Sold out of honey

We had our last Christmas market of the year on Saturday 14th December. It was in a marquee in Whickham, the small town just down the road from Sunniside, the village in which we live. I am part of the group that ran the market. Lighting Up Whickham was set up to raise money for Christmas decorations in Whickham and to help boost the business vitality of the shops there. My job was to book the stall holders, get the tables from Marley Hill Community Centre (where we run the community cafe) and promote the event.

In the photo above you can see my preserves and honey on the left. The stall holders told me they had a good day. I certainly did! I sold out of honey. That's it til the summer of 2014 when we get in our next harvest. There is clearly a big market for locally produced honey so next year we will be looking to increase the 8 hives we currently have.

We have a small bucket of honey left at home for our own use. There's not much in it but we will be trying a few honey recipes soon. We also have a large amount of squeezed honeycomb which we will process. One by-product of this will be the water we use to wash the honeycomb which will be used to make mead.



Left to right: George Craig, Lorena Dayson, Cllr Peter Craig and me - we helped run the Christmas market. It raised £415 for future Christmas decorations. This was the first Christmas market the group has held, but we are likely to make it an annual event from now on.