What's new on the farm:
Hi everyone! This is a quick mid-week one today - I wanted to wish you a Happy Independence Day for the Americans and a belated Happy Canada Day for my fellow Canadians.
The beginning of July means that the honey flow is on its way. The fields are starting to fill in with colors from all the blooming flowers.
We've got beautiful shades of purple from the alfalfa, white and yellow from the sweet clover, and pink and white from wild roses.
Many people wonder why our honey is white when most honey isn't.
Well, did you know that the color and texture of honey primarily come from the flowers that the bees gathered nectar from?
This is because individual flowers have a unique profile of sugars in their nectar.
This profile leads to a lot of variety in color (from dark brown, like molasses, to water white), texture (solid and thick to liquid and runny), smell, and of course taste!
Terroir is a concept that describes how food is affected by the environment that it is grown or harvested in. The most well-known example of terroir is seen in wine.
The grapes that are grown to make the wine are affected by the amount of sunlight, the soil, the moisture, etc. That's why different countries have different qualities to their wine even if they are using the same variety of grape.
The same can be applied to honey, although it's much less well known!
Even from batch to batch, there are slight differences in our honey because there are different flowers in each of our apiary sites.
And the amount of rain in the fields changes each year, and also across locations, which can make the honey thicker or thinner.
The alfalfa and sweet clover are primarily what make our honey so white. If you compare this to honey from another region, say Manitoba, they may have honey from Buckwheat flowers which makes it look almost black and taste very pungent!
And honey is different from different countries too. The most well-known comparison is Manuka honey, which is also quite dark, liquid, and strong.
Unfortunately, most people are unaware about the uniqueness of honey and think it's as uniform as white sugar.
When I sell at markets and offer samples of our honey, some people refuse, thinking they already know what it tastes like and tell me "no thanks...honey is honey."
Why is this? Mostly because people are introduced to honey through the golden liquid that is sold in the grocery store. Big packers purposefully blend different honeys to get a uniform consistency that their customers are used to buying.
For instance, they would buy white honey like ours (which is more expensive on the bulk market) and blend it with darker honey (which is less expensive) to get a medium colored gold.
It's a bit of a science to them but also it loses all the character of a unique honey from a unique location.
Which seems to work for most consumers who don't care. But if you're here, I bet that's not you. You're probably here because you are looking for something less processed, more flavorful, and special!
