Our Story - Circling Hawk Honey & Mead

After 23 years of subdivision living in Richmond Hill in 2009 Michele and Gregg were ready for a change. Our former business that we'd started in 1998 had done very well through the mid 2000’s but it was beginning to slow down somewhat by 2009. Also about that time the subprime meltdown affected property values downward. The third notable thing that happened was Michele’s mother who lived across the street from us passed suddenly and we inherited her Richmond Hill home. With Mom's house empty directly across the street from us along with these other things that were happening together it was time for a move. So every Saturday my wife Michele and I would go house hunting for a larger property or at least a different home for us to move into with our two teenage daughters and our dog Bella.

Bella, who was an older Rottweiler, was experiencing hip problems and she needed treatment. My oldest daughter Kallie had learned about a chiropractor that worked on animals. His name was Tom and he worked every Saturday out of his stable in Richmond Hill where he treated dogs, horses, goats, donkeys etc. with chiropractic techniques. Tom was a retired chiropractor who also loved animals and he was getting on in years. So it became our Saturday routine to view potential new homes in the Aurora and Stouffville areas each morning and then bring our Bella to Tom for her weekly chiropractic treatment later in that day.

Tom’s business was in big demand back then and we almost always had to wait for the que to clear before we could get Bella inside the stable for her treatment. After a few weeks we asked Tom if we could hike around his farm instead of just standing in a line waiting for him. So with the OK from Tom we began to hike the area. We were amazed at the views from the back of the property where the entire city of Toronto was viewable from atop of the Oak Ridges Moraine. We also loved the open fields & paddocks and stable and barn complex were quite spectacular to us and we began to really get interested in looking for a farm property instead of just a different subdivision house.

It was our fourth visit with Bella to see Tom when we were surprised to see the real estate sign at the front of Tom’s farm listing the farm for sale. Since we already loved the property & stable we immediately wanted to know more but we doubted that we had the money to buy Tom’s lovely farm. Well with a calls to our real estate professional and bank we found out that Tom’s farm was indeed within reach for us financially if we sold our house and Mom's house. So that same day without hesitation or even seeing the inside of all the residences (3) we made the offer and Tom accepted. Bingo our life as rookie bee farmers was off to sudden start 2009.

Michele grew up spending the summers on her uncles farm in eastern Ontario so she knew a few things about farming horses and hay so that is where we started in 2010. I had some experience and talent for breeding tropical fish in my university years and was always fascinated by honeybees but I didn’t have a location back then. So our first endeavors in farming in the summer of 2010 was to board horses, replant the back 10 acres with fresh hay seed, plant some berries and get some honeybees.

By the start of 2015 we had grown the bee population on the farm to about 25 colonies and this reached 75 by the following year. We also found out that we really didn’t like boarding horses so we decided to only focus our farming efforts on producing food for our community from then on. Around that time my parents named Alan and Diana were looking to move from their townhome in Barrie and we talked them into moving into the front house on the farm. Alan & Diana who both had retired well over 2 decades earlier were open to the idea of retailing farm products from the buildings at the front of the farm. So with a sales team in place Michele and I could focus on expanding production of the business of farming bees & berries to hopefully sell to our community. Around that time a few nearby farms asked us for pollination services using our bees. That spawned the start of our bee honeybee hostel program where we place bees on other farms at our expense so as to expand our bee populations. Also about that time we learned about mead and how to make it.

Why is mead becoming very popular?

Mead is still fairly unknown in Ontario but has gained a great deal of interest in the US. Changes between the licensing model between Canada and US are the main reason that fewer people know about mead in Canada. In Canada, the licence requires that the meadery owners are also commercial beekeepers with over 100 registered colonies. No such laws exist in the USA so they’ve seen south of the boarder many more meadery establishments open up and that in turn has increased mead’s awareness.

How do we keep our meads special and high-quality while so many people are interested in them?

As demand for mead grows here in Ontario we've' found that in order to keep up we’ve had to keep expanding our production of honey, mead and fruits. Mead improves greatly with proper aging of at least two or more years so we work hard at forecasting the demand for our meads two years out and then brewing accordingly.

More Honey!
Our honeybee hostel program has really help us expand the number of bee colonies we manage. Under this program we place 16 or more colonies on other farms or large tracts of land at our expense. We take great care of all of our bees including the hostel bees and we make sure to maintain the owners lawn around the bee colonies. The best part for the owners is that we share honey or other apiary products with the land owners in return for them allowing us to use a small part of their property. This hostel program has allowed us to expand the number of colonies we manage by about 20% per year.

Get Into Being Dirty
Every year we expand the production of one or more of the following fruits growing directly on our farm: haskap berry, raspberry & blackberry, high density apple & pear orchard plantings, along with patches growing elderberry, seabuckthorn, saskatoons, aronia & black current. Since the demand for fruity mead is growing we don't sell fruit fresh as it's all used in the mead.

Sometime you Need a Helping Hand
In 2022 we secured some financial assistance from a producers grant from the Ontario Soil & Crop Association. This allowed us to install a chilled water system and some larger mead fermentation tanks. Also, through those pandemic years we were able to hire some amazing and dedicated meadery, beekeeping and bartending helpers who we hope will stay with us for the long term.