Wondering what we did in the garden this morning? It rained last night, so we had to wait a bit for things to dry out before we could do any harvesting. After weeding and pruning to clear an area for transplanting more Apothecary Roses in the back corner of the garden, we headed over to the Hyssop patch. It's covered in lovely purple flowers, and the bees are busy working there.
When we had several armfuls of Hyssop, we headed inside to the kitchen, where we stripped the leaves and flowers into wooden bowls, then chopped them with my antique ulu knife.
On Wednesday, I'd brought home a 60 pound bucket of organic honey, and my plan is to make a variety of herb-infused honeys over the next few weeks. The honey will extract some of the healing properties of each plant, so in addition to being delicious additions for teas, these honeys will be even more healthful. I expect we'll try Lemon balm, Anise hyssop (a totally different plant), Motherwort and a few others. Today, it was Hyssop.
We filled each of 24 jars about 1/3 full with fresh chopped leaves & flowers, then poured on the honey. We gently stirred each jar with chop sticks to distribute the plant material all through the honey & then topped off the jars. Aren't they beautiful?
8 comments:
Wow! They are beautiful! I love hyssop, but had never dreamed of making a hyssop honey! Oh how luscious! You are so amazing and creative, Sarah!
We were having honey synchronicity, evidently.. John made a big batch of blueberry mead that will be ready in a year or so! Mmmmmm! Come down and have some with us!
Blueberry Mead! Oh, my. Want to trade?
do you leave the herbs in the honey? or do you eventually strain them out?
The herbs stay in the honey. So, when you take a spoonful of honey for your tea, you'll get a little bit of the plant material, too. Honey is a fabulous preservative!
Wow! I wish I knew where to get a bucket of honey! how nice.
This looks so good.
I suppose one needs to drive to Lancaster to get some, darn it. You need a mailorder service!
Just sayin'.
Oh, Pandora, I DO have mail order through my web site. The honey isn't ready to ship yet, so it isn't on the web site yet, but give me another week or so & I'll get it up there.
Now the honey is on the web site! Here's the link: http://www.herbsfromthelabyrinth.com/shop/?itemid=514
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