The Amish Beekeeper's Dilemma
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Patrice Lewis
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17
Chapter One
Rebecca Hilty, wearing elbow-length gloves and a bee veil over her head, stood in the middle of the clearing and smiled. Honeybees buzzed around her on an otherwise quiet May afternoon. But the bees were not inclined to bother her even after opening several hives and splitting the insects to make new colonies. They were simply getting resettled. She lingered by the hives, enjoying the hum and movement of the insects.
It was a warm day, and the sun shone through the branches of the pine and fir trees that lined the edge of the clearing where her hives were located. It was perfect weather for the task she had just completed: splitting hives. Of the forty-six hives in her bee yard, she had deemed eight of them strong enough to split. Into empty hive boxes, she moved frames thick with developing bees, pollen and capped honey, as well as a queen bee or the resources to make a queen.
If all the splits were successful, she would end up with fifty-four hives instead of forty-six.
She might have been anxious about the actual procedure, but she made sure to display no nervousness around the bees themselves. The insects were quick to detect agitation, and Rebecca had long ago learned never to disturb the colonies if her mood was not calm and unruffled. Somehow, bees knew the difference between an attack from a predator and manipulation by a beekeeper. She was seldom stung.
She considered honeybees one of Gott’s most fascinating creatures. She’d been a beekeeper for five years, and this was her second year turning a profit from sales of honey. Her employer and mentor, Caleb Graber, had been completely encouraging when she first expressed interest. Bees were always useful on a farm, he’d told her.
Five years ago, freshly arrived in the new Amish settlement outside the small town of Pierce, Montana, she’d known no one—not even the older man whose advertisement for a farm hand she had boldly answered before she’d moved across the country. Desperate to leave her matchmaking mother and aunt behind, Rebecca had fled her hometown in Indiana and traveled to this new community.
Working for Caleb had been nothing but a joy. She preferred her independence over marriage, and now—at twenty-eight years old—her mother despaired of her ever finding a husband.
Rebecca didn’t care. She preferred it here in Montana. Her beekeeping venture was turning into a profitable one at last.
Just then she heard a noise, and turned to see Caleb returning from the bus station in town, directing his horse and buggy toward the barn with a man sitting on the seat beside him.
Normally, the sight of Caleb returning from town was something she looked forward to, but today he was bringing home the great-nephew who was his heir. Rebecca couldn’t help but feel resentment over the arrival of someone who would upset the operation of the farm she and Caleb had worked so hard to establish.
She sighed and stripped off her gloves, then removed her bee veil. Her calm mood fled, replaced with gut-clenching nerves. She couldn’t avoid meeting the visitor.
Truth be told, deep down she had hoped she would be the older man’s designated heir. Widowed and childless, Caleb Graber had come to Montana after his wife passed away and started a small farm. When he needed help, he’d put an ad in The Budget seeking a farm hand, and she had responded. It had been a perfect match. And she had grown to love Caleb like a grossdaddi.
But now...well, now there would be an outsider on the farm who would disturb the harmonious working relationship she and Caleb had established: his brother’s grandson from Ohio, who would inherit the farm when it came time for Caleb to retire. His name was Jacob Graber, and Rebecca decided she didn’t like him for the simple reason that she didn’t want him here. Jacob had never seen the farm, had never had a farm of his own and had never been to Montana, yet she—as the hired hand—would be expected to defer to his inexperience. It grated on her nerves.
Unwilling to jeopardize her warm relationship with Caleb, she had kept her thoughts to herself. But now she would be forced to be civil toward this...interloper.
Sighing, she first stopped at the small outbuilding Caleb had retrofitted into a cabin for her. She dropped off her bee veil and gloves, then washed her hands. She patted stray strands of hair back beneath her kapp and smoothed down her apron. Best to get it over with. She headed toward the main farmhouse.
She saw Caleb holding one suitcase, while the other man held two more. They were carrying them from the barn, where the buggy was stored, toward the house.
“Ah, Rebecca, there you are!” Caleb smiled. “I’d like you to meet my great-nephew Jacob Graber. Jacob, this is Rebecca Hilty, my right-hand helper.”
She approached as Jacob put the suitcases on the ground. “Guder nammidaag,” she said, smiling through gritted teeth as she held out her hand.
“Guder nammidaag,” he repeated. His smile seemed no more genuine than hers, his chin was lifted with a touch of haughtiness, and his handshake was firm—almost too firm, as if he was testing her strength. “Caleb has talked about you the whole way home.”
Jacob had curly brown hair and dark blue eyes with laugh wrinkles at the corners. He looked tired—understandable after his cross-country trip—and she noticed his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
For whatever reason, it seemed Jacob was no more thrilled to meet her than she was to meet him.
She dropped his hand and turned to Caleb, who seemed oblivious of the undercurrents of tension between her and Jacob. “That pot of lentil soup I put on after lunch has been simmering all afternoon. All I have to do is bake the biscuits I cut out earlier and dinner should be ready. While they’re baking, I’ll do the evening chores.”
“Ja gut,” Caleb replied. “It will give Jacob a chance to get settled in the house.” With a spryness belying his seventy-two years, Caleb reached again for the suitcase at his feet, while Jacob picked up the remaining two and followed the older man indoors without a backward glance.
Thinning her lips, Rebecca stepped into the cheerful sage-and-cream kitchen she and Caleb had painted shortly after her arrival. She remained just long enough to slide the biscuits into the oven and snatch up the egg basket, then fled toward the sanctity of the barn.
In the building’s shadowy interior, she pressed a hand to her chest and took a calming breath. Her first impression of Jacob was not positive. Though barely exchanging a greeting, she’d picked up overtones of arrogance that rankled her, and her inclination to dislike him deepened.
But she didn’t want to hurt Caleb’s feelings, which meant she would be forced to work with Jacob, interact with him, while pretending his very presence didn’t threaten her place on the farm she had come to love so well.
If nothing else, he couldn’t complain about her efficiency. In the twenty minutes it took the biscuits to bake, she fed the chickens, gathered up the eggs, tucked the calves into their pen for the night and made sure the horses and cows had fresh water. They did not need extra food this time of year, with the pastures so lush and green.
When she could no longer find an excuse to linger in the barn, she picked up the egg basket and headed back to the house, where she found Caleb had already set the kitchen table. Jacob sat with a cup of coffee at his elbow, and listened to the older man’s cheerful chatter.
“Everything snug in the barn?” Caleb inquired.
“Ja,” she said shortly. She turned to wash her hands, then pulled the biscuits from the oven.
“Rebecca makes the world’s best biscuits,” Caleb said into the yawning silence. “Even better than my wife’s, and that’s saying a lot. Jacob, do you want another cup of coffee?”
“Nein, danke.” Jacob knuckled his eyes. “I don’t want anything to keep me from a good night’s sleep. It’s been a long trip.”
“I can imagine. You’ll feel better in the morning. Rebecca can walk you around the farm and show you everything we’ve accomplished in the past five years. I think you’ll be impressed.”
“I’m sure I will. Danke,” he added as Rebecca set the pot of soup on a hot pad in the center of the table.
She piled the biscuits in a cloth-lined bowl and snatched up a small tub containing homemade butter, and brought them to the table as well.
She paused, along with Jacob and Caleb, for a silent blessing over the food. The men might be expressing thanks for the food. Rebecca found herself praying for peace of mind and forbearance during what she saw as a difficult time ahead.
Sometimes, she knew, silence was golden. When she worked with the bees, she was forced to move calmly and without agitation. She would borrow a page from her apiary duties and apply it toward the newcomer.
One thing was certain: she saw no reason to be any more pleasant to Jacob than common courtesy demanded. She wouldn’t be rude; she wouldn’t be argumentative. She would just be...quiet.
Four days of traveling by train and bus from Ohio to Montana had left Jacob Graber exhausted. Sitting upright on public transportation seats rather than reclining in a proper bed would do that to a person. He was delighted to see Caleb, but his great-uncle was inclined to be sociable and chatty, and Jacob was almost too dazed to pay attention.
And then there was Rebecca. On the way from the bus station to the farm, Caleb had waxed eloquent about his hired hand. Personally he would have thought it better to hire a man, but whatever. Jacob had a mental image of an amazon of a woman. If she was still unmarried at her age—Caleb had said she was twenty-eight, the same age as himself—then she must not be much to look at, though clearly Caleb thought she had other qualities to admire.
The reality was far different than he imagined. She was slim and tidy, attired in a forest green dress and black apron. Her white kapp was perched neatly atop her dark brown hair. Her brown eyes looked wary. She had a dusting of freckles across her nose, and a steel set to her jaw.
In short, she looked nothing like he’d envisioned her. She wasn’t an amazon; she was somewhat tall and rawboned, he realized, but not to the point of plainness. She wasn’t pretty, but she looked like she had character.
She did, however, give every impression of being a stubborn woman who wouldn’t lightly release the reins of control she had on the farm.
The food was superb—a hearty lentil soup with plenty of ham, and flaky biscuits that were so delicious he polished off half a dozen—but Rebecca barely said a word.
To him she seemed positively sulky. She kept her eyes on the bowl in front of her and rarely lifted them, even when Caleb addressed her directly.
He watched her as he ate the soup. Privately, Jacob wondered why Caleb hadn’t designated Rebecca as his heir, rather than himself. The old man seemed to think the world of the woman. But however his great-uncle had decided to pass the farm along to him, Jacob was beyond grateful.
Because Jacob wanted a farm...badly. As was customary among the Amish, his younger brother had inherited the family farm. His older brother had managed to purchase his own farm. But as the middle son, Jacob felt rootless and unanchored. Land prices in Ohio were high, property was scarce, and for the past eight years he had worked on his older brother’s land.
This left Jacob in too precarious a financial position to consider courting a wife or starting a family. He felt like he was in limbo, and was growing increasingly frustrated under his older brother’s tutelage and unable to implement some of the farming practices he wanted to try.
So Caleb’s offer to pass on his farm to him was an enormous blessing. For this reason, Jacob was willing to be patient with the old man’s chatter, even as he fought to keep his eyes open.
“You said the farm is fifty acres?” he inserted at one point.
“Ja. About half in forest, the other half in pasture.” Caleb stroked his wispy beard in a thoughtful gesture. “There’s a lot of clay in the soil. It’s hard work plowing for grain. Plowing is one thing I do better than Rebecca, and to be honest I won’t mind turning it over to a younger man.”
“Why do you grow grain if it’s too hard?” inquired Jacob.
Caleb looked startled. “It’s what I’ve always done,” he replied in a puzzled voice.
It was one of the things Jacob hoped to change—how the land responded to farming practices. If the soil had too much clay to plow for grain, perhaps growing grain wasn’t the best thing to do.
But it was too early in his reacquaintance with Caleb to offer criticism or suggest improvements. When the farm was fully under his control, Jacob would be free to implement all the ideas he wanted to try. Ideas, he thought sourly, that his brother Nathan refused to consider, no matter how persuasive Jacob made his arguments.
Through dinner, Rebecca remained silent. He knew she was listening intently to the conversation between him and Caleb, but she said not a word. Her face was expressionless.
After dinner, Rebecca excused herself to wash dishes, then murmured, “Gude nacht,” and disappeared so abruptly that Caleb stared after her.
“The hired hand doesn’t seem to like me,” Jacob remarked to Caleb.
“What on earth’s gotten into her?” murmured Caleb, his expression full of confusion.
“Whatever it is, I’m too tired to worry about it.” Jacob punctuated his words with a huge yawn. “I hope you don’t mind if I go to bed early.”
“Ja sure.” His uncle flapped a hand. “Your bed’s all made up. Sleep as long as you need to.”
“I will, danke.” Jacob leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m very glad to be here, Uncle Caleb. It’s so gut to see you again.”
His uncle blushed and flapped a hand again. “Go on, get some sleep.”
Jacob washed up a bit, then pulled out his nightclothes from one of the suitcases. He was almost too tired to appreciate the sound of crickets coming through the screened window, or the hooting of a great horned owl in a distant tree. He slid between the sheets, murmured his evening prayers and closed his eyes.
The only thought that crossed his mind before he dropped off to sleep was mild annoyance at Rebecca’s blatant antipathy. He didn’t much care. Once Caleb returned to Ohio, as he planned, it might be best for all parties involved if Rebecca could be eased into another job somewhere else.
