How far have we shipped our honey? This is a question I get asked quite frequently from friends and family who know I ship out packages of honey, soap, and candles to customers through our online shop on Etsy. I've never really measured distances to find out the farthest location our honey has traveled, but I know it has gone to Canada several times, as well as Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the US Virgin Islands. But my favorite place to send our honey is to Alaska.
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| Caribou Herd in Alaska photo credit Rainey Hopson, www.salmonberryblood.blogspot.com |
Why Alaska? Well, I love the mountains, and I love to imagine what it would be like to live in snowy remote places. I am really happy that Alaskans can buy our honey for very reasonable prices. I can ship up to 5 lbs. of honey to Alaska for just 9.88. Because it is extremely difficult (maybe impossible) to keep bees alive in Alaska, the price of good honey there is very very high. Most beekeepers would need to start with new package bees every Spring, and hope for a good enough crop to pay for the expense of shipping those bees and supplies all the way to Alaska. Thanks to the USPS and their dedication to providing rural areas with access to easy mail delivery, Alaskans can still get great honey at a reasonable cost.
One customer, Nasugraq Rainey Hopson, lives in the Brooks range mountains of northern Alaska and frequently buys our honey through our Etsy store. She has even been kind enough to mention us on her blog, www.salmonberryblood.blogspot.com, and has sent other customers our way. With her permission, I am sharing some of her stories and pictures here, as well as favorite ways they use our honey.
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| Here is Nasugraq Rainey's brother-in-law drinking coffee outside the family cabin. Rainey says they love using our honey to sweeten their coffee. |
Nasugraq Rainey says that her favorite way to use our honey is in tea when they are camping: "We often travel across the tundra all day long to get to certain far away spots for hunting and foraging, so we take quite a few tea and coffee breaks along the way. We always use glacier water and good honey! The Elders don't really drink coffee at all so they especially appreciate it when we carry our honey with us. The older kids that tag along LOVE it raw."
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| Sneaking up on caribou for a hunt photo credit: Nasugraq Rainey Hopson |
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| This is a photo Rainey took last Spring when traveling to a fishing site. Snowy Alaska in May. photo credit: Nasugraq Rainey Hopson |
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| Ice fishing near Lake Chandler last April. photo credit: Nasugraq Rainey Hopson |
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| Rainey's family picking blueberries in the Fall. While Rainey picks berries her husband must keep watch with a rifle in case any bears come too close. Photo credit: Rainey Hopson |
Some other ways Nasugraq Rainey and her family enjoy eating honey is drizzled on ice cream, on fresh bread with butter, in milk kefir, as well as in lingonberry muffins. Nasugraq makes a lot of her own berry jams with the wild berries they find while foraging. Below is a picture of the Cloudberry (also called Salmonberry). If you watch her Etsy store throughout the year, you may find some jams and jellies for sale! I would love to try them out.
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| Cloudberries photo credit: Nasugraq Rainey Hopson |
Nasugraq also uses our beeswax in some of the products in her etsy shop, www.salmonberryorigins.etsy.com. Here is her "Origin's Eye Balm" made with Honeyrun Farm beeswax.
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| Nasugraq's "Origins Eye Balm" can be used for healing and moisturizing the skin around the eyes. |
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