Origin Stories Are The Best: We Reveal Our Signature Beek Balm Beginning

Have you ever had a happy accident? You know the kind…you forget part of something, like an ingredient in a recipe, but it turns out great anyway?

That happened to us with one of our signature products: Hint-O-Mint Beek Balm. It is an odd name for a lip balm, but that is a story in itself. 

When we first started Five Feline Farm, we had two main ideas. Sell our excess produce and raise honeybees. The honeybees were for both pollination and honey production. During our first honey harvest, we discovered a great byproduct: beeswax. 

All-natural beeswax is a small farm entrepreneur’s dream. When you have a micro-operation, you need to squeeze maximum benefits from minimum input. Beeswax fits that description.

To harvest honey from the hive, each frame is “uncapped.” This is simply cutting off the top layer of wax to expose the honey. Frames are spun in a centrifuge to extract the honey. The wax cappings are collected in a tub.

There are a few steps to prepare the wax for use. Drain out the remaining honey drips, melt, and strain give us a pure wax ready to use. 

The first wax-based product we attempted was a lip balm. It didn’t take long to branch into skin balms, but those are a topic for another post.

The first step to creating our lip balm was to figure out the ingredients. We picked up a tube of a famous national brand (you know, the one that everyone uses the brand name to refer to all lip balms)—no ingredients on the label. 

Odd, we thought. 

Off to the internet for a search. After digging through many pages on the brand website, we understood why the label does not include the ingredients. There are too many to fit on a lip balm tube! Then very few ingredients in the list had easily pronounceable names. It sounded like an experiment in a top-secret science lab. 

Plus, the first ingredient is petroleum.

Petroleum comes from crude oil. For those living near an oil field, you are familiar with the odor. It smells, well, chemical and a bit gross. If you have never been near an oil field, imagine a thick sludge that smells like a blend of petroleum jelly, used motor oil, and gasoline. All I could imagine was smearing that voluntarily on my lips. 

Nope. 

Time for a different formula. An all-natural formula. One whose ingredients would fit on a tiny balm tube label. 

Eureka!, as they say. 

We had an abundance of beeswax. All we needed was sweet almond oil, vitamin E oil, and a food-safe flavoring. We source sweet almond oil and vitamin E oil from high-quality sources. We started with our original honey flavor sourced from our hives for flavoring. Then quickly developed three other flavors: Spearmint, Hint-o-mint, and Peppermint. 

About that happy accident.

We were whipping up a batch of Spearmint Beek Balm, and some distraction or another interrupted the flow. Whether it was a cat needing attention or a cool song on the radio, the measurement of pure Spearmint oil was affected. Only half the required amount went into the batch. 

Oops.

After testing one of the tubes on ourselves, it wasn’t half bad. (Pun intended.) The name “Hint-O-Mint” was a perfect descriptor. It became a hit with only half the mint flavor of regular Spearmint. It is now second only to the original Honey flavor in sales. 

Are you still wondering about the Beek Balm name? 

We sought interesting and different names for our products early in the business. Something creative that would identify the product and become a signature name. 

The conversation turned to product names during an evening of great food and wine with close friends at our favorite restaurant. The four of us batted around names for our natural lip balm invention. The discarded choices are lost to history, but we settled on “Beek Balm.” Beek is a double entendre. It can be short for “beekeeper” and an obscure reference to a person’s lips. 

There you have it. 

The complete origin story of Beek Balm, available exclusively through Five Feline Farm. 

 

163-It is Almost Spring at the Farm

As the title of this episode suggests, we are starting to see warmer temperatures in East Central Illinois.

Those warmer temperatures allow us to begin the outdoor tasks like removing invasive plant species and burning up the cuttings.

We also have been able to check on the honeybees. We may have lost one colony over the winter, but the other two seem to be doing well. They have plenty of food stores to get them through until pollen and nectar start, but just in case, we added a little more in the form of winter patties.

The Mercantile will re-open on Friday, March 19, 2021 for the season. We will be then be open almost every Friday until Christmas. Keep watching our website, email and social media (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) for more details.

Two links were mentioned in the podcast.

First is our online gardening course: Gardening the Five Feline Farm Way. It is packed full of videos and information about each step we take here at the Farm to produce all our garden goodness. We are offering a low introductory price of only $19 for lifetime access. As we continue to add lessons, the price will go up.

Second is our Gert’s Garden 2 Go© bags for customers within our delivery area (15 miles from the farm). All of the details are available through the link below.
Gert's Garden 2 Go©

As usual, we are busy here at the farm.

Until next time,

Donna, Julia and the Felines

140-Fall Progress

We have been busy as always at the farm, cleaning out areas of the property that need attention. This time we had much appreciated help from a couple of guys who have the equipment to do tasks much faster than we can.

You will also hear an update on the honeybees and what happens when they forage Goldenrod.

The gardening season is coming to an end, at least for producing enough to sell. We will continue to have greens for our own use through most of the winter, but the protected areas are not large enough to go beyond that.

Keep your calendars marked for October 10, 2020 for the 3rd annual Farm Fest. It will be a bit smaller scale this year than originally planned but we are moving forward. You will hear more about this on the next episode.

Until next time….see ya.

Donna, Julia and the Felines

130-Mid Summer At The Farm

It’s hard to believe it is July already. Where has the year gone?

Today’s podcast gives you a quick review and update on our current activities. Beekeeping, gardening, the Mercantile and more.

The Mercantile is open every Friday from 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM. We still offer curbside pickup as well as a climate controlled, safe shopping experience inside the Mercantile.

You can also order online!

Many of our nonfood products can be shipped if you can’t make it out to the farm. Our aim is to serve you.

So come out to the farm and see where your food is grown. We do small batch, high quality products.

Until next time….

Donna, Julia and the Felines

P.S. Don’t forget to follow our social media for daily information and inspiration: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus you can find our online Mercantile here. And to get our posts and other information delivered straight to your email inbox, sign up for our email list.