Runamuk Acres Conservation Farm
Soil-first farming, building health from the ground up!
Since man first began robbing bee-trees for honey, beeswax has been a highly prized commodity treasured for it’s many uses and healthful benefits. Beeswax is utilitarian, medicinal, and beautifying. Beeswax through the ages Both ancient Egyptians and Persians used beeswax when embalming the dead. When they conquered Corsica in 181 BC, the Romans demanded…
There are a good number of beekeepers who object to feeding bees sugar. And I completely understand their objections. Sugar is essentially the equivalent of feeding your bees a steady diet of twinkies. It causes a number of health issues. Add to that the fact that mainstream sugar is produced from genetically modified sugar beets,…
The spectrum of animal pollinators is much broader than most people realize. With some 200,000 species world-wide, pollinating approximately 80% of all flowering plants, this group of animals has a profound impact upon the functioning of Earth’s ecology. They are a keystone group of animals and without them our lives would be very different indeed….
We came home from the Civic Center in Augusta filled with hopeful optimism that lingers with us even now, after spending the day at the Maine Agricultural Trade Show on Tuesday.
Previously I ranted about budget-meat versus local and sustainably raised meats. I’m not going to rehash the topic–but you can read that post here if you are so inclined. Basically my point was that if you’re truly committed to avoiding the factory farmed meats offered at the grocery store, there are ways to eat sustainably…
I want to take a moment today to talk about meat. Actually–I’m going to stand on my soap-box and rant about meat. Specifically big-box grocery store meat versus the alternative.
When I took that initial foray into beekeeping, I didn’t realize just how amazing the act of pollination really is. Ten years ago I was bug-phobic like so many others in our modern society, but through my husband’s affinity for insects I began to see them differently. I was not a fan, but I learned…
I am a honeybee beekeeper, but the entire spectrum of pollinators fascinates me (this is the driving force behind Runamuk’s message of pollinator conservation). Bumblebees are particularly interesting. Maine is fortunate to have a large diversity of bumbles, like the Orange-Banded and the Rusty-Patch bumblebee. Several species have gone extinct in states southwards, and while…
I think sometimes we don’t realize that it wasn’t very long ago that women weren’t encouraged to participate in what was considered a man’s world. Up until the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries women–especially upperclass women–were generally constrained to the drawing room, where they were expected to occupy themselves with more “genteel” activities, such…