Hope Springs Eternal

A Million and One Penguins

Two of our grandchildren stayed with us last week, and even though they are definitely the sweetest, best-behaved children on the planet, they completely wore us out. And for me anyway, the more tired I got, the less patient I became - especially when it came to the youngest one’s fairly predictable melt downs. I realize she is only 5, and I totally understand the allure of a well-executed crying jag, but I grew weary, and by week’s end, I was a wee bit testy. On Friday, in the midst of an epic fuss about how she wanted the red bowl (which her older brother was eating out of and had no intention of giving up), I handed her the green bowl which I had cleverly labeled “This bowl is actually red.” Incensed and gaining a second wind of unhappiness, she bellowed even more emphatically; “I want the RED bowl – The REAL red bowl!” Exasperated I exclaimed in response “and I want a million penguins, but we don’t always get what we want!!!” Startled, she caught her breath and asked. “What would you do with a million penguins?” Afraid that the slightest hesitation on my part might allow the melt down to resume, I launched into a breathless monologue about the day in the life of the average penguin rancher. To begin with, I told her, there are no part time penguin ranchers because you need a minimum of a million penguins or they start getting lonely - really lonely. And everyone knows there’s nothing sadder than a really lonely penguin. Sheep just need a couple of other sheep around them to feel safe in the world, and pigs just need one other pig to be completely happy - but penguins need lots and lots of company. And obviously, if you have a lot of penguins, you have a lot of work. Half your day is spent rushing from nest to nest collecting, monitoring, and then sitting on all the eggs that are about to hatch, but which still need to be sat upon. And then once the chicks do hatch, you have to waddle about and carry them on your feet – waddling and balancing is a whole lot harder than you’d think. It takes a lot of practice - but that’s the good thing about having a million penguins, you learn quickly. The very worst part of being a penguin rancher though, is having to constantly dive into the frigid ocean to find a fish small enough that you can feed to the chicks. And catching the little buggers is not an easy task. You have to swim around with your mouth wide open hoping the perfect fish swims in. It’s not like you can use a net or a pole. Baby penguins only like mouth-caught fish. They are very particular about that because not unlike human babies and 5 year olds – they are very hard to please. And then changing the subject abruptly I told her a kind of long-winded story about my penguin friend Donovan who was indeed very hard to please, but who eventually became a very successful airline pilot. I finally ran out of steam just about the time she finished her cereal and announced - “I’m going to the bathroom now” (I’m paraphrasing here) and as she was leaving, she informed me that the bowl was not actually red, the cereal was way too mushy, and my story wasn’t very good. Thanks for reading Clatter Ridge Farm! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clatterridgefarm.substack.com [https://clatterridgefarm.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Precisely What We Need

Maybe it’s because I’m an “Adult Child of an Engineer” that I am constantly contemplating how to redesign things that work okay - but could be better. The human body is one of those things that I often think falls way short of perfection. (And the older I get, the shorter it falls.) For instance, I’ve often wondered why my arms couldn’t be just a little bit longer, so I could reach and scratch the middle of my back. I suspect that evolution determined long ago that people who sought the company of others, if for no other reason than to get their backs scratched, stayed together and for survival purposes at least, we really are better off together. Another redesign I would vote for would be to completely do away with fingernails. Other than peeling the occasional orange, I see no use for them and for those of us that work in the soil with our hands, it’s a constant annoyance trying to keep them clean. But maybe always having a small dose of healthy soil under their nails helps explain why kids who grow up on farms tend to be much healthier than the population at large. In fact, 70% of antibiotics in use today originate from soil bacteria. Unfortunately, the overuse of these antibiotics, especially in animal feed, has created antibiotic-resistant “super bugs”. In 2018, in a race against time to find new antibiotics, the National Institute of Health (NIH) funded a research program which collected 2,000 soil samples from across the country. Researchers discovered in many of those soil samples, a new class of antibiotics called “malacidins.” Happily, malacidins are very successful at wiping out many drug-resistant “super bugs,” including the dreaded and deadly MRSA infection. So maybe once again, it’s the big picture of microscopic organisms that we are missing. Maybe by working with the earth and in essence scratching its back while tending its soil, the earth will watch out for ours by providing us with precisely what we need. Thanks for reading Clatter Ridge Farm! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clatterridgefarm.substack.com [https://clatterridgefarm.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

I Love Hard Work

Anytime I’m near a honeybee hive, I linger. I can’t seem to help it. Even though my “to do” list is as long as any honeybee’s, I just stand there and gawk. Perhaps it’s the 40 years I’ve spent managing construction sites that has me so enamored. There is no one in charge of the hive, but everything gets done. There are no bees leaning on shovels, drinking coffee, or chatting on their cell phones. The vast majority of the bees in the hive will only live a few weeks - they quite literally work themselves to death. At the hive entrance, there is always an endless torrent of bees coming and going. Most of them are foragers, collecting everything the hive needs to thrive (pollen, nectar, propolis, water). When they return, they are met by “guard bees”. If the guards don’t recognize the smell of an incoming bee – it is either chased away or killed. Once safely past security, the foragers are greeted by specialized worker bees inside the hive that help them unpack their bounty. Pollen is the only source of protein the hive gets and is vital as a food source. Each forager bee will visit only one type of flower on any given foraging journey, and when they return their pollen sacks range in distinct colors from bright yellow, pink or a deep amber color depending on which type of flower they visited. “Nurse bees”, inside the hive, mix the pollen with honey and their enzyme rich saliva to make fermented “bee bread”. The bread is then fed to all the bees in the hive, and any surplus is stored in empty cells for future use. The nurse bees consume more than their share of the bread and in turn produce royal jelly which is fed to developing larvae and the queen. The larvae are fed the jelly for the first 3 days of their life - the queen is fed jelly throughout her life. The foraging bees are fed last and if there isn’t enough left over to feed them their full ration, the foragers get the message that they need to work harder to gather more pollen for the hive. (FYI- this kind of “feedback loop” would NOT work well with me.) Nectar is transferred from the foraging bee to worker bees and the enzymes it is exposed to in the process turns it into diluted honey. Young bees are in charge of storing the watery honey in a comb and fanning it with their wings to evaporate the excess moisture. Once it is the right consistency, they cap the cell with wax. Tree resin is brought back to the hive, mixed with honey and saliva to create propolis. The building crew inside the hive uses the propolis to cover the bottom of an empty cell before the queen lays an egg in it. They also use it to fill in small cracks in the hive, and somewhat ominously, it is also used to encapsulate any intruder that was killed by the guard bees but is too heavy to remove. Propolis is what gives beeswax that wonderful aroma. Without it, the wax has no scent. Water is as essential to bees as it is to humans. Water collector bees work tirelessly bringing water into the hive. The water is used to make bee bread, royal jelly, and to reconstitute stored honey. On hot days it is also sprayed over the surface of empty cells while several thousand young worker bees flap their wings creating a wing powered cooling system not unlike our own air-conditioning systems. By human standards, I’m a pretty industrious being, but I’m sure bees consider me a total slouch. Every time they see me, there I am leaning on a shovel, just watching them. For Christmas, they’ll probably get me a t-shirt that says “I love hard work- I could sit and watch it all day.” Thanks for reading Clatter Ridge Farm! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clatterridgefarm.substack.com [https://clatterridgefarm.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Stacking Hay

I was thinking, that if I was ever told I only had one hour to live, but I could spend it doing anything I wanted, I’d choose stacking 400 bales of hay in our hay loft, on a 97-degree day – because that hour would last an eternity. Normally we wait until the weather turns cooler to get the hay in, but we were worried that the price is going to skyrocket again this year, so we went ahead and ordered it. It was delivered, of course, on what turned out to be one of the hottest days of the year. When the truck arrives, we put our hay “elevator” on the bed of the truck where the driver can load the bales onto the conveyor that transports them up to the loft, where I stand waiting to unload them. The fifty-pound bales come quickly, one after another, and it’s always a struggle just to keep up. I grab each bale as soon as it comes within reach, but before it falls off the end of the conveyor, either dropping back down to the ground - or worse yet, derailing the rest of the load. Once I’ve successfully grabbed the bale, I throw it to the person doing the stacking. Each bale lands with a decisive “thunk”. The interminable mechanical clacking of the hay elevator reminds me incessantly that I forgot to tighten the chain - and the screeching of the gear cogs lets everyone know I also forgot to oil the gears. Unsuccessfully, I try to distract myself by making up lyrics that go with the screech, the clack and the thunk. Here’s the best I could do: The screech of the cog the clack of the chain the thunk of the bale... The screech of the cog the clack of the chain the thunk of the bale... The screech of the cog... I know- it needs a little work. Even in cooler weather it’s a monumental chore to get the hay in. Last year, I was the one stacking the bales, and even though it was a crisp November morning I quickly overheated so I removed my sweatshirt and hung it up inside the loft - promptly forgetting about it until the last bale was unloaded and I started cooling off again. Calculating that the sweatshirt was, at that point, buried about 400 bales in, and we only use 5 bales a day, I probably wouldn’t see it again until sometime in late February. I was extremely pleased, however, to discover that my car keys were not in the sweatshirt pocket, which in itself would have necessitated making the hard choice between re-stacking the 400 bales to retrieve them, or trying to convince Anne it was time to buy a new truck.. Thanks for reading Clatter Ridge Farm! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clatterridgefarm.substack.com [https://clatterridgefarm.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

The Gift of Clover

When our sheep first started grazing at Hill-Stead, the pasture consisted of multiflora rose, a few saplings and poison ivy. The brambles were so dense the sheep’s wool would frequently get hopelessly tangled up in the thorns and they’d be completely unable to extricate themselves. I’d rescue them by cutting one thorny branch at a time until they were finally able to yank themselves free – inevitably trailing a branch of thorns which would shred my fingers as they bolted away. Despite its heavenly fragrance, I grew to hate multiflora rose with a passion. We mowed the roses with our “brush hog” and when they tried to regrow, the sheep grazed them down again, and again. After a couple years, the multiflora rose disappeared, but unfortunately, under those massive bushes was bare ground which quickly filled in with poison ivy. After a few more seasons of grazing, that too has pretty much disappeared and has been replaced by a wonderfully tasty assortment of grasses (according to the sheep). This spring, much to our great pleasure, we are beginning to see various clovers starting to grow. I have come to truly love clover if for no other reason than it is a very reliable and abundant source of nectar for honeybees. White Clover blooms early and persists when most other nectar sources wither from the heat. The fact that bees depend on clover is reason enough for me to welcome it to our fields, but there is more – much more! As a proud member of the legume family, clover is high in protein, which our sheep, on their strict vegan diet, have been otherwise lacking. From now on, our flock will benefit greatly from having a healthy dose of clover in every mouthful of grass. And they clearly love it. If the fact that the bees can depend on it, and our sheep love it, isn’t enough, there’s even more! Clover has the ability to draw nitrogen out of thin air and add it to the soil. If that’s not pure magic, I’m not sure what is. It’s a process called nitrogen fixation and scientifically it’s been well studied and understood - but to me it’s simply “a gift”. A well-grazed pasture doesn’t ever need chemical fertilizers. The clover adds enough nitrogen to the soil to encourage all the grasses around it to thrive. I don’t particularly care if our clover has three-leaves or four – I always feel incredibly lucky whenever I see it. Four leaf clovers in our pasture! Thanks for reading Clatter Ridge Farm! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clatterridgefarm.substack.com [https://clatterridgefarm.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]