Fall Events: Beekeeping & Canning Workshops, Harvest Festivals & Hereford Farm Market

Our regular market, Hereford Farm Market, is about halfway through its season. We’re there once a month this year, which is working for us. I miss being there every week, but we had a lot of scheduling conflicts this summer, so I’ve been grateful for the Saturdays we’ve been able to sell there. We’ll be at HFM again tomorrow, September 6^th from 9:00 a.m. to noon. Most of our crystallized honey is gone but we’ll have honey from this year’s harvest, as well as cut flowers (zinnias and dahlias) and the last of this year’s handstitched OOAK upcycled aprons, which can be used for cooking or gardening.

Upcoming workshops & fall fests – Come see us!

Beekeeping Workshop at Hereford Library – Sept. 13th 2-3 pm

Introduction to Beekeeping

Humans have been keeping bees and harvesting honey for thousands of years and you can too! An experienced beekeeper discusses the basics of backyard beekeeping – the equipment you’ll need, best practices and common challenges. This workshop provides a simple overview of honeybee anatomy, a hands-on demonstration of how a Langstroth hive works, tips for honey extraction and where to find more information. There is an observation hive with live honeybees, so participants can spot the queen, and a Q&A session. Weather permitting, the program may be held outside.

Craig & I + one of our queens will be the hosts for this workshop.

Canning Workshop at Norrisville Library – Sept. 16th 6-7 pm

Water Bath Canning Basics

Learn how to safely preserve fresh fruit in sealed jars using traditional water bath canning. We’ll discuss the types of fruit home canners can safely can, the process and best practices, the equipment needed to get started, how to find trustworthy recipes, and more.

I’ll be hosting this workshop solo. If you’ve ever wanted to know how to can like your granny once did, now’s your chance!

Oregon Ridge Honey Harvest Festival – Oct. 5th 10 am – 4 pm

Join us on Sunday, October 5th, for our annual family-friendly event that celebrates all things honey and nature-related in the bucolic setting of Oregon Ridge Nature Center!

Enjoy a variety of food trucks offering artisanal beer, crabcakes, burgers, donuts and ice cream. Shop from over 25 local craft vendors and honey farms offering a plethora of honey products and happy to talk about the practice of beekeeping. Visit the goats in the petting zoo or join a sing-a-long in our “1,000 Acre Woods”.

The Central Maryland Beekeepers Association will lead the honey extractions as we learn about all things honeybees – from pollinators to beeswax. Relax and listen to local musicians as your children do crafts, play lawn games or get up-close and personal with animals – from raptors to turtles to chickens. Take a tour through our historic tenant house and learn about the history of Oregon Ridge.

Craig & I + Mandi & Rob (Rosie Posie) will be sharing a table for this event. Mandi will have all sorts of colorful, fun, seasonal knit items and we’ll have lots of HONEY!!

Dejon Vineyard Harvest Festival – Oct. 11th 12 – 5 pm

13th Annual Harvest Day! A Family Fun Day!
$10 Adult Admission Upon Arrival – FREE Entry for Kids
Live Bluegrass Music from PORCH SETTERS UNION!
Hayrides, pumpkins, more local vendors. Delicious Wine!
BYO PICNIC/FOOD

Craig & me for this one. In past years, this has been a beautiful, laid back event. Hope to see you there – or at one of the other places we’ll be this fall!

Adding raised beds to our garden

Our biggest outdoor project this summer was building, filling, planting, and growing in raised beds. We decided to experiment with them because I thought it would help with the weeds and insane garden chaos that usually happened in years past. It worked! The beds turned out beautifully. They were a ton of work to build and fill, but planting and growing in them was much easier than when we planted directly in the ground. Our garden is still a work-in-progress, but I love the changes we made this season.

Before…

During…

After…

Other fun stuff…

After a worrisome late start, the dahlias turned out beautifully! We also grew some cactus flower zinnias. Love their “Raggedy Anne” look. Our milkweed came up again and we saw at least two caterpillars and a chrysallis. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the chrysallis transform into a monarch. Maybe next year!

Hope everyone had a wonderful summer and is looking forward to a fun Fall! See you soon!!

April 18, 2025

Earth Day is April 22nd!

I’m beginning the season with another post about butterflies, but I promise I’ll be back to posting about bees and honey again soon!!

Come celebrate with me this Tuesday!

Along with two other Ladew Gardens Butterfly House docents, I’m hosting a NATIVE BUTTERFLIES OF HARFORD COUNTY program at the Norrisville Library at 6:00 p.m. We’ll have lots of great info for all the pollinator fans out there. Come see some gorgeous photos of some of Maryland’s most beautiful butterflies. You can learn about their life cycle, how butterflies differ from moths, and how you can attract more of them to your own backyard, balcony, or farm. Register here.

Happy spring & hope to see you all soon!

September 13, 2024

This season’s butterflies

As we head into fall, I’m taking note of all the amazing butterflies I’ve seen this season, both near and far. Most of the butterflies I saw this year were native to Maryland, but a few were spotted in more exotic locales. I captured photos of beautiful North and Central American butterflies in a Mexican ecopark, on a Costa Rican coffee estate, and, of course, in Harford County.

Native Butterflies at Ladew

Ladew Gardens Butterfly House is open for another week or so. There’s still time for a visit. Although the butterflies are shifting into fall mode, there’s still a lot to see there and you can pick up tips for planting or improving your pollinator garden next spring!

The Butterfly House was designed to look like a butterfly

Black Swallowtails

Fennel is one of the host plants for Maryland’s Black Swallowtail butterflies (anything in the carrot family will do). Love that the caterpillar below was checking out his own sign! 🙂 The butterfly on the right is a male — you can tell because it has more yellow and less blue.

Buckeyes and Clouded Sulfurs

I still occasionally get the Clouded Sulfur and the Cloudless Sulfur mixed up. I tend to focus on the spots, but I think the defining characteristic between the two might be the wing edging.

Monarchs and Eastern Tiger Swallowtails

Like last year, the Butterfly House had a lot of monarchs in all stages. Keep planting that milkweed! 🙂

Monarch and Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Joe Pye Weed

Pearl Crescents and Variegated Fritillaries

I get these two confused a lot. It’s easy to see why. I’m hoping my careful notes here in this post will help me get up to speed quickly next year.

Silver-spotted Skipper

For some reason, I always forget this one’s name… This is a butterfly, not a moth, even though it has a thicker body and is less colorful than many butterflies.

Spicebush Swallowtails

I love these butterflies for many reasons: their host plant is incredibly easy to remember (spicebush — haha), their caterpillar stage is adorably cute (they have big faux eyes and like to “taco” or curl up inside spicebush leaves for protection), and they are beautiful in the butterfly stage!

There’s a spicebush caterpillar curled up inside that leaf…

Zebra Swallowtails

These are really neat and dramatic looking. Their host plant is the Pawpaw tree, which is native to Maryland. Have you ever eaten pawpaws? They are an interesting fruit, kind of like a banana in consistency but hard to describe in taste. You can find them at farmer’s markets and specialty stores when they’re in season. I’ve heard pawpaw ice cream is the best, but haven’t had a chance to try it yet.

Eggs and baby caterpillars are tiny!

When I see how small butterfly eggs and baby caterpillars are, I always think they could easily be mistaken for disease, an invasive infestation, or even insect or bird poop. But these little ones will eventually turn into gorgeous and majestic butterflies!

Some really cool native Maryland moths – Cecropias & Clearwings

The clearwing hummingbird moth is one of my favorites in the Butterfly House. They truly look like small hummingbirds when they fly from flower to flower. You can see in the picture below that their wings are see-through. (Maybe hemaris thysbe was the inspo for Wonder Woman’s invisible plane? 😉 )

Shoutout to some other amazing North and Central American Butterflies

I love Ladew Gardens Butterfly House because it allows Marylanders to see all the beautiful butterflies our state has. But I was lucky enough to see some exotic butterflies this season in their own native areas.

Costa Rican butterflies

Blue morphos were everywhere! No need to go to a butterfly house to see them, but I was excited to check out the butterfly garden at Hacienda Doka and one in San Ramon. It was inspiring to see how Costa Ricans have embraced ecotourism and really want to rightfully show off all the natural wonder and beauty of their country.

Pura Vida is hard to translate but it’s a saying that seems to be equal parts carpe diem, joie de vivre, and stop and smell the flowers (or watch the butterflies). But it could also be used to express gentle acceptance of something that didn’t go as well as you wanted it to, gratitude, or simple acknowledgement.

Mexican Kite Swallowtails

Saw these beauties at Cenote Zapote in the heart of the Yucatan. There were clouds of them “puddling” near the water. They have really long tails, a neat aqua color and kite shape, and are constantly fluttering. My encounter with them felt ethereal and was truly magical. I’m both awestruck and not surprised that these creatures have been on planet Earth for 100 million years!!

Fashion Institute of Technology Textile Design Student Emily Chibnik’s “Mariposa”

Last picture in this post, but my first butterfly sighting of this season. Was collecting Ellie from school last spring and we went to see the student exhibits at the Pomerantz Art and Design Center. This embroidered design was one of my favorites, showing that nature continues to inspire whimsical, delightful art.

That’s a wrap for my 2024 butterfly season ~ More lepidoptera next year!

If you’ve read this far, you deserve a high five and a discount on honey or a free t-shirt! Stop by our table this weekend and tell me your favorite butterfly or moth and I’ll give you a dollar off a jar of honey or a free Windtree Bee t-shirt (while supplies last — I only have a handful left). See you tomorrow at the market!

April 19, 2024April 19, 2024

Earth Day Celebration!

We’re kicking off the season tomorrow at Dejon Vineyard. They’re hosting an Earth Day event with BBQ, corn hole, and lots of wine! There will be cute, friendly farm animals, live music, and we’ll have honey!

Craig and I bottled about 80 pounds of spring harvested honey this week and it tastes amazing!! We’ll also have some Windtree Bee t-shirts and can answer any questions you might have from “What should you do if you see bees swarm in your yard?” to “How do you start beekeeping in Baltimore County?” No admission fee for the event but bring your own camp chairs if you want to sit outside. Hope to see you there!

What else have we been up to?

The American Museum of Natural History

This spring, I visited the AMNH near Central Park in NYC. It’s a huge museum! I limited myself to only the insect-related exhibits and I still didn’t see everything. (I forgot to reserve tix for the “What’s in a Name?” exhibit, a collection of rare books, entomological illustrations, Warhol art, and the “surreptitiously displayed” “whimsical” Withus oragainstus longhorn beetle. Sounds intriguing – a must for next time!)

The exhibits I saw were excellent:

The Davis Family Butterfly Vivarium – an exotic butterfly house with a pupae incubator. It was magical, although my favorite butterfly houses are still native ones like Ladew Gardens’.

The Solomon Family Insectarium – really neat! There’s a huge honeycomb exhibit, lots of info on honeybees, other bee species, and all sorts of interesting insects + a ginormous leafcutter ant farm.

“Extinct & Endangered” – Levon Biss’ macrophotography, which is best appreciated up close and in person.

Erie Eclipse Trip

We were lucky enough to be able to travel to Erie, PA to see the total eclipse. Craig planned our trip nearly a year ago. We were worried we wouldn’t see much because of the cloud cover, but the clouds cleared enough at just the right time for us to see the totality and immerse ourselves in one of the most outstanding natural science moments of 2024.

Until this month, I had only ever seen a partial eclipse. The Totality was everything they said it would be – incredible!! Such a neat experience. Witnessed flocks of circling birds beforehand, felt the temp drop during the event (so much so that I had to put my jacket on), and was able to see Baily’s beads, solar prominences, and the stellar corona. Hard to capture with words how extraordinary those three and a half minutes were!

Lots of hiking, a bit of beachcombing, and prayers for our bees…

Unfortunately, our prayers turned out to be last rites because most of our bees did not survive winter. It’s always sad but not uncommon. We’re constantly trying to up their odds of winter survival. Beekeeping is both an art and a science… and a little bit of faith.

Queen Rebecca (a.k.a. Boudica II) survived! She is the sole queen to make it through winter. Her line continues to be robust and strong. Long live the Boudicas!! 😀

We’ve also been catching swarms, jarring honey, and getting ready for the 2024 Season!

I’ll update everyone on the new bees and the Hereford Farmers Market soon. In the meantime, hope everyone’s spring is going well and that we will see you soon! Maybe tomorrow at Dejon Vineyard?

October 20, 2023December 11, 2023

Hereford Fall Fest + Season Wrap Up

This weekend, we’ll be at the Hereford Fall Fest. We’ve been vendors there for years and it’s always a great event. Weather should be typical fall weather here – cloudy and a bit windy. Bring your muck boots and a giant backpack for all the stuff you’re gonna buy! 😉

We’ll have:

Pumpkin Pie Spiced Applesauce – a favorite that was very popular last fall. This year’s batch was made with SweeTango and Cortland apples. I like to use at least two different varieties because I think it gives the applesauce a better flavor. (But, honestly, what isn’t good with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, and cloves added to it?) Even if you’ve had your fill of PPS drinks, no one ever gets sick of PPS applesauce!!

Caramel Apple Coffee Jam – for coffee lovers! Delicious all year long, but especially in the fall and winter. I simmer the apples in espresso before turning them into jam. The caramel flavor comes from the brown sugar I add to sweeten it. This jam is perfect for a Pumpkin-Shaped Baked Brie Puff Pastry.

We’re also bringing:

Honey – the last of our 2023 harvest. We only have a couple dozen jars left. You know the deal, when they’re gone, they’re gone! Stock up on local, raw, minimally filtered, unprocessed, pure honey for your winter tea, oatmeal, toast, etc. It never goes bad. (Ever.) If it crystalizes, just gently heat it (do not boil) to bring it back to liquid form.

Summer jams – SALE! – I have a dozen or so “summer cocktail” jams that I’ll be selling at a discount. They’ll be shelf stable through the winter, so use them for thumbprint cookies come January when you need a sugar boost!

Windtree Bee Merch – SALE! – I’ll also be selling our #SupportLocalRoyalty bedazzled t-shirts at a discount. They are adorable and make great gifts!

Our Market Season is Wrapping Up

We really enjoyed selling at the Hereford Farm Market this year! We missed a lot of HFM weekends in September and early October due to various conflicts and commitments. After Fall Fest, however, we plan to return to HFM for Halloween weekend (Oct 28th).

What have we been up to?

Other fun pics of insects…

See you this weekend at Hereford Fall Fest!

July 21, 2023

Seasonal Jams, Colorful Flowers, and Butterflies

We’ll be at the Hereford Farm Market tomorrow . For anyone new — the market is held at Hereford High School every Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to noon — live music, food truck + tons of great vendors! 🙂

We’re bringing our usual mid-summer offerings: seasonal jams and flowers. I grow lots of flowers for the bees and butterflies. It’s no secret that zinnias are some of the easiest cutting flowers to grow, which is good because I’m a middling gardener at best. I always joke that I like gardens a lot more than I like gardening – ha! 😉

For a short time during mid to late summer, I offer cut zinnias for $1.00 a piece. You choose which ones you want. Free clear jar with your purchase. Sometimes I offer colorful ribbons or vintage vases (prices vary for those). I can arrange your cottage bouquet or you can. I’m no more a professional florist than an experienced gardener — but our flowers are beautiful and every purchase helps support the bees. Any profit from our market table goes toward our beekeeping expenses.

From left to right: Chai Tea Rooibos Blend, Chai Tea Assam Blend, Pina Colada Jam, Black Forest Preserves, Maple Strawberry Jam, Mimosa Jelly, Strawberry Chipotle Jam.

Ladew Gardens’ Butterfly House

I volunteered there again this past Thursday. There were twice as many butterflies in the house as there were last week. It’s been really neat learning more about them. Obviously, butterflies are very different from honeybees! It’s fun chatting with other people about pollinators and pollinator gardens. And, by the end of the summer, I’m hoping I’ll be able to identify most of the butterflies that visit our house, gardens, and bee yard.