Farm Feature: Circling Hawk Honey & Meadery
Tell us how Circling Hawk Honey & Meadery came into being
After 23 years of subdivision living in Richmond Hill in 2009 Michele and I were ready for a change.Our former business that we started in 1998 had done very well through the 2000’s but it was beginning to slow down somewhat in 2008 after the subprime meltdown in the US. Also, the year before Michele’s mother pass suddenly and we had inherited her Richmond Hill home. So every Saturday my wife Michele and I would go house hunting for a larger property or a larger home for us to move into with our two teenage daughters and our dog Bella. Simultaneously Bella who was an older Rottweiler was experiencing hip problems and needed treatment. My oldest daughter Kallie had learned about a chiropractor that worked on animals. His name was Tom and he worked every Saturday out of his stable in Richmond Hill where he treated dogs, horses, goats, donkeys etc. with chiropractic techniques. Tom was 88 years old back then and he was a retired licenced chiropractor. So it became our Saturday routine to view potential new homes in the Aurora and Stouffville areas each morning and then bring our Bella to Tom for her weekly chiropractic treatment later in that day. Tom’s business was in big demand back then and we almost always had to wait for the que to clear before we could get Bella inside the stable for her treatment. After a few weeks we asked Tom if we could hike around his farm instead of just standing in a line waiting for him. So with the OK from Tom we began to hike the area. We were amazed at the views from the back of the property where the entire city of Toronto was viewable from atop of the Oak Ridges Moraine. We also loved the grounds, stable and barn complex and we began to really get interested in looking for a farm property instead of just a bigger house. It was our forth visit with Bella to see Tom when we were surprised to see the real estate sign at the front of Tom’s farm listing the farm for sale. Since we already loved the property we immediately wanted to know more but we doubted that we had the money to buy Tom’s lovely farm. Well with a calls to our real estate professional and bank we found out that Tom’s farm was indeed within reach for us financially so we made the offer and Tom accepted. Bingo our life as rookie farmers began.
Michele grew up spending the summers on her uncles farm in eastern Ontario so she knew a few things about farming horses and hay so that is where we started in 2010. I had some experience and talent for breading tropical fish in my university years and was always fascinated by honeybees but I didn’t have a location back then. So our first endeavors in farming was to board horses, replant the back 10 acres with fresh hay seed, plant some berries and get some honeybees.
By 2015 we had grown the bee population on the farm to about 25 colonies. We also found out that we really didn’t like boarding horses and we decided to only focus on producing food. Around that time my parents named Alan and Diana were looking to move from their townhome in Barrie and we talked them into moving into the front house on the farm. Alan & Diana who both had retired 2 decades earlier were open to the idea of retailing farm products from the buildings at the front of the farm. So with a sales team in place Michele and I could focus on expanding production of the business of farming bee’s & berries. Around that time a few nearby farms asked us for pollination services using our bees. That spawned the start of our bee honeybee hostel program were we place bees on other farms at our expense so as to expand our bee populations. Also about that time we learned about mead and how to make it.
What is your favorite type of honey and why?
I love the mid-summer honey that’s loaded with basswood. This honey is a very light colour and has a slight peppermint flavour. It’s very unique but we don’t get a great deal of it. The amount the bees produce greatly changes from year to year.
Mead is becoming very popular. Why do you think that is? How do you keep your meads special and high-quality while so many people are interested in them?
Mead is still fairly unknown in Ontario but has gained a great deal of interest in the US. Changes between the licensing model between Canada and US are the main reason that few know about mead in Canada. In Canada the licence requires that the meadery owners are commercial beekeepers with over 100 registered colonies. No such laws exist in the USA so they’ve seen south of the boarder why more meadery open up and that in turn has increased mead’s awareness. As demand for mead grows here in Ontario we found that in order to keep up we’ve had to keep expanding production of honey, mead and fruits. Through the pandemic years we were able to hire some amazing and dedicated meadery and beekeeping helpers.
One final question: What are the most popular products in your store?
Our most popular mead is what we call beekeepers reserve haskap mead. Our Beekeepers Reserve is loaded with haskap and has a special velvety mouth feel. We accomplished this using a very low fermentation temperature that slowed down the rate of yeast growth from 21 days to over 40 days. We then cold crashed and stabilized this batch of mead before the fermentation completed so that some of residual berry and honey sugars remained intact. These were made possible after we installed a large commercial chiller system into our meadery. It’s also worth mentioning that at the 2024 Royal Winter Fair Circling Hawk won two first place ribbons for our meads in the professional mead making category. The two first place winners were our “Dry Pear Mead” and our “Dry Traditional Blend Mead”. We also won a second in the sweet mead category for our “Truth Nectar Mead."
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