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By David Story
Photos by Jerry Martin

Without flowering plants, there would be no honey.

It’s all about the nectar, says beekeeper and self-proclaimed “bee doctor” Jimmy Carmack, who’s appeared on numerous local TV shows and radio shows promoting honeybee issues. Owner of Carmack Farms in Odenville along with others in the state, he has become quite the expert.

Many myths have surrounded honey over the centuries: unfiltered honey can be good medicine for allergies, that the body metabolizes honey differently from other sweets or that honey’s as good as gold.

State Apiarist Dennis Barclift with Alabama’s Plant Protection section is quick to point out the pros and cons for people with allergies, “The pollen in the honey can make some people with allergies sicker. Others may claim to want honey because of its antibodies, which gives resistance allergies, but all this is speculation and folklore.”

Barclift adds, “However, we do know honey’s good for you; we know it tastes good and is a ready energy source since it’s simple sugar. The sugar’s broken down by the bees, so the human body can use it immediately. That’s why many athletes drink a solution of honey and water.”

And, honey’s indeed much in demand. “I get a lot of calls in the spring looking for local, unfiltered honey,” says Carmack, who’s participated in workshops and continuing education courses at Auburn University.

So, myths aside, two facts about honey are indisputable. Whether an entrepreneur like Carmack or a hobbyist, honey production’s fun and challenging. And, whether a chef or a homemaker, cooking with honey’s nutritional.

Man’s fascination with honey began 10,000 years ago. According to retired home economics instructor Lee Cannon, author of the Southern Living Quick & Easy Cookbook, honey extraction, and not solicitation, is the world’s oldest profession. Since the dawn of time, she says, man has craved honey, coveted honey and consumed honey.

“Honey’s the world’s oldest sweetener,” she adds “There’s evidence of honey gathering on mesolithic cave paintings in Valencia, Spain. In Ancient Greece honey was the primary sweetener. And in ancient Egypt, honey was used to sweeten cakes and biscuits; Middle Eastern people used honey for embalming’ and in the Americas, the Maya used honey from bees for culinary purposes. Honey was a 16th century sweetener popular before slavery in the West Indies made sugar cane plantations a reality. Then, sugar changed the game and took the place of honey.”

People still clamor for honey today, and in order to meet the growing demand, Carmack excises honey from hives at his apiaries, keeping bees in three or four counties. “We have colonies of bees all the way up to Huntsville,” says Carmack, who has set up exhibits at fairs, Earth Day events and Farm Day for Kids at statewide schools.

“We primarily produce wildflower honey, cotton honey and occasionally kudzu honey,” continues Carmack, who has worked with the apiary at Jones Valley Urban Farm in downtown Birmingham. “Our honeys have won numerous local, state and national ribbons.”

Other popular flavors indigenous to Alabama are “clover/spring flower (peach apple, and blackberry mixtures) and tulip poplar,” Barclift says.

And Cannon goes on to say some of the honeys with which she’s most familiar are alfalfa, buckwheat and basswood, the latter of which is an ornamental shade tree producing cream-colored flowers known for their nectar.

Buddy Adamson, director of the Alabama Farmers Federation’s Bee and Honey Producers Commodity Division, says the most common honeys in Alabama are wildflower, clover, cotton, soybean and privet, an invasive plant that’s nonetheless a “fruity” source of nectar. Lighter honeys are more prevalent and come with a milder flavor.

“Honey can be as clear as water,” explains Carmack, or almost as black as coal. It can vary from practically tasteless to bold and robust. The nectar source determines the color and flavor. For example, cotton honey is very sweet but prone to crystallization. He says that when honey granulates, it hasn’t gone bad. It can be re-liquefied by heating in a pan of water, but cautions that honey should never be refrigerated. Folklore has it, he adds, crystallized honey found in the pyramids of Egypt was still edible.

Once his honey’s extracted and packaged, Carmack sells jars of Pure Alabama Honey to retailers on US 280 at Cowboys’ gas station and Whole Foods, also on US 280, which in 2007 became the first national grocery chain to open its anchor store in Alabama with an exclusive supply of Pure Alabama Honey. Carmack, who’s described by Barclift as “knowledgeable about bees and a good beekeeper,” also sells at other venues, such as Valleydale Farmers Market on Saturdays in the summer and Pell City Farmers’ market on Wednesday afternoons.

Pure Alabama Honey’s available in five sizes: 8 ounces, 12 ounces, 16 ounces, 32 ounces, and 64 ounces, but individual retailers may not carry every size. “You’d be surprised at how big a seller our 64 ounces is,” Carmack says. “There are people who really go through a lot of honey.”

Adamson explains Carmack is the exception to the rule as there are practically no commercial-sized apiaries left in the state today, as opposed to almost 70 about eight years ago. According to Adamson, costs vary from $1 per lb. on up. He says one pint of honey is about 3 lbs. and may sell for around $4 to $5.

Barclift concurs, “Honey can go up to $2 to $5 a pound.”

An early fascination for bees

“Bees always interested me as a child,” explains Carmack. “Then, as an adult I was working with a guy who was a beekeeper, and he showed me what to buy along with the book, First Lessons in Beekeeping. We went to the old Sears store in Birmingham. It had a big garden center and sold beekeeping supplies. In 1973, I ordered my first bees there from York Bee in Jessup, Ga. I was hooked. I’ve been keeping bees ever since.”

Carmack, a certified master beekeeper through the University of Georgia’s Honey Bee Program, has served as president of the Jefferson County Beekeepers Association and president of the Alabama Beekeepers Association.

“I was involved with the Alabama Farmers Federation in creating a bee and honey commodity with their organization,” he says, “and served on the Bee and Honey State Committee for nine years.”

One thing Carmack says he learned during his tenure with the committee was people often don’t realize the benefits of bees and the role they play in agriculture: “The pollination bees provide is essential to many of our state’s most valued crops.”

Adamson agrees, “Beekeeping’s indeed important from the standpoint of pollination; honey’s important secondly to pollination.”

The nectar source for Carmack’s Pure Alabama Honey bees comes from wildflowers, which include a cross section of blooms: dandelion, clover, tulip poplar, holly, blackberry, mimosas and sumac.

“Pure Alabama Honey’s raw and strained as opposed to microscopically filtered, which means it still maintains the pollen granules that are so beneficial.” When pasteurized, honey is heated to a high temperature, breaking down the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes.

Barclift notes that “pasteurized” is a bad term: “Honey’s filtered but not ‘pasteurized’, and it’s often highly filtered or strained. Straining and filtering are cleaning processes, getting bits of wax, a purification, if you will, to get out bits of pollen from the comb.”

As for the nutritional benefits of honey, Cannon explains what’s in it: “It’s about a third fructose, a third glucose, and less than a fourth water. Higher sugars and sucrose make for less than a tenth of honey’s make-up.”

With an Italian-American background, Cannon’s traditional cuisine wasn’t steeped in honey – her mother, Philomena Ferrara, didn’t really cook a lot with it, so Cannon’s first culinary experience with honey was in the form of a pancake or ableskiver from a recipe prepared by her husband Bob’s Mormon mother, Winifred Morrell Cannon. “For every Sunday supper we ate ableskiver, prepared in a special ableskiver pan, topped with homemade honey butter.”

This family tradition has been carried on by Cannon’s sister-in-law, Winnifred Cannon Jardine, a home economics graduate of Iowa State University and author of the Mormon Country Cooking (She for many years was a food critic with The Desert News in Salt Lake City.).

“Today honey has become more expensive than sugar,” says Cannon, “but I still like to put honey on toast and squash – don’t peel the squash – it’s better than butter.”

By Carol Pappas
Photos by Jerry Martin

The sign is like a portal to the South from spring and into the fall, beckoning one and all to come have a taste: FRESH PRODUCE, it says.

In the sweltering heat of a Southern summer, roadside stands and farmers’ markets peddle palate-pleasing delights straight from the garden.

It’s certainly no different in St. Clair County, where farms and backyard gardens — large and small — stretch from atop Chandler Mountain to the shores of the Coosa River below. Around these parts, cucumbers, okra, peas and beans with unsavory names like Rattlesnake are regular table fare, just like Silver Queen corn, eggplant, purple hull peas and yellow and zucchini squash.

Don’t forget the peppers — sweet and hot banana, green bells and even an Italian named Marconi.

Tomatoes? By far, they’re still the king. St. Clair County is home to one of the top five largest tomato crops in the country, perhaps the largest in the region. “We’re the tomato capital of the South,” said Judy Gilliland, who along with husband Hershel, raise five acres of vegetables and fruit on their Chandler Mountain Farm fit for the finest tables around.

And for dessert, Crimson Sweet watermelons are a farm favorite.

Up on Chandler Mountain is a treasure of thousands of acres of scores of varieties of tomatoes from traditional to heirloom. But there is plenty more to see along the countryside.

The Gillilands are third generation farmers on Three Oaks Farm, named for the trio of the more than century-old oaks that stand watch over their family home. Children and grandchildren, who lend a hand during planting and harvest, have become fourth and fifth generations of this branch of St. Clair County farmers.

“We grow as much as we ever need,” said Gilliland. They grow enough to sell all summer long at farmer’s markets in Trussville, Pell City, Sylacauga, Leeds and Ross Bridge, where city folks line up for their own taste of summer from early June to September.

Gilliland, a retired engineer from the state, and Mrs. Gilliland, who retired from a law firm, returned to their roots when they got the chance, moving back in 1990 from big-city life to the family farm in Steele.

Now they spend 14-hour days harvesting the fruits — and vegetables — of their labor. If you close your eyes and imagine the birth of a buffet of fresh-picked paradise, that would be the fields of Three Oaks.

The Gillilands are locally famous for their heirloom tomatoes, and Mrs. Gilliland explains the different varieties they grow as deftly as a seasoned teacher giving a history lesson. “They’re the ugly face with the great taste. That’s what you call an heirloom,” she said, noting a series of deep ridges of these oversized tomatoes with an unmistakably sweet taste.

There are Yellow Blush, a variegated variety; Brandywine, which is pink; Yellow, a milder type; and Cherokee Purple. They share a common benefit. “All heirlooms are low in acid,” she said.

Just down the road a piece, young Jake Owen lures passersby to his produce stand with a fresh cut watermelon perched atop a sign listing his family’s vegetables du jour. The flesh of the watermelon is the deepest of reds, arousing taste buds of no telling how many motorists happening by.

His family owns six acres flanking the fruit and vegetable stand — “five more across the road,” he said. He and his father handle the chores of growing and harvesting from the farm that produces enough “to feed all of us,” he said, referring to his family. Owen has been selling the farm’s produce for two years but plans to go to work on the commercial tomato farms of Chandler Mountain next year, he said of his future.

Then, he turned a moment to the past, talking about his farming lineage. “Daddy’s been growing stuff as long as he’s been living.” His grandfather grew cotton, and his “kinfolks” in Oneonta in the next county farm as well.

For Andy Kemp, who along with wife, Paula, started A&P Farms five years ago, it was the lure of land that helped them find their way to St. Clair County. Andy, who managed a parts distributorship in Memphis, Tenn., and Paula, who worked as a software developer for BellSouth, “dreamed of having our own property — acreage,” he said. “We found this, not knowing we’d farm,” pointing to field after field of fruits and vegetables nearing picking time. They own 75 acres “to the peak of the mountain,” he said, and they began growing and providing their bounty to one farmers market five years ago.

Today, they sell at seven farmer’s markets a week and supply a grocery store in Birmingham as well as Community Supported Agriculture — an outreach of East Lake United Methodist Church — to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to buyers and for charitable purposes.

“It’s a lot of work, but we enjoy it,” Kemp said. While there are plenty of vegetables readying for harvesting across his acreage, his favorite is growing fruit — 15,000 strawberry plants, 160 peach trees and four 200-foot trellises of blackberries. “We pick 150 watermelons every two to three days and 150 to 200 cantaloupes every couple of days.

Then it’s on to market in East Lake, Birmingham’s noted Pepper Place, Valleydale, Trussville, Pell City, Adamsville and Gardendale.

Between growing, picking and marketing, “It’s daylight to dark seven days a week.”

Heirlooms are A&P’s specialty, but he has plenty of the main ingredient to a good old fashioned tomato sandwich.

His crop these days is helped by a pair of high tunnels, similar to hot houses but strictly solar. The sides are rolled up during the day and let down at night, allowing Kemp to extend his growing season by four months. Planting season can begin March 1 in the tunnel instead of the traditional mid-April dates.

“I had 50 boxes (of tomatoes) in May. By May 15, we’re picking red tomatoes. I hope to have them into November.”

And there’s no waste for any of Kemp’s crop. They freeze what’s left, and over the winter, they produce jams, jellies and relish. Perhaps the T-shirt he donned said it best: “We grow it. You eat it.”

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