Watch our video interview with Amber and Brian about how HoneyPaddle Farm survived the Holiday Farm Fire and their hopes and plans for the future.
It was a week before the Holiday Farm Fire when I first met Amber and Brian Jackson. They were making the Honey Paddle delivery rounds and visited my plot of land in Blue River with a quart of the most excellent honey I have ever tasted.
Months of careful planning and hard work had produced an incredibly flavorful golden honey with punchy notes of blackberry, phacelia, and borage.
“We named it the McKenzie River Blossom in honor of all the beautiful bounty around us,” Amber posted on the Honey Paddle Facebook page in what was a very different world back then.
I remember reflecting at that time how wonderfully the character of a landscape such as the McKenzie is distilled in this most perfect of natural products. It is easy to see how they caught the “honey bug” as they put it.
“This is the place where we want to spend our rocking chair years,” says Amber as we meet again at their farm near Leaburg. “We really built this from the ground up, paying special attention to the soil, so we planted ten acres with ten acres of phacelia, and borage and three different types of clover.”
Brian believes the next few months will be difficult as many people face the difficult decision of whether or not to rebuild, but he is hopeful that the majority of people will decide to stay.
“I think in the process of rebuilding, it would be really nice to have a lot more small local businesses that can bring in things, specially related to food and entertainment,” he says. “Just having more choices of places where we can go and support people upriver.”
“Ultimately what we really want to see is more businesses in the area supporting each other.”
Click the button below to watch the video interview with Amber & Brian.