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" Healthy camel crickets spend a lot of their waking hours grooming, so I have learned to recognize the ones that will soon die because they walk about encrusted with sand and bits of litter, having lost all interest in keeping clean. "

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" I've lived all over the country - Michigan, California, Texas, New Jersey, Rhode Island and, now, Maine - but I never understood springtime until I spent 25 years farming in the Ozarks. "

Sue Hubbell

California

Texas

Now

" Strictly speaking, one never 'keeps' bees - one comes to terms with their wild nature. "

" My crickets found me. "

Sue Hubbell

Found

" Our family was like no one else's. My schoolfriends had fathers and grandfathers and uncles who did things, but in my family, women had been the doers. "

" A rule about portages: the longer and harder they are, the fewer people will make them. "

" You have to take springtime on its own terms in the Ozarks: there is no other way. It can't be predicted. It is unsteady, full of promise, promise that is sometimes broken. It is also bawdy, irrepressible, excessive, fecund, willful. "

" Great Wass Island Preserve is a 1,579-acre Nature Conservancy jewel, a place of spectacular botanical interest, and Jonesport is situated on a postcard-pretty harbor. Tourism is not serious business in those parts - boat building and fishing are - and there are no signs telling how to get to Great Wass. But I know. "

" Spring starts in January in the Ozarks, lurches on in a complicated way, with spurts and setbacks, until May. Then, early in May, there is a cold spell known as blackberry winter because it comes when blackberries bloom. It is a worrisome week for anyone who farms. "

" It gets cold here in the Ozarks in the winter. There are often warm winter days, but there are also weeks when the temperature never climbs above freezing. "

" Our human calendars take little notice of such dates, but nighthawk migrations tell of shortening days and a season's end. "

" It wasn't that there weren't menfolk in my grandmother's stories. There were lots of them but they died young or were drifters and dreamers who disappeared or turned to drink or succumbed to melancholia or slow mortal diseases. The women, on the other hand, lived a long time and were full of spit and vinegar until the end. "

" I know a number of coastal trails in downeast Maine, all of them interesting. "

" For a long, long time, nearly 40 years, I never had any bees. I can't think why. "

" The Ozarks are old and worn mountains from the geological past. "

" We humans are a minority of giants stumbling around in a world of little things. "

" Everyone should have two or three hives of bees. "

" All chain saws are formidable and dangerous. "

" Every spring, I begin cutting my firewood for the upcoming winter. It should be cut months ahead of time so it will dry and cure. "

" I've never been much for becoming a member of a group. "

" I am an early riser. "

Sue Hubbell

Early

I Am

" I married a university professor, raised a son, and worked as an academic librarian. My husband and I moved to the Ozarks, bought a farm, and started a commercial beekeeping business. And divorced. "

" Fiddling with the genetic identities of domesticated plants and animals ever since we had become human. We are the fiddlingest animal the world has ever seen. "

" Otherness is what I have always liked about bugs. "

" Beekeeping is farming for intellectuals. "

Sue Hubbell

Intellectuals

Farming

" Nothing gives a person more confidence... than to be zipped snugly inside a bee suit. "

" I am beekeeper, but I am also a writer, and some years ago, I sat down at a typewriter to experiment with words, to try to tease out of the amorphous, chaotic and wordless part of myself the reason why I was staying on this hilltop in the Ozarks after my first husband, with whom I had started a beekeeping business, and I had divorced. "

" My bees cover one thousand square miles of land that I do not own in their foraging flights, flying from flower to flower for which I pay no rent, stealing nectar but pollinating plants in return. "

" Bees are easier to keep than a dog or a cat. They are more interesting than gerbils. They can be kept anywhere. "

Sue Hubbell

Than

Keep

" Crickets are immaculately clean, harmless animals. "

" I started collecting crickets to study them. Now I expect they will be my companions for many years to come. "