An Exciting Commission: Working With Kickapoo Meadery on Six Botanical Paintings

A few times over the summer I mentioned working on a big commission. I even shared a sneak peek of one of the paintings:

Today I want to share the full story.

The project was to create a series of six botanical watercolors for Kickapoo Meadery to use on their mead labels.

I remember first learning about mead back in high school when our English class read Beowulf and first tasting it in college when my roommate brought some back from a semester abroad. I had it again a few years ago at a tasting at the Viroqua Food Co-Op, lovely paired with a delicious smoked cheese (The Viroqua Food Co-Op wrote a great article about the Meadery for one of their tastings here).

While working on this commission I chatted with people and it seems not many know about mead (I did a little research and found an article with a good summary of why that might be), but like many handcrafted, farm-to-table foods and beverages, mead-making is flourishing.

Kickapoo Meadery is the life’s passion of Tim McDonald and Diane Roy. Their 180-acre farm is tucked away in a quiet spot in Blue River, Wisconsin.

Although the farm and mead-making facilities are not open to the public, Matthias and I were able to visit over the summer.

Tim and Diane took us on a magical tour from one pollinator meadow to another, up and down the farm’s rolling hills and through tall pines they planted themselves as tiny trees. Not much was in bloom while we were there, but the lush fields were full of life. Within minutes I even spotted some monarch butterfly caterpillars on a stem of milkweed.

The land was formerly a dairy farm, reclaimed through 18 years of love and hard work. Now it provides habitat for many types of plants, animals and insects.

Including, of course, their bees.

Coming upon the hives I was struck by all the activity, such a contrast to the quiet of fields where the bees were inconspicuous.

Near the hives the bees traveled invisible paths in and out of the clearing, crisscrossing above our heads. Carrying on with their business they were disinterested in us, even as I approached to snap some photos.

I was delighted to learn the pastel colors of the hives keep the bees cool in the summer and help them easily identify their particular “address”.

Tim and Diane are dedicated to keeping the land and their bees healthy and thriving. Thriving bees produce good honey and good honey is essential to creating high-quality mead.

The idea behind this project was to create a cohesive collection of images, tying together their meads and shifting focus to the botanicals on which the bees forage and/or are used in the fermentation process. It was sparked by a new mead to needing a new label. This new mead is fermented with staghorn sumac berries:

“We’ve been making sumac tea for ourselves every season for years and we always thought it could make for a wonderful Staghorn Sumac Mead… and it does! Sweet, with a subtle citrus flavor you will recognize if you’ve ever put a sumac berry in your mouth. We’ll be doing a limited number of cases as we pick the berry clusters ourselves on our farm. We are so grateful to Anne for her help with the label. When we decided to produce the Staghorn Sumac Mead we immediately thought of her!”

—from the back of the bottle

Staghorn sumac was the first painting I created for the collection. The other paintings depict wild bergamot, Ohio spiderwort, lance-leaf coreopsis, common milkweed and ginger (the only plant not grown on their farm).

They write: “our meads are made with honey from our honeybee colonies foraging on the pollinator habitat plantings we began establishing in 2013, water from our 460’ deep well, yeast and time.”

I am so grateful to have gotten the chance to see the farm, the bees and the mead-making facilities while in the middle of this commission. With each step of our tour, it was clearer and clearer how much love and care (and back-breaking work) go into everything Tim and Diane do. Knowing my paintings would help bring Tim and Diane’s vision for their meads to life made this project so special for me. I’m so grateful to have been a part of it.

Kickapoo Meadery’s meads are available at the Viroqua Food Co-Op in Viroqua, Wisconsin as well as other locations in and around La Crosse, Wisconsin. If you’re in the area, I hope you get a chance to try it. You can also connect with Tim and Diane and learn more about their process on Instagram.