What's Up Next At Sleepy Bees Lavender Farm? Coming in 2022
Hi friends!
It's a brand new year, and we are in our planning stage for 2022. We have so many id...
Thank You For Your Support
Hi friends!
We want to let you all know how very, very thankful we are to have such amazing custo...
Things Are Warming Up At Sleepy Bees!
Spring sure didn't hang around long! The heat is here already and seems like it has settled in t...
Spring is Here!
Finally! Spring is here. For some reason, this past Winter seemed like it would never end. Not...
Summer 2020: Making Lemonade
This summer did not turn out like we were expecting! Indoor events were canceled, masks were req...
Spring is in the Air (Along with the Coronavirus)!!
Well, this has been a weird Spring, right? We had our Spring planned out down to the smallest de...
Beating the Winter Blahs by Planning For Spring and Summer
While there isn't a deadline for anything rushing up to meet us, we still have a lot to do to get ready for the Spring selling season.
We are in the process of planning our first annual lavender festival for this summer
"Without Rain Nothing Grows. Embrace The Storms Of Your Life" A Thanksgiving Blog
Every day I am thankful that we took the leap and decided to start this farm when our jobs were moved. It was terrifying, but we've been happier than we ever were working for a big company.
Sleepy Bees Lavender Farm Spring/Summer 2019 Catch Up
The majority of our summer was spent weeding and attending craft shows, fairs, and farmers' markets. We have met a ton of great people and made some really good business connections. We learned so much this summer. We are finding our niche and settling in nicely.
Spring Craft Show Time!
What I found out at that first sale, and at every sale since then, is that people are awesome. They are kind and supportive even if they aren't buying anything. People love hearing our story and Jerry sure loves telling it! They are genuinely curious and interested in hearing more. They want to be able to visit the farm. I think later this summer when the plants are blooming and we have an open house, we will have more visitors than we even imagined.
You Gotta Have Faith
I never, ever would have imagined myself as a person who watched the weather at least twice a day...
Winter at Sleepy Bees
The holiday shopping is over, the lavender plants are put to bed for the winter, and the new plants for 2019 are ordered. What are we going to do with ourselves for the next few months? Well, hopefully this is the calm before the storm, and we will spend our quiet months getting organized and prepared.
Giving Thanks
The past few weeks have been very busy, and the next few are going to be even busier. Since I wo...
Meet Biscuit and Gravy
Well, there isn't a whole lot happening right this minute with the lavender or the bees, so I tho...
Website Launched!
On September 28th, we officially launched our sleepybeeslavender.com website. This was so exciting for us. Most of the summer has been spent developing recipes for bath and body products, and sending those products out to testers. After sending a batch out, we sent out questionnaires, and when we got those back, made adjustments. It was a lot of trial and error...and actually still is as we are tweaking things all the time.
Starting Our Product Line and Website
With the plants growing nicely and our 3 hives of bees doing well, it was time to move on to web ...
The Bees Are Here!
We got our bees all settled in their new hive, and even though it drove us crazy not to peek in every day, we left them alone for about a week once the queen was introduced. The queen has to be kept in her small cage for a few days until the other bees get used to her pheromones and accept her, otherwise you take the chance of the bees not liking the queen and killing her.
Time to Plant the Lavender!!!
After months and months of reading and researching and preparing the plants finally arrived. I'm...
The Bed Shaper and the Mounds
At this point in preparations we were struggling. The weather had NOT been cooperating. It rained almost every day for a week at the time we were supposed to be getting the manure and lime spread, so we were already about a week behind. After going down the first row with the shaper, we ended up with a small pile, but nothing like the 12" mound we were envisioning at all. The pile was much wider and squared off at the top, and also not packed down at all. It turned out that the rototiller we used did not dig down far enough to bring up enough loose dirt to completely fill the bed shaper. The plates are not height adjustable, so we had to work with the 12" that we had.
Prepping Fields (a nice way to say Spreading Poop)
The first week of May 2018 it was finally time to get our field ready for planting. A...
Getting Started With Bees
Our plan was to have the bees pollinate the lavender, which in turn would give the honey our bees made a lavender taste. Win-Win! According to numerous articles we read, bees LOVE lavender, so we were on the right track.
Time to Order Some Plants
According to the US Lavender Grower's Association, there are over 45 different species of lavender with over 450 varieties. To decide which would be the best variety for us, we needed to do a lot of research on which types would grow best in our climate, produce the most essential oil (for use in products we'd be making), be good for culinary use, and of course look and smell amazing both fresh and dried. That's not too much to ask of one flower, is it?
It's All About the Dirt
It wasn't just going to be learning how to grow lavender. The farming alone was brand new to us. We'd have to teach ourselves about soil, planting methods, watering methods and harvesting. We were going to have to teach ourselves to make products from our lavender, and to develop our own unique recipes. Once the products were made, we'd have to learn to package and market the products. We'd need to learn web design so we could start a website to sell the things we made. We were going to have to learn beekeeping. There were also many other things that would come up along the way that never even crossed our minds.
Sleepy Bee Lavender Farm- A Little History- Part 2
After a fantastic honeymoon it was time to get back to reality. Somehow, we had to figure out what to do with the rest of our lives when our jobs came to an end in 8 months. One thing we both knew was that we didn't want to start over with another company and have the possibility of this happening again in a few years....
Sleepy Bee Lavender Farm- A Little History- Part 1
We are Jerry and Holly McCabe, and we want to share our experiences (both the successes and the failures) as we learn the ins and outs of creating a lavender and honey farm. We are learning as we go. We have literally no experience with farming or raising bees, so it should prove interesting.