A couple of months ago I wrote that the mindset of the countryman appears different to others, but that the difference has more to do with a particular attitude to life rather than where someone lives. However, detailed knowledge of the countryside can be important, and this came home to me recently when a white van stopped suddenly outside our cottage: Two young men leaped out and proceeded to fill huge plastic bags with bracts of the white flowers growing in the lane.
I finished feeding the chickens and watched quietly until one of them turned and said. “I hope you don’t mind but we thought we would collect elderflowers because they fetch good money in Bristol.” I replied that I didn’t mind at all, particularly as they were picking cow parsley.
I told them that elder flowers grew on trees and wouldn’t be out for another week or so, and then went on to suggest that they might mistake cow parsley for the similar-looking poison hemlock or fool’s parsley. At this news they hurriedly tipped out their bags and shot off.
After Sunday morning service at Dymock I related this tale to an old bee keeper, and he reminded me me that young cow parsley leaves as a salad item, taste sharper than garden chervil but with a hint of carrot. It is also a mosquito repellent but musn’t be confused with giant hogweed which can burn the skin if touched.
About a week after my acquaintance with the Bristol cow parsley pickers, I was delighted to see a swarm of bees take up residence in a box I had previously baited with a few spoonfuls of honey. I just happened to be in the orchard when the sunshine dimmed and the sky was suddenly filled with the buzzing sounds of about twenty five thousand bees. A few days earlier I had noticed scout bees looking for a new home, and so was thrilled to witness the rarely seen phenomenon of a swarm arriving at its final destination.
There is an old saying that a swarm in May is worth a load of hay and that one in June is worth a silver spoon. However as the last load of hay cost me £400 pounds; I shall hang onto my wooden spoon for a while longer.
Many readers may not realise how many bee keepers there are in the benefice or that we generally help each other when a lot of physical lifting is needed. I reckon that when handling bees’ two pairs of hands will do the job six times faster, and so this leaves time to gossip and swap notes. We often observe how bees in one colony are temperamentally different from another, and that this is because every bee in a colony is the off-spring of the queen and so inherits her nature. This means that if the queen is a nasty leader she will create a spiteful colony.
Talking of testy leaders however, reminds me of the county agricultural college which ran courses in beekeeping and employed a lecturer in apiary studies. He was a hard taskmaster, with a keen eye for detail and intolerant of error. It was said that when marking written papers he was so fastidious that in thirty years he had never awarded a student an ‘A.’
Unsurprisingly, he was referred to as the ‘B’ man.
View from the Pew 