Talk around the Winebarrel
We have started a new forum style page where we can record various conversations, comments or questions about winemaking. We never presume to be experts – we just have been working with grapes for a long time and have some experience.
Click here to see our new page….
For years we have had conversations with winemakers just standing around the grape scale or by the grape crusher by the barn. Everyone likes to compare their winemaking success (and ocasionally failures). Possibly in the future we may have a bring your own winetasting at one of our picnic tables.
See what the winemakers are interested in…..
September 7, 2011
Posted in: Vineyard & Grape Growing, Winemaking 
No Comments
Great Table Grapes!
A few days ago I saw these beautiful Venus Seedless Grapes in the vineyard. Many times we do not get around to bringing some in to the house to eat – but I did and washed and set them by our coffee maker, put in the fridge and chilled – they were heavenly.
We have many seedless and jelly grapes ripe this weekend.
More wine grapes next weekend.
Our daughter (Liz – and her husband Mark) have just started producing salsa’s, quacalmole, hummus, taboule, and more under their new business “Rightfully Raw”.
Many of these fresh new products will also be available at our Rustic Sales Stand.
See you at the farm
Bill & Pat Schnute
September 3, 2011
Posted in: Vineyard & Grape Growing, Winemaking No Comments
Vineyard and Honey Farm opening soon!
It will soon the grape and honey time again.
Our Vineyard and Honey Sales Stand will open on Sept 2 and be open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays ONLY until mid October.
The vines did very good and there is a great crop ripening up.
After this past winters tremendous winter loss, we replaced most of the bees with new ones and it looks like the crop is good. Plenty of honey will be available.
Click here for Newsletter Info
August 11, 2011
Posted in: Beeswax Candles, Honey, Honeyflow Farm, Uncategorized, Vineyard & Grape Growing, Winemaking No Comments
Just a Quick Update 4-23-11
Spring has been very busy and I have not had time to make a new newsletter yet, so I will keep you up date here.
We are in the middle of spring pruning and things are proceeding well. The weather this year has been very cool and wet but we are getting the job done. I keep telling Pat that the cool weather is good, it will slow down the growth of the vines and make them less susceptible to late spring frosts.
Regarding the honeybees – We had the most winter loss we have ever had last year and had to purchase a lot more honeybees. I have been putting them in small hives (nucs) too keep them warm and will move them out to their permanent locations in May.
We are still busy as usual in the Candle Shop, although we have slowed down since the Christmas Season.
We are making a lot of changes to our website. (Nothing you can see yet) What we are going to is a Content Management System called Joomla, which so far is working very good for us.
Our existing forum was damaged by spammers and will be replace with a better one in Joomla.
We are going to take down our Facebook page as it is not a good fit with our site.
The Blog is just fine and we will continue with it.
Bill & Pat Schnute
April 23, 2011
Posted in: Uncategorized No Comments
Our Forum is now Inactive
Due to problems with spam and idiots making hundreds of spam entries we have temporarily taken our form down. We will re-install it in the future when we finish remodeling our website.
March 6, 2011
Tags: forum, idiots, spam Posted in: Uncategorized No Comments
Feeding Honeybee Colonies & Pruning Vines
Feeding Honeybee Colonies
We have just started checking and feeding our colonies and have found that we have lost at least about 80%. This was one of the worst losses we have had & combine it with almost no honey crop in 2010 it makes beekeeping very difficult. I am afraid many beekeepers will not be able to survive this.
We are feeding the colonies we have left with “candy boards”, which is sugar syrup that has been boiled until 260 degrees and then poured into molds. It hardens up and it a real good feed for the honeybees.
A warm spell has melted much of the 12+ inches of snow we recently had and now we can get into the bee yards.
The pictures show a colony that needs feed. The bees are up in the top box & we set the candy board right above them.
The cords you see are medications we give the bees for mites – usually thyme oil.
Since the weather moderated, we also started pruning in the vineyard.
Although we do a lot of hand pruning with high school youths during Easter Break, we also start some hedge pruning on some of the very strong vines. More on pruning from a previous newsletter…
So far we are not seeing a lot of winter damage and hope for a good crop.
February 18, 2011
Posted in: Honey, Honeyflow Farm, Vineyard & Grape Growing, Winemaking One Comment
What’s New in 2011
Happy New Year everyone.
Pat and I just returned from visiting our daughter & family in California. Andrea also has a Candle Shop called Candleshop Creations. You can visit her at www.candleshopcreations.com/. She specializes in handcrafted beeswax candles for decorations, gifts, and guest favors.
New changes are coming to the website! We are trying to give our website a complete work over. We have always done most of our own work on the site with skills and technology changing over the years. We are not web designers but still like to do our own work and have control of our site. As any site evolves, pages and styles get old.
We are now experimenting with a Joomla content management program that may help us get a handle on things. (www.joomla.org/) This may take longer that I first thought but things look very interesting. Have any of you used Joomla? Send us a note.
We just reached an agreement with UPS that will give us a discount on shipping heavier items like pails of honey or large candles. The discount is automatically passed on to the customer. When you place an order, a program on our e-commerce system checks with UPS, gets the quote and automatically adds it to your cart.
We just received this note from one of our customers:
“Suzie and I are sending you this email to make you aware of our blog http://michigan1001dailyphoto.blogspot.com/. We think there is an opportunity for every resident of Michigan to promote tourism and support Michigan businesses, organizations and parks.”
“We recently featured Honeyflow Farm on December 28, 2010. We invite you to take a look and share the site with others. Pass on the link to your visitors and staff. We appreciate your help in promoting wonderful Michigan.”
They have a lot of nice images of our area!
Bill Pat Schnute
January 16, 2011
Tags: Beeswax Candles, Farm Operations, Website Posted in: Uncategorized No Comments
New Whisper Glass Apothecary
New this season is a small “Whisper Jar” – “votive style” apothecary candle. It holds just a bit more beeswax than a beeswax votive and will burn slightly longer.
They measure 2.25 inches wide by 2.5 inches tall and include a glass lid. After the original wax is consumed a votive may be dropped in to re-use the glass candle.
$9.00 each or 6 or more at $8.50
Click here to purchase
October 23, 2010
Tags: Apothecary, Glass, Votives Posted in: Beeswax Candles No Comments
Farm Update – 7-30-10
I just took a tour through the vineyard and things are starting to look pretty good. The grapes are about full size and will soon be entering into veraison, the period when they start to color and ripen up. The Concord & St. Pepin crop along with many others look very good.
Grapes are ripening a little early this year due to the warm summer. When we open we should have lots of grapes ready to pick. Last year there was little heat in the summer and many things did not even ripen properly.
We will most likely open our sales stand on Sept 3 and be open on Fridays, Saturdays & Sundays through Mid October.
The honey crop looks a little weak and we are planning to have honey that weekend, but we will see how the Michigan crop is and what is available. Beekeepers all over the country have lost colonies over the winter and the number of beehives in Michgan is not like it used to be.
July 30, 2010
Posted in: Beeswax Candles, Honey, Honeyflow Farm, Uncategorized, Vineyard & Grape Growing, Winemaking No Comments
Spring Frosts in the Vineyard – 2010
Spring Frost are always a problem for grape growers. As the days in Spring advance the chance of a frost becomes less – but as the buds develop they get increasingly more sensitive to cold.
When the buds break and shoots develop, any green tissue will be severly damaged by freezing temperatures.
I always liked to have our vineyard pruned before Mothers Day, before the buds get too large and may be damaged by brush pulling.
This year we had nice warm weather that felt great but caused the bud growth to advance a little more than normal.
We had a pretty hard freeze around Mothers Day that burned much of the green growth off of the vines.
The only good part of this scenario is that we have been doing a lot of hedge pruning that leaves on a lot of extra buds. This was good for us this year and we will still have a somewhat normal crop.
Two years ago we had a devastating freeze on Memorial Day, by then the vines were very advanced and much damage was done.
May 16, 2010
Posted in: Vineyard & Grape Growing, Winemaking No Comments