Six word stories. Have you played this game? Tell me a story in six words. Hemingway may have done it best…For Sale: Baby Shoes, never worn. Think of what that story is about.
Larry Smith, the editor of the book on this, Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure, has taken the game to the AARP magazine (yup, giving away all sorts of memoir information there, aren’t I), with different topics…Birthdays, for instance, brought up 'Nearing 60, still on rough draft', and 'Slow learner, life began at 50', and for Best Advice Given or Gotten, there’s 'Life is short, eat dessert first', and 'Do something, even if it’s wrong', or, 'Life is tough, get a helmet'.
I have a whole different topic. Beeyard Stories. A beeyard story in six words…and only six words. For instance, 'Smoker went out, really bad day', or, 'There’s a hole in my veil'. You get the idea. Wanna try one? Send me an email with your six word beeyard story. Keep it to two per person, please. We’ll publish the best later this winter…maybe the January and February issues. If it works and we get good participation maybe we’ll try it again. 'Six Words. No More. No Less'
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The USDA statistics people send me reports on everything they count. Peas, farmers, honey, bales of cotton, farm land, crop prices…and rural populations. They recently came out with a prediction about where people will be living in the next decade. The Baby Boomers, those people between the ages of 55 and 74 (see above, AARP), will be moving from the city to the county…lots of them, by 2020. My age cohort will increase in rural areas by two-thirds to the tune of about 14.2 million people. We Boomers make up 28 percent of the U. S. population right now, and as we retire, and we will eventually retire, we will no longer be tied to urban areas because of our jobs. But even before that we’ll be moving to the countryside because the internet has freed many of us from the need for cubicles and copy machines.
This will, of course, increase the demand for better transportation systems, housing and health care. It will create local jobs but stretch the budgets of low population rural areas, until the payroll and property taxes catch up with the influx of new people (who aren’t paying as much in taxes anymore). And boomers with time on their hands, and money in the bank…though less from that 401k and Social Security income they were planning on…and the land to do things on will do what? Why, they’ll garden and keep bees, of course. Golf, I imagine, will take some away, and travel and other activities will too, but with retirement budgets tightened just a tad, making a little money on the side selling honey and growing a bit of home grown food, now that they have the time, the money and the space…
If you want to find out more about this report go to http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/err79/, or just google USDA, Baby Boomer Migration.
The perfect beginning beekeeper, in my experience, is this person. They now have the money, the time, the place and many have always had the desire to keep bees. They no longer are climbing the business ladder, the kids are grown and gone (some may be back again, but not for too long), the house is paid for (mostly), other volunteer activities that made business contacts are winding down, and there is time to spare and a place to spend it. Is this you? Or is this someone you know?
You can spend all the time and money you want trying to get teenagers interested in keeping bees, and a few will, and a few more will eventually. But give me someone who is retired, still active, and has the place and time and desire to keep bees…that’s the person I want to get involved as a member of my local beekeeping association. They, maybe you, have time to keep a few bees, time to come to the meetings, time to volunteer to be an officer, time to talk to school kids, time to work at the fair, time to help out with just about anything.
Smart beekeeping supply companies should be preparing to cater to these fine folks now, priming the pump as it were…getting ready for the influx of old geezers who always wanted to keep bees. We’re out there. We’re ready. We’re cool. Bring on the bees!
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The last zuke was picked on Labor Day, with only green tomatoes left for now, and look, the weeds of summer have long gone to seed. It’s been a bad bee year with honey hard to find almost everywhere. And Georgia beetles came this year so there’s another worry now.
October is the hardest month. No longer summer. Not yet winter. Closing up, shutting down, another season past.
Bright leaves and radiant skies help the spirit, and looking up, giant Vs of geese link past and future in an echo of fowl cacophony across those skies, day and night and day.
The bees need help and it comes now. Food and shelter and secret worries for good measure. When you go to help the bees take care – keep your veil tight, your smoker lit, and your hive tool sharp . . . next year just has to be better.
