I thought I’d share some pictures from the farmer’s market:

Our simple honey sign and prices

Grant (that's me!) and Jess with the honey.

You can kind of make out the bee hives in the darkness…

The silhouette on the horizon are the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

We are happy offer a new honey starting today – Chamiso Honey!

Chamiso aka Rabbit Brush

Chamiso Brush aka Rabbit Brush is an evergreen brush prevalent throughout the South West. The brush is as tough as the landscape that it inhabits. Native Americans often used the flowers of the Chamiso to make tea for curing various illnesses including dizziness, diarrhea and lack of focus.

The healing properties of the Chamiso brush can be felt in its honey. According to legend the nectar (and therefore the honey) from Chamiso is said to help one maintain focus on details while still seeing the larger picture of the project at hand.

This honey will make you stand up and take notice. If you look closely as you pour the honey you will see the striking resemblance in color that the blossom of the plant and the honey share.

This honey was made in the fall of 2009 in Southern Colorado. We have pulled it out of reserve for the first time.

Bee on Chamiso Flowers (pic via Dave Beaudette)

Clover Honey

Clover is one of the mildest honeys we produce. Our Clover Honey comes from yellow and white sweet clover found in the high altitude of the San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico.

Unlike our other honeys, we are able to produce clover honey fairly consistently, although some color variation is normal from year to year.

Tamarisk Honey

Tamarisk, also know as Salt Cedar is a pine like tree that grows all along the Rio Grande river from Northern New Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico. The tree has gained a reputation as a large water user and New Mexico currently has a program  to try to eradicate this tree through removal. As a result, we have been making less and less honey every year. This is my favorite honey; it is the Irish Stout of the honey world, dark, strong and very unusual. If you are a fan of buckwheat or Tupelo honey this is right up your alley!

White Honey

White Honey (sometimes called whipped, spun, or creamed) is honey that is naturally granulated under controlled circumstances. We use Mesquite honey to start the process and give it a nice smooth consistency. This white honey will stay soft in the jar forever and won’t run off of your toast! Keep it in a cool place, as if you warm it it will turn into regular liquid honey.

“Seasonal” New Mexico Wild Flower Honey

We call this honey “Seasonal” because it is produced in very limited quantities, and it has the most variation in terms of pollen source. This honey is from around Rodeo, NM where the bees freely roam the beautiful desert and have their choice of wild flowers (cactus flowers, star-thistle, etc).

Bees will fly up to 3 miles from the hive so it is difficult to keep them from comming in contact with some pesticides when they are places around cultivated areas. We try to place our hives on farms and Ranches that use older farming and ranching practices as apposed to “modern agriculture”.

Since we are migratory, that is we haul the bees south for the winter, the bees are placed in the southern desert of New Mexico where there is absolutely no agriculture. All of our spring honey and desert (tamarisk), and wildflower honeys are completely pesticide free.

I get a lot of questions about our honey – and most of them require the expertise of our beekeeper, Brent. To help answer all of your questions, we’ve set up a new page, called “Ask the Beekeeper” where you can easily send Brent a direct question.

This year Grampa’s Gourmet will be making it’s Denver debut by participating in Colorado Fresh Markets farmer’s market at City Park Esplanade (which is next to East High School and across the street from the Tattered Cover Bookstore).

CITY PARK ESPLANADE FRESH MARKET
Sundays, May 16 – Oct 31, 9 am – 1 pm,
E. Colfax Ave. & Columbine St.
(Map)

Come by and visit us at the booth!

I’ve been working pretty hard over the last few days getting this website set up. Today, I finally wrote down what is perhaps the most important part of this whole website – the page which explains Grampa’s Story.

Coming soon are pages about Brent Edelen (the current beekeeper), your truly (internet geek/local honey enthusiast) and of course the honey.

We’re also working on creating an online store, so look out for that as well.