bees on earth

Well, you’ve waited long enough.

Here is the Raisin & Porpoise Holiday Gift Guide.

“She’s going to tell us to sew something.”

“Or felt it. Or knit it. Or bake it. She’s going to tell us to make it ourselves.”

But I’m not! I have a few surprises up my sleeve, and here is one: I want you to buy stuff. Go all crazy and buy stuff.

Maybe you are secretly weary of all the locavore this-and-that you hear. Maybe you read the 100 Mile Diet and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and all the Michael Pollan books, all of them, just like everyone said you should. Maybe it all makes sense and you know they’re right but it also just makes you stressed and paralyzed, there in the store with your reusable bag and your carbon footprint, staring at the imported but organic this and the local but conventional that and wondering what you are supposed to buy to be making the right impact and still have something good to eat.

It’s all right, honey.

Honey. Honey is the answer. Buying honey from small producers supports a healthy bee population and supports beekeepers and farmers and gardeners and, well, the entire ecosystem on which all life depends. Neckties and hands-free soap dispensers cannot make this claim. Plus hardly anyone in the history of the world has been given a gorgeous jar of honey and thought: oh, great, what am I supposed to do with that?

If you want to know more about bees and life, go here, here,here or here. If you don’t have a beekeeper in the neighborhood to shop with and you just want to buy some honey for your Aunt Gertie and have it shipped right to her, head over to Local Harvest. Their “search by zip code” feature means you can buy honey from someone near you, or near Aunt Gertie, or you can just head right for the creamed vanilla honey and send that to everyone you know.

Ho, ho, ho.

image courtesy of www.public-domain-image.com