By Tabitha Evans Moore
Editor & Publisher

HURDLOW COMMUNITY — It’s Good Friday, and not three minutes after Craig Syler pulls a honeycomb frame from the freezer to show me how honey is made, the bees start buzzing around us.

“They smell it from miles away,” he explains. “If we left it out here long, they’d start coming from all directions.”

Blue, the Craig and Amy Sylers’ Australian Shepherd, snaps at the bees and Craig smiles.

“He’s protecting you,” he says.

It’s the kind of thing that happens on a century farm. Even as a guest, you feel cared for by the land and every creature on it.

I’ve always been a relatively big-city girl — or at least, if you count the historic district of Lynchburg as the city. The country life always seemed a little too slow for me. But standing in the middle of the Syler Seven Farm — wind blowing, bees buzzing, hummingbirds wheeling past, chickens doing whatever chickens do, something happens. A deep peace washes over me that I simply don’t feel around the corner from the buzz and hop of the Lynchburg Square.

The first person I met when I arrived was Blue — big smile, full of energy, immediately on the job as the welcoming committee. He is very much like Craig and Amy themselves.

As we begin the interview, the Sylers speak in tandem, the way two people do when they know each other thoroughly and care for each other deeply. Their perspectives are different but complementary, and together they paint a picture that neither could quite manage alone.

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A 123 year-old Tennessee Century Farm

The Syler Seven Farm has been in the Syler family since 1903. Bob and Molly Smith founded the farm in 1903 and Clayton and Maggie Syler purchased it in 1960. Craig and Amy Syler purchased it in 2021 and now run the 260-acre farm. 

It’s one of 13 Tennessee Century Farms in Moore County — a statewide initiative that honors and documents farms owned by the same family for at least 100 years. Established in 1975 by the Tennessee Department of Agriculture as part of the nation’s bicentennial celebration, the program has been administered since 1985 by the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University.

Craig grew up here. His daddy grew up here. The cattle came first, a natural inheritance from his father who had semi-retired from the herd. The bees came later — about five years ago, when Craig was looking for something to do with his hands that wasn’t expanding the cattle operation beyond what he could reasonably manage.

His late brother Kerry, who lived just up the road, had been keeping bees for years and helped introduce him to apiculture.

“He was really good,” Craig says. “He was sick by then and only had a year or two left, really, and I took care of his bees that last year, so we got to work more together.” He trails off for a moment. “I was glad we got to share that.”

What started as a side project has grown to nearly 40 hives spread across several locations — 10 or 12 near the river, a dozen more on Bear Branch, and a fresh placement the night before my visit. The average Tennessee hive produces about 50 pounds of honey a year. Craig rounds the math up and moves on.

Amy is, by her own description, technically the beekeeper assistant.

“Mostly I hold things and hand him things,” she says, laughing. “But extraction is definitely a two-person job.”

Extraction is exactly what it sounds like — pulling the honey supers off the hive, getting as many bees off the frames as possible, uncapping the wax-sealed cells and running the frames through a centrifuge extractor. The Franklin County Extension Office in Winchester has one anyone can use, which is where the Sylers take their supers. Last year they extracted twice.

“It’s a messy, sticky, yucky mess,” Amy says, and she sounds delighted about it.

Limited supply until next year

The honey they sell under the name Honey from the Holler comes in one-pound, two-pound, and three-pound jars — all raw, all measured by weight because honey is denser than water. A quart jar of water weighs two pounds. A quart of honey weighs three.

But the product drawing attention lately is something different: Bourbon Barrel Aged Honey from the Holler — Craig’s experiment in infusing raw honey with the residual character of a used whiskey barrel.

The idea came from a vendor Craig saw at the North American Honey Bee Expo in Louisville, Kentucky — the largest bee convention in the world, drawing some 4,000 beekeepers annually. Craig had already been thinking about broadening the product line. He reached out to a beekeeper in Columbia, Tennessee, who had been doing something similar. Far enough away, Craig figured, that he wouldn’t mind sharing the basics.

The barrel sits in Craig’s workshop. He built a rolling frame for it so he could turn it daily, exposing fresh honey to the charred interior. Through the winter, he kept it under a repurposed metal cover with two heat lamps to hold the temperature near 90 degrees.

After about three months, they pulled the honey — and discovered why filtering matters. The interior of a whiskey barrel, it turns out, sheds charcoal and wood fragments into anything aged inside it.

“It was like something you pull out of a fireplace,” Craig says.

They filtered it six times — through a 600-micron filter, a 400-micron filter, a paint strainer, and finally a flour-sack kitchen towel. Some flecks remain, which Craig now considers a feature rather than a flaw. A beekeeper he tracked down on Facebook told him not to worry about it.

“That’s a marketing tool. That’s how they know it’s the real stuff,” Craig says.

The label was designed by his sister, Tanya Vann, in about 10 minutes with a little help from AI. Amy pushed for a matching back label rather than something plain in white.

Craig went back to Sticker Mule and had a second label made. The costs are considerably higher than a jar of regular honey, he acknowledges. The time investment more so.

Farm life is a calm that washes over you

There is a conversation happening in America right now about what Craig and Amy Syler have been quietly doing for years — about the value of clean food, of land stewardship, of making things from scratch. Amy sees it clearly.

“People are starting to get back to the older ways of doing things,” she says. “I see a lot more people going to an ingredients-only home — they buy ingredients and make their own food. That’s how it used to be.”

Craig is slightly more measured.

“I think people are starting to realize there’s value in that,” he says. “I don’t think we’ll ever get all the way back. But I think they need to be aware, and learn to do some things.”

What he has noticed is the effect the farm has on people who visit. A pair of Nashville families came out not long ago. Craig found the men standing at the edge of the property, just looking.

“They said, ‘Listen — you can’t hear cars. You can’t hear anything,’” Craig recalls. “You feel your blood pressure drop. It’s like this calmness washes over you.”

Amy hopes that feeling travels in a jar.

“I hope that’s what people get from buying the things we sell here,” she says. “A little piece of this place.”

The Sylers’ goal is a simple one, stated without ceremony: to hold onto this land for at least one more generation — their daughter after them, and then, hopefully, another. The farm has been here since 1903. They intend to keep it in the family.

The next morning, I try some of the bottle of Bourbon Barrel Aged Honey that Craig and Amy gifted me in my morning tea with a bit of local cream and ground cinnamon. It’s delicious. The bourbon-infusion adds a layer of richness without the bite of bourbon. It’s satisfying to enjoy something clean, and locally-handmade, something with soul made from faces I know and respect on a plot a land that’s sacred to them.

It’s like tasting the essence of the rural south and Moore County’s rich farming tradition in a single cup.

The Syler’s Honey from the Holler — Bourbon Barrel Aged edition is currently available at Amy’s office in Decherd located at 25 Veterans Drive as well as the Moore County Co-op, Miss Mary Bobo’s Boarding House, and soon at Barbecue Caboose. When it sells out, it’s gone until next season. •

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