Like a box of sweet chocolates, St. Albert Farmers' Market boasts a wide assortment of choices.
In this week's Market Place, the Gazette spotlights the family-operated Coal Lake Honey Farm – vendors of unpasteurized honey and moisturizing honey-based face and body creams.
Christine and Joseph Kent are a lively British couple who live on 5.8 acres in Gwynne, a hamlet in the County of Wetaskwin. The Kents' smiles are wide, their accents thick and their voices rich with a lyrical storytelling quality.
Joseph is the family beekeeper, tending to their 235 hives housed within a 20-kilometre radius. Christine supplements the farm income by blending beauty products.
Originally from Barrow-in-Furness, a town in northwest England by the Irish Sea, the Kents immigrated in 2000. The town had been a major shipbuilding centre constructing ocean liners. At its peak, 17,000 tradesmen were employed. Joseph, a welder by trade, was one of them.
"You were there for life," Joseph, 65, says.
But when the shipyards switched from building ocean liners to nuclear submarines, the number of trades dropped dramatically to a mere 3,000 employees. Massive unemployment created a grim turn of events.
But Joseph, a beekeeper since he was 11, kept the hobby up while raising a family.
"Bees are so clever, the things they do," says Joseph still in awe after 54 years of beekeeping.
"For a start, the honeycomb – they don't waste any space. They're very clean. The queen is the egg layer. She can lay millions of eggs. But the worker females control the hive. If there's too many, they lay more than one queen cell. The male drones are there for the first week of mating and then they're gone."
Back in England, the Kents fostered Joseph's passion by buying an old school on the town periphery that was constructed purposely for farmers' children. Inside the school was a beautiful old fireplace with oak beams and original floors. Outside the couple landscaped the playground to house 23 hives.
"It took 18 years to convert," grins Christine.
When the employment downturn occurred, Joseph's brother living in Edmonton suggested he check out the province. Joseph, who had seen his tradesman father die from asbestos and long-term fume inhalation, was concerned about the importance of living a healthy lifestyle.
"I like all natural things. When we lived in England during mad cow disease, we didn't eat beef until we came to Canada. We lived on wild meat – partridge, pheasant, rabbit, ducks, geese," adds Joseph, also a hunter of noted skill.
The Kents discovered a shortage of beekeepers in Canada. Joseph then spent six weeks at a Ferintosh beekeeping operation. He visited commercial operations and viewed different extracting systems. Upon his return to England, the Kents applied to the Canadian High Commission and were accepted with a minimum of fuss.
Ideal location
The Gwynne location, with three dairy farms in the surrounding area, was ideal. A large variety of flower pollen was available – alfalfa, clover, canola, sunflowers, dandelion and wild asters.
Beekeepers can decode the colour of honey by the pollen bees fetch. Dandelion pollen produces a bright yellow honey with a strong taste. On the other hand clover-based honey is very white with a mild taste.
"It's very popular. Clover is a very good flower in that it releases its nectar quickly," notes Joseph.
Honey is usually taken from the hives in August. To avoid bee stings, Joseph wears a tracksuit underneath a protective cotton bee suit. On his head is a sealed helmet and veil and his hands are covered with cowhide gauntlets.
"You're robbing the bees and they know it and they defend it," he chuckles.
The honeycombs are in single brood boxes. In summer, its occupants can produce up to 70 pounds of honey per box.
The boxes containing about 10 frames each are transported to the hot room where the temperature is kept at a constant 28 degrees C to keep the honey liquid.
The Kents sell their honey unpasteurized. Pasteurization is a process of heating food to a high temperature that kills microbes and slows spoilage. Honey is reputed to have antibacterial and antibiotic substances and high heat can affect those properties.
"Once you heat honey above 37 degrees, it destroys the natural enzymes."
The frames' first stop, Joseph explains, is the uncapping machine. Once bees fill a cell with honey, they seal it with beeswax. The uncapping machine takes off the beeswax and exposes the honey.
In the next step, the frames are placed in an extractor where the frames are spun around at a slow speed.
"It takes 20 minutes to extract the honey from 60 frames. The honey is thrown out with centrifugal force."
From the extractor, the honey is dumped into a well where any remaining wax floats to the top separating itself from the golden bee nectar.
Once cleaned, the honey flows into a holding tank that holds 9,000 pounds of honey that is thermostatically controlled to 26 degrees. All the honey is potted and gradually solidifies.
Christine uses some of the honey to manufacture two face and body creams. In England, she had met a beekeeper who made beauty creams. In his younger days, he had been a chemist and formulated a recipe.
"He never gave the recipe out, but when I was leaving he gave me the recipe. But I changed it," Christine comments.
Although Christine keeps the ingredients and manufacturing process under wraps, she notes that in lighter face cream there is a chamomile base with mango, essential oils and unpasteurized honey.
"Honey is a natural healer, a natural antibiotic. Honey is what they used to use in wounds to clear it out."
Regulars value her heavier skin cream noted for its moisturizing properties of lanolin, oils and natural beeswax.
"You can wear it through four or five washes. Nurses use it. One surgeon in Edmonton buys 12 of the big cases every year."
Living a natural lifestyle is more than just hype for the Kents. It's a passion they delight in sharing with the public.
The St. Albert Farmers' Market operates every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
