Located in Jackson Center, PA, Breezy Ridge Acres is a Certified Naturally Grown farm, producing raw honey, along with a variety of other honey-related products.
When Tim Heeter was preparing for retirement a little over a decade ago, hobbies were on his mind. Cheri, his wife, was already engaged in the life of an equestrian, and Tim wanted his own thing in which to become absorbed.
To that end, in 2010, Tim found his thing–apple trees!
(But wait, isn’t this an article about honey?)
Well, it wasn’t long before Tim procured the necessary supplies along with three hives full of honeybees and Breezy Ridge Acres was born. Unfortunately, he learned too late that the proper bees for pollinating apple trees are actually mason bees, and not honey bees, but by then, he was already hooked on his new hobby and on the liquid gold his little workers produced.
By 2014, Tim was tending to approximately 8 hives and became a regular vendor at the Mercer Main Street Farmers Market, which is now a thing of the past. Presently, in 2022, Tim visits over 50 hives in 12 different “outyards.” Outyards, which are places scattered around where Tim sets up his hives, are necessary to ensure that all those bees have plenty of space to roam and aren’t competing for resources.
When it comes time to harvest the honey, Tim removes a frame at a time to ensure that it is capped, which means it is relatively free of moisture. The frames are then brought into a Honey House where the individual cells are opened with a special device and put into an extractor which spins the honey out through centrifugal force. The honey drips into a food grade bucket that has a strainer over it to catch large bits of wax before they fall in. From there, it’s poured into a bottler, sealed, and labeled.
Tim and Cheri actually code each bottle according to the outyard, since some people prefer to buy honey from the outyard located closest to them. Of course they also taste a sample of each bucket of honey so they can attempt to describe the taste and texture for potential consumers. Every honey is different depending on what flowers or plants the bees have visited!
Even after extracting the honey from the frames, there is still some honey left in the frame, and so the final step is to set the frame outside the Honey House so the bees can fly the last bit of honey back to their hives.
Over the years, Tim and Cheri have been vendors at many farmers markets. They were often our neighbors at the Franklin Farmers Market, and they’ve also set up at the Oil City, Slippery Rock, Grove City, and Austintown (Ohio) markets. You can find them at local festivals, too including Apple Fest, Foxburg Festival, Pioneer Frolic at Maurice Goddard State Park, Music Fest at Maurice Goddard State Park, Strawberry Days in Grove City, and the Lake Latonka Festival.
They also sell their products at a few local stores like Core Goods, as well as Fairview Swiss Cheese in Fredonia and Gruber Farms Pasture Raised Meats in Shippenville. They really enjoy all the people they’ve met at different markets and festivals and want to continue attending such events for as long as they are able.
Besides raw honey, they also produce honey comb (when the bees cooperate), beeswax products (such as beeswax bars, beeswax food wraps, beeswax body lotion, beeswax candles), honey pecans, and hard honey candy. They only use products made by their own bees because they want the wax to be as pure as possible (pesticide free).
In fact, this is one of the things that sets Tim and Cheri’s honey apart–they only use natural treatments for their bees and are Certified Naturally Grown. They do not use pesticides or antibiotics. They strain the honey to get out clumps of wax, but they don’t filter or heat it (hence the term “raw”) since that can destroy the enzymes and antioxidants in the honey that are beneficial to your health. They don’t even use heat to uncap the honey like some other apiaries do. The honey they sell is only from their own bees because they want to know where each drop of honey comes from.
It is a labor of love.
Besides a love for the bees, when asked, Tim said one of the things he enjoys the most about beekeeping is “the satisfaction of producing something without having to buy a $100,000 tractor.” Also, he says the bees are always teaching him something new. Cheri is fascinated with how the bees work together to form a “superorganism,” a colony of hundreds of little parts working together as one.
Perhaps we could all take that lesson from the bees!
Next time you’re at Core Goods, make sure you visit the honey shelf and get yourself a jar of fresh raw honey from Tim and Cheri and the bees from Breezy Ridge Acres in Jackson Center, PA. Or, bring a jar, and we’ll fill it for you!
Find more Breezy Ridge Acres information at BreezyRidgeAcres.com or on Facebook at Facebook.com/BreezyRidgeAcres.
Also, find a post about raw honey, and how to turn it back to liquid if it has become solid, here.