End of the growing season finds us like squirrels, rushing in preparation for winter. The sheep are enjoying the last of grazing: soon they will be watching the world from their winter paddock. During the final week or so of grazing, I take down the rotational fencing and let them have access to full pasture. At the gate, they crowd behind me, Bronte bringing up their rears. They rush past me as I swing open the large gate, the chain clanking against metal. At first they think that we are headed for one of the new fields, greener pastures if you will, but suddenly I see them taste freedom and race in all directions. This year we have three Shetland lambs, I anticipate heels in the air.
Our garden looks like Miss Havisham’s. From tangled, deflated vines dangle long, muscly green beans, now faded tan. Swinging in the autumn wind, they look antiquated, abandoned. Grass has moved in around the spots where we have mined potatoes. Carrots, their tops like happy flags, wave to me, hoping I will remember to pull them from the cold earth.
The wagon that we drag into the summer sunshine stands silent, bamboo trellis crossed with mutant cucumbers, absurdly short and stout. Our greenhouse, packed solid with softball size tomatoes during August looks haunted, the doors on each end swing in the breeze.
On the ground, still attached by their umbilical chords, lie the squash family. Sturdy round acorns, so good with butter and maple syrup. Small pumpkins, the only ones we can grow in our garden space with limited afternoon sunshine, decorate our dining room table. Their bright orange flesh and wild, curling stems make me happy each time I walk into the house, reason enough to grow them. The light bulb shaped butternuts lie silently in the tall grass, taking their time turning from deep green to a more refined beige shade. These we will store deep in the cool of the root cellar. I will pull them up and split them for Thanksgiving alongside our potatoes, resting in a nest of shavings, much like our chickens.
We spend precious evening hours making tomato and apple sauce. the window in the kitchen steamed beyond vision. We’ve shredded zucchini for green bread during the white months, made pesto out of everything possible, more than we will ever eat; brought baskets piled high with cherry tomatoes to neighbors as well as errant zucchinis the size of newborns.
We keep three freezers in the basement for putting up food. I pick up ten roasting chickens from our friend’s farm and try to avoid the stares of our own hens standing at their fence as I quickly bring them in. Soon every corner fills and I delight in the varying shades of color, from the beautiful deep red of my raspberry jam to the cloudy jars of both sweet and dill pickles where small mustard seeds bob around in a pickle/snow globe.
Each week of early autumn I have checked the supers on our hives, waiting for our first production. Zipped into my bee suit, I pull a frame out and hold it to the sunlight. For a while the honey has been uncapped, containing too high moisture content to harvest. Now it creates beautiful golden rainbows, the dark top curve from the Japanese knotweed, an invasive species that bees love, and makes amazing honey, the lower arc lighter from goldenrod.
For almost two years we have attended meetings on and offline, treated hives for mites, moved heavy deeps around to situate bees, wrapped hives in black tar paper in winter and fed brown sugar from a white tub with freezing hands. We have been stung, and stung.
My neighbor, Meg, comes to help: she, a whiz at keeping the smoker lit. We pull the frames and they are all capped in one of the hives. The honey sparkles in the sunlight and is ready for harvesting.
We spend the next hour on our deck jamming our feet against the vibrating extractor as we take turns cranking for all we are worth. In the corner sits our cider press that we also crank to produce liquid. I spend a few minutes thinking about how much time I am spending cranking this fall.
The extractor uses centrifugal force to pull honey from the comb. It spews gold all round the broad metal barrel: a rich Buddha. We grab a spoon from the kitchen and take our first mouthful. Filled with all of the complexities of fall plants, it seems I can taste the travels of our bees. I’m feeling healthier almost immediately and announce that.
We finish straining the honey for bee and honeycomb bits. I heft the barrel onto the cherry bar in our kitchen. In the basement I gather all of the misfit jars I have been collecting for two years and clink back up the stairs.
Activating the spout on the extractor, honey begins to slowly emerge into my first jar. It is so thick it doubles over on itself, like a honey soft-serve. I leave a little head room, screw on the lid and wipe the jar with a damp cloth. Everything sticks to everything else. I pull the small round labels with the name of our farm on them, a Christmas gift from our son a year ago, smooth one on and hold the full jar up to the light, admiring.
We fill so many jars I have to take another trip back into the basement for more, grateful for my early optimism. I overshoot pouring, blobs of honey spilling onto the counter. We scoop it up with our index fingers and suck it off like lollipops.
Dishes done in very hot soapy water, jars pyramid-stacked on the counter, I sit in the low light of the evening. I’m filled with a deep sense of satisfaction. We did not know what we were getting into when we began keeping bees. Everything was a trial. So much basil green hive-paint on the garage floor. The woman from whom we bought bees and equipment took a hiatus almost immediately after we paid for everything so we were reliant on the mentorship of bee-keeping friends. They came out to the farm, donned bee suits and, looking and feeling a little like astronauts, we took that first step.
What has filled these jars is more than honey; it is patience and perseverance, trial and error, blood, sweat and tears. It is life.
We had no idea what was on this path when we hopped on. We decided to take it based on hope and craziness. What I am proud of is, regardless of twists and turns, rocks and floods, we kept taking those steps.
Sweet.