Honey, that shopping list is about to get sticky.
This century-old shop has been making one jar a surprisingly tough decision since 1925. Clover, wildflower, tupelo honey, and many more options make choosing just one even harder.
The business started with surplus family honey sold from a simple roadside stand. A century later, that small setup has grown into a country-food shop with customers far beyond Tennessee.
Honey still gets top billing, but the shelves have plenty of backup. Country ham, sweets, and gift boxes can turn one planned purchase into a much fuller basket.
Come for the honey.
Just do not expect the rest of the store to mind its own beeswax.
A Roadside Honey Stand Started The Whole Story In 1925
Early’s began with a surplus of honey and a practical idea. In 1925, Mamie Early and her son Erskine set up beside the road near their Spring Hill home and started selling raw local honey to people passing through the area.
The original stand was simple. Two barrels supported a few wooden planks beneath a mulberry tree, and young Erskine made a sign announcing honey for sale.
The route beside them was part of the old north-south road system that later became U.S. 31, putting the little stand directly in the path of travelers.
Seasonal food expanded the business quickly. Honey and fruit fit the warmer months, while smoked sausage and country ham joined the lineup in winter. Apple cider also became part of the operation, giving the Early family more reasons to serve people throughout the year.
Mail order eventually changed the scale of the business. Early’s has been sending holiday catalogs since the early 1950s, allowing people who discovered the stand while traveling to keep ordering from home.
A century later, that original roadside idea is still recognizable. Honey remains one of the products most closely tied to the Early’s name, even though the present store carries a much wider Southern pantry.
The Honey Shelf Gives You Plenty To Compare
The current honey collection gives you plenty to compare. Clover, wildflower, orange blossom, tupelo, and sourwood all appear in Early’s lineup, along with honeycomb, honey bears, larger jars, squeeze bottles, and sampler combinations.
Not every variety is guaranteed to be available at the same moment. Sourwood and some local honey products can sell out between batches, while honeycomb is tied to a limited seasonal harvest.
That means the shelf can change even when the main honey categories stay familiar.
The store works with small beekeepers for every honey it carries. That approach lets the selection stretch across different floral sources and regions instead of treating honey as one identical product in a dozen containers.
If you want the easiest comparison, start by separating the local choices from the regional ones. Clover and wildflower keep the focus close to Spring Hill, while sourwood, orange blossom, and tupelo bring very different floral sources into the same collection.
Early’s Honey Stand is at 5075 Main Street, Spring Hill, TN 37174. Once you are inside, give the honey shelf a proper look before grabbing the first familiar jar. The differences in source, color, and flavor are the whole reason choosing one can take longer than expected.
Local Clover And Wildflower Honey Keep Tennessee Close
Clover honey takes the story back to the beginning. The local clover variety follows the same basic style of honey that launched the business in 1925, and the current product is raw, unfiltered, and sourced from hives local to Spring Hill.
The flavor is light and mild, which makes clover an easy everyday choice for tea, biscuits, toast, pancakes, or cooking. It is the kind of honey that does not need a complicated use to make sense in the pantry.
Wildflower honey stays local too. The raw wildflower honey comes from flowers growing around the Spring Hill area, so the character can reflect a broader mix of blooms than a single-flower honey.
Those two jars give you a useful starting point because both are tied directly to the local area while still tasting different from one another. Clover leans toward one familiar floral source, while wildflower comes from a wider mix.
If you want to leave with something that connects most directly to Spring Hill, compare these first. They keep the honey story close to the place where Early’s began, long before orange groves, sourwood trees, or tupelo blossoms entered the modern lineup.
Sourwood Brings An Appalachian Honey Into The Lineup
Sourwood gives the shelf a distinctly Appalachian turn. The honey comes from nectar collected from sourwood tree blossoms, and Early’s sources its sourwood from East Tennessee.
The variety is seasonal by nature because sourwood trees have a limited bloom period. That shorter window helps explain why sourwood products can disappear from the collection between harvests or batches instead of remaining endlessly available.
This honey is darker and richer than the clover option, with a buttery, earthy character. You do not need tasting expertise to make the comparison useful. Put it next to mild clover and the contrast becomes much easier to understand.
Sourwood also shows why the store’s honey selection is more interesting than simply choosing between container sizes.
The floral source changes the product itself, and a tree associated with the Appalachian region creates a different honey from clover fields around Middle Tennessee.
If sourwood is the variety that brought you in, check availability before building the whole trip around it. When it is on the shelf, it gives you one of the clearest regional comparisons in the Early’s collection.
Orange Blossom And Tupelo Stretch The Selection Farther South
Orange blossom and tupelo move the honey shelf beyond Tennessee. Early’s orange blossom honey is harvested from Florida orange groves, giving it a citrus-flower source that is completely different from local clover, wildflower, or East Tennessee sourwood.
The orange blossom variety has a fruity and floral aroma with a light citrus note. That makes it an easy contrast if you want to compare a blossom tied to fruit trees with honey collected from clover or mixed wildflowers.
Tupelo takes the comparison in another direction. Early’s sells raw, unprocessed tupelo honey collected during the brief bloom of the tupelo gum tree. The harvest window lasts only about two weeks each year.
That short harvest helps explain why tupelo stands apart in honey collections. It has a light, buttery, smooth profile, giving you another flavor to compare without relying on added ingredients or flavoring.
Put orange blossom, tupelo, sourwood, clover, and wildflower together, and the variety becomes obvious. The jars are not simply different labels on the same sweetness.
They represent different blossoms, growing regions, and harvest windows, which is what makes comparing them half the fun.
The Shelves Keep Going Long After The Honey Ends
Honey may explain the name, but Early’s has spent generations building a much larger country-food catalog.
Country ham, hickory-smoked bacon, baking mixes, snacks, and sweets all remain part of the current selection.
The smoked-meat side reaches back almost as far as the honey stand itself. The Early family began selling sausage and country ham during the colder months, and those products eventually became major parts of the mail-order business.
Preserves can easily create another round of decisions. Current fruit-spread choices include fig, blueberry, raspberry, apricot, Dutch apple, peach, pear, and several pepper jellies, with custom packs available for anyone who wants to group several flavors together.
Gift boxes bring the categories together. Some combinations pair honey with country meats and breakfast mixes, while others focus on snacks, sweets, or pantry staples.
You can also find honey-centered gift options when you want the original Early’s specialty to stay in the spotlight.
The result is a store where the honey shelf can be the beginning rather than the entire visit. Once you start comparing jars, it is very easy for biscuits, preserves, bacon, or a gift box to join the plan.
A Quick Stop Can Easily Turn Into A Much Bigger Haul
Early’s keeps the in-person schedule simple. The Spring Hill store is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closes on Sunday, while the online store remains available outside those hours.
Before you go, decide whether you are shopping for one specific honey or simply comparing what is available. That small distinction can save time because seasonal honeycomb and individual honey varieties may move in and out of stock.
If you are buying for someone else, the sampler and gift-box sections can make the decision easier. A honey sampler lets several floral sources share the same gift, while broader country-food boxes can mix honey with breakfast items, preserves, or smoked meats.
The shop’s century-long history adds another reason to slow down. The current Spring Hill building served as an Early’s mail-order facility and dates to the 1960s, so the store is still tied physically to the company’s long shipping tradition.
Start with the honey, compare the local jars with the regional ones, and leave some room for the rest of the shelves.
Early’s has spent more than a century turning one roadside product into a much larger Tennessee food business, and the modern store makes it very easy for a one-jar errand to become a full basket.