Prairie Creek Farm and Apiary

A Tiny Homestead

Today I'm talking with Jane at Prairie Creek Farm and Apiary.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Jane at Prairie Creek Farm and Apiary. Good morning, Jane. How are you? I'm fine, thank you. Good morning. You're in Kansas, right? I am. I'm in South Central Kansas, just north of Wichita. Okay, awesome. So tell me about yourself and what you do at the...

00:29
the apiary. Well, my name is Jane and I, I'm retired from federal government. I worked in the federal government for over 22 years in law enforcement. And back in 98, when I first was hired on, I bought this little farmstead in Harvey County. And after retirement,

00:58
I continue to work it as just a small horse farm. We used to breed horses here, my daughter and I, but we've always had a garden. And then after my grandsons started being born, one of them had allergies and eczema, and the doctors wanted to put him on medication right away. And I said, well, why don't I just start keeping bees and see if honey really helps?

01:28
And it did. And now 12 years later, I'm, I'm up to 25 hives and starting to do farmers markets on the weekends or during the week here locally. And then I started making goat cheese with a friend up in Park City, Kansas. And I made cheese for him for three years.

01:58
and they purchase my honey and my byproducts to put in their little market shop. So that's kind of what I do. Fun. I love it. Okay. So I do want to get into a couple of things about the bees, but the first thing I want to ask you about is I was looking at your Facebook page and you have some kind of salt bar that you make. What is that? It is basically the base oil in it is

02:28
olive oil, or sorry coconut oil with a little bit of olive oil and castor and then it has a couple grams or probably like a cup of Himalayan sea salt and it just lathers up and is so pleasant for your face and I do it with and without

02:58
So, and it's just fun. It's fun to work with and it's really lovely on your face. And you can use it as a total body soap, but it's something I've started this summer more continuously. And I have people that just absolutely love it. And that's the first bar that they come to. Some of them I have with turmeric.

03:26
So it has sort of an anti-inflammatory with the turmeric. And then I'm getting away from fragrance oils and using more essential oils now. So I have several different essential oils. I just made some with tea tree and then I have some with eucalyptus and thyme. So yeah, I'm just kind of experimenting. Okay, so my question is, it's a soap.

03:55
bar but the salt bar. So why is the salt important in this? Um, it's fun because salt and sugars help with lathering but the salt also it can be used as

04:12
Oh, it's like a scrub. So it just has nice lathering properties. And I wish I had a better answer. It's just a really beautiful salt bar. And I can go get some more documentation on it. But that's my best answer is because of the lathering and the scrubbing nature of the salt. Just like if you make salt.

04:38
foot scrubs with honey and salt. It just helps with exfoliation and cleansing your face better. And then I'm just kind of experimenting different ways. I follow a lady, I believe it's the nerdy farmer's wife, and she has some really great books and series on soap making. And when I started making milk soaps, I followed a lot of her recipes.

05:08
And then she had this series coming out with salt bars. And there was another group of people, because when you start doing one thing and you start researching, then all of a sudden you start getting these pop-ups and other people that make soap. And so I started looking at some of their recipes and putting things together. But mostly I would say that the salt itself is, getting back to the original question.

05:37
um for exfoliation and help cleaning your skin and it helps with lather. Okay got two things off of everything you just said. The internet the internet is the most amazing rabbit hole to go down ever and the reason I asked about the salt bars is because I didn't know I'd never heard of a salt bar before and we make soap and I was like what is a salt bar I need to know more.

06:04
Yeah, if you look up that nerdy farmer's wife, she has some great books. And then if you follow them, every once in a while you'll receive an email and she'll have a recipe in there and you can kind of look at the recipe and add things or take things away, you know, run it through a lie calculator and. Salt bars are just great. I find them to be one of my favorite soap bars. Okay.

06:34
Awesome. I just I needed to know more. Thank you for sharing. So in looking at your Facebook page, it looks like it was a fabulous summer for growing for you. It was. We've had a little bit more rain this year in Kansas. Last year was a terrible drought and things just didn't produce as well. But this year is also the first year that I did decided to become an LLC.

07:03
And luckily we had some beautiful rain and my tomatoes just went crazy. And I wasn't distracted and actually picked my corn at the exact right time it seems. The sugar was beautiful and my sweet corn. And our town started a Friday evening, midnight market or moonlight market. And so I was able to

07:32
have a booth there and it was just fun because I had never really tried to sell produce before and I was able to go out into the community. I first time in 25 years really started meeting people in the community and sharing my produce and then paying off what I put into my farmstead. I was able to pay for all my seed and all my starting plants and

08:02
hopefully can eventually get my own little greenhouse so I can start my own produce. Isn't it a wonderful feeling when the thing that you're making or producing or growing manages to pay for the things that you needed to start the project? Yes, I just lost my last great aunt. She was 99 years and three months. And my aunt Garnet lived up in Ohio and she said, well, Janie, if you're selling everything.

08:33
Why aren't you putting some back for your family? I said, you will share. But you know, what I'm not using then I can share and sell with my neighbors. And it's been fun. And I really enjoy it. I enjoy meeting folks and I love seeing their faces when they see a tomato, you know, as big as a dessert plate.

08:59
Yeah, we grow tomatoes. We haven't had a tomato that big yet. We're hoping next summer to have some humongous tomatoes. This year was terrible in Minnesota, where we live, growing. So. I'm sorry. I've been piling up my horse manure. I still have a couple of horses here on the farm. And I pile it up about midwinter and turn it.

09:29
to get rid of the weed seeds and stuff in it and have been putting it back out on the garden. And boy, does that make a tremendous difference. I think anything grown in the dirt tastes so much better. You know, you can tell when you haven't, nothing against aquaponics or anything like that. I just don't have that kind of a setup. And I think that something grown in the dirt just tastes

09:58
so much richer. It's like a beet, you know, I love beets. And that earthy flavor just really comes through. I love vegetables though. Me too. Speaking of things from the earth tasting better like stuff you grow. We don't have chickens right now and so we had to buy eggs. And my husband bought just plain old white eggs at the grocery store.

10:27
a week or so ago. And we were down to the last one. So he bought some actual free range eggs at the grocery store. Yes. And that's a term that is not definitive, whether they're actually free range chickens or not. But he bought these eggs and they were in a clear container and you could see them and they're big. They're supposed to be large eggs, but they're huge and they're brown. My son cracked the last white egg and then cracked, I think, one of the brown eggs.

10:56
and he knew which one was which. And he was like, mom, this is crazy. Look at this. And I walked over and he had cracked it into a white bowl. The yolk on the white egg was half as orange as the free range egg that we had bought. It's insanity. I just, it's astounding to me the difference that you can actually see in the different ways things are grown and produced. Yes. So just wanted to throw that in there. Yeah. You know, I'm sorry.

11:25
I can't actually let my chickens roam freely. One I have four dogs and then two we have a big coyote and red fox population and the hawks and the prairie raptors that are out here. But they are in a hundred by fifty foot run and they're given all the scraps from the garden, they're given all the scraps from the kitchen. We do supplement them with a grain.

11:56
But you can 100% tell the difference between a caged chicken and a non-caged or free roaming chicken. And what they're fed. What they're fed changes the color so much too. So you were saying moonlight market. Is that with the farmers market, is that when it's dark out or is it just an evening farmers market? It's an evening farmers market. So it's Friday in the summertime.

12:25
I believe they started May and the last one was in September. And it's from like five to eight PM. Downtown and we have a really, it's a small town here. Yeah. And the outskirts of Wichita. So yeah, it was, it was great. We had a good time. Got to meet a lot of folks. Awesome.

12:51
I just, I think it would be so cool to have a farmer's market when it's dark out and have one of the vendors be like a coffee, tea. Oh yeah. Something. Well, the folks that I work for, they own, it's a place called Eldersley Farm. The wife is actually a chef and they have an upscale restaurant there at the farmstead. It's where her husband, George,

13:18
grew up on that farm and he had a goat herd there. And we were making artisan cheeses. And...

13:29
In the fall, we have a farmer's market there, but he also has a big Blackberry Bramble. So in the spring, we have a bloom festival also. And they're fun. And they go in, especially Oktoberfest, it goes into the evening. So you have a chance to put lights on your awning and really jazz up your display. So it's great. It was much fun.

13:58
the little lights on an awning or on a trailer or whatever that just make it so special. And it's part of the reason that I love this time of year because everybody's going to be putting out their Christmas lights soon if they haven't already because Thanksgiving is a week and a half away. And I just, I love it because you don't see it every day. And so it's this very unique, very special time of year and lights always make things better. That's my take. I love candles. I do too.

14:27
everything. So it's very fun. And I have on the books with my husband to go do a, a light tour of our town and the town up from us because they do a really good job. Our neighbors go all out and I'm hoping that inflation doesn't stomp some of that because electric bills are probably high. I don't know. So, so anyway, um, I had a question. Oh, I want to talk about your bees. I have talked with a lady who,

14:55
who was a beekeeper. She didn't take care of bees last year, but she did for eight years before that. So I have a whole episode about honeybees. But I had some questions. I know that bees will take care of things after you take the honey out of the hive, but most people don't know. So when you harvest your honey, you let the bees clean things up. So can you talk about that? Cause I saw your video about it. Yes.

15:23
Well, you can put up your honey supers wet or dry. And then if you put them up wet, that just means that the honey that's in them goes into storage for the winter. A lot of beekeepers will put their honey supers out and let the bees clean them up after they've spun out the honey. For me, the area that I keep them in, it's a 40 by 60 foot shed.

15:50
and the bees find their way in and they clean them up anyway. So, and then my different layers of screens that I filter the wax and bee bits and out of my honey before I bottle it. When I'm finished with that, with the wax cappings, because I try to spin out as much honey from my wax cappings as I can, but then I'll let the bees clean it up.

16:19
I have a big trailer and I just set everything out on a trailer or underneath an awning and they're going to find it, especially if you're in a dearth when there's nothing else for them to eat, they're going to come and clean things up. So I put my hive tools out. A lot of people don't like it because then they think that, you know, you can spread different diseases that way.

16:43
But I kind of have the thought that it's a waste to just wash that stuff off and let it go to nothing when they're already hungry and it gives them something else to do. Yes, yes. And honey is what the bees eat. It's the stuff they make so they have food during the winter. Right. And I, you know, I've not had a problem, knock on wood, with

17:12
any diseases in my hives. I guess I've been fortunate or I just watch out and try to head things off before it becomes an issue. And I know there are probably some feral hives around here, there have to be, but I have 13 hives out behind my house and my farmyard and then I have some scattered throughout the county. But most of those bees are where I collected that honey from.

17:42
and they're just cleaning up behind themselves. And of course they will fight a little bit over it and you're gonna lose a few bees that way. But I like them cleaning it up and they do such a good job. Yeah, and the reason I wanted you to tell me about it is because I feel like Mother Nature did a really good thing when she created honeybees, or if you're a God person, God created honeybees. Because honeybees are really efficient.

18:11
at their lives. They, I don't know how to explain it, like I know just enough to kind of make a guess at this. Honey bees are amazing. Like I found out from somebody a couple months ago that in the fall that the female bees kick the male bees out of the hive for the winter. Is that, that's right, right?

18:39
purpose in life is to meet a Virgin Queen. They go out on mating flights and they're still trying to figure out, they're called drone zones. And it's usually, I believe, don't quote me on this, but there is kind of usually in a low area, kind of like a draw. And the main, the Virgin Queen will go out on a flight. How she knows is another thing.

19:09
greatness of nature. And she flies to these drone zones and she can made it with more than one drone on this flight. But drones do not have, they do not have stingers. Where their stinger would be is kind of like what we would assume to be a penis. And they, when they make the queen, they fall

19:35
it releases or stays in the queen and instead of like pumping venom, their spermothica just starts pumping sperm into the abdomen of the queen. And she will, they think she may go on on multiple flights, but once she has finished mating, she does not go back out again unless she is on a swarm. So she goes back into the hive and within the week, she'll start laying a week

20:06
to, you know, seven, oh, I guess seven to 12 days she'll start laying eggs. And then that's her job for the rest of her life. And she can live between, you know, three to five years in nature. Yeah. Yeah. And so the reason that the female bees kick the males out during the winter is because the males don't really have a job during the winter and they don't want them to eat all the food in the hive. So they just kick them out.

20:36
The lazy SOBs have to go. Yeah. They're not allowed to just sit around and watch football. They, um, they do. They, uh, because they don't scavenge, like they're, their only job is to mate a queen and so in the late fall, um, early winter they're kicked out of the hive, you'll actually see the, the worker bees dragging them out on the porches of the hives and just booting them away. Yeah. Um.

21:05
And then in the spring, you know, when it's time to watch for swarming and so forth, or that, you know, things are kicking a ramping up in the springtime because you'll start seeing drone cells, the drones are the males in the hive. And there are much bigger bee. So worker female bees have flat cappings on top of their cells, but a drone actually kind of looks like a bullet. It, it propels out a little bit.

21:32
It rounds out. Yeah. Yes. And so once you start seeing those, you know that, you know, it's nature's warming up and spring is happening and you've got to start watching your hives. Yeah, it's just, it's so interesting watching the life cycle of honeybees. And I, I'm not going to lie. I was very afraid of anything that stung for years because I was stung on the bottom of my foot when I was like four years old and it made a very big impression.

22:02
Yeah. And so I ended up writing an article about raising bumblebees because you can actually raise bumblebees. It's probably not the easiest thing ever, but you can do it. And I learned about the life cycle of the bumblebee and wrote an article about it for Bee Culture, the magazine. And then I was like, huh, I wonder what the life cycle of honeybees is. And I did a big deep dive into honeybees and how their lives go and what they do. And I was just so impressed at the effect.

22:31
efficiency and the focus of these little tiny insects. It just, it blew my mind. I don't know why I'm so fascinated by it, but I am. Well, it's just the perfectness of nature. Everything has a purpose. In a bee colony, everybody has a purpose. Everybody has a job. And it's just, shows how wonderful nature really is. Yeah, there's such a beauty in it.

23:00
And I'm gonna say this again, I've said it like seven times in the last year and a half on episodes on the podcast. People, if you're gonna buy honey, try to get it from a local person who raises bees, keeps beehives, and knows what they're doing. Because if you buy honey at the store, it might not actually be honey. It might be something that's supposed to be honey, but there's no honey in it and it's not great for you. Plus, if you buy it from a local person, you're supporting them.

23:29
and they can keep having bees and they can keep producing beautiful honey. It's an expensive hobby. And you know, if you're, people are always concerned they think that their honey goes bad because it crystallizes. Well, if your honey is not crystallizing, it's not real honey. And it's so easy to decrystallize honey by just putting your jar into, you know, a warm bath. It will decrystallize.

23:58
But real honey, because of the moisture content and because of the yeast and so forth, is going to crystallize. It never goes bad. No. It never goes bad. No, and honestly, crystallized honey is really great to spread on toast. It is. And spun honey is a wonderful byproduct of just regular honey.

24:25
Clover honey usually has a very small crystallization content in it. So where I come from, like if you have a soft flower field or a soybean field, the moisture content or the crystals can be much larger. And so it is the only honey that I actually put through a fermentation or not a fermentation, I'm sorry. I put through a heated process to heat it up to.

24:53
and then I cool it very quickly and that gets rid of those large crystals and it also takes away the yeast so that it doesn't ferment. And then I'll introduce a small crystallized honey, like a clover honey, into that. And then that's called spinning honey because you incorporate it. You use like a stirring process to incorporate that smaller crystallized honey into it.

25:22
And then that makes it very spreadable. And you can also add flavorings into it. A lot of people will add cinnamon or they'll add different powdered fruits, flavors. And it just is another wonderful byproduct that beekeepers can have to sell to their customer base. Definitely. I don't know if you're gonna know the answer to my question, but I know you know a lot about bees. I was...

25:50
Look, I was thinking the other day that I have to get some more neosporin, the antibacterial appointment that people use for, for owie. And I was like, I wonder if I can take some beeswax and some honey and coconut oil and make a salve and not have to use neosporin because coconut oil is an antibacterial and so is honey. Do you know, do you know if that's like nature's neosporin?

26:16
It is. The inside of a bee hive is actually very sterile environment. They collect sap from different trees and make a propolis. That's what they use to seal cracks and so forth in their hive. And they kind of use it as their medicine chest. So if you can get some propolis and a little bit of honey and coconut and some beeswax, you can make some wonderful sabs. And there are several out.

26:43
course on the internet because you can find everything on the internet now. Of course, yes. You can make some wonderful salves with honey and beeswax and propolis. You don't even have to have propolis, but it's always a nice additive to it. Yeah. I just, I was looking at the ingredients on the Neosporin tube and I was like, this can't be good. I mean, yes, it helps, but it can't be good for you. And I knew that, that, um,

27:12
the manuka honey that people talk about can be used on wounds. And I was like, I bet I could make my own salve that would do the same thing that I needed to do that Neo's Soren does. So I'm going to have to work on that. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I have a little cookbook, the Kansas Honey Producers is a group and they have a cookbook that we sell at the state fair every year. And in the back of that cookbook are several different

27:43
salves and hand lotions and so forth and I can send you a recipe. That would be awesome. I was trying to make a lotion for my son because he has dry skin and I wanted it to be lotion and it looks like lotion when I put it in jar and then it solidified and it became sap. And apparently I was missing an ingredient to keep it like a lotion. I don't know what the ingredient is. I have to look for it but I am.

28:11
I am all for making my own stuff with natural ingredients because why wouldn't I? I have time. I'm smart. I can read a recipe. I can do things. So I had one more thing about all of this and now I can't remember what it was. Oh, it was a statement or question. That's why I can't remember it. Bees, honeybees are incredibly important and people make jokes about, oh yeah, everybody says save the bees.

28:41
Well, number one, they are pollinators, and they pollinate our produce, and we need them to do that, or there are no tomatoes, there are no cucumbers. Nothing happens if these things don't get pollinated. Number two, they make honey, and honey is wonderful. If you like honey, you love honey. And I don't ever want there to be a world where there's not honey from my tea.

29:08
the wintertime. I don't want there to be a world where there's not honey from my toast. And honey is not just tasty. It's something that can actually heal people like we were just talking about. And beeswax is a huge part of lots of things. So when somebody says don't kill that honeybee in your house, put it in a glass jar and take it outside and let it go, they're not crazy. They're just trying to keep them alive.

29:36
Yes, and it's a little girl because only the little girls go out on foraging and she needs to get back to her hive because if you lose all the foragers that are out looking for these, it sets the hive out of balance because at different stages of the bee's life, they do different things. When they first attach out, they clean the hive.

30:03
And then they start taking care of the babies that are under the cap cells. And they assist the queen or clean the queen. And then they, you know, guard the hive and then they become foragers. And if one part of that goes out of whack because all the bees are out in a field collecting and they get sprayed with a pesticide, then that sets the hive off

30:32
you know, the next bee under them has to progress. They, I mean, they notice something is out of whack and it just, you know, it's like that perfect nature thing. It just sets everything off. So they are very important. They are important to the food we eat and the hive dish does so much more than what people really realize. Yes, and it's like the backbone.

31:00
of farming and we don't want to lose that because we have enough issues with farmers going out of business, farmers losing their crops to weather. We need the bees to be the support and just I don't want to be a crazy save the bees woman, but I'm going to be a save the bees woman. If you know there's hives near your property, don't spray things near the hives. And if a bee gets in your house, if there's a way to get it out alive, you

31:30
do it. And I am really still kind of afraid of bees. Like I have a huge appreciation for them, but I still get that that crinkle at my back when I hear a bee buzzing. And there was a bumblebee in our house a couple years ago and I managed to get it outside and I was very nervous about it, but I did it. So, so if you're afraid of bees, face your fears. And the fact is unless you're allergic to bee stings,

31:59
A bee sting hurts for a minute and then it's better. You know, they had a little bit of ice and some, you know, Zequil, or not Zequil, Benadryl can't help, you know, fix. So yeah, and you know, people freak out when they see a swarm, you know, because that's how bees reproduce is once the colony becomes very, very populated.

32:27
Those workers in the hive start putting out a pheromone for the queen and they start running her around the hive to have her lose weight so that she can fly further distance. And she will start laying certain eggs that will become a new queen. You'll end up with queen cells in your hive and that shows you that they're getting ready to swarm. And the older queen will fly off with a percentage of the colony and you'll see them, you know, like great...

32:57
clump of grapes hanging from a limb or on the side of a building and people freak out over that. Normally, they will not sting you because they're not there protecting their colony. You may have a rogue bee sting from that, but for the most part, if you contact a local beekeeper, they will love to come and collect that swarm because that...

33:22
increases the amount of hives you have and you're not paying for those bees, you're just helping them find a new home where they're wanted instead of in a tree or somebody's house. Bees normally only sting if you accidentally put your hand on them or step on them or sit on them.

33:51
but when they're guarding their hive, they may sting. But for the most part, they don't want to because they know if they do, that's the end of their life. Yes, for people who don't know if a honeybee stings you, it's a one and done. They sting you and they die. Yes. We had a bunch of yellow jackets at our last Oktoberfest and people said, I think your bees are out. And I said, those are bees, those are yellow jackets. Because they were going into people's fruity drinks.

34:21
We were serving a lot of hard apple cider and soft apple cider and of course they were attracted by that fragrance. Yes, and a good way to tell a yellow jacket from a honeybee, a honeybee is fuzzy. A yellow jacket is shiny. Yes. And they can sting multiple times. Uh-huh. They're mean. I hate them. I hate them so much. And they're pollinators too, but I still hate them. They're not as nice. They're not friendly, no. Okay.

34:50
We could talk for hours about bees because I'm still terribly curious about all of it. But I told you 30 minutes. We're going to keep it 30 minutes, Jane. Thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it so much. I thank you. It was nice meeting you, Mary. You too. Have a great day. You too. All right.