Oklahoma Dreaming: Worker Bees
by Donna Schoenkopf
I love bees. Seriously love them. I love the drones, the queen bees, and most of all the worker bees.
Drones do not work. They exist. They eat. They impregnate the queen. They take up space. They have a pretty easy time of it. They must have led an exemplary prior life to get a cushy job like this.
The Queen Bee is the reason for the hive. She gives meaning and purpose to the rest of the bees. She procreates. That’s it. And that’s enough.
But Worker Bees are who we love. Their hardy little bodies hurtle out of their hive, into the world of flowers and pollen and sweetness. They talk to each other, you know. It’s all about where the pollen is. They do dances in mid-air telling their comrades how far and in which direction to travel to reach the pot of gold at the end of rainbow.
Bees need all three types to exist. But we all know who the heroes are.
The Worker Bees.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately with the Worker Bees of the human world. I’ve spent several weeks planning for the Local Foods Harvest Feast. Each meeting was attended by Worker Bees. We were all women. Mostly. We sat at the planning table and talked excitedly about the upcoming event, interrupting each other in our excitement, dancing our dance. The project was grist for our mill, cream in our coffee, honey in our tea.
I don’t think any of us (me, anyway) RUNS to help in some unpaid, labor intensive project. Rather, it is like magnetism. We are drawn, like it or not, to some giant idealistic THING that will help to make the world right, or more beautiful, or saner.
We get caught up in the force field of energy and are helpless, HELPLESS to resist.
We hurtle out of our hives, sensing our destiny somewhere out there.
And our destiny is to ... work. Work at the jobs nobody else wants to do. For free.
A Few Weeks Before the Feast
So there we were, the Worker Bee Brigade, buzzing mightily, swarming with ideas around a huge conference table.
We talked about decorating. My hand shot up before I could stop it when we were asked who wanted to be on the Decorating Committee. The buzzing continued. Excitement, ELECTRICITY, in the air.
(Worker Bees produce a LOT of energy whenever they get together.)
We talked about the menu. We talked a lot about the menu. We assigned different foods to different people. Jo and Carol volunteered to make the pies.
EIGHT PIES EACH.
(Have YOU ever made eight pies in one day? Hmmmmmmm?)
Jo took sweet potato pie and Carol took pecan, using local produce, INCLUDING, I might add, the wheat for the crusts.
Meat: Jerri took beef, Chris (one of our menfolk) took buffalo. Grass fed, baby.
I got beets.
Now don’t go sticking your nose up in the air over the word “beets” and saying to yourself that you don’t like them. I am good at beets. I cook ’em GREAT. Ask anybody.
A Week Before the Feast
Barbara, our spiritual leader, visited farmers markets several times, all in the search for produce that was at its peak. She got a scare when one of the farmers told her all the butternut squash had been drowned by the heavy rains. She had visions of ALL the produce in the state being drowned.
Very stressful.
But hallelujah! She found some squash, happy and healthy squash, grown in raised beds.
Several Days Before the Feast
Barbara assigned several of us the making of black-eyed peas at home. And this, ladies and gentlemen, the black-eyed peas I mean, is a great illustrator of Worker Bees and how they operate.
How Worker Bees Operate:
Our Barbara had already duplicated the recipe for us, complete with interesting abbreviations, when she made the initial request for pea-cookers.
(She pronounces the word “recipe” as ruhSIP. It’s an old pronunciation from an old-timey guy that (I think) she heard on a radio show back in the day. No one ever asks why she pronounces it that way, but one day, without me asking, she told me. I am glad she did.)
We Worker Bees were to pick up our fresh-off-the-vine THAT DAY, shelled, black-eyed peas at the special produce store on the east end of Main Street, down there among the dilapidated secondhand stores and the comic book emporium and the abandoned storefronts.
Our directions, thorough and thoughtful, were:
Be at the produce store no later than 5:00 pm, ask for the peas, take them home and wash them and then rebag them and freeze them and then take them out a day before cooking to thaw out, then cook them and and put them in crock pots and bring them to the hall of the Emanuel Episcopal Church the day of the Feast.
We all, every one of us, managed this. No problem.
Because we are what??? WORKER BEES!
Two Days Before the Feast
Valerie and I went with Barbara on the last farmers market visit. We gathered the artisan breads and butternut squash and carrots and brussel sprouts and herbs—dill, chives, basil—tuhMATES and puhTATES, as Barbara calls them, and all manner of other things. Including beets.
The Day Before and the Day Of
The kitchen of the church is filled with Worker Bees. We all have our place and our job. Everyone is happy. We are all talking and enjoying the moment.
I am scrubbing beets, topping them, bottoming them, leaving little ones whole and cutting big ones into fourths. I put ’em in a giant stainless steel bowl, pour olive oil over them, add a bunch of garlic, lemon juice, and big chunks of sea salt. Mix it up by hand, turning things over and under until everything glistens. Pour some oil on the giant baking sheet and put it into the oven to heat up. Spill the whole bowl of beets over the hot baking sheet and slide it back into the 400 degree oven. When they are almost done I add a double fistful of tiny, I mean teeeeeeeny, organic baby carrots that I had scrubbed tenderly, all the while in the company of another Worker Bee, Valerie, who tells me her marital history (very interesting) while we scrub away in the huge double sink.
And then I add the cutest teeeeeensy baby Brussels sprouts you ever saw to the beets and carrots.
Pretty, pretty.
Imagine those deep roasted beets, all maroon and shiny, crusty on their bottoms with those baby carrots and Brussels sprouts sprinkled over them.
Wow. I amazed MYSELF!
Millions of slivers of carrots are julienned, dozens and dozens of cherry tomatoes are sliced in half for the marinated salad, new potatoes are scrubbed and painted with olive oil, eggplant is sautéed and sealed with the kiss of a sweet and savory sauce from heaven, deep aluminum containers of wheat berry salad, made with pecans and cranberries and other secret treats, is delivered, fry bread is fried, corn bread is baked, and as far as anything else is concerned, I couldn’t tell you. I am busy.
Before and during all this cooking and scrubbing, some of us decorate. We haul out a sofa, push tables and chairs around, hang cotton Indian prints to disguise the bookshelves and gift counter. We cover tables with cloths, fold napkins in intricate designs, arrange baskets and plants and wood, use produce—beautiful purple baby eggplant, deep red and yellow- green miniature apples, red-orange-yellow-green chile peppers—as centerpieces, and magnolia branches and tea candles and wildflowers are laid everywhere.
There is no plan for decorating. We just brought stuff we thought would be interesting and then we Worker Bees combine it into beautiful tablescapes—the modern with the traditional with the natural with the ethnic.
It was real purdy.
After the Feast
Dishwashing. Hundreds of dishes. And wineglasses. And forks and spoons and knives and pots and pans. There is the floor to mop, counters to wipe down, dishes to be put back into cupboards.
Decorations are removed and hauled out to our cars.
One by one Worker Bees begin to fade.
Until it is over.
And the lights are turned off and the doors locked.
The last one to go is Barbara.
She must have been bleary with exhaustion, and happy.
We all were.
Good night, dear Worker Bees.
Sleep tight.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
I’m HONGRY!!! Wonderful, lovely piece. But am wondering, dod you peel the beets before roasting ‘em? Or do you eat the roasted skins?? Ummmm, ah’m gettin’ HONGRY all over again.That must have been one hell of a grand feast.
2009-10-07 by Ann Calhoun