The knife purchased a lifetime ago from a flea market outside Paris from an elfin woman specializing in ancient tools for the farm and la cuisine. - Wooden boxes splayed and overflowing; knives bung hole drillers leather cutters harnesses instruments of discipline. - Unearthed from farm jetsam lay an unusual knife, the handle lifted above the blade like a brick layer’s trowel. - Pour le miel, for the honey she said thrice. With a haughty smile and jaunty scarf and tiny hands elaborating slicing open the honeycomb, ouvrir le nid d'abeille liberating the honey. - Once belonging to a beekeeper in Burgundy, a friend of an uncle, a likely story for an over-eager foreigner with USD. - The carbon blade and turned walnut handle in fine condition from hundreds of years of minding someone else’s beeswax. - Buying a knife before the hive, the mis en place before the honeybees, a life glimpsed before it’s realized, the desire to understand Nature before I’m able to nurture. - #beekeeping #bee #backyardbeekeeping @napavalleybeeco (at At Home in Napa)