05/18/2019
The highlight of today was definitely watching the kids. We had the coolest opportunity of going to local farm and helping its residents, the Fiscus’, vaccinate and de-worm a few of their kids, as in their baby goats!
A downer from the past two or three days has been the incoming rain. It is exceptionally daunting because I am really wanting to see the bees, a bee farm, but if the rain keeps coming and the clouds don’t clear we might have to skip out on that adventure. I have faintly heard talk of pollination while here in Iowa, but I know that it is an unspoken story because everyone knows that it needs to happen, and happens naturally. The bees, butterflies, and other critters come in do there pollen dance with plants and fly back out.
I am really invested in the bees because I am attached so strongly to my first introduction to bee farms. It was through the novel, The Secret Life of Bees. The novel tells the fictional story of three Black women in South Carolina (my home state), and how they fought against the wrath of racism through spiritually, maternal-ism, and honey bees. What made there honey so amazing is that they labeled there product, “Black Madonna Honey.” It was the sense of ownership not only of their bees, but of themselves that made this story shine. They stood in truth and did not waiver, even in the face of tragedy.
These days I just associate bees with blackness. I associate bees with beauty. As the first week is coming to a close I look towards what I want to challenge myself to think about and what I want to challenge others to think about. When some visualize farming one image that comes to mind is the famous American Gothic painting. The older white man with a pitchfork, and what can be assumed, his wife standing beside him. Farming does not look as muted or as stiff or as white. The tradition of farming for Black Americans traveled with them over the Atlantic and aided them in survival throughout all of slavery. Farming offered refuge during the era of sharecropping. Today Black farmers are barely recognized, let alone celebrated. I want to show others that there is a place for Blackness in farming.
– August from The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
“Most people don’t have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don’t know anything about”