it’s all about the buzzzzz: NEW working grrls-at-Camont

Oh Honey!

Beekeeping-at-Camont, Round 2.

A couple summers ago I trapped? caught? coaxed? a wild swarm to move into my waiting hive- la ruche. I savored the summer apiarist antics while discovering the sweet taste of Camont, letting the garden wild up, and learning from my favorite beekeeper- Narcisse Ferronato.

The winter was hard, the swarm was fickle, bee mites attacked and the bees were all gone by the spring. Like many new things I’ve attempted- making charcuterie, growing a garden, and driving an 85 foot barge- you don’t always get it right the first time around. Part of the ‘getting it right’ (or just getting it done) & part of growing up (and older) that I’ve practiced at Camont is learning that once is for dilettantes. Pros work, create, and practice all the time. (Sorry, but cooking once a weekend doesn’t make you a chef!) So at the end of last year, I took my sorry/sad/empty ruche to Narcisse’s small bee farm underneath the Chateau Madaillan and left it with him to over winter for some loving care. Today I picked it up- 3/4 full of fat honey and healthy bees and ready to welcome them back to Camont’s bounty. I am ready to begin again and really learn to keep bees. So what’s bloomin’ at Camont?

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Camont’s New Beekeeper- Narcisse the Sweet

When shopping the Le Passage d’Agen market on a Wednesday, I whisper to students and guests that “This man sells the best honey in Gascony!”. I get little patronizing nods, the cameras click away; they love his trim mustaches, the flowing gray locks,  his black Stetson hat. He flirts and poses and sells a few more kilos of leeks, garlic, potatoes, persimmons, nefliers and pomegranates. But I wait. I wait patiently for the French ‘central casting’ call to diminish and then announce again.
“THIS MAN SELLS THE BEST HONEY IN GASCONY.”

Now that I have your attention, let me explain. I love honey. I use honey in many of my traditional recipes like pain d’épice, chevre, miel & armagnac tartine or a pan-seared foie gras aux 4-épice. Best of all, I love honey straight from the pot, drizzled over warm toasted bread that has been smeared with fresh salted butter. But I have never, ever had such delicious honey as that Miel de Ronces (bramble honey) from local beekeeper Narcisse Ferranoto.

This year I wished for a bee swarm and got one (see archives here), followed the #Tweehive happening on Twitter and have been planning to integrate more beekeeping in Camont’s resident programs. Only problem was WHO would be our King Bee?

While working on a chapter for my book of French food producers- “Butcher, Baker, Armagnac-maker’, I have long ‘stalked’ this honey man, this beekeeper, this sweet pillar of the market. This week Photographer Xtraordinaire Tim Clinch, fall intern Julia Leach, and I went across the Garonne River and through the woods to discover the sweet secret way of the beekeeper Narcisse Ferranoto at his Ferme de la Chateau Madaillan. After coffee with his smiling new bride, (they have lived together 30 years and just married 5 months ago!), Narcisse told me a few sweet secrets and, at last, I know the answer of just how he makes THE BEST HONEY IN GASCONY.

Want to know how? Then join us this spring in France for the inaugural Apiculture Internship at

La Ruche… outside the Kitchen-at-Camont.

April-June 2010.

Narcisse Ferranoto by Tim Clinch

French Beekeeper Teacher at Camont

Pain d’Epices- a honey sweet spice cake

Nothing like a little frost on a Sunday morning to bring out the baker in us all. So when Julia Leach, the Kitchen-at-Camont’s fall intern, fell under the Pain d’Epices spell, we turned on the oven and began a day learning about dough, pastry and good smells.  Here in Gascony, Pain d’Épice or Spice Bread is thought of as a foreign treat- from the north, another region, a taste of winter.  Usually, I buy thick slices of honeyed pain d’epices made near Rocamadour from Kakou & Francoise at the Saturday market and serve it in the Gascon way with duck rillettes or thin slivers of foie gras. Dense, solid and studded with walnuts or candied orange peel, prunes or even chocolate chips, this honey bread is made by a former beekeeper turned patissier specialist in the Lot at la Noyeraie des Abeilles.

With that tasty inspiration at hand, we turned to a monograph on the subject published by Les Editions du Coq a l’Ane and signed and prefaced by the late Bernard Loiseau. I found it one year in Dijon, one of the spice cake centers of France and have hoarded it since waiting for a chilly baking sort of day. All secrets lie within this thoroughly researched and well written book, from history and folklore to dozens of recipes. From the sucrée- actual recipes for dozen’s of versions of honey spice bread, to the salée-including a killer looking Lapin au Pain Épice for rabbit with cream, mustard and pain d’epice breadcrumbs.

But first things first, I chose this basic recipe “like in Dijon” to honor the book, the source and inspiration to cook regionally. We used local honey, mixed flours and upped the spices some. Results? Perfect! A chewy caramelized crust, moist but substantial density and just right  balance of honey, spice and orange flavors. Have fun!

Adapted from Le  Pains d’Épice by Lise Bésème-Pia.

Le Pain d’Epice Comme a Dijon.

• 250 gr wheat flour (we used half white wheat flour &  half whole wheat; rye and buckwheat are traditional choices as well)
• 125 gr honey-
• 125 gr sugar
• 200 ml warm milk
• 1 tsp spices (1/4 teaspoon each of cinnamon, ginger, allspice or cloves, & anis)
• 1 tsp of baking soda
• zest from one orange

Place the flour in a  bowl. Add the sugar and spices. Melt the honey with the warm milk and add to the flour. Whisk together and work the batter (not using machines much here, we whisked by hand for 10 minutes). Then add baking soda and whisk again until well mixed, stir in orange zest. The batter should be smooth and fluid. Pour into a well-buttered loaf pan (22 cm or 8-9 inch) set on a baking sheet. Place in cold oven; turn on and set at 180′C or 350′F. Bake for 45 minutes, then lower heat to 150′C or 300′F for another 15 minutes; total baking time 1 hour. Remove from oven, cool some, remove from pan, cool some more. Then attack with knife and fork with good coffee or tea at hand! A taste of honey for you sweet things…

The Golden Egg- chicken love.

These warm fall days inspire lots of things- flanning along the canal, browsing old magazines, sorting the summer pantry… but real work? No, thanks. I’ll look around and stay outside to do some garden chores.

It’s been dry since April.  I know this fair weather won’t hold much longer. Rain is sure to come. The chicken coop needs some end of season love and weather proofing,  so it’s off to the tool shed, hammer, nails, screws and ingenuity in hand. The best part is getting to spend an hour with the girls, clucking and clicking as they scratch, peck and lay their golden eggs.

With Julia preparing some winter crop beds, we’ll turn the flock into the potager and let them give us a hand. Should be a slugfest frenzy!

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Ode to a Sweet Bee- or how to relax a garden.

I’m turning sweet on you, my friends, here in my untidy parc sauvage,

my feathered orchard, my alive-with-critters compound.

Honey, you are a busy growing part of my French world

and the food we grow to enjoy here at Camont.

Within one season of changing my garden habits, Camont has transformed from a tidy, neatly edged ‘ Two-acre Park’ to a home forager’s paradise.  A dynamic counterpart to the humm & buzz, bird twitter soundtrack of late summer, I now share Camont with chickens, ducks, cat, dog and honey bees as well as hungry students.   This is what I did ( or didn’t do…) to transform a tidy and quiet garden to a haven for wildlife and not-so-wild food.

• banished all use of weedkiller like Round-up
• bought a great long handled, open hoe to weed
• left the brush pile from late winter prunings instead of burning them. results: we welcomed a hedgehog into the rose garden.
• created a ‘no-go’ zone around Camont’s border- letting the nettles, dandelions, purslane & wild mint run rampant.
• seeded an old variety of deep red clover in fallow areas of the potager (I’ll do more of this next spring)
• stopped mowing the ‘parc’ area in favor of letting it naturalize. Results were a handful on new wild cherry trees and walnut trees sprouting up.
• bought a scythe- way quieter than a weed-whacker.
• planted a new entrance orchard by the drive with undergrowth of purslane and other ground cover.
• let everything in the garden go to seed in it’s own turn. Results: honey bees on the chives, lettuce and fennel seed heads.
• encouraged small groups of feverfew and borage to spread out.
• created a small pond for the ducks and bees to use. Result: every visitor got involved helping to shore up the banks and outwit the chickens heavy scratching.
• weeded less, enjoyed more.

I learned to see the garden as a process rather than a final outcome. When one of my well-meaning but clueless grown students suggested I might ‘hire’ someone to do it all for me, I just had to shake my head.  She just didn’t get that the time I spend mowing, weeding, wandering, smelling, planting, and harvesting comes back to me many fold in my uber-awareness of my home and how I live. Now when I see a patch of wild mint, I look for a working bee, and think of iced mint tea with honey. Before I clear a pile of branches, I make an ‘Andy Goldsworthy’ shrine to a possible nest for teh slug eating hedgehogs. And most of all I look… look hard to see if the bees have enough flowering for food and what I can let go or plant for next year to encourage my first honey efforts.

Fall is a wonderful time to ‘tidy up’ the garden…but not too much, please. For more tips on relaxing your garden…click here and support the #Tweehive swarming this Saturday sept 5th  in your own Bee-autiful way on twitter. Tweet me at @katedecamont.