My Million-Dollar Donkey (13 page)

“They
are
a part of the plant,” he said. “And ready for harvesting.
Somebody
has to pick them.”

Since picking beans was far more interesting than picking bugs, I didn’t mind being
somebody
this time. In fact, my enthusiasm for the task was so contagious, that Mark and the kids started picking too and in half an hour we had two huge baskets filled.

The squash plants proved to be overachievers too. I gathered a basketful, and from that day on, added squash to every meal, until Kent no longer asked, “What are we having for dinner, Mom?” and instead commented, “What will we be having with our zucchini tonight, Mom?”

I put zucchini in bread, cookies, and brownies. I sautéed, stuffed, and fried zucchini, put it into soups, and blanched and froze a dozen bags.

We ate beans till we burst. I froze some, canned some, and even tried my hand at pickling beans, though I knew at the time there was scant chance anyone in our family would eat a pickled bean. Preserving wasn’t so much about good eating now but more about taking advantage of our ‘free’ food in a way that would allow me to brag all winter about my new self-sufficiency. I made salsa, tomato sauce, and dozens of jars of pickles: traditional dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, sweet garlic dill pickles, lemon dill pickles, and more.

Still harboring hope that canning would improve my sex life, since a woman with canning skills seemed high on my husband’s list of remarkable women, I did my best to present every batch of canned produce to Mark with a sultry bat of the eyelashes.

“That’s a lot of pickles,” he said, seeing the counter overrun with jars of green spears, and a huge bowl of cucumbers brining.

“I figure, any food that gets you to pucker up is worth making,” I quipped, trying to look sexy as I hoisted another gallon jug of vinegar to the counter.

“They look great,” he said, turning away.

Sigh.

Every day, I walked down to the garden with a big bowl and scissors to cut lettuce for our evening salad. I’d mix the fresh dark greens with walnuts and feta cheese and throw in anything else I found ripe that day. Every meal began with my pointing out how healthy the menu was, my not-so-subtle demand for praise from the troops. I was spending an awful lot of time in the nourishment area of our life, but since gardening was only going to last the summer, I considered it a short term grand experiment rather than drudgery. I marveled at each vegetable’s natural form, fascinated that these tasty items were imperfect cousins of the Stepford vegetables found in shrink packaging at the grocery store. I got a kick out of the fact I could walk right outside my door with an empty bowl and return moments later with that same container overflowing with the makings of a healthy meal.

Of course, some of our efforts fell flat for no explainable reason. We planted cantaloupes and the plants flourished and flowered, but nary a melon grew. We planted corn, but only skinny wormy stalks came out. I was willing to pick bugs, but drew the line at worms. The corn become treats for the chickens. I should mention here that my chickens were real slackers in the egg department so far, and all I did was feed them, rather than them feeding us. We still had not seen a single egg.

Then, one day, I came upon ‘the globe.’

A vine had popped out of the dry dirt where we had tossed the random seeds. Huge flowers bloomed along the stem and the bees buzzed so loud that echoes inside of those big flowers could be heard from ten feet away. Nevertheless, only one single globular thing developed. I stood at the edge of the hillside and stared. Might that round thing be a pumpkin? Perhaps a watermelon? But why wasn’t the surface turning dark green? The ball didn’t look like a gourd. If anything, this ball looked like a honeydew melon, except we hadn’t planted any of those.

After two months of speculation, the globe turned orange, revealing that we’d grown our very own foot-wide Halloween pumpkin. I was mighty proud to have grown something so substantial, so much so I couldn’t bear to carve it. The pumpkin sat in a place of honor on the mantel, as a seasonal decoration. I was so proud of that pumpkin that when Halloween passed, I added some cornhusk pilgrims as a fall tribute. Soon snow fell, and that pumpkin, still as fresh as the day picked, was crowned with a Santa hat, which made for an odd Christmas decoration, I agree, but still nice evidence of our farming finesse.

Spring came and I tried nestling the pumpkin in a wad of Easter grass, but even I couldn’t justify the pumpkin’s presence when spring offered a bounty of fresh flowers for decoration instead. So, the pumpkin found a new home on a bench outside of the kitchen door. I patted the gourd whenever I passed, marveling that months had gone by and there wasn’t a speck of rot on the thing.

By May, I started wondering if pumpkins lasted forever, or if this specific one was enchanted. I started wishing the thing would wither or rot because I couldn’t bring myself to just throw my prized pumpkin out now. I was deep in the throes of planting a new spring garden, and ready to retire any vestiges of the former year to make room for the new produce. Finally, I took the pumpkin to a hillside and, with a whispered
“sorry
,” smashed the gourd for the chickens to pick through. A month later a new pumpkin plant made a shy entrance into the world and young eel-like vines spread across the hillside like Medusa’s hair. Yellow globes began to bud on the tips. I’d unintentionally begun a heritage pumpkin patch, and our Santa Pumpkin had become the grandfather of many pumpkins to come.

And so my garden adventures continued. By each September I was tired from months of bending over to weed, harvest and water. I hated to see the garden fade, but after a full summer I was ready to take a break from harvesting to start opening the jars of preserves and sauces I’d made instead. Some days the effort and expense of organic gardening made me question the true value of growing food at home. I could buy a can of tomatoes for half the price of growing them, and finding locally grown produce was easy since every corner had a neighbor farmer selling wares from the back of his pickup. The industrial revolution was considered good for humanity because inventions rescued people from endless manual labor, right? But despite all the reasons why home gardening might be impractical in regards to a utilitarian equation, nothing compared to the sense of accomplishment and the fascination I gained from growing food myself.

Before moving to the country, my understanding of food sources was limited to an academic awareness that food grows on plants or in the ground, bacon comes from pigs, and hamburger from cows. Living closer to the earth made me see everything in life has a season and a purpose. Witnessing the life cycle of a bean, from planting of the seed to watching the mature plant wither and die, brought a certain reverence to my meals.

I still wasn’t ready to raise livestock for eating, even knowing the meat for sale in the grocery store came from animals subject to a horrible, pitiful existence. The methods corporate food companies developed to feed the masses cheaply and to please our palate are truly inhumane. But however passionately I felt about the need for humane farming practices, I couldn’t bring myself to kill my own dinner. I just had too much empathy for any creature I looked right in the eye to be the instrument of its death. My weakness was my shame.

As a compromise, we purchased one half a cow and a whole pig from Ronnie. Mark agreed to share the cost of the animals with him, with the understanding that I was never allowed to see them. I guess he feared I’d crack and lead the beast home on a rope as a new pet if I ever saw my cow up close.

One day that fear was put to the test. I wandered down to Ronnie’s pasture to admire his property and accidentally came face to face with my cow.

“That black and white one is yours, you know—well, at least half of him,” Ronnie said.

For an instant my stomach dropped, but watching that cow meander lazily across a field ripe under the sunshine made me reconsider my gut reaction. This cow would live two years on a clean pasture, while others I consumed spent six months in darkness and dung because the poor creatures were unlucky enough to be born and raised by a corporate meat company. True, in both cases, the animals were destined for slaughter, but death would come quickly and gracefully to my cow. I’ll feel better when my freezer fills with hormone-free packaged meat from a cow who had known the pleasure of sun and kindness during his time on earth.

Like so many others of my generation, I know I rationalize my behavior when stress or frustration has me headed to the McDonald’s drive-through. I don’t always eat with mindful awareness. But tending a garden and watching animals graze naturally has taught me to consider the difference between food raised with respect and dignity, and the alternative. I guess you can say that instead of saying grace with my meals, I began to
feel
grace as my relationship with food changed.

Two bees ran into each other. One asked the other how things were going.

“Pretty bad,” said the second bee. “The weather has been really wet and damp.

There aren’t any flowers or pollen, so I can’t make any honey.”

“No problem,” said the first bee. “Just fly down five blocks, turn left, and keep going until you see all the cars. There’s a Bar Mitzvah going on with all kinds of fresh flowers and fruit.”

“Thanks for the tip,” said the second bee as he flew away.

A few hours later the two bees ran into each other again. The first bee asked, “How’d it go?”

“Fine,” said the second bee, “It was everything you said it would be.”

“Uh, what’s that thing on your head?” asked the first bee.

“That’s my yarmulke,” said the second bee. “I didn’t want them to think I was a wasp.”

(That’s a beekeeper joke, don’t ya know?)

As I pored over gardening and environmental magazines, I kept stumbling over articles that focused on “an impending epidemic of monstrous proportions.” Bee colonies were collapsing without clear cause and science was in a tizzy over the loss of our beloved pollinators. The world’s food supply would collapse without bees, the articles proclaimed. Meanwhile, honey was at a premium due to the decline in production as more and more independent apiaries were giving up the struggle to stay in business.

My new role as guardian of the land made me feel responsible for doing my part to save humanity.

Theories about why the bees were disappearing ranged from global warming and the overuse of chemicals to the possibility that cell phone towers were interfering with the insect’s communication skills. New, heartier Russian bees, more aggressive in nature, yet less inclined to go belly up, were being bred. Even so, the bee population was still dwindling.

Despite the scientific facts, I didn’t see a lack of bees as much of a threat where I lived. My blueberry bush was always humming with honeybees, bumble bees and all manner of wasps and butterflies. The ground vibrated from so many flying insects hovering over the clover and whisking through the fescue, I had no doubt my plants would be visited by enough pollinators to get the job done. The whole bee scarcity thing seemed an exaggeration, but the focus on bee colony collapse disorder did bring my attention to just how vitally important bees were to my garden. If I wanted to do this organic and environmentally friendly gardening thing right, I should get some bees.

I began studying beekeeping. As creatures of distinct habit and remarkable social structure, bees can be second-guessed and even controlled. Hive placement, estimated flight path, and a bit of basic math can leverage bees so they’ll impact a garden in the best of ways. Furthermore, local raw honey is one of the healthiest foods a person can consume; the honey from the pollen of the very plants that plague residents with allergies helps a person develop natural immunity.

I didn’t have allergies and my garden was producing well, but the lure of jars and jars of free honey to cook with was as much a motivation to me as performing the ecologically conscientious act of raising bees.

The problem was going to be Mark. If a miniscule little sweat bee buzzed anywhere near, he would flap his arms and dance about like a terrified little girl, so I knew he wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about my adding fifty thousand bees to our back yard.

“Honey, I was thinking about how to get the most from our garden, and beekeeping might serve us well,” I said one night.

“No.”

“Can’t we talk about it?”

“We just did. You asked about keeping bees. I said no. Case closed.”

“That’s not a very good attitude. When the world’s supply of food dries up because there weren’t enough bees to pollinate plants, won’t you feel guilty?”

“Maybe so, but bees sting. Isn’t it enough that you have chickens and zucchini plants?”

“I need bees to pollinate the zucchini. Just think of all the sweeties I can make you with a vat of honey at my disposal. Honey’s expensive, you know, but with bees, honey will be free.” (I prayed he wouldn’t compare this to my egg production equation, which as yet, hadn’t saved us a cent since my birds hadn’t laid a single egg.) “I’ll put a hive in a far corner of our land. I promise.”

“I hate bees,” he said.

“I know you do, dear.” I felt a twinge of guilt when his heavy sigh of resignation filled the air.

He said no more, so I thought the case was closed. Bees had been vetoed. But a month later, he joined my sister in giving me a starter beehive kit for my birthday. He no doubt felt railroaded by my sister’s enthusiasm and figured I’d be getting bees one way or another so he might as well get credit by giving me his generous permission rather than having his preference ignored. Nevertheless, I was touched. It’s easy for a man to give his wife a sexy nightgown or a lovely dinner out for her birthday. But a beehive when you absolutely despise bees? That’s love, or so I chose how to view the act.

I went online and bought some beekeeping books, bee food, a bee smoker, and tools. I subscribed to
The Beekeeper Journal
, joined the Georgia Beekeepers Association, and signed up for a weekend beekeeping course.

When the hive kit arrived, I put the pieces together, painted the parts, and went back online to purchase bees, only to discover orders for bees are taken in January and since this was spring, all the bee companies were sold out.

Mark suggested I talk to the Indian at the flea market who sold honey on weekends. Perhaps he would know where I could get some bees. So, we visited the honey booth, and I interrogated the Indian while Mark leaned down to peer into the jars of gleaming gold sweetness.

The Indian was a gruff, quiet man with dark eyes and tobacco skin. He offered to sell me a nuc (a small colony) of bees, and for a reasonable fee offered to help me set them up. The next day he came to our place in a rattling truck filled with a dozen gallon jugs of honey and a box holding five frames of bees. Mark immediately announced he had important errands to run and skedaddled. Alone as usual in my country adventures, I showed the Indian beekeeper where to set up the hive.

I took him to a shady corner of the forest where Mark agreed I could keep the bees. The man grunted, looking about with a shake of his head. “If you want the hive to succeed, the box needs to be out in the open where the sun shines. Somewhere near your garden. Why would you want to hide bees in the forest anyway?”

“My husband thought it might be safer to keep them out of sight.”

“Not for the bees,” he said, stepping to the open field and pointing to areas that were good for a beehive. “I take it your husband is not much of a farmer.”

“He likes the idea of farming, but a practical application of his ideals is not exactly his forte.”

A change of bee plans would not make Mark happy, but I was about as savvy about bees as I had been about mules, and I admitted I was agriculturally ignorant and tired of wasting money when we did things ‘our way’ instead of the right way, I told the man to set up my bees wherever he thought was best. The Indian drove to the very front of our land, selected a prominent, grassy spot right at the entrance, and wordlessly set up the hive. When this was done, he made his way back to the car to write out a bill, his face a mask of stoic intelligence. For some ridiculous reason, I felt my bees were of better quality than any I might have purchased from a bee farm because an authentic Cherokee delivered them.

“Don’t forget to feed them.” he said as he started up his truck. “How?”

He nodded towards the box on the top of the hive. “That thing you have on the top of the hive is a feeder. Just fill the box up with sugar water and the bees will stick to their new digs.”

“Sure. Okay,” I said, trying to feign confidence. As soon as the dust settled from the Indian’s truck rolling down the lane, I rushed to the house to crank up the Internet. An hour later I returned to the hive with two pounds of sugar diluted with water for that thing on top of my hive, which I now knew was a feeder.

There didn’t seem to be any sort of bee mutiny going on yet, but I filled the feeder anyway. Bees came and went from the small opening in the front, seemingly happy with their new home.

Mark was perturbed when he returned to find the bees out in the open, but he wouldn’t dare move the hive, so they remained right where they had been positioned. A new hive of bees pretty much takes care of itself, and since flowers were blooming like gangbusters, there was nothing to do but watch from afar. Having bees was rather anticlimactic until a month later, when the time came to officially check the hive.

The books said I could handle the bees in jeans and a long sleeve shirt. Gloves and a headpiece are all you truly need to work with bees, and even then, the thick leather fingers of the gloves make it hard to get hold of the closely spaced honey files in the hive. Nevertheless, I decided to slip on my bee suit, partly because I was a nervous newbie and partly because I wanted to pretend I was a big-time beekeeper. A bee suit is really nothing more than a stiff jumpsuit made of canvas. A plastic safari hat with a bride-like veil protected my face. A beekeeper suit looks a little like a spacesuit, truth be told.

“Take me to your leader,” I said, the first time I put on the suit and gave the family a fashion show. I walked around the living room in slow motion like someone walking on the moon.

“We could get a suit in your size so you could get up close without risk,” I suggested to Mark. “It’s pretty cool to witness how nature works, and I’m told a honey-filled hive is heavy. You could help me lift and harvest the honey. Beekeeping can be an adventure we share.”

“No interest.”

I sighed, then loaded up the car alone. I had a second hive box at the ready in case the bees were ready to expand their living quarters. I also had my trusty bee brush to sweep bees out of the way, a hive tool, and a lighter for the smoker. I figured with the hive only a month old, all the beekeeping paraphernalia was unlikely to be necessary, but I wanted to play with my new toys and the bee suit made me feel serious and infallible.

I lit up the smoker using pine needles for fuel. Within seconds the pot oozed a heady stream of thick, gray smoke. The hive top was sealed with propolis: a sticky residue bees create to seal their homes. Good! This gave me an excuse to use my hive tool. I pried the lid open and peeked inside feeling ever so professional. A million bees stopped what they were doing, turned around, and stared at me with disdain. Their eyes spoke of raw hatred, I tell ya.

I reached for the smoker and shot little whiffs of smoke under the lid. Hopping back, I tried not to hyperventilate. Slowly I crept forward and lifted the top again, only to discover the bees had all crawled down into the recesses of the hive. Sigh. That was better.

I leaned in closer to inspect the frames, staring with wonder at the brood embedded in the new comb. Using the pry end of my trusty hive tool, I lifted the center frame. A hundred bees scurried about eating honey, a natural reaction to the smoke. The frame was shockingly heavy, dripping with sweet amber. I wanted to dip a finger in and get a taste, but the glove and my awkward hold on the frame made that impossible. Gingerly, I set the frame aside.

I shifted things about to look at the other frames, but rather than do a full inspection, I just peeked at the active frames from above fearing I’d crush the single queen like many dopey inexperienced beginners do.

I had put together a new hive stand that very morning, so I moved the hive to the ground so I could install the new part and crushed a handful of bees in the process. Oops. When I tried to set up the stand, the box didn’t fit on the concrete blocks, so I ended up putting everything back in place, crushed bees and all. I poured more sugar water into the hive top feeder. This wasn’t necessary, but feeding the bees was the only thing I knew how to do with confidence and I was the kind of girl who always felt feeding her loved ones was a way of nurturing and caring for them.

I wanted to put an entrance block in front of the hive to keep out honey robbers; however, the entrance was swarming with active, annoyed bees. Apparently, they don’t take kindly to strangers killing their kin. Determined, I tried to put the device in place, but two bees landed on me and tried to sting my arm. Protected by the suit, I brushed them away, grabbed the smoker and puffed in their direction, only to discover my smoker had burned out! The bees were now buzzing louder, no doubt spreading the word that I no longer had a weapon. Quickly, I bent down and stuffed a handful of pine straw into the smoker and squeezed the air vent until more smoke puffed up.

“Take that,” I said, sending a few extra shots their way. They say bees can sense your attitude, and the most important thing you can do is remain calm and loving when working with bees. Obviously, this particular lesson would take practice for me.

Satisfied at surviving my first hive check, I put everything back in place, backed away, took off my veil and gloves, and leaned against the car to watch the bees swarming in the air. My hair was sweaty from the bee hat, but a warm breeze blew through my bangs. The bees outnumbered me by the thousands, but having come through a successful first encounter, I felt oddly in tune with them.

Wildflowers dotted the field around my feet and the blackberry bush was in bloom, as were dandelions and clover. I formerly picked daisies, cosmos, and coneflowers for my table this time of year, but now decided to leave the flowers to their greater purpose. I knew the bees would fly in a two-mile range, and return to this very box to do the famed bee-dance to communicate where each flower was located. Imagining this, I considered my grief over dance disappearing from my life. Perhaps my greatest love had simply been reincarnated, lurking in the background of my existence quietly, in the dance of the bees. Perhaps everything I had been in the past and everything I was learning to be now was fusing, the shadows of one life gently morphing into another.