I'm so jealous of you and mk right now. I've helped a friend make mead before, and intend to make my own at some point. However, this has been with store bought honey. Can't imagine how good it must come out with home produced honey.
Thanks :-) I'm planning to try something new this time . A major problem in mead making (especially with all-honey, no fruit meads) is weak fermentation - slow start and takes ages, compared to beer or wine fermentation. To combat this I'm going to use the yeast cake from an ale homebrew for my mead - rack off a finished beer, then simply dump the honey-water mix on to the yeast cake. This will give me a much greater starting yeast population, and I'm hoping, a better, stronger fermentation. I've done it when making stronger beers in the past and it has worked well.
This worked so well that I'm going to do it again, every chance I get; and I'll just make a starter if it's not convenient to make a full batch of beer. FG was ~992, lowest I've ever measured, and it tasted nice on bottling.