08/23/2013
I wanted to give a background on Mathis family farms. My brother and his wife(Josh & Rachel), and Josie and myself(Michael) are in the process of starting up this honey business. My dad has owned bees since I was a kid, having as many as 500 colonies of bees at one time, producing 94 (55)gallon barrels of honey in one year! He(dad) had some really rough years with drought and a series of events that led to him to go back to school and get a different job. His bees have scaled back over the years as he had very little time to work them.
So, here we are starting a new chapter in our lives. I have known in my heart that God wanted us to be in this business(and longed for it), but the timing wasn't right for it. I'm not sure when the ball started rolling, but it is going now and it's exciting and scary all at the same time. It is a challenge, we have always sold most of our honey in bulk, but my desire is to sell everything by bottle. I won't lie to you, we make more money this way. I don't have a middle man and you get local honey( hopefully comb-honey, spun honey, pollen, etc. next year.) Of course I have to make a living,that is the goal, but it is a deep passion of mine to work with bees. Harvesting, extracting the honey, (taste testing!) all apart of the fun and joy of what we are doing. We hope to purchase colonies this fall or spring.
Thanks for reading! I will be sharing with you different aspects of our business, adding photos and videos soon hopefully. Feel free to post on our page, share stories and photos. I also encourage you to ask questions and get in on the conversations. If you want to discuss something, post it! Thanks.
