Last evening after closing up Farmstead after a busy day of scooping our delicious sheep milk gelato and baking wood-fired pizzas for the holiday visitors, Mom and I were out weeding the green beans. The pig weeds and purslanes were making their presences felt, threatening to crowd out the bean plants if we didn’t come to the rescue.
On our hands and knees with buckets and crates, we carefully pulled out the offenders, leaving happy beans in our wake, standing tall without competition…at least for now. Weeding is not my favorite task, but it’s part and parcel of having a garden where you use composted animal manures as fertilizer and old hay as mulch.
I could have been grumpy, saying that the weeds were an unnecessary evil getting in the way of the plants we wanted, but lately I’ve taken a different attitude. As we worked along, chatting about life, we noted that we weren’t really weeding—we were harvesting crop for the pigs. These weren’t just weeds, they were free cover cop that was growing itself.
As our buckets and crates filled with succulent greens, we carried them from the garden to a waiting pen of young male Kunekune pigs. They must feel like they are the luckiest pigs on the farm, as their current pen is right near the garden gate. We come out of the gate and dump the weeds into their pen. They race over and gobble up the weeds like we’ve just thrown candy at a parade to children. By the time we fill our buckets again, all the previous weeds are gone, and the pigs are ready for more.
This is just one of many, many examples about how everything has value on a regenerative farm—even the things we might feel are troublesome—so long as there is balance. The weeds make great feed for the pigs, so they have value, so long as they don’t get ahead of us and smother out our garden. As long as the garden crops have the upper hand, the balance within that sub-ecosystem is maintained.
As dusk approached, the mosquitoes began to find us, nipping at our faces and whining in our ears. On our farm, we neither spray nor fog for the insects, and the eddies and pools around the natural creek that flows through the property provides plenty of habitat for mosquitos. But it also means that we have a healthy community of dragonflies and birds that love to live here and feast on these pesky biters, as well as hosts of frogs and toads.
I read an article a year or so ago lamenting the disappearance of swallows on farms. Well, they certainly aren’t disappearing here! Considering that over 80% of bird species feed their children insects (regardless of their adult diet), those mosquitoes come in handy not only for the swallows but also the hummingbirds that delight visitors at Farmstead.
The arrival of the mosquito onslaught during weeding signals to us that it’s time to wrap up gardening for the evening and let the birds and the bats have the dusk without us. It’s time for chores anyway. If we didn’t have all the mosquito feasters flying and crawling on the farm, I’m sure the mosquito populations would be absolutely horrendous! We always cheer when our dragonfly friends visit us in the garden, as they help to maintain the balance.
Examples like these abound on our farm, from the ant colonies in the pasture that want to build mounds that include the lower wire of the electric fence that provide great entertainment and dust bath holes for the laying hens as they rotate through. There’s the diverse community of rodents that can wreak havoc on feed bags or garden crops when they become too numerous, but on the other hand their supply of easy pickings keeps the resident weasels busy enough that (knock on wood!) they have been leaving our poultry alone.
The key is seeing the value of all things when they are in balance. Sometimes that means we don’t notice them until they become out of balance, which is when they become a problem. Then we just fixate on the problem and attach blame, followed by the quest for extermination. This leads to a chemical warfare approach to farming that leaves the soils lifeless and barren and is causing collapses in populations of crucial insects (including much-needed pollinators), birds, and amphibians.
Recovering balance is really what’s needed. We can see it in aspects of our own lives and phrases like “too much of a good thing.” We value freedom, but freedom should also be balanced with responsibility. We value love, but love should also be balanced with respect. And we value the liberation of human creativity and actualization, but this too should be balanced with humility and awareness of community.
I’m sure that you can think of many, many more examples as well. This week, take some time to notice the value of things when they are in balance with one another. What you find might surprise you! Awareness is always the first step in the journey. See you down on the farm sometime.
Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com
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