One fine Sunday we decided to explore what Opotiki has to offer. We decided to take a walk at Hukutaia Domain. It’s a small jungle and you walk on the trail to see birds, trees, leaves, well you know, nature? It takes approximately 30 minutes or so. A very easy relaxing nature walk for all ages.
On our way there, we passed by a honey farm of some sort. Called Hikutaia Honey. On the back of my mind I was thinking, “can we visit it?” Should be fun isn’t it?
So once we were done with the Hukutaia Domain, I suggested to them, what about make a stop on Hikutaia Honey on our way back?
And this is the beginning of our good fortune. Really.
You see, we make a stop there and enquiring if we can have a look at the honey making process but unfortunately, it was Sunday and they are not open. They were actually cleaning up the place when we arrived. Small talks and we found out that the owner’s daughter-in-law is also from Malaysia! What a coincidence right?
You see, that’s kinda make a bridge you know, seeing that we are also from Malaysia kinda makes us feel more connected. In fact the owner, Allan said if we want to, we can drop by again on Monday, when the farm is in operation so we can see the whole process ourselves.
You bet we do return. We make a date at 10am on Monday, however we were ahem, a little late. Hahahaha typical Malaysian I know ;p *blushing*
Allan was saying how his daughter-in-law must be glad to see Msians so he called her up and she was there too to meet us. Her name’s Rachel and she’s from Sabah. A very sweet nice lady.
The day before, Allan did tour us around and explained the process to us already. However, hearing it and seeing it in operation is really kinda cool.
The process goes from this, collect honey from the hives, and the honey comb is separated from wax and honey. Then the honey on the honey comb is put into a centrifuge to distilled the “pure honey” and yada yada yada…Finally it’s packed in jars and ready for consumption.
Each batch of honey they keep some sample and also send it for tested in the lab. This is what we called quality controlled, people! Mainly, they sell their honeys in drums to big players in the field. The honey wax is not left for wasted as well. It’s compressed and packed in blocks and sold to people that makes candles, soaps, handcrafts etc.
I’ve seen the wax blocks in golden yellow and brown colour. And the honey also has different colours ranges from light clear golden liquid to dark brown. We were told that they import the honey queen from Japan (if I not mistaken) Also, we were enlightened on the process of “raising” a bee hives, how to keep them survives during the winter, texture of honey from liquid to crystallized and more.
Allan showed us the queen bee and frankly speaking, I was a little disappointed as I thought queen bee is gigantic in size but it turn out nahhh….it was just slighter bigger than the regular bees. That’s all. Not as gigantic as I imagined, but bigger than the average ones lar…
Before we left, Allan was so generous and gave us two jars of honey. Yippie!!! Honey for FREEEEEEE~~~~ That’s fortune number One.
Fortune Number Two:
Rachel invited us all to her house for dinner. At first this seems like a polite offer but gosh! She really meant it. You see, later that day we were all crowded at the public phone booth right outside our backpacker and suddenly a car stopped by and a man asked Dinosaur “are you Malaysians?”
We were like, Uh-oh, what had we done? What’s going on? Dinosaur was like, “yeah~” and the man introduced himself as Steve, Rachel’s husband.
Upon hearing that then only can we release our breath with relief! Whoosh! Steve extended the invitation from Rachel to have us as their guests for dinner tonight. He said Rachel will come and picked us up at six.
At six, Rachel’s right at the front of our backpacker in her white sport-ish car. A Commodore. The interior is sleek black and red leather. Real cool. A lady vroom vroom in that baby is real classy lor~ Gaya~~
Her house is a little outskirt and beautifully surrounded by trees and kiwi orchards. In fact right behind her house is an orchard already. We take a peek at the orchard of course as it’s probably our only chance to get into an orchard. Unless we work in orchard of course, but I hoped not! Everyone’s been telling me working in orchard is really hard work.
Rachel and Steve’s house is charming and the view from it is even better. When we entered her house, we see many miniature aircrafts and helicopters model in a glass cabinet. Then we found out that Steve’s a helicopter pilot. That explains the models^^
Not only we had delicious dinner, we met their delightful daughter, Mia too. It’s really great to feel that you have friends in foreign land like this. It feels like you found some extended family members.
While we were chilling out at her place, we see some video clips on venison hunting made by Rachel with Steve as the pilot. Before we left, Steve gave us some venison meat and salami to sample.
All these good fortunes befall ever since we stepped into Hikutaia Honey Farm. It really feels like lady luck is indeed beaming down at us.
God bless!
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