Farm Dreams (Are Made of Bees)

MY YARD is full of dreams come true. The yard itself, sunny and alive, I dreamed up during a cold, hard Brooklyn winter. I saw the Craiglist ad for a cottage in Oakland with fruit trees and I cried; it looked so much like my dream, and I figured that meant I couldn't have it. (But I got it. That still amazes me.) I dreamed up the foot-high cedar raised beds with tidy rows of carrots and leeks. I dreamed the flock of hens chilling in the shade of the fig tree, and, later, I dreamed the banty subflock, roosting in a barn-red mini coop perched preciously on stilts.

Cat & corn

Dreams are messy, of course, in the coming true. I've lived in '1 BR Cottage with Fruit Trees'  for ten years now. I had to cut down the loquat and the old lemon. The decrepit peach succumbed to disease, and the figs, which aren't very tasty, besmirch the patio. I've had hens murdered by predators and my vegetable beds infected with equally deadly Verticillium wilt.

But none of those disappointments ruin the dream. Such woes are the price of realness; they cannot outweigh the satisfaction of imagining something wonderful and bringing it to fruition. The lemon and orange I planted the year I moved in are big, productive trees now. I open a high window and grab some bout-to-be-juice.

Problems also shape the course of new dreams. The dread Verticillium has made tomatoes and squashes (and hella other things) hard to grow, which depresses me. Last year, as I watched my cucumbers wither and my strawberry leaves turn crisp brown, I started thinking of ways to produce food from my yard that would not involve soil. I began to dream about bees.

A BEEHIVE was one of those supercool things I thought I'd maybe have someday, perhaps when living with some brave individual willing to have bees all up in his business. I thought that way about chickens too, circa 2005. I figured I'd maybe get chickens at some suitable juncture, when I was fifty or whatever. But I got chickens circa 2006.

Beekeeper Barbie

Once I dream something up wheels turn and I can't help but make the thing happen. At least that's how it works for farm dreams. Farm dreams have a fairly straightforward arc: think it up => read obsessively about how to do it => plan meticulously and excitedly => shop! => plunge in fearfully. And there I am dumping ten thousand bees into a box painted to match the coop. (Would that I could work this magic system for non-farm dreams.)

When any farm dream is in the coming-true process, I freak out daily. I suppose the notion that my vision is really happening is too hard to believe, so I expect doom around every corner. I worried that the swarm I purchased would abscond (which means the bees all fly away in a fuck-you cloud), that my colony was queenless (which means reproductive doom), that I had so-called 'zombees' (which means workers get parasitized by an evil fly). But as the spaces between worries get longer, I am loving the bees. My ultra-miniature new livestock are wondrous to behold. 

Bee in passion (flower)

At any given moment of daylight there is serious traffic at the hive entrance, bees zooming out purposefully, ready to fly miles for nectar, while others return with fresh supplies, stomachs full, legs laden with pollen. Their earnest dedication has me feeling guilty about the part where I'll 'harvest' honey. I say harvest-in-quotes because that word connotes reaping the rewards of one's work, and taking frames of honey seems way less honorable than that. How many bees are flying and dying for those honey stores? And here I'm gonna barge in like some asshole bear and just gank it? I should make a big show of doing some helpful things for these bees so I can feel justified. I did give them a cozy hive, easily defensible from thieves other than me. That's a start.

Some time next winter I'll be having scrambled eggs and orange juice and mint tea with honey and it will all be from my yard. That's gonna taste so good.

WHENEVER I feel discouraged by life, thinking this or that cannot possibly happen because it would be way too awesome if it did, I should remember my younger self in cold Brooklyn, gazing at '1BR Cottage with Fruit Trees,' disbelieving I could ever have what I have now.

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