A Guest of Honour!
You’ll probably remember my enthusiastic visit to last year’s Lithopolis Honeyfest; thus my returning for another go at it should come as no surprise.
The weather was much cooler this year than last, which made for a more comfortable but slightly busier spin through the booths, but despite my not really being fond of even smallish crowds, we had a good time, to say nothing of returning home with what shall probably prove to be more than enough local honey to get me through ’til next year’s Honeyfest.
Rogers Honey display.
I shall try to keep the yammering to a minimum, but wish to say once again: If you’re in the central Ohio area the weekend after Labor Day, Lithopolis’ Honeyfest is a must-visit!
Hand-crafted pottery toadstools from May Clay Pottery, perhaps my favourite new find!
It’s not an enormous event, such as the Ann Arbor Art Fairs (great 
fun, but rather exhausting unless you are able to spend the entire weekend in A2 and visit a little each day), nor is it utterly overblown, like the Circleville Pumpkin Festival (sorry, Circleville, but you’ve got to do better than sticking a few impressively large pumpkins amongst a lot of standard-issue carnival food booths). At most, unless you wish to stay and enjoy one of the many bee-related presentations or (usually) non-bee related musical acts, you’ll spend maybe two hours or so, depending upon how much time you spend sampling and browsing. Besides, there are more than enough things to occupy the rest of your time in the Columbus area should you make a special trip (or not).
There is plenty to do of both—not too much, but certainly enough to risk punching a hole in one’s budget if you like honey, bees, or gardening! As a woman who loves all three, as well as taking photos, Honeyfest is a pretty exciting day for me. This year we wandered through first so I could take photos before I nabbed most of the prey spied earlier. The local library, right on Main Street where Honeyfest is held, also had a book sale during the festivities this year, but since we’re looking at houses, it’s probably best that I curtail my book-loving activities for the time being.
Well, on to the fun stuff!
Honeyrun’s Cinnamon Honey
Honeyrun Farm is one of my favourite producers. In addition to raw honey, they offer hand-milled soaps. It’s the honey I adore, though; this year, I brought home some of their Tulip Poplar honey as well as the Fall Harvest; the latter is very rich and probably my favourite from Honeyrun! (In fact, I’m just barely done with last year’s Fall Harvest, but a girl—especially a tea-loving one—can never have enough honey!)
“Summer Sip”
Speaking of raw honey—well, people are often surprised by that term. But the truth is, most supermarket honey is pasteurized. If you ask me, this is absolutely unnecessary, honey being naturally antibacterial, to say nothing of the fact that the process destroys many of the amino acids, enzymes, and anti-oxidants—as well as interfering with the taste of the product. The pasteurization does make the golden stuff easier to bottle and alleviates the crystallization and cloudiness of the product, but still: I’m not a fan of pasteurized honey (or milk, for that matter), and that is probably one reason I snap up so much of the raw stuff at festivals! (For more about raw honey, try here.)
This year I also spotted a new-to-me lavender-infused honey from Honeyrun. I’ve had lavender-infused honeys before, but this is marvellous, especially for the price! The flavour is really intense, but not so much that you can’t taste the honey. I can’t wait to start using it in all sorts of goodies. Also new-to-me from Honeyrun is their cinnamon honey, which I sampled and forgot to snap up on our way back. Keep your glazes—*this* is what needs to be drizzled over cinnamon rolls and citrus loaves. Happily, Honeyrun is not only available locally, they have an online shop.
Beeswax, candles, & propolis honey from Daniel’s Honey, another favourite vendor. The propolis honey is a must-have come cold and flu season!
A vendor I don’t recall seeing last year, and one I was very happy to have found, is May Clay Pottery. Look at some of the marvellous bee- and honey-related goodies:
May Clay is also the home of the darling pottery toadstools near the beginning of this post. I fell for pretty much everything in the booth, but not wanting to spend like the government, happily chose this sunny, bee-bedecked mug to bring home with me.
Being able to sip my tea and coffee from this mug is likely going to make those long, grey days between Christmas and June much more cheerful! I will, however, confess to greedily wanting a few more of them so there’s a full, smile-inducing set to serve guests with.
New for 2014 was the Honey Competition. I would have been happy to help judge, but the ever-so-slightly crazed look in my eye probably frightened them.
Cheery pincushion from Fugly2Pugly.
Back again was last year’s exciting discovery, Fugly2Pugly, from whom I purchased a graceful old silverplate pitcher on a post that’s now keeping my hydrangeas company (not for much longer, however as my garden “cute” all comes in with the colder weather). They had so many darling goodies this year I’d no idea where to look, but managed to spot quite a few fun things once again.
It seems I was also in a bird-loving mood Saturday (of course, I’ve always loved birds, so that’s not really a surprise). The booth was quite busy, and getting in the way of customers is of course never my goal.
One booth had this”bouquet” of the boxes queen bees come in. There didn’t seem to be as many live bees at this year’s Honeyfest—I’m not sure why, but did miss them despite the fruits of their labour everywhere around me.
My victims! And yes, those candles are, for the moment at least, too cute to burn.
And that’s all. Saving the eating of all this honey, anyhow!
Victory Rolls and V8s 