A beautiful poem You will only see here

Well another booth I stopped at at the fair was the small woodlot owners association. I got a few of their newsletters and this poem was in one of them.It is by Clark L. Stevens who was chair of the UNH forestry Dept 1938-1958. I think this is right up there with very famous and beloved poems.

If I could learn the secrets of the tree,
the art of living fully in one spot;
of using wisely that which is my lot;
to grow above my lesser company
though still a part of community;
to fight the menace of an inner rot
or outer parasite, for one cannot
of all such enemies be wholly free.


If  I could learn to alternate the days
of strong production with the days of rest
and in my older years provide the best
of strength, of beauty, and of shaded ways.
How fortunate indeed my life would be,
if I had the powere of the tree.

The Truth About the Birds and the Bees - Well just Bees

I just got back from the Fryeburg Fair and I asked the bee keeper at the honey booth how things were going with that honey bee disease. Bee discombobulation disease or whatever they call it - the thing that is killing them all off. WELL I got the true story of what is going on. It used to be that bee keepers could make a living selling honey. Then trade opened up with China and China undersold American honey and cornered the market. About 70% of all honey in stores now actually comes from China. Even if it doesn't say China it could come from China. Because, after China cornered the market in the USA, we put a big tarrif  on their honey and they started laundering their honey through other countries. So, U S bee keepers started having to find other ways to make money - so they started hiring themselves out to farmers just to pollinate their crops and traveling far and wide - not caring about hony production just selling their services for pollination. This has led to overstressing the colonies and using the bees in a way that nature never intended and that is a major part of the problem. I plan never to buy honey in a store from now on only from American bee keepers.