Here in the Catskills, each season announces itself with distinct colors reflecting the atmospheric shifts – surmounting grays, whites and browns in winter that sometimes cover every surface in sight – tumultuous rain and sun in spring, bringing with them lots of mud, tenderly opening buds, seeds and flowers – lush green hillsides, and of course plentiful humidity and bugs in summer – and, finally, gold, rust and bronze decorating endless hues of red, orange and yellow in autumn.

Autumn is the season of plentitude in our region. Farms and home gardens explode with squash, peppers, tomatoes, beans and maybe a fall crop of leafy greens. Sweeping fields beam bright yellow with swaying corn stalks and smiling sunflowers. Autumn is also a potent time to look back and reflect on the year, while we gather harvests and prepare for the upcoming winter. 

As we paused to reflect on how to tell the story of fall in the Catskills, we realized we needed to go back to our greatest teachers of abundance in nature…bees. Here is what we learned in our conversation with Rogers Ranch & Apiary, a local farm that centers all things honey and bees.

Greentree Home: We are so grateful to be talking with you! First tell us, who is Rogers Ranch & Apiary?

Rachelle: The Rogers Ranch is made up of Brian & Rachelle Rogers, along with Fred, our dog. Along with a couple hundred thousand bees. One more four-legged friend – Ginger (Fred's half-sister) will join us in November.

Greentree Home: Was the apiary always part of Rogers Ranch?

Brian: We always had a home garden with fruit trees, flower beds, vegetables and other edible perennials. We started beekeeping in 2015 and started becoming successful after a few years.

Rachelle: Having an apiary took our ranch to the next level. My co-workers were constantly in awe of what Brian and I were growing and what new hobbies we were taking up, and they started calling us the Rogers Ranch. That's how the name came about. We've always gardened, canned and preserved our bounty of vegetables. We dream of having a farm stand someday so we can offer our community our vegetable harvest and other goods that we produce for ourselves.

Greentree Home: What inspired you both to create an apiary?

Rachelle: I talked about the idea of beekeeping in early 2014. That year, my sister Stacey gifted us a startup beehive kit for Christmas. Then we took a class in Cold Spring, NY and ordered our first package of bees for the spring of 2015. Brian has planted fruit trees throughout the years so we thought bees would be a cool addition to what we were building and dreaming. Besides a farmstand, I do want chickens. Bees and chickens just make sense.

Brian: Honeybees play an important role in our food supply. With us having a large home garden and small fruit orchard, adding an apiary seemed like a logical next step.

Greentree Home: Rachelle, you are both a beeswax candle-maker and apiary tender! Can you say more about your personal connection to bees?

Rachelle: As I've gotten older and moved into adulthood, I've really started to pause – to take in nature and learn about what is around us. What's healthier? What's pure and beautiful? To watch a honeybee gather pollen from a flower is so pleasing, I just sit there in awe. They work hard for the greater cause. We can all learn from them…taking care of one another is what we should all strive to do.

Greentree Home: Rachelle, you are both a beeswax candle-maker and apiary tender! Can you say more about your personal connection to bees?

Rachelle: As I've gotten older and moved into adulthood, I've really started to pause – to take in nature and learn about what is around us. What's healthier? What's pure and beautiful? To watch a honeybee gather pollen from a flower is so pleasing, I just sit there in awe. They work hard for the greater cause. We can all learn from them…taking care of one another is what we should all strive to do.

Greentree Home: It is beautiful to hear the history behind your farm and apiary, as well as the future visions that inspire you. What values would you say are at the heart of Rogers Ranch?

Rachelle: Honesty and respect are definitely core values for us. We strive to be transparent with our customers – only providing them with our own honey, in raw form. We respect the honeybees and the way they live.
 
Brian: We treat honeybees as living creatures that deserve respect and kindness. The work we do in the apiary requires us to essentially break into the bees’ homes on a weekly to bi-weekly basis – we must do that gently. They provide us with food, so we must provide them with the best life possible.

Rachelle: We keep bees to have them, not to harvest honey to sell. We only sell honey once there is a surplus. We all need bees. Caring for them to the best of our ability is the best gift we can give.

Greentree Home: What an incredible way to practice respect and reciprocity with nature. And you seem to be very creative with this surplus honey – I see all kinds of beeswax and honey products! Can you say more about your lovely goods? Where and how can people connect with Rogers Ranch?

Rachelle: We offer seasonal raw honey (usually spring, summer and fall), along with creamed honey and cinnamon creamed honey. Creamed honey is a creamy, smooth honey created by controlling the crystallization and preventing the honey from forming larger, harder crystals. We sometimes offer cut comb honey. We make beeswax ornaments around the holiday season. We also keep all of our wax cappings and sell blocks of wax to customers. Our products are available locally at: our Rogers Ranch self-serve cabinet, Hamden General Store, Hamden Filling Station, Dar-View Farmstand, South Town Market, and Strickland Hollow Bottle Shop. Our friends at the Hamden Inn purchase our honey to make delicious appetizers, desserts and cocktails. Our friends at Dear Native Grapes add our honey to their wine ferments. Alfie and Deanna have made an amazing wine called "Best Summer Ever" with our goldenrod (fall) honey.

Greentree Home: In addition to all that you create at Rogers Ranch, Rachelle, you also make sculptural beeswax candles at Greentree Home Candle! Do you have any favorite Greentree Home designs or colors?

Rachelle: I love the Fluted Pillar and Petite Pillar. They look beautiful on their own, or together as a pair. The dimension, height and fluted edges make the candles so elegant and cozy. I also love, love, love the Rope Tapers. I keep a stock of them in a variety of colors in my home so that I have them available when going to dinner parties, or to have a gift for any occasion. Though I am a fan of all the colors at Greentree Home, if I had to choose a favorite palette – I would pick natural, sage, antique and sangria.

Greentree Home: Do you light candles at any special time of year? What are some of your candle traditions at home?

Rachelle: I burn candles all year round. I do feel more passionate about burning candles when the days get shorter and the cooler temperatures are upon us. The warm glow of a candle burning on our dining room table as we unwind for the day just has a different vibe than sitting under artificial light. I appreciate these slower days, enjoying the quietness after the hustle and bustle of our busy summers. I find it to be so important to have a warm and inviting place to gather and share food. We host our families for Thanksgiving and having a beautiful tablescape with Taper candles lit makes our dinner that much more special. My family has experienced a lot of loss in a short period of time, so having these family dinners is very important to me.

Greentree Home: As someone who grew up in the area, what is important to you about living in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains? When do you feel most connected with your local community?

Rachelle: I have always found this area to be beautiful, and I want to share and promote that. I want people to see the benefits of having a couple beehives, fruit trees and a small garden. Knowing where your food comes from is very humbling and rewarding.

I feel most connected when a customer visits our self-serve honey box and rings the doorbell to ask us questions about the honey and the bees. They want to know what types of flowers the bees visit to create the light golden spring honey, or how is the fall honey so dark and red? Asking us when we started, or do we have other jobs? How do you have time to do all the things you do? Asking us to share recipes that use honey. To connect with our customers and teach them about honey and bees is really moving.

Thank you to Rachelle and Brian Rogers, and the hundreds of thousands of bees they support at Rogers Ranch. Visit Their facebook page or Instagram for more info about this sweet bee haven nestled among the foothills of the Catskill Mountains.

BEE SUSTAINABLE

Greentree Home: How can we all be pollinator protectors?