Bee Hives
Pasture Ryan Brown runs New Life Community in Carlisle, PA. Our working relationship started by him identifying families he was working with who could benefit from Carwood Beef & Burger Bundles during the pandemic and getting the bundles to these families. These bundles are sponsored by Carwood customers.
Along the way, he shared with me that he was a bee keeper in his spare time. One thing led to another and we partnered with Ryan & his wife and Ebenezer Honey for Ryan to house hives at the farm. We set up pollinator plots where we could on the farm to support the bees.
The results were unquestionable. Our pumpkin flowers were full of bees, along with my personal garden. Pumpkin harvest was massive. We sold a bunch of pumpkins, donated a lot, fed 8 pumpkins a day to our pigs for 6 weeks, did a pumpkin smashing fund raiser and we still had over 1000 pumpkins left in the field at the end of the season.
The biggest surprise was my field corn harvest. I'm the first to tell anybody, I'm not a crop farmer. Whatever the average bushel per acre corn harvest is in our area, I usually come in at least 30 - 40 bushels under. With the help or the bees, I slightly exceeding the area average by harvesting 177 bushels per acre. My neighbor's harvest was also exactly 177 bushels per acre. That was the bees!
We plan to continue to host the bees in future seasons. Every fall we help Ryan and his wife market the honey by announcing their sales via the Carwood Monthly Newsletter. If you are interested in getting honey, sign up for our newsletter through the link at the bottom of each page of our website so you are among the first to know when sales are available.