Ames Honey Farm

While I can’t claim that I grew up on a farm or anything like that, I was in the middle of a rural community and got to experience the pleasures of unprocessed products such as raw milk and chopped sugar cane. A lot of them required some serious elbow grease to be edible but they retained all that individual nuance that is lost in factories. And every once in a while if I was lucky somebody would show up with chunks of honey comb or raw honey, obviously unfiltered given the fact that one or two dead bees would always make their way into the jar.

After moving to the US I had forgotten how much I liked honey and honestly never thought of it unless I had a sore throat. Then this Christmas I received a variety pack of raw honeys from my sister. These are put out at what is one of the only artisan honey farms in America, specifically Ames Farm in Minnesota. The idea behind their product is that they track their bees and place the hives in specific locations, trying to produce a variety of honeys that reflect the different seasonal flowers in the region. Each honey product is assigned a hive number; region name and primary pollen source, so those tasting have a very specific snapshot of how it came to be. I’m not sure how they avoid getting a wider variety of sources but I can only assume that it involves thousands of bee sized collars that explode if they leave a certain area. I would love to visit Ames farm to confirm my suspicion, that way I could sample some fresh honey while listening to the occasional popping noise of a rogue bee exploding.

And while it seems unlikely that two honeys should be different based on the pollen source, the contrast is pretty easy to appreciate but a lot harder to explain. We are not talking about chocolate vs. vanilla here, but instead some really subtle differences. For example I found the Basswood to be lighter in color, with a taste of confectioner’s sugar and a distant echo of lemon zest. In contrast the honey that originated from Carimona Wildflowers reminded me of brown sugar with a more pronounced fruity brightness. This one had started to crystallize a little though, so that may have affected its flavor. A really interesting one was the August Mellon, which had a dairy character to its flavor like those delicious goat’s milk candies.

Where you start to note a real sharp contrast is when you compare it to the blended and processed product available on store shelves. This honey has a lot more character to it, from the small crystals in its texture to the floral accents in its taste and the visible cloudiness. Also according to the website it is a lot more nutritious to consume raw honey, so yay for that too. I highly recommend picking up a couple of varieties for those cases where they honey you use is actually important. Given how small the differences are it’s hard to recommend a specific honey to a specific person but instead delight in the fact that from year to year and region to region you will find small details that makes each jar unique.