Did you know the 18th of January is Winnie The Pooh day? Nope, neither did I until I was looking at Facebook on Thursday and saw a load of Winnie The Pooh related posts. As countless Pooh’s Piglets and Eeyore’s whizzed past on my feed, it got me thinking about the Local Honey Man. I was gazing at a picture of Pooh Bear trying to ram his face in to a pot of honey, and remembered that I’d dropped in to the Local Honey Man shop before Christmas, and completely forgotten to write about it. So here goes, Walthamstow, meet Curtis, the Local Honey Man.
I’ve been following the exploits of Curtis on social media for a while, and I’ve dropped by his stalls at the Farmers Market, but I hadn’t realised he had a shop. I stumbled across it in December on my way to the Chequers pub after a walk around the Wetlands. I wandered up Sutherland path and noticed that just beyond Blackhorse Workshop and Wood Street coffee, I could see a big banner with the Local Honey Man logo on it. The doors were very firmly closed, but as I stood to take a photo the doors opened and a lady popped her head out and said hello. She told me the shop was about to close, but asked me if I waned to come in for a look around, I did just that.
The brick building just off Blackhorse Road which houses the shop, is also the distribution point and factory for the products Curtis makes. Well, the factory for the bit done by humans, the real hard work is of course done in the hive by the humble but amazing bee. The white washed space is packed full of honey and related products. Honeycomb, beeswax, candles, bee pollen (a superfood apparently). What I was most impressed with was all the different flavours of honey. Borage honey, lime honey, black seed infused Honey, ginger honey and lemon zest honey. I tasted some samples whilst I was in the shop and it was all incredible, but the ginger infused honey really woke my taste buds up.
Curtis doesn’t just sell honey, he’s on a one man mission to save the honey bee. He sells hives and bee colonies, and helps people become bee keepers, which then increases the number of honey bees buzzing around in the open. This side of what he does is really important because sadly the bee is in decline, so anyone trying to stop that is a bit if a hero, right?
If you like your honey, and you like to keep it local, you’ll find the shop at 67-69 Sutherland Road, E17, next door to Blackhorse Workshop. The shop is open Monday – Friday 9-6, Saturday 11-3 and Sunday 11-2. You can find out more and order honey on the Local Honey Man website, but nothing beats going in to the shop and talking to the people who make the products.
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