Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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Sweet Oklahoma Legislation, Call to Action SB 716

 Good morning friends!! I am writing a bit hurriedly this morning to ask you all for some help. It’s a step outside of my comfort zone. Today, I am getting involved in some local politics. Cue dramatic music…

…PAM-POOM-PAM…

   This afternoon, our Oklahoma State Representatives will be voting on a bill that will have a great impact on beekeepers and fresh honey availability.

   It’s really important and kind of exciting!

   If passed, Senate Bill 716, the Oklahoma Honey Sales Act, will allow small scale or hobbyist beekeepers (like little ol’ me) to sell their fresh, local honey without cumbersome regulation and inspection through the Health Department.

   This bill has already passed the Oklahoma Senate (unanimously I might add), which is great news. If today goes well then our fellow beekeepers will be very happy and everyone can continue enjoying the sweet, sticky, healthy stuff at a reasonable cost.

   Please let your Representative know who you are why you care about this, and that you support this bill. Some of our smart  peers have been working really hard on it already. My friend Maribeth in particular has spearheaded the writing of the proposed bill; and others have been lobbying at the Capitol with jars of their fresh honey in tow. Isn’t that a great way to be remembered?

   I have no honey to offer yet, but I will be contacting them today to make a last minute impression. And if you are an Oklahoma friend I hope you do the same

   Honey is nature’s perfect food. It doesn’t spoil. It will not grow bacteria. It has myriad health benefits. And keeping bees is not just good but vital for every aspect of our agricultural environment. Everybody should care that bees thrive and that honey is free flowing.

   Lastly, and this is the crux of it, honey and other bee products are certainly not cheap to produce. It’s a pricey and risky venture already. So further restricting production and distribution would be bad for everybody, not just beekeepers who want to share their liquid gold now and then. Small scale apiaries need the freedom to operate simply and economically, or they may be forced not to operate at all. And we need exactly the opposite to happen. We all need more beekeepers, not fewer of them.

   This matters to you IF…

  • You are a beekeeper yourself
  • You like to purchase local honey from farmers’ markets, etc.
  • You live in Oklahoma and eat any kind of produce (because bees pollinate everything).
  • You are in Oklahoma and read this blog. (C’mon you guys!! All three of you contact the Capitol today!)

   

   How to help, exactly? Glad you asked.

   The Oklahoma House of Representatives will be voting on this bill today at the 1:30 session. Between now and then, please call or email your Representative. Make sure he or she knows you support SB 716 and that you hope he or she will vote to support the Oklahoma Honey Sales Act.

   If you do not know who your State Representative is, you can click on this link right here. Super easy. Make sure you scroll to the bottom to find your State Representative, not State Senator or US Representative, as this website will provide all elected officials.

   Thanks in advance for participating and being part of an important decision! I hope you all have a beautiful day. Give thanks for the rain Oklahoma is receiving this week. Daydream about the crops that will grow from it and about the gorgeous honey we will soon be collecting. 

“If you want to gather honey,
  Don’t kick over the beehive.”
 ~Dale Carnegie
 xoxoxoxo

American Honey

   A few Saturdays ago I was fortunate enough to spend most of the day with Handsome’s colleague at the Commish, our good friend, and my new honey mentor… Maribeth. She’s a three-in-one fantastic person to know, and then some! Maribeth had invited me to visit Cripple Creek Farms with her for a beekeepers’ social gathering and hive diagnosis demonstration.

   Cripple Creek is a privately owned farm near Guthrie, Oklahoma, where the proprietors Randy and Treasa Brady raise bees, goats, and chickens and grow peaches, vegetables, herbs, and more. They hosted us and a few dozen other bee keepers for coffee and donuts, tours, discussion, and then a wonderful outdoor lunch.They are just as lovely and hospitable as you can imagine, and I hope to return for an agri-tourism event soon! If you shop the Saturday morning farmer’s market in Edmond, look for their products.

Thank you for your hospitality, Randy & Treasa!
Their verdant row of peach trees already in fruit 
made the chlorophyll in my veins hum.
(Keep in mind this was almost a month ago.)
By the way, how cool is it that growing foods and flowers 
and keeping bees are so simpatico? So symbiotic? So poetic?
This links my paternal heritage of apiaries 
and my maternal heritage of gardens,
and I just love that.
Goat kids are so cute. In other people’s yards.
These babies are bottle fed and certified organic and disease free,
and they will eventually be faithful dairy producers.
   It was a thoroughly beautiful day in every respect. In fact, I learned so much and was so inspired by the experience that I have had trouble deciding how to tell the story. Should I try to tackle the science, or should I instead try to impart to you the magic? That’s the struggle I felt the whole time we were at Cripple Creek, too. Should I obey the desire to learn, restricting my imagination and focusing stringently on the education available? Or is this experience meant to fill my heart, fueling me for the pen-and-paper classes soon to come? Should I just surrender to the romance of a thriving bee yard?

   I chose the magic and romance, big surprise.

   Oh, and by the way, that day was also supposed to be the next official bee class at OSU, but I had the instructor’s blessing to skip class and attend this instead. You guys, the last time I skipped class it was because I hadn’t studied for something and I was looking over my shoulder the whole time!

   Before we continue, perhaps I should insert here that I made the odd mistake of wearing intentionally frayed and holey jeans to the bee yard. The reason was less for fashion and more because I knew not to wear perfume or fragranced soap, so I just took it a step further and wore the same clothes I wore that Friday. Anyway, that was a mistake. 

   My neighbors on the hay trailer were kind enough to notice, and Maribeth helped me seal up the many points of bee entry with her trusty duct tape.

“Duct tape is a beekeeper’s best friend.” ~Maribeth


********************

    The sky was cloudless. It glowed with that deep, bright color of old denim. The sun poured like warm butter all over my skin, all over the trees and all over every free range chicken and every blade of green grass. If there was any breeze that day, it was mild. Nearly undetectable.

She grew up on the side of the road

Where the church bells ring
and strong love grows
She grew up good, she grew up slow
like American honey

   Once we all suited up and enjoyed a slow hay-and-trailer ride down to the bee yard, a couple of football fields away, we walked around cautiously.

   Following our host I noticed a gradual increase in bee activity. The buzzing was a whisper at first, then it grew louder and more urgent, almost loud enough to sound amplified, like on a microphone.

   But it was lulling, not terrifying at all. The communal hum was downright soothing. I wanted to lay in the grass and clover with the sun on my skin and sleep there or maybe read.

   Do you know what’s amazing? The complexity of a bee colony. And the gentle industry.

Steady as a preacher, free as a weed
Couldn’t wait to get going
But wasn’t quite ready to leave
So innocent, pure and sweet
like American honey

Here, Randy was describing the usurping of a Russian queen bee
by an Italian one and the changing health of the remaining colony.
It’s very thought provoking.
Because of my reading material this spring,
the political implications were on the tip of my tongue.

   The long, complicated, delicate process of honey production is possibly nearer to enchantment than even a seed breaking dormancy in the spring. Nature’s honey recipe is so uniquely beautiful and so filled with intricacy that the fact that we can not only impose ourselves into that process but also participate in it and even enhance it, well… I have no problem calling that a miracle. What a gift that God would allow us to be involved in this!

Get caught in the race of this crazy life
Trying to be everything can make you lose your mind
I just wanna go back in time to American honey
There’s a wild, wild whisper blowing in the wind…
Calling out my name like a long lost friend.
Oh how I miss those days as those years go by
Oh nothing’s sweeter than summertime
And American honey. 

Are you entranced by natural honeycomb?
Its shape, colors, texture, even its pale fragrance…
Mesmerizing.
   Maribeth and her husband Dean joined us last weekend for dinner and hours of sparkling conversation. That evening we scouted around the Lazy W and chose the perfect hive location. Handsome and I have a few more preparations to make, then tomorrow evening I drive to Noble, Oklahoma, to retrieve my two colonies. 

   And then the real adventure begins. 
“Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.”
~Robert Green Ingersall
xoxoxoxo
Tune in tomorrow for a little story about the hive painting…