Farming for Self~Sufficiency Independence on a 5~Acre Farm
Information on bees and wild food.
Ah, the vicissitudes of time. Four years ago, when
there were NO currently relevant small-scale-farming
introductory handbooks available, many of us welcomed the
publication of Richard Langer's Grow It! with open arms.
Now that we're all older and more experienced, however,
some folks find it increasingly easy to criticize that
breakthrough beginner's guide (see theFeedback
sections of MOTHER NOS. 23, 24, and 25).
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Which brings us to another breakthrough book that is
just as important (probably more so) now as Grow It! was
four years ago ... and which may well come up for its share
of criticism in another 48 months or so.
Be that as it may, John and Sally Seymour's record of
18 successful years on a shirttail-sized homestead in
England is important now and should offer welcome
encouragement to today's back -to-the-landers . . . both
real and imaginary. I started serializing the book in my
No. 25 issue and I'm sure that many readers will want a
personal copy for their home libraries.—MOTHER.
Copyright © 1973 by John and Sally Seymour.
Introduction copyright C, 1973 by Schocken Books Inc.
Every farmer will understand me when I say, that he
ought to pay for nothing in money, which he can pay for in
anything but money.
by WILLIAM COBBETT
BEES
The pre-industrial Revolution manner of keeping bees would
not commend itself to the officers of the R.S.P.C.A.,
because the bees were 'put down', as the latter would term
it, every autumn. The hive with precision-cut moveable
frames had not been invented, and the only way in which the
honey could be extracted was to burn a little sulphur
underneath the hive and liquidate the bees. The picturesque
straw skeps were treated in this manner, and in Africa and
most parts of Asia today this is still the manner of
keeping, and ceasing to keep, bees. In Central Africa one
frequently sees hollowed - out logs hung in the
trees: these are the equivalents of the medieval bee skeps
in England. There are bee keepers in dear old England today
who, whisper it not, do this very thing. They put old
orange boxes or other crates and receptacles around the
backs of their houses, where the neighbours can't see them,
and put a few old bee frames with a bit of wax on them and
the smell of bees inside them, and either hope that some
bees will arrive from somewhere (and if bees have been kept
in that garden for a long time you can be fairly sure some
will) or else go out and capture a swarm and put them in
the box. The busy little insects fill the box completely
with honeycomb and honey, but all jammed in there
higgledy-piggledy, and there is absolutely no way known to
man of extracting that honey without killing those bees.
But there, the economics of the thing, from Man's point of
view, are perfectly sound. The bees, by the autumn, have
done their work. They have made their honey. If the man is
going to keep them alive all winter it either means that he
has got to leave a large part of their honey with them for
them to live on, or else feed them with sugar. In a country
with a high proportion of woodland and forest, and
therefore of wild bees, there will always be plenty of
fresh swarms in the spring, and a swarm of bees in May is
worth a load of hay, and worth none the less because you
didn't have to feed it and look after it all winter.
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