Welcome to the Hum-Along Honey Farm website.
Hum-Along Honey farm is located at the western end of the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, Canada.
By way of introduction, I am Roy Austin, and my wife is Judy. Our farm is a joint venture that continues to develop each year.
Judy and I met in 1969 while attending Canadian Nazarene College in Winnipeg, Manitoba (now Ambrose University, Calgary). We were married two years later, and following college graduation in 1972, we moved to Wapella, Saskatchewan. It was there that we began our family, and our career in pastoral ministry. In 1975, with two young children, we relocated to Kansas City, Missouri where I enrolled in graduate studies in theology. Following graduation in 1978, we returned to Canada, where, for the next 34 years the ministry took us to different communities from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island, Alberta, Nova Scotia and Ontario. Judy usually worked as an Educational Assistant wherever we were living. While all this was going on, we were busy raising a family of five boys who are now all married and raising their own families in Nova Scotia, PEI, Alberta, and British Columbia.
As a child I had grown up on small farm in central Alberta. For a few years before leaving home, I had gained a little beekeeping experience as a very reluctant helper to my dad who had inherited a few beehives when his father (my grandfather) retired and sold his farm.
Judy (Lewis) grew up in Port Lorne, Nova Scotia, the daughter of a fisherman. She attended high school in Bridgetown, NS, before going off to college. Although much of our married life took her away from the seacoast and the salt-air, she was an ambassador for the Maritime provinces wherever she lived. From Judy’s grandmother onward, several of her family were merchants of one kind or another. Likewise, Judy is not ashamed to say “I like to sell things.” It is no surprise then that the “Honey House” is her retirement project. In addition to selling honey, she has developed a line of skin care/cosmetic products, and specialty candles that make use of the bees wax that is another “gift” of the honeybees.
We began keeping a few beehives around 1995 in Claresholm, Alberta when I was serving as the pastor of the Church of the Nazarene in that community. By the time of my retirement in 2012, I had been a member of provincial Bee Associations in Alberta, Nova Scotia, and Ontario, and was still enjoying the delights and the challenges of beekeeping.
As the time for retirement drew closer, the dream of having a small beekeeping business began to take shape. In the mid 1990’s we had acquired a 10 acre property overlooking the Annapolis Basin, in Upper Clements, Nova Scotia. This is where, in 2012, we came to begin “retirement” in the beauty of the Annapolis Valley — a wonderful place for bees, and for us.
In 2016 we managed about 21 production hives, and another 10 nucleus hives. We hoped to have 30 hives in production by 2018. We reached the number, but it would be an exaggeration to say that they were all production hives. 2019 has been a challenging year but we continue to grow and learn as we go along. All the honey produced is extracted, bottled, and sold at our farm location at 2478 Highway 1, Upper Clements, Nova Scotia.
We hope you will stop in.