Eastside Honey Co. Serves Fresh Honey from Rescued Bees

Bee rescue is one of those jobs that most people don’t know exist until they find themselves with an infestation on their property. At that point they usually want an expert available right away. In Austin, Brandon Fehrenkamp of Eastside Honey Co. is the go-to guy for bee removal and relocation.  He has relocated bees from hives that were established within the walls of homes, from beneath floorboards, from water boxes and 55-gallon drums, and from swarms in transition from one hive location to another.

Urban bee removal is a delicate process, and it can vary greatly from one location to another. Brandon decides on a course of action for each particular infestation, and then he delivers flyers to neighbors letting them know when a removal will take place. A bee removal usually requires dismantling walls inside homes. He uses a combination of low-suction vacuums to draw the bees out of the walls without injuring them and into containers to be transported to manmade hives.

Once all the bees have been removed, the honeycombs have to come out of the walls. Otherwise, roaches, rodents, and other undesirable critters will move in for the free snack. If the combs have honey, Brandon takes the combs to one of his locations around Austin and lays them on the ground at a reasonable distance from the hives. The bees that live in the nearby hives will remove the honey from the combs and take it back to incorporate into their own hives. For this reason, if a homeowner has sprayed pesticides in an attempt to kill the bees, Brandon is unable to rescue and relocate the hive.

Getting Social with The Pie Society

When it comes to uniquely American treats, pie looms large in many people’s minds. As ubiquitous and familiar as pie is, until last year there were not many options in Austin for artisan-made, creative pies. It was all grocery store pies or slices from a restaurant.

The Pie Society founders and bakers Lindsay Leslie and Emily Ingle changed that in a big way. Their custom pie delivery service offers all the classics, but that is only the beginning. Creative variations on pie are their specialty, and playfulness is part of the personality of both the owners and the business. Emily invented the Crimp, a two-bites sized mini-pie, because she’s the kind of person who can never choose one type of pie. Instead of having to order four different slices of pie, a Crimp-eater can sample all the flavors guilt-free. Lindsay is the queen of crusts, and she delights in the delicate doughy process of pie forms and lattice work.

  

Chef Alex Galindo brings a level of culinary expertise to the team, and together the three pie maids invent recipes that often revolve around what is seasonally-available in central Texas. The Pie Society considers sourcing locally as a way that small businesses in the community are able to help one another to succeed. Fresh, local, seasonal ingredients yield such delights as the strawberry-rhubarb kiss – available only as long as the crops are tasty.  Famous Texas peaches and pecans round out the haute flavors in pies that are always hand-made from scratch. This trio of pie creators looks forward to a long future of baking in Austin.

  

Sustainable Futures at Springdale Farm

Springdale Farm has a simple yet laudable goal: to build a sustainable future for themselves and for their community. Glenn and Paula Foore started out because they wanted to provide healthy food to their own family that was not laden with pesticides or other harmful substances. Like so many other urban gardeners in east Austin, they soon found that the land, which had been a major agricultural powerhouse a hundred years ago, provided much more abundant produce than they and their own family could consume. 

Neighborhood Pop-Ups bring HOPE to East Austin

What do you do when one of America’s most popular music festivals necessitates a relocation of your farmer’s market for two critical weekends in the springtime? Some markets may despair and look at the disruption as a loss. But Elizabeth Garrett and the staff at HOPE Farmer’s Market decided to turn the annual SXSW displacement into a major opportunity.

They came up with the idea of neighborhood pop-up markets – mobile markets that would show up in neighborhoods in East Austin known for being food deserts. And they wouldn’t limit themselves to SXSW, either. These markets would pop up weekly in the same location for anywhere from one to three months, and then after establishing CSA relationships with residents, move on to other neighborhoods in need of fresh food.

I met up with Elizabeth, HOPE’s Market Manager, at the first such pop-up market in the Cherrywood neighborhood of East Austin. Mid-day on a Wednesday, the small market was bustling with customers. The pop-up market is truly made in a collaborative spirit, with area businesses providing the lot space necessary for the markets to take place, and with neighborhood vendors providing goods that are suited to the demographic they serve.

Because HOPE’s pop-up markets are still in the prototype phase, there are many possibilities for new ways to serve the community. One of the most exciting goals is a collaborative effort between Elizabeth, Ramon Martinez of HOPE Likes Bikes, and design students at the University of Texas. They’re working to build bicycle-towed farm stands that are fully mobile and can bring fresh produce deep into the food deserts of East Austin. What a pop-up concept!

Dai Due

“Dai due regni di natura, piglia il cibo con misura” ~ “From the two kingdoms of nature, choose food with care.”

Dai Due is a mobile fine restaurant as well as a food artisan selling at farmer’s markets in Austin, TX. I worked with fellow Real Time Farms Food Warrior Molly Margulies on this project.

The Commercial Kitchen that Could

Winfield Farm outside of Bastrop is a thriving family business, sustainable in a very real and practical way. The four members of the Hough family prove that it does not take very much land to grow an abundance of food using ecologically harmonious methods. The key to their success is doing a little bit of everything, and tying it all together with their licensed, certified commercial kitchen.

Rain Lily Farm Wears Many Hats

an egg-laying hen at Rain Lily Farm

When your farm sits in the heart of a residential neighborhood, bordered by an elementary school and surrounded by urban activity, it’s only natural that you and your land would become a hub of the community. And when your farm is a small one, measuring crops in square feet rather than square acres, community is a vital way to remain profitable. Community runs deeply through all aspects of Rain Lily Farm in east Austin.

Countryside Family Farms

The way Sebastien Bonneau sees it, there’s no bad meat; only bad cooks. That’s why, on his Countryside Family Farm in Bastrop, you’ll find varieties of meat that are unfamiliar to many American palates. His message is one that encourages people to try meat from animals they’ve never eaten before. Countryside Farm offers a wide range of high quality meat, from the exotic-sounding feral hog, to guineas and even pigeons, and familiar standbys like ducks and chickens.

Nourishing the Community with Dewberry Hills Farm

a mature chicken at Dewberry Hills Farm

There are two aspects which are crucial to any civilization, according to Jane Levan: sex and food. If a civilization messes up either of these simple but critical functions then the civilization will decline, and the reasons are pretty self-explanatory. But for Levan, the messing up of food is occurring even in the face of unprecedented prosperity. On a large scale, we’re just not doing it right.

Feeding people is about community. It is about nourishing a whole person by sitting down to a meal together and eating wholesome food together. This gathering together is truly what creates civilization, and our dominant culture tends to drive us away from this primal need. Jane is doing her part to bring back this critical social function along with her husband Terry, by providing nutritious, high quality chicken at farmer’s markets and to restaurants in and around Austin.