We're not the only farmers in the garden...

So I've been reading a bit of Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan here on the farm. One of Pollan's main points is that while we humans arrogantly like to think of ourselves as in charge of the little plots of land we tend, in reality the plants have more of a say than we give them credit for. That is, he talks about the ways in which plants will "use" animals, such as humans, to carry their seeds for them far and wide, and will develop traits that those animals desire in order to be fruitful and multiply. To snag human help, for example, corn gets big and fat, fruit gets sweeter, etc., etc. In this sense, plants domesticate us similarly to the way we domesticate them. We are both subject and object when we play with our food.

In light of this, I've been thinking about the many ways that we are not in charge of our gardens, and one such project this week has illuminated this truism for me. In doing some aphid control on our sunflowers, it was revealed to me that we are in fact not the only farmers working in the fields. Aphids, as it turns out, are sometimes called "ant cows" because of the way some species of ants will farm them. These ants "milk" the aphids for the honeydew they produce by stroking them with their antennae. Some ants will even gather aphid eggs and store them over winter, then carry the newly hatched bugs back to the plants in the spring. The

y will fight off aphid predators, and queen ants will even carry aphid eggs with them when starting a new colony, in much the way that Europeans carried prized seeds with them when colonizing the Americas.

This to me is absolutely fascinating. I was so captivated by this process that I took time to snap a few pictures while I was pruning the more infested sunflower leaves from our house garden. Check it out:

Those little green bugs you see are the aphids. The top picture is one of my faves because you can see the "milking" in action. So cool! Also, the other bug you see in the top-left of the second picture is a young ladybug. If you have aphids in your garden, ladybugs are your best friends. Unlike the ants which are the farmers in this food web, ladybugs are the hunters. When they feed on the aphids, they kill them (the ants don't kill when they suck the honeydew), so they help get these "pests" out of your garden before they suck the juices out of all your plants and deposit toxic saliva all over them. Here's a nice close-up of one of these young ladies:

Some lessons to take from all this: While we think of farming as something peculiarly human, something that sets us apart from the "less evolved" creations, it is in actuality an act shared with a creature as small and "simple" as an ant (and likely countless others, if we took the time to notice). Yet another example of how we ain't so special after all.

Second, as an aside, is the question of "good" or "bad" creatures in the garden. We tend to think of corn as good and pigweed as bad, ladybugs as good and aphids as bad. But its all a matter of perspective. Ladybugs, after all, are not very good for aphids, and aphids are wonderful for ants and ladybugs. And in the case of weeds it becomes even more blurry. Pigweed is in fact edible (its a form of wild amaranth), but we pull it out without hesitating because we prefer the taste of cultivated veggies. Neither are good or bad. They're just plants.

Third, and perhaps most important, is that when we plant a garden, it really isn't our garden. We may be planting the seeds and encouraging some plants to grow while killing others, but really we are just assisting in the creation of an ecosystem that quickly leaves our control (Pollan might argue that even planting the seeds is out of our control -- we are merely being manipulated by various species of plants who wish to be propagated). On the underside of each sunflower leaf that I plucked was an entire food web, consisting of aphids in all stages of life, ladybugs in various stages as well, and hungry ants working just as hard as we are to keep a steady food supply. This is as much their farm as it is ours. Its really quite humbling.

Of course, recognizing that we all equally own -- or equally do not own -- this plot of land isn't gonna keep me from sending those ants and aphids packing. Girl's gotta eat, after all.

Desert Solitaire

So, its been a long time since I have been very inspired to write, let alone write a blog. But more and more I've been feeling the need to document what's been going on inside and outside of me, and so I've decided to revamp my blog and start writing again. So welcome to the Farm Road -- a road I'm happy to share with anyone who cares to walk with me a while.

Quite a bit has happened since my last post, and I won't attempt to share all of it. Currently I'm WWOOFing at a glorious little farm in Southern Utah called the Red House Farm, and I anticipate most of my writing in the coming months will also reside in wonderful Boulder Town. But for now, I'd like to share a bit of writing I did while hitchhiking here a few weeks ago. To set the scene: I left Heart's Desire Homestead in California on a sunny Sunday afternoon, and departed on a week-and-a-half long hitching trip across Nevada and Utah, taking mostly Highway 50 -- "the loneliest road in America." Here is a peak at what transpired during this journey:

6.25.10

I feel compelled this morning to try and share some of the magic of hitchhiking, the magic of solitary travel, and the magic of the desert.

I've been on the road since last Sunday, when I left Redwood Valley, the beautiful wonderful place I called home for the past half-year or so. I'd been stationary for so long that I was pretty nervous venturing out into the great unknown, but I got my road legs back real fast and have been riding that high ever since. There are many stories, big and small, packed into the past seven days, and to try and tell them all with whatever energy and time I have now would do them a disservice. Instead, I'll offer up an brief sketch of how the road has unfolded behind me.

Day 1: hitched from Redwood Valley to Nevada City, CA in three rides. David, the self-described vinyl hustler, with his two kids heading down to Fresno to visit gramma. Brandon, freshly moved to Colusa to become an apprentice of sorts to the DA ("there are a lot of crazies out here," he says, and he punctuates the conversation frequently by jokingly calling me one of them). Finally, Tom, a 66 year-old retired drawbridge operator out for a solo drive on father's day. Beautiful people, all of them, who went out of their way to get me further down the road then they had originally planned on going. I arrive in Nevada City around 4:00 to the sounds of a hundred women speeding down Broad St on bicycles, and meet up with Juniper, who takes me back to the homebase of the Living Lands Agrarian Network -- an awesome farm project that installs gardens in people's backyards, where she's been working for the past few months. Turns out that Ed Buryn is the owner of the land (!), author of Vagabonding in America (sweet travel book he wrote back in the 60s). I get to meet him and he gives me a big hug when he hears that I read his book. :)

I spend the next few days living and helping out at Living Lands, exploring Nevada City and celebrating Solstice by scrambling naked around the wild Yuba River. After my time there was up, I head to Lake Tahoe. One of the more bizarre landscapes I've been to -- the only place i've been where you can sit on a sandy beach 6000 miles above sea level under the watchful eyes of snow-covered mountain peaks. Walking along the beach I find a coupon for a free psychic reading, which I of course take full advanatge of when I head back into town, where Tanya the psychic tells me (among other things) that I'm due to wander for another 4 years, at which point I will settle in the desert. Hmmm...

So desert it is, after a brief stop at a bluegrass festival filled with banjos and fiddles and too much whiskey, I head down the east side of the Sierra Nevada into the hot desert sun. In the interest of time, I won't bore you with the details of this leg of the journey, other than to tell you about my adventures in Fallon last night. I had originally intended to make it all the way to Middlegate, recommended to me by my fellow vagabonder Skippy. But plans changed, as plans are wont to do, when I was picked up in Silver Springs by a young man named John in white '68 Chevy truck, one of the loudest vehicles I've ever been inside. We chat for a bit and get along nice, so he asks if I want to join him and his friends down at the river for some beers. I, of course, accept his offer.

I don't drink that much, since I'm still recovering from the whiskey the night before, but its great fun to watch these folks get progressively more sloppy. I kick Sarah's butt at air hockey, and lose miserably at pool, but my favorite game of the night was the jukebox. The 90s rock, CCR ("best band of all time," says John), and Tracy Chapman were some crowd pleasers.

After taking a whirl through the Jack In the Box drivethru (again, John pays for my mozzarella sticks like a true gentleman), they decide its a good idea to hit up the other bar in town. Bad idea. Sarah's ex-boyfriend is there, and we're not in the bar for more than 5 minutes when he comes barreling down at Ernie and tries to sucker punch him while he isn't looking. Chaos ensues, but the fight is a relatively harmless one -- nobody bleeds or gets bruised, but we do get kicked out of the bar pretty fast. The night is officially over.

I head back to the hotel room that John was nice enough to get for me and I sleep on a real bed for the first time in a long time.

6.26.10 -- Fallon, NV

The wheel of my suitcase chirps incessantly as I walk through the front of the Safeway grocery store. People stop and stare as I squeak past the checkout lanes. I smile and nod, meet their eyes. A few return the gesture of kindness, others look away quickly. Behind my smile, I'm a bit worried about the wheel. My mobility, given the inordinate amount of STUFF I have, depends in large part on my ability to pull this schoolbus yellow plastic box behind me. Granted, I haven't had to walk much -- being a woman hitchhiking gets me more rides than I could possibly need, and knowing the tips and tricks of a successful hitch (where to stand, what sign to hold, etc.) ensures that I can hang out in one spot and be guaranteed a ride within the hour.

Today might be different, though. I stayed last night at the Super 8 motel, courtesy of my last ride, John, and its at least a mile to the edge of town. Hitching in the midst of intersections and traffic lights can be tricky. I'll try it, but I prepare myself for the half-hour-plus walk under the high noon desert sun just in case.

My relationship with food has been an odd one these past days. I've not eaten a proper meal once in that time, instead consuming the random chunk of bread and fistful of grapes; whatever I happen to have in my food bag lovingly purchased with stamps while in Nevada City, CA. Thinking I need sustenance, I buy a mess of a Safeway "sandwich" that now sits half-eaten in front of me, its innards spilling out onto the oily wrapper like roadkill freshly hit. I can't imagine eating the rest of it -- but why not? All logic says I should be starving. Pure nerves and adrenaline, I muse, must be what I'm running on. I try to force a few more bites down -- this think won't travel well and I spent $5 of my food stamps on it. Can't let it go to waste.

I linger in the Safeway, basking in the artificial cool of civilization, not wanting to face the heat of the day. I imagine business here booms in the summer months, as heat-dazed consumers linger in each aisle, every moment spent pondering which kind of bottled water to buy meaning one less moment bathing in sweat.

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This sums up only about half of my southwestern hitching adventure, and there's lots I'd like to share about what transpired after that. But that's for another day, my friends. For now, suffice it to say I survived the loneliest road and made it safe and sound to Southern Utah, probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Rest assured, I've fallen in love with this little community and will be expressing that love through writing very soon. Until then...

Have a Good Everything,
S