recipe box
50 Shades of Honey
BY JOE LONG
Aphrodite , the goddess of
I wondered why my honey varied love , was said to use honey each time I extracted the delicious for beauty , and throughout bounty . The answer lay in our history others used honey for genius loci , the spirit of our area as arousing stamina and good health . shown by the diverse nature of the The allure of honey has tantalized region . We live in an place that has people for thousands of years . This a complex ecosystem with great desire is evident in the demand for biodiversity . If you look at the Agricultural Reserve from above , you ’ ll unique honeys produced in different areas of the world . When I see mostly farmland lined with started beekeeping , I did not know trees . A closer look reveals mixed much about varietal honey , but I forests with border and hedgerow found a passion to collect honey , plants , wildflowers , gardens , orchards , and fields of crops . Honey- and discovered a love for the amazing types of honey that my bees take advantage of this diversity by collecting pollen and nectar beehives produced .
What caught my attention from various flowers through the was that the color and taste of season and make wonderfully honey was different every time . unique honeys . When I started selling local honey , The honey produced here in
Spring , early summer and late summer honeys collected from the Agricultural Reserve express the variable characteristics of seasonal flowering plants .
2021 is a good example of this phenomenon . There was a delightfully long spring and a summer with adequate rains for flowering plants . The late frost in the fall helped as well by providing extra food and forage for hives going into winter . The honeybees reflected these bountiful seasons by making an incredible light honey in the spring , a flavorful amber honey in early summer , and a robust darker honey in late summer .
The early light honey is mostly derived from black locust blossoms , and earlier wildflowers . The flavor is sublime with an extraordinary sweetness , a floral note , and hint of vanilla . The early summer honey is more robust with complex flavors of light caramel with a citrusy hint . Those nectar sources are medley of flowers , along with blackberry , tulip poplar , and many other blossoms . Finally , in late summer , I collected an even darker butterscotchflavored honey with a tart finish . Honeybees had collected nectar from late summer flowers like sumac , goldenrod , asters , and many others .
Local farming practices can affect the character of honey , too . At One Acre Farm , Mike Protas uses buckwheat and red clover as a cover crop . The beehives there
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34 plenty I spring sowing 2022