HAVEN
HONEY
From Our Little Haven to Yours
About Haven Honey Farms
Finding Inspiration in Every Turn
Haven Honey Farms is a small-scale, Black-led, intergenerational family farm just outside Birmingham, Alabama. We produce raw, unfiltered honey, fermented kombucha a, and a growing nursery of trees and perennial plants — all rooted in ancestral practice and ecological care. What started over twenty years ago as one father's efforts to grow nourishing food for his family has become a multi-generational labor of love.
Today, we tend more than thirty hives, grow hundreds of tree saplings each
year, and offer hands-on education to our community.
We believe in the slow, patient work of tending — to land, to bees, to each other.
How We Began
In many ways, our story starts well before 2020, the year we found our current farm space.
Over twenty years ago, when one of Mwenja's young children was experiencing food allergies and health problems, Mwenja and his wife Cynthia began looking more deeply at food as healing. Drawing on the skills he'd grown up with on a subsistence farm in Nairobi, Kenya, Mwenja began to grow food for his family, in front yards, through multiple moves, alongside a full-time job. High-quality, nourishing food grown by hand.
The reviews from his children were mixed. It was always “Dad's thing,” and the plates of greens were awfully bitter.
Then in 2019, Mars, Mwenja and Cynthia's middle child, decided they wanted to be part of this food-growing thing too. From there, Haven Honey Farms was born.
Today, Haven Honey Farms focuses on two main things: bees and trees.
We tend over thirty hives and produce raw, unfiltered honey through a blend of traditional Kenyan and biodynamic practices that Mwenja has adapted to the American South. He's no purist about exact rules. He experiments, observes, and keeps what works in our climate.
Our honey is small-batch, harvested throughout the growing season rather than all at once. Spring honey tends to be lighter in color and taste; fall honey is darker and more robust. If you get a jar that looks or tastes different from your last one, nothing has gone wrong; the bees are just enjoying a healthy, varied diet.
On the tree side, we currently grow hundreds of food-bearing trees and perennial plants each year, with plans to scale into the thousands. The vision is regional resilience: small food forests stitched throughout Birmingham and beyond, feeding people and ecosystems alike.
We also offer hands-on education: one-on-one mentorship, small-group workshops, videos, and visits to local schools — to help our community reconnect with the land and the pollinators that sustain it.
Meet Our Family
Mwenja Julius
Mwenja has been a beekeeper for over ten years. He was inspired by the increase in production he noticed in his garden after his wife, Cynthia, got a beehive.
He soon took over as beekeeper for the family and over the years, he has become fascinated with bees. He is constantly in awe of what they do, how they function, their whole ecosystem.
Being able to learn from the bees has been very
fulfilling for him personally and he’s excited and grateful to be able to share this knowledge and connection with others. Mwenja lives with his wife, Cynthia, and three of his five children near Birmingham Alabama.
Wambui Marian
“Mars” Mwenja is a burgeoning tree farmer. They got inspired to plant a food forest four years ago as a more accessible, ecologically and ancestrally rooted way to grow food and medicine. As they planted hundreds of edible and useful trees and perennial plants, they began to envision hundreds of small food forests throughout their city and region, supporting local food production, community connections, and ecosystem resilience. They’re currently working on getting to that
vision.
Mars has been stewarding land for over 5 years and they love experimenting with simple, easy, and microbially rich ways to tend and remediate land.
Our Values
Rooted in Ancestral Traditions
Our practices draw on Mwenja's roots in Kenyan farming and the broader inheritance of Black agricultural knowledge. We honor what's been passed down.
We farm not just for ourselves but for the neighborhoods, schools, and ecosystems around us. Our work is local, relational, and intended to last.
Ecologically Regenerative
We work in partnership with the land, building soil, supporting pollinators, planting trees, and tending hives with care for the whole web of life.
