the seed costs in Australia are high, the soil needs to be amended, there’s lots of manual labour and water needed, and then it takes forever to clean and polish the babies up!
 Gourds soaking
 Gourds clean but still wet
Next step is for me to make some beeswax furniture polish and give the bowls a real shine. I’m hoping to sell the beeswax furniture polish at farmers markets. We visited the inaugural Gloucester Farmers Market on the weekend and it was great! We’ll be there at the next one selling our goatsmilk soaps, honey lip balms, organic essential oil balms made with our beeswax and more…I’m actually thinking of taking an ice bucket and offering little bottles of fresh raw goatsmilk and raw honey so people can go home and have a Cleopatra bath!
Today was also goats milk soapmaking day and I wanted to create a new scent using organic essential oils. But first stop…the goats for milking!
Step 1. Put milk pail up high so the goats can’t knock it over.
 The Honeycomb Valley view Step 2: Feed the girls some goat treats
 There's lots of yummy things in our goats milk soap! Step 3: Prepare the milking machine
 We do a combination of hand milking and machine milking depending on the goat
 He's actually available for self sufficiency and goat milking mentoring via www.capeable.com.au Step 4: Find someone who knows how to use the goat milking machine
Step 5: Ask all the goats to wait in line
 Tracey the British Alpine doesn't like waiting for all the Saanens to have their turn  A freshly poured bar of goats milk soap in our new essential oil "flavour": Lime, Lemongrass and Orange. The kitchen smelt fab! Step 6: Use all this lovely raw goats milk to make goats milk soap.
And here are some images of the soaps we made a few days ago using our own honey, goats milk yoghurt and organic essential lavender oil:
 Handmade lavender and goatsmilk soap  Honey and goatsmilk soap is just divine Step 7: In 4 weeks, if you’d like, you will be able to buy some of our handmade, cured goatsmilk soap, including the new organic oil scent of Lime, Lemongrass & Orange..it’s a goatsmilk soap zinger! We’ll be selling our soaps online, as well as at the new Gloucester (NSW) Farmers market. We’ll be calling the range “Honeycomb Valley” and will also be offering natural lip balms, sleep balms and insect repellent balms.
Thank you for your time. Thank you goats! Thank you bees!
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