Smithville Farm

14/07/2025

Come to Ladies Night Out July 15th.

Tuesday July 15th we will be at the Route 66 Interpretive Center from 5 pm to 8 pm for Ladies Night Out along with a lot of other great vendors.

It’s a fun time of shopping and great door prizes.

Come taste some yummy honey and check out lotion bars, lip balm, great smelling soup and melts, beeswax candles, foaming soap and lots of bee themed items. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

12/07/2025

Due to the rain this weekend we won’t be set up anywhere but we are doing some meet ups on Sunday if anyone needs anything. We know we are meeting up at Mounds Dollar General and a meet up at Harvard Meats. We don’t have the times pinned down yet but if f anyone else needs anything let us know and we can bring your order with us. We could also do a meet up in Sapulpa at Ace too if anyone needs to meet there.

If you could let us know but about 10:30 Sunday we can have it ready to come with us. When we see who all we need to meet and where we will set up times.

We also will be at Ladies Night Our in Chandler on Tuesday from 5 pm to 8 pm.

04/07/2025

Come see The Bumbling Beekeeper Saturday July 5th at the Drumright Monthly Market. We will be in booth 9 and 10 at the Drumright Museum at 9 until 2.

We will have all of our yummy honey and beeswax goodies. Stop by for a taste of honey and check out all the other great vendors too.

03/07/2025

It’s Almost Harvest Time!!! How Do We Know???

Beekeepers all over use different indicators for when they want to harvest honey from their hives. The biggest honey harvests are done in the heat of summer.

The first and ultimately most important indicator is moisture content. Honey needs a moisture content of 18 percent or less to be bottled. Honey that has too much moisture, if not consumed in a reasonable time, will ferment. Having a low moisture content helps insures the honey will have the long shelf life for which it’s known. So this is what every beekeeper looks for before they bottle the honey.

But there are other factors that beekeepers use as well. Some beekeepers like to do several harvests and will pull any honey when it reaches the right moisture content. This is especially done in areas and states with very high honey production. Since as I have posted about before, you can only safely put a certain number of boxes on each hive.

Oklahoma is not a high producing state. So harvesting everything once for the spring honey works well in Oklahoma. Some locations will be able to do a fall harvest as well but that doesn’t happen often in most of Oklahoma. But we have high hopes for this year since it rained at the right time to make a good fall bloom of goldenrod.

For our apiaries, since there are only two of us doing all the work, we prefer to harvest one location at a time. In the bigger ones we may harvest half and then come back for the other half. But we don’t even think about beginning our harvests until the last of the sumac and soap berries have almost finished blooming. Every area will have a bloom of something that signifies the last of the nectar flow for spring honey. For us in our area we have a later blooming sumac variety that we always watch for. It is like our alarm clock for harvest time. As you can see in this pic the time for watching the blooms burst open has begun. Bees love this plant they are often covered in bees this time of year.

We know once those last blooms are fading and we are in the heat of summer that the moisture content will be perfect for harvesting. The bees have had many months to dry the moisture from the honey. But this is the first year since we have been beekeeping that it has rained into July though. So we will be testing to see if we need to leave the honey on the hive a little bit longer due to the high humidity we have had. Honey is a “humectant” which means even when it is dry enough it can pull moisture from the air which would make the moisture content higher. So humidity does play a part in harvest time.

We always get great bee related questions when we are at markets so I try to answer some things I think people might not know about beekeeping here. If you learned something from this post let me know. 😂

If you are a beekeeper what is the plant that signifies the end of the nectar flow in your area?

01/07/2025

We reserved spots 31 and 16. As a good man used to say, “won’t you be my neighbor” Mr Rogers

(THESE SPOTS ARE ALMOST FULL FOLKS ) 😁 WHAT A GREAT 15th Annual it’s goingg to be!
🎃 Pleasant Valley Farms – 15th Annual Winter Squash & Pumpkin Festival 🎃
📅 October 11–12, 2025 | 🕘 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM

🌟 VENDOR SIGN-UP NOW OPEN! 🌟
If you’d like to be a vendor at our 2025 Fall Festival, please sign up ASAP —
First Come, First Serve. No duplicate vendors.
🔸 Craft Vendor Fee: $100 (Non-Refundable)
🔸Food Truck Fee: $200 (Non-Refundable)
🔸 Deadline to Pay: August 1, 2025
🔸 No payments will be accepted after this date.
🔸ALL VENDORS IF PAYMENT NOT PAID BY AUGUST 1, 2025 YOU WILL NOT HAVE A SPOT.
🔸 You will receive a confirmed vendor spot number with your paid invoice
🔸ALL VENDORS must check in at giftshop with PAID RECEIPT BEFORE YOU SET UP.

🌦️ Rain or Shine – Hot or Cold – The Show Will Go On!
No weather cancellations — we’re farm-tough and fall-ready!

*ALL vendors tents must have
Weights to tie your tent down, you are responsible if your tent blows away.

🚫 SCAM WARNING 🚫
To protect everyone from scammers:
The ONLY official numbers to contact Lisa at is.
CALL 📞 9182485647
TEXT 💬 9187343760
You’ll receive an official Pleasant Valley Farms invoice with all the details.
If you do not pay through Lisa, you will NOT be allowed to set up at the event.
We will not honor payments made to scam contacts.

🍁 Come be part of a fun, festive weekend at the farm!
We can’t wait to see you there — and thank you for supporting Pleasant Valley Farms! 🧡🎃 here is a chart to pick your booth Space you would like to reserve. First come first serve you cannot reserve a spot without a Payment. Thank You when you can contact me I will let you know what spaces are still available. 

01/07/2025

We enjoy this event every year. It’s a good family friendly event with good traffic. If any of my vendor friends are looking for an event in October, I recommend this one.

29/06/2025

Sapulpa!!! We are at Ace Hardware today with your favorite Local Honey!!!

Come by and see us at Ace today. We will be here until 3:00.

We have our honey, spun honey, hot honey, infused honey, honey sticks and honey suckers with us today. Along with lotion bars, lip balm, soap, candles and melts.

Hope to see some smiling faces today! 😁

28/06/2025

Broken Arrow
Saturday June 28th
Harvard Meats
12:00 am - 6:00 pm due to rain delay.

I will update here for any time changes.

If you have placed a preorder we will have that with us for you to pick up until 3:00.

What we plan on having available….

raw honey
46 oz jar $40
23 oz jar or squeeze $20
16 oz squeeze $14
12 oz squeeze $11

Spun honey
Natural, strawberry, lemon, chocolate, and turmeric
10 oz jar $13

Infused honey
Vanilla, lemon, and strawberry
23 cups z $30
12 oz squeeze $16
8 oz squeeze $12

Hot honey (Smokey, medium or hot)

14 oz squeeze $22
8 oz squeeze $12
5 oz jar $8

We do not have to charge tax on the raw honey but there is a little tax on the ones with flavors.

27/06/2025

Vendor Friends Random Question…

Has any of our vendor friends participated in any events in Tahlequah at the Community center?

If so could you share your thoughts? You can message or post here. We have never been to that area so just wondered if we wanted to try it next year.

26/06/2025

We are at Dollar General in Mounds today till 4:00 if you have an order to pick up or just want to stop by to shop or taste some honey.

23/06/2025

Homegrown Side Dish…..

I am excited to say those potatoes I harvested recently made a great side dish last night. My first ever successful potato harvest!!!

On top of that these red chanterelle mushrooms and the walking onions also were harvested from our yard too. I love foraging!!! Technically we did plant the onions years back.

I feel like with more practice and good advice from all y’all wonderful people out there with more skills than us we can eventually became qualified to garden a really small space. 🤞

I’m sure I’ll be asking more advice soon. Right now I also have sunchokes, lavender, rosemary, spearmint and basil planted. Hoping to have some pictures of success eventually. 😁

What other easy things should I try?

23/06/2025

Natures Medicine….Help Me With Ideas???

Each year I am excited to see the return of this cool plant in my yard. Mullein. This year and last it has a baby companion too.

Every year I make grand plans to harvest it and make…….something🤔🤔🤔……Each year I wait too long and it is past its prime.

Last year when it bloomed which it does on a second year plant I did manage to spread some seeds. But that is as far as I have gotten.

Honey bees and other pollinators love this plant. When it blooms they harvest nectar and pollen from the blooms. It also serves as a place for them to rest during their days work. So save this plant for your bee friends.

This plant has so many uses. It has been used for ages for breathing problems, skin problems and so many other things.

I have succeeded this year and I have remembered this plant while the leaves are beautiful. So I wanted to hear ideas of what I should do to use some of this wonderful plant. I wanted to feel all successful at being a forager and make something useful and natural.

So far I have harvested two perfect leaves. Only two incase I flake and don’t follow through. 😂 Here is where I need y’all’s help. What should I do with these and I have more I can harvest if I need more. I have washed them and have them laying out to dry now what???

One more question. This plant is in the same location every year. I know it has passed 2 years several times. Is this the same plant each year and it just blooms every second year or is this just coming back from seeds? It has so many seeds I can’t see it just being these two if it is seeds since there are so many seeds.