Fencerows, Meadows, and Gravel Pits

My earliest childhood memory involves a mustard plant, a pasture field, and a bird’s nest. I remember being transfixed as I studied the three speckled eggs in the miniature grass nest that was delicately balanced between the yellow mustard flowers that were just beneath my nose. The unexpectedness of discovering something new in a familiar place still thrills me at the age of 65 in the same way that it did when I was five years old.

I have a picture in my head of how the world, my world, looked back then. On family car rides, complaints of boredom were always answered with a single sentence. Look at the scenery. We muttered under our breath, but with nothing else vying for our attention in a cramped back seat, we looked at the scenery. The fields in Gratiot County resembled a patchwork quilt, the diverse crops in each field neatly hemmed in by fencerows. Dry bean varieties were woven into my vocabulary – yellow eyes, cranberries, turtles, navys. Wheat, corn, oats, barley, and alfalfa completed the tapestry that went from green to gold with the shift of seasons.

I am struggling to make peace with a world that no longer resembles the one that I grew up in. The patchwork quilt has been discarded in favor of a miles-wide, monotone blanket. Centuries-old trees that provided respite from the midday heat for farmers in the 1960s are seen as something that reduces resources for crops and bulldozed into burn piles. Fencerows are ripped out and ditches plowed shut so that every square inch of land can be made productive. Agriculture in the 21st century. It’s not that I’m adverse to progress. I know changes are necessary to compete in the current markets and that life as a farmer will always be a life of great expense, hard work, and challenges.

Wind turbines and solar panels are visible from my front porch now and they make for a very different view of the eastern skyline. But I understand that diversity in energy production is necessary if we are to avoid being at the mercy of a single source of energy. From a distance, the solar fields seem as though they are in opposition to the world I grew up in, but when I look closer at what’s growing inside the page wire enclosure, I am heartened by everything I see. Bees, butterflies, and songbirds – all thriving in the tall grass beneath the shade of silicon and glass panels that are harvesting sunshine. The pollinators that have been scarce at the edge of this field over the past 20 years are beginning to return in just two years’ time. These wide expanses are undisturbed nesting ground for meadowlarks, bobwhites, and Savannah sparrows. My Merlin Bird ID app brings up a new bird almost weekly.

The 1/4-mile lane that runs from the front of our property to the back is peppered with sections of an old fencerow. The Shagbark hickory trees are the first thing to bloom in the spring, lighting up the winter-weary landscape with their huge, fascinating rose and peach-colored blossoms that seem to burst open overnight. The Canadian goldenrod flourishes here, too, bringing thick swaths of blazing yellow plumes to the landscape at the end of the summer. I never tire of looking for new native perennials that sustain the pollinators that are so necessary to successful food production. The Tatarian honeysuckle, American black current, and Multiflora roses are among my most recently discovered favorites. I’ve walked this lane in every season and watched with wonder as new plants appear that I’ve never seen. My Picture This app has been my constant companion on these walks, satisfying my curiosity whenever I notice an unfamiliar leaf or a vine fighting for occupancy alongside the all too familiar poison ivy.

This summer, the gravel pit at the back of our farm that has always been a habitat for a variety of wildlife has all but dried up. Infrequent rains over the past decade have slowly reduced the average depth from 6 feet to 6 inches. I survey what has become a cluster of glorified mud puddles, remembering how we were never allowed back here as children for fear that we would drown. Now there is barely enough water for the deer and fox to survive. The Painted Turtles that used to sun themselves at the waters’ edge have disappeared. Not only is it a loss of habitat for so many creatures, it is a loss of space for imagination. The 12-spotted Skimmer dragonflies are still calling this place home, at least for now. Watching their black and white wings darting above the still surface of the water feels a little like finding a lost part of my childhood.

As someone who is somewhat travel-averse and more than content staying home, I relish my walks and the possibility of stumbling onto something new among the old and familiar. Change is admittedly hard for me, but changes that bring more diversity back to our surroundings are much easier to accept than the changes that do not.

Recreating those patchwork days of my youth is decidedly more labor intensive than practices that produce perfect lawns and meatball-shaped shrubbery. I’m reminded of this every time an afternoon of gardening begins with me working from a standing position and ends with me using my shovel and hoe as makeshift crutches to get myself up off the ground and back to the house. The work is exhausting and at my most bone-tired, it becomes clear that I won’t be able to continue this level of physical work forever. My shins bear the scars of more weedeater-gone-wrong incidents than I can count, and more than once I’ve ended up gasping in a down draft of 40% vinegar as I’ve attempted to find a viable alternative to glyphosate.

The birds, bees, butterflies and I have a reciprocal relationship that reminds me of playing hide and seek. I bring home native plants, and they continue to find them. It’s an incredible experience to have a hand in creating spaces where native species can thrive. It might be an ordinary thing, but it has never felt ordinary to me. Truly, the wonder never gets old.