While the bees were busy, Don and Doris were buzzing, too. They bought an extractor, a large metal vat that operates like a salad spinner. When the combs were full and capped, the Mechs loaded them into the vat like the spokes on a wheel and spun them until centrifugal force sent the honey to the walls. From there, it seeped through a spigot into a bucket. Some honey farmers heat the honey at this point to make it runny, so it can be sucked through plumbing up into the top of the bottling vat. But Don’s honey was—and is—raw. Instead of using heat and pipes, he lifted each 5-gallon bucket and poured the honey into the bottling vat. Within the stainless steel walls of the vat, the honey was separated from the wax and filtered pure and clear.

Doris and Don knelt next to the bottling vat, with their first jar at the ready, and opened the spigot. That first jar of honey, back in their basement overflowed all over the floor. In their current honey house, a converted barn in Maple Valley, Doris keeps a picture of the two of them on their knees, young and dark-haired, licking honey from their fingers and laughing as honey pooled on the floor. They quickly figured out how and when to turn off the valve on the bottling vat and filled dozens of jars. The next day, they took their honey, a cash box and a hand-painted sign, “Honey for Sale” out to the road. By sundown, they had sold only six jars.

A few years earlier, the Mechs had signed a petition—two names among 25,000—to save the venerable Pike Place Market from demolition. The mayor of Seattle and a city-sponsored committee for urban renewal had a new plan for the struggling downtown. The proposed Pike Plaza Project, named to remind people of the place that was to be demolished, would be home to a new hotel, a 32-story apartment building, four 28-story office buildings, a hockey arena and a 4,000-car parking garage. Seattlites didn’t let it happen. Farmers and fishermen, architects and professors joined together and fought successfully for the market. Finally, a city initiative was passed to protect it, creating a seven-acre historical district, and the market began to rebuild. The Mech’s would be a part of that renaissance.

When the day came in July of 1974, Doris and Don got up at 5, loaded their VW Bug with honey, and went to market. They were assigned a table in the North Arcade, along with berry farmers and orchards, people selling watercolors and tie-dyed t-shirts. The table itself was just a few feet away from her current one—across the street from a certain little coffee shop that would, the 1990s, take over the world.

On the Mechs’ first day at the market, Doris set up a simple display: a few plastic placemats — and honey. No sign, no tablecloth. But it didn’t seem to matter; they sold almost all of their honey. The Pike Place Market, it was clear, was the place for them.