A Chat with the Waldport Honey Guy

By Brian Bahouth

If you’ve been to Waldport in recent years, you have likely seen the signs for “Raw Honey” that lead you to a building on NW Hemlock street. There, under and around  a sizable overhang, are cloth-covered tables heavy with an array of honeys from a variety of apiaries. When I visited, glass gallons, quarts and pints of honey glowed under low, afternoon sunshine, from near-opaque brown to the most delicate of translucent golds. Jeffrey Warren is the Waldport honey guy and started his business with a set of principles in mind.

“It actually started with energy bars, healthy energy bars. I wanted something that was made by small people. It was more wholesome and regional. And that was the three principles from way back when I was in the Portland area. And I would take all these goods made in Oregon. I would take them up to Seattle. I was in Seattle markets for a long time, and started with energy bars. 

“Maple syrup came along. I learned about that. One of my neighbors had maple syrup. I said, I want to sell that. Honey came last, but people were looking to me. They saw all these cool jars, and he said, is that honey? Is that honey? I better get myself some honey, because that’s what they want. And so now, it’s the lion’s share of the business.”

Warren brought an aspect of wine sales and a now rarified business ethos to the merchandising of honey. 

“I used to be in the wine business. You’ve got to tell a story if you want wine to be sold, or anything like that, to have a story behind it is important. So I chose honeys that actually have a story, and I deliver that. I bring that home to the people, and there’s where the difference is. 

“It’s kind of like the guy in the grocery store that isn’t there anymore. He can tell you all about their product. The little guy on the corner general store who knew everything about everything. It’s like they’re gone, so I’m that.”

‘Tell me about your relationship with these apiaries,’ I asked. ‘That’s what I love about this business, the variety of honeys that reflect what’s growing out there.’

“To be a beekeeper or apiarist, officially is a, the more I learn about them, the more I talk to them, I’m fascinated how much a labor of love. I mean, how much work goes into, they’re usually upside down every year, but they keep going. They have to keep going to pay last year’s bills, and then they just build up new bills. 

“But they are constantly seeking out. It’s like folks who are tuned in with horses or goats or cats or dogs. They’re really not that much, they’re not that great, they don’t enjoy time with fellow humans as much as they do, so to be one with the bees and to understand the flowers, the whole botanical side of it. These bees need to be taken to those flowers if we’re going to get anything done, if this is going to be successful.”

‘I come to you in the past for a particular blossom, maple blossoms. To me, this is a rarefied honey, isn’t it,’ I asked. ‘Tell me about this.’

“It is. Some honeys aren’t made. We’re back to the flower again. It all comes back to the flower, the flower, the flower. What’s in the flower determines the outcome, and if the flower ain’t growing, or if it’s too rainy and there’s not going to be any flowers from that particular plant this year, you’re not going to get any honey. Move on to the next. You got to wait until the rain breaks and see what else blooms somewhere else. 

“So the beekeepers that have contracts with farmers to pollinate, that’s like, it’s an insurance policy. You know that eventually it’s going to stop raining, and the pumpkin farmer or the blueberry farmer, eventually they’re going to need you to pollinate their crop, or the meadow foam, they need the beekeeper. 

“So these things, maple which grow out in that’s a wild growing thing. Blackberry is a wild growing thing. We don’t farm blackberry. They just grow, and there are years where there isn’t going to be any blackberry honey this year, sorry. And so it’s once every two or three, four years. In some cases, you’re not going to see maple, you’re not going to see rabbit brush, you’re not going to see some of these things.”

‘Tell me about your customers,’ I asked. ‘You know some honey junkies I gather.’

“By and large, the demographic slices up pretty much, I’m using it to sweeten this, I’m using it to sweeten that. There aren’t as many people using it medicinally as I thought there would be. Or maybe they’re buying their honey somewhere else. I don’t know. I don’t see many people, I wish they would. 

“One should have a jar of raw honey around in their cabinet at all times for not just to sweeten whatever they’re going to eat in the morning. Someone’s going to be sick, someone’s going to have a cut on their wrist, and they’re going to want to use honey on it instead of something that’s a medical product. 

“But out here on the coast, we see an international clientele, and so folks that come from central Europe will come out and they’ll see that they’ll reach for the darkest and they’ll go straight to the darkest honey set on the table, and it’s over. They see it. That’s what they call honey. That’s what they call home. They’re comfortable with that. 

‘What is that honey that’s sort of sulfurated, though sulfurated is the wrong word. But it’s really dark and it’s just a really rich taste,” I interjected. ‘I’ve had it once, and it really is an acquired taste almost.’

“Well, buckwheat has a molasses like character. Now, buckwheat is a farmed crop. It’s fairly clean tasting, but it’s strong stuff, molasses, so it’s more useful in cooking, baking or in a stir fry. It’s really useful in the kitchen. But that’s also an acquired taste from again, like these folks from other countries, they’re used to really dark, dark stuff. We’re not really used to dark stuff out here. It’s 99 percent of what is sold here is very light, friendly honey. That’s okay.”

Honey is among the oldest and most essential of human foods. For Warren, honey is apolitical, a universal substance.

“Tell me that I have something on my table, that I found something, that, it’s almost like an international language. It’s a common thread. It actually ties the world together globally. I mean, it has respect, raw honey has respect in Middle Eastern countries, California, north, south, New Zealand. It doesn’t matter. Everyone knows something about honey. 

“Just the words on my sign, raw honey, they’re going to pull over and see what I’ve got. It’s like, when they’re traveling, they want to know what’s going on right here with beekeepers and flowers, and when we’re traveling other places, that’s what keeps me going, educating folks and meeting people. 

“We don’t argue here. No one argues. It’s a peaceful place, because we have respect for something that’s made by bees, which is a fascinating thing in and of itself.”