I’m doing a little taste-test. From each of the three jars of honey before me I have removed a modest sample. Jotted down first impressions, like the true professional I’m not. Decided that ‘Small Batch’ was a bit tangy, ‘Coastal Bloom’ floral and ‘Iron Bark’ delicate and very sweet.
These are the three types of 3 Top Honey currently) available at Tom Warren’s market stall. Tom is young but he was a lot younger – 14 years old – when he was given a bee-hive for his birthday by a neighbour. That was the start.
He tells me it was ‘just a hobby’ up until the time he qualified for university, when he realised that he ‘just wanted to work on the farm’. In his gap year he’d come down from Brisbane to ‘do the bananas’ on the property of relatives – who just happened to be the Everest family. ‘I really liked it,’ he says, ‘so I didn’t go to Uni!’
3 Top is the name of the mountain next to Mount Warning, at whose foot extends the Everest property –so 3 Top was the name Tom chose for his fledgling honey business. He’s adorned the stall with lovely old equipment – smokers to smoke the bees (in order to induce honey production); copper drums – which originally belonged to a friend’s father. I listen, fascinated, as he explains his honeys to customers. One woman is requesting Yellow Box as she prefers a lighter honey. ‘Lighter honeys,’ Tom tells me later, ‘tend to be more sought after – one exception being Manuka’ – which he’s hoping to produce ‘further down the track’. There’ll certainly be more varieties: ‘It’s all seasonal’, he says. Iron Bark is his most popular. ‘That’s a first-grade honey!’
3 Top Honey is at Mullumbimby every Friday from 7 – 11am and every Tuesday from 8 – 11am
