The bee is more honoured than other animals, not because she labours, but because she labours for others

On a Thursday, a hot July afternoon, we turned off our computers, we tucked our office chairs in at our desks, we gathered each other, jars of water, work gloves and towels and we made our way to the woods outside Florenceville to a wood fired kiln, a jumble of kindling and broken pottery, mud puddles from the rain and the shade and cool smell of spruce and moss. Yolande fed us fresh things; Mexican fare, cherries and beer to inspire enthusiasm for the job ahead of us. We worked together until the sun went down.

Along with Lee and a very pregnant Yolande we stacked and chopped and loaded and unloaded, strung tarps and cleaned out the kiln. Three interns, four neighbours, five children, a dog. After such success we swam in the river, The Presque Ile, now just a trickle in the summer heat, but cool and wet on our sweaty faces, we laughed and asked to come back next week and every week until the end of the firing. So on Wednesday with another crowd of eager bees we did the same and on Thursday the twenty-second we plan to help again.

Lee and Yolande Clark are preparing to fire their anagama kiln. A 28 foot cave of brick and mortar dug into the ground and emerging in gentle curves and steep chimneys on their land between the overpasses of the new Trans Canada highway and the sprawling lawns and bulky houses of the suburbs west of the mighty Saint John River. Four cords of Tamarack and Pine split into narrow kindle will stoke a flame reaching 1300 degrees day and night for more than a week. Between now and then they will work clay into astonishing shapes; figures and vessels that seem to emerge from the earth, they, with our help and the help of other friends will carry and stack wood, load the kiln, stoke the fire, and wait for their art to change by the ash and heat and magic of the woods and time and patience and sincerity of purpose.

These Early summer days have been long and humid in the offices and fields at Falls Brook and in the evening when work is done and there seem to be only a few hours to eat and play and prepare for the next day the selflessness and strength of those who have given up their night is appreciated so much more. The objectives of the Work Bee program: volunteerism, cooperation and community support, the exchange of ideas, skills and assistance have certainly been fulfilled in these two initial gatherings.

Tomorrow, Saturday the seventeenth, we’ll gather again with the same intentions and many hands to raise the walls of a blacksmith work shop. This time Dana Kittilsen will lead us in sawing, hammering and constructing using recycled materials from an eighty-year-old barn.

See you all tomorrow on the Land Trust on Simms Road in Knowlesville, hammers in hands.

Emily

Falls Brook Centre Work Bees

For more information, to register or become involved

please write to Emily at education@fallsbrookcentre.com

To read Yolande’s words about the work-party and her life, her family and her work:

http://burntnormal.blogspot.com/2010/07/work-party-party.html