Keepers of the Bees

I attended the seasonal meeting of the Iowa Beekeepers meeting last night.  Once every three months, this group of like-minded people join together to discuss the issues relevant to the life of a bee.  This group is an agriculturally minded group - dedicated to crops that their tiny flying armies live off of and help to grow with their pollination. They are as much, or more, a fundamental part of the agriculture industry than even the corn and soybean growers associations, but much less widely known or recognized.  What is different about this group of  farmers is that you will never see an industrial agriculture company among its ranks - no Monsanto, no Cargill, no Roundup.  In fact, to even bring up those words leads to a certain amount of snarling, leers, and mumbled expletives from the members of this group because they know all too well the havoc that industrial agriculture wreaks upon the life of their hives.

These keepers are the touchstone of the agriculture industry. They see what is happening to the natural world around us because they deal with it directly in the lives of the bees that they safeguard and keep. They are the miners that hold onto the canary and warn the other miners when the canary dies and the mine is no longer safe. They are not razzle-dazzled by the agribusinesses with their fancy commercials and shiny, glossy magazine ads for chemicals and GMO seeds, because they see all too clearly the consequences of such things first hand.   It is one thing to be a farmer and grow a crop - relying blindly on the pollinators that you may see but often don't acknowledge as being the direct cause for the fruit and vegetables that grow on the vine, but when those pollinators disappear so do the apples, cherries, blackberries, blueberries, watermelons, pears, peaches, almonds, and countless other crops.  When I see people in general acting so blasé about the effects of corporate agriculture on the tiny keystone insects that make that agriculture even possible in the first place, it has me deeply worried.

But here is what worries me the most....the bee keepers are disappearing as well.

I enjoy going to these meetings, but they distress me.  The average age of these keepers is easily somewhere in the mid 70's.  I am, quite easily, the youngest person there. At last night's meeting there was a sympathy card being passed around for one of the members that had just passed away at the age of 84.  Another one of the keepers, Charlie, received the honor of being recognized for keeping bees for the last 50 years! He has been keeping them longer than I have been alive, and appeared to be willing an able to do it for at least another few years which is a good thing because I really don't know what is going to happen when these quiet, thoughtful, nature-loving people depart this world for the clover field in the sky.  That is not to say that bees can't survive on their own, because they can, but we are loosing the people that monitor them closely and are able to tell the rest of us when the pesticides and chemicals that we love to pour on our fields of monoculture crops have finally broken the back of the tiny winged atlas that holds up the agriculture world.  But, then again, they already have told us....and we fail to listen or to learn.

 Darwin's theories hold true for all biological systems....even man.  Those species that are not smart enough to adapt and learn, get wiped off the face of the earth.  It may take hundreds, if not thousands of years, but it happens none-the-less.  We humans think we have the corner market on survival, but I feel quite certain that the seeds of our own doom have already been sown and continue to prosper under the falsity of capitalism - making a dollar at the expense of everything else and spending less money on cheaply produced goods that we will simply discard and replace with more cheaply made goods. It is an unsustainable practice and yet one from which it is hard to wean.

I looked around the room last night and watched as this group of people shared and discussed things in such a civil manner - even the disagreements were cordial.  There were discussions of wood peckers eating into hives and squirrels damaging the boxes that contain the frames.  They analyzed the best ways to get rid of mites without chemicals - apple cider vinegar and powdered sugar were the clear favorites.  Quiet, soft spoken, accepting of the ebbs and flows that nature throws at a person, schooled in the process of trying something and then adapting it as necessary to fit your needs and knowing full well that next year it may need to be adapted again.  So much knowledge, patience and time was tucked into that one meeting room last night, and the thought of that wealth of information slowly dispersing one sympathy card at a time made my heart clench.

 I realize that I am something of  a throwback to an earlier age - I look around at my peers and I marvel at their concern for things like flat screen televisions and fancy cups of coffee.  I try to reconcile this generation of "wants and desires" with the generations before us of "hard work and survival" and think that, somewhere, there must be a sustainable mix of the two.  Is it that people just no longer care or is it just that they don't know?  And if they did know, would they care?  I understand the concern that our elders have for my own generation and then I look at the kids today....or rather I look at the tops of their heads as they are busy with their i-phones and texting their friends... and my concern only grows deeper.

Meeting over and coffee poured, this group began the social part of the night which is really more of an extension of the meeting itself, but this time with a cup of coffee in hand.  I made a few rounds asking pointed questions of the keepers that have seemed to have the most success and then headed out to the local store to buy some supplies for my two small, struggling hives of bees under the recommendation of my main mentor, Floyd.  It will be three months before the group convenes again and I left with a hope in my heart that at the next meeting there will be a few more people in their 30's and 40's and not a sympathy card in sight.

Occupy Iowa

There is a movement afoot.  People of all walks of life are occupying everywhere - Wall Street, Boston,  San Fransisco, Dallas......you name it and there are people starting to line the streets that are angry, unsettled, out of work, out of faith...just out.   The main theme, although somewhat unestablished, seems to be a general loss of trust in the system.  Wall Street has bought out our government and We The People are tired of it.....and it is about time. 

This may be very un-American to say, but I have been disenfranchised with the system now for quite some time, and by system I mean the system of big business and big lobbyists controlling what bills get passed and which ones conveniently disappear from committee.   I re-read the Declaration of Independence not too long ago and I had a strong desire to reissue it to our present government, put my name up there with John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin and send it via post to the White House.

I have an intense desire to join the mob flowing into the streets, pitch a tent and live there for a while if only to fully state my level of distrust in the system. And then it dawned on me.....I have.  Eight years ago we pulled up stakes from our home in Wisconsin where we were living the life of the average middle class family - 2.5 kids, two jobs, new car, nice house, credit card debit, the whole enchilada.  Cashed it all in and moved to a small, hundred-year-old farmstead in Iowa and set up shop.  

This is our 5 acre protest lot.  Here we raise enough food to feed the seven of us through the winter, raise pigs and chickens to help feed us with pork and eggs and do it all organically and sustainably while all around us are commercial farms that are intensely farmed using all that is wrong in the world of agriculture.  Monsanto, Novartis, and Cargill are the main players as they have roped in the farmers with their "Round-up Ready" genetically modified seeds and their belief that all the soil really needs is another application of ammonia to keep it healthy.

Thankfully, we are on pretty good terms with our neighbors. We try not to rock the boat too hard, but we do try to make ourselves heard, if possible. Initially, it was difficult to come by organic grain for our animals. We would often have to drive down to Kalona, where ironically, the state of farming among the Amish is more sustainably advanced than it is around us. But, with time and persistent asking, our local feed dealer has started ordering and carrying the organic food that we need. And then he was thinking about starting a few fields of his own in organic food....and maybe seeing if others are interested in that also. Small steps, it takes small steps. 

In the last four years I have seen an incredible change in how people obtain their food.  The farmer's markets in cities and towns across the country are starting to take off because people no longer have trust in the food system. No trust in the companies that control the way our food is grown, processed and sold to us.  These big businesses have sold us everything from genetically modified seeds, $.59/lb chicken laced with Salmonella, and T.V. dinners with enough preservatives to never -ever decompose, but what they have sold us the most of is disease.

The level of metabolic disease in people is staggering to witness.  I did my own small survey one day while making the run to the local co-op to get some food.  The people that tend to shop at the co-op, where the food is typically organic, sustainable, locally grown and quite expensive - these people are all in pretty good shape.  Most are healthy and happy individuals.  They don't overfill their shopping baskets because something is a good deal, they pay the going wage for a local farmer to bring in  produce because they appreciate how much work goes into making healthy food.  They are a community of people who are aware of the local infrastructure that keeps the town afloat and they support it as best they can.

Then, frighteningly enough,for reasons I no longer remember, I found myself at a grocery store. Grocery stores depress me. The people are often suffering from metabolic disease (if you don't know what it is, I encourage you to look it up as it effects 1 out of 4 people in the U.S. ), they are often in a hurry and they have their carts stuffed with so much processed food that I have to bite my tongue to keep from pointing out to them that even though it says "low fat" it can still be very bad for you. So, I come home and dig up a few carrots, potatoes and onions and stage a mini food protest in my kitchen. And I blog about it, because that is the type of protest I can do right now while trying to maintain a family of five kids, run a small, struggling business in a horrible economy, and farm my Iowa farm.

Perhaps this has all come about because I am looking for a way to make myself feel better for not taking the time out of freezing and canning produce to go camp out on College Green with the other ticked off Iowans, but a saying came to me the other day, "You must be the change you want to see in the world." (thank you M. Gandhi) and it made me feel good to realize that I am changing, and I am changing my family and the way that my kids view the world, and even the feed mill guy (slowly). Change takes a long time and it is hard work, but it is often worth it in the end.  There will be ebbs and flows to the understanding and progress, but change will come.

So, I salute all the people out on the public parks and Wall Street - occupy!  Occupy every corner that you can, and make a stand for all that needs changing - from the banking system to the way that our food is supplied and our children taught in schools.  I celebrate a country where, with small steps, 99% of the people are waking up to what big business and government has been cramming down our throats (figuratively and literally) for far too long.  And I?  I will maintain my 5 acres of protest, and there is always an extra place at my table for anyone willing to make a change.