From Liz Eglington

I am an organic olive farmer in the Klein karoo, Western Cape, South Africa. Outside a small village called Van Wyksdorp. The farm is in a brittle area but nestles against the Rooiberg mountain range so there is also extensive wild areas and pristine nature. 

 

We have a self catering cottage and 8 years ago I received a request/booking for a 2 month stay from Jenny. She explained she was quite ill and needed a “clean” environment in Nature with peace and quiet where she could recover and heal.

 

At that time I was also Chairperson of a Provincial conservation agency called Conservation at Work, working with funding in order to assist landowners with conserving their land, and educating them on best practice. We also worked with Cape nature where we managed their funds for landowner assistance.

 

Because of my passion for working WITH nature and my journey of farming olives and growing real healthy nutritionally dense food organically, I have for the past 15 years been running workshops and training courses on how to farm organically and live sustainably.

 

So when Jenny arrived here I believed I was quite knowledgeable on “all things natural” due to my extensive studies and research and practical experiences.

 

It took but a few conversations with Jenny to learn that what I thought I knew about bees was not only incorrect but had not even scratched the surface of what there is to know. Jenny ended up staying 10 months on my and the next door farm, having established our valley as a new research area for her.

Just around my home and food gardens Jenny identified over 100 DIFFERENT bees- which was astounding for me to learn and gave me an entirely new insight into what my world here consists of, and an appreciation of who I am sharing this space with.

 

Jenny’s knowledge and passion for her work and for bees is breathtaking and beyond compare to any other research I had up to then looked at. Her many years of practical experience and the thousands of hours of diligent patient study and deep caring has given her an insight into the world of bees that has made them come alive for us, and most importantly made us care for them as well.

 

Our community is made up of farmers, smallholders, and people who live in our village as an escape from “city busyness”. So we arranged for Jenny to give regular talks and show her incredible videos to our community members, to educate as well as open up this beautiful new world to a broader audience, as well as then encourage them to adopt practices that protected, nurtured, provided food and shelter, and to STOP using practices that harmed the world of bees/pollinators. 

What Jenny clarified for us:

1                     Without these bees and pollinators we would have very little food.

2                     How we grow our crops and our food gardens impact and can decimate these very important insects and that adopting organic and natural practices is essential.

3                     That the solitary bees are actually the most important bees, are in the largest numbers, and do the most work. But can be outcompeted when bringing in the managed bee hives which farmers use for pollination.

4                     That MANAGED honey bees are unhappy bees and that we should allow and encourage the wild bee nests that do the same work but better.

5                     Through her incredibly detailed and magnified videos and photos she took us into the world of these different bees and we saw how intricately they worked in symbiosis with other wild life and other insects, as well as how they have evolved these complex behaviours as a community for their food gathering, hygiene, communications, procreation.

 

Then through my network that has evolved with my chairmanship of Conservation at Work, we then arranged for Jenny to give workshops, talks and showcase her research at several venues around the Western Cape, and then most importantly at our annual 2 day National Symposium Jenny gave 2 presentations on both days to a large and diverse group of people made up of scientists, farmers, government personnel, department of Agriculture, Conservation agencies, and conservationists.

I saw how this “new” information Jenny was sharing impacted this new audience as much as it had in my farming community, and it sparked much debate and conservation. Many workshops and meetings and collaborations were born and evolved over the several years following and jenny has impacted in a very powerful way how people view, understand, and now want to protect these very important insects.

 

I am so very grateful for meeting Jenny and being taken on this incredible journey.

Her focus, hard work, diligence, and absolute commitment is astounding to witness and I am proud to be associated with her. 

 

Liz Eglington

Blue Sky Organics