![]() ![]() Hubbell becomes a sort of Thoreau in her self-reliance: shingling her house, repairing her pickup, and cutting firewood with her chainsaw. Note that Hubbell wrote her book before the widespread appearance of the varroa mite, colony collapse disorder-or cell phones. Similarly, she downplays the deadliness of copperheads and rattlers, though she’s wary of water moccasins. She shrugs off the common Ozarks fear of the brown recluse spider: she’s bitten herself and claims the bite to be no more significant than that of a tick or chigger. On the farm, she observes not only bees but birds, deer, insects, and snakes. She travels about in her cantankerous pickup truck, making friends with the local people even though she’s plainly an Easterner and a literary sort in the bargain. ![]() Hubbell makes a perilous living with her 200 hives, kept not only on her farm but on neighboring farms. ![]() She casts no blame but you feel her loneliness, her buried grief, on every page, even though her short chapters are often levied with bemusement over, for instance, the war between a blacksnake and chickenhouse mice. After some thirty years of marriage, Hubbell’s husband left Hubbell and their bee-keeping operation in southern Missouri. ![]()
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