It’s Pride Month!!!
Over here at Groennfell Meadery, we sort of celebrate Pride like most people celebrate Christmas. We have a whole bunch of activities that we smatter throughout the month, we have special food, drinks, music, movies… the works!
As a proudly queer-owned company, we use this month as an opportunity to not only show our own pride, but to thank and honor those who came before and to take time to invite the next generation to the feast. We wrote a lot more about that last year, which you can read here.
This year, we thought we’d tell you a little bit about how we, personally, celebrate.
It all starts on June 1, which, of course, is co-founder Ricky the Meadmaker's birthday. While the root of Pride is in the dark moment in our history known as Stonewall, which happened in June of 1969, it is convenient that in the 70s folks decided to commemorate the riots with a peaceful celebration that we now all know and love! Back when we had the Mead Hall, we’d often do special drinks and a special menu. Now Ricky tries to cook something special for his family and the staff. Maybe next year we’ll finally be able to throw an event again!
This year, we’ll also start shipping Bee Proud right at the start of the month! You’ve probably seen our art contest and the design from our fabulous winner Brandi Slovinsky.
What about the music? There’s a lot of Foxy Shazam. Also Pentatonix and Daft Punk, but Foxy Shazam is sorta the soundtrack for the month.
Movies? The one and only class that co-founders (and spouses) Kelly and Ricky ever took together was Queer Cinema at Middlebury College (there’s a weird piece of trivia for you), so they have a pretty wide range of films available for the company to borrow. En Kort, En Long starring none other than Mads Mikkelsen and given the odd English title of Shake It All About marks an interesting turning point in the history of cinema and is worth watching if you haven’t seen it.
For an excruciatingly long history of the arc of queer individuals appearing in films, please ask Ricky or Kelly about it at a cocktail party.
Since Midsummer falls in the middle of Pride month (which is considerate of… ancient people? The angle of the Earth? Time itself?), many of our foods and rituals tend to get blended as the month progresses.
Then, at last, Pride month comes to an end. But wait, we’re in Vermont!
For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to us, Vermont Pride is in September! So we take a few months to tend to our gardens and drink ice cold cocktails, then it’s more Foxy Shazam!
