Bees

The photo of a mass of grandkids around the tractor pulling a wagon load of wood is the result of one of two very important bees that we had at the farm.

No, not the kind that sting; the kind that share. A bee is a gathering of neighbours to help either thresh the grain or saw the wood.

When trees were cut in the woods, they were hauled out into an empty space and piled up to wait for the sawing bee. The cutting usually took place in the winter when we could get around with horses and sleigh. We lived in a bog, remember. In the spring, the man with the saw and tractor arrived and set up in front of the pile of logs.

The invitation had gone out a few days before, so the neighbours arrived and set to work. It was intense, hard work carrying sixteen-foot logs to the saw and reducing them to sixteen inch blocks. That was only half the job, really. At a later date, someone had to split those blocks into stove sized wood and then move the whole lot into the wood shed in preparation for winter. That is what is happening in the photograph.

The other bee took place in the fall. After the grain had been cut, bound and stooked, the man with the threshing machine and tractor would arrive when it was our turn. The neighbours, usually the same ones, would arrive and the sheaves of grain would be brought to the barn and the threshing machine by horse and wagon.

The straw was blown into a mow in the barn to be used for bedding for the cattle over the winter. The grain was bagged and stacked in the granary to be ground at the water-powered grist mill in Spencerville. Again, it was hard, hot and dusty work.
When noon came, the men all washed at the pump and headed for the house where tables groaned with the weight of the food. And did they eat! My mother, assisted by two or three neighbouring ladies, would serve up the potatoes and meat and vegetables and bread and two kinds of pie and mugs of tea. It all disappeared like magic. Work hard, eat hard.

These farmers had to consume a tremendous number of calories just to keep going. The difficult physical labour required volumes of food, for after the bee is over and the grain is bagged, everyone rushed home to do the chores –milk the cows, feed the hens, clean the barn.

Bees were social occasions as well as socialist concerns. It was self-help and help one another, all on good spirits. Lots of talk, lots of laughs. This ready exchange of labour worked well. The result was a strong community.