Overwintering Monarch Butterflies

On February 26, we made a special pilgrimage – to see the over-wintering Monarch butterflies high in the mountains of Michoacan, Mexico. The day began serenely at the lovely Agua Blanca canyon-side spa inn in Jungapeo, at an elevation of 4,850 feet above sea level. Gundi started her morning with a long swim in the mineral-rich pool waters, which she says took away the aches and pains of years. In Chris and Allan’s rented Jeep we climbed 5,000 feet via the town of Angangueo to the butterfly-viewing base at El Rosario. This is part of a 56,000-hectare sanctuary for the mariposas monarcas (of which the butterflies only inhabit a fraction), declared a Biosphere Reserve in 1980 and a World Heritage Site in 2008.  From here, it was an hour’s steep climb in thin air another few hundred feet to close to the summit at over 10,000 feet. It is here that millions of monarchs cluster high in the oyamel fir trees, making forays in the sunshine to find water and food from the plentiful forest flowers. On mostly cloudy mornings such as we experienced, the butterflies are lethargic in starting their day, so action on the wing was tempered. Nonetheless, the sight of so many monarchs freely finding their ancestral annual winter home was a mesmerizing one to behold.  With a hundred or so fellow “pilgrims” watching on quietly in awe, this was a profound  and moving spiritual experience, with Nature playing out for a whole species. 

Monarch butterflies are severely threatened by a number of challenges, all of which are brought on by humanity’s greed and over-reach. Their habitat across their summer feeding and breeding grounds in Canada and the United States, their migration route to the southern states and Mexico, and their over-wintering forests all need ongoing vigilant protection from toxic pesticides, desert-like monocultures, development, mining, and logging in order for their current numbers to be sustained and increased. They are highly dependent on the milkweed with which they have a symbiotic relationship across these vast territories. Our relationship with them has to be symbiotic too, as they pollinate wild flowers, bring us beauty and joy, and as we continue efforts to conserve them as a fellow species. They need us as we need them.

Trees and Turbines

Palm trees in Columbia

Wind turbines in the Kendal Hills, southern Ontario

Pondering peaks

Photo of two caribou bulls with locked horns, from http://trondekheritage.com/our-places/

(First posted at www.highupintherollinghills.blogspot.com January 3, 2014)

As another year slides into the past and a new one challenges me in my winter cocoon to shape up and be more energetic, efficient and productive than ever, the world we inhabit remains challenged on many fronts. I am reminded on a passage from my book, High Up in the Rolling Hills:

“I ponder whether I have reached the maximum rate of return after which returns enter a terminal decline—peak life? Have living standards for many of us reached peak abundance? Is the big bubble about to burst? My generation has certainly borrowed much from the future and from the planet. The debts to be repaid are astronomical, and it is certain that they cannot be fully retired, at least at current punitive interest rates and current accelerated rates of destruction. Governments and mega-corporations—now in the developing world as well as the developed—plough through finite natural resources like there is no tomorrow.

Intensified industrial technologies have been aggravating unintended consequences for the ecosystem: air pollution, nuclear waste, radiation contamination, extreme weather events, desertification, acidification of the oceans, ravaging of fossil-fuel reserves, poisoning and depletion of soils and farmland, loss of flora and fauna habitat (and biodiversity). With these upheavals and losses go peak food, peak soils, peak health. It is simply not feasible for us to maintain our general well-being by turning our backs on the natural world. The truly wondrous biodiversity and plenty that recent generations inherited in short order by feverish greed in the quest for short-term gain. Long gone are those vast herds of bison roaming the wide-open North American grasslands, great auks patrolling the seas and passenger pigeons swarming in the skies. Wild salmon, cod, whales, sharks and turtles are disappearing from the oceans. Domesticated and farmed surrogates of wild creatures are no real substitute. With the animals and plants goes the heritage of ancient cultures, languages and whole ways of life that had been passed down over millennia. Which species is next to be rendered extinct by this orgy of wastefulness? The caribou? The hippopotamus? The rhinoceros? The elephant? The panda? The gorilla? The tiger? The polar bear? The penguin? The whale? The tuna? The butterflies? The bees? The frogs? All of the above?

"Humans have been killing other animals and slaughtering our own kind for as long as we have stood upright. But only in the last half century or so have we developed the capacity to extinguish not merely a species or a tribe, but whole floras and faunas. With the burning of fossil fuels, the splitting of atoms, the synthesizing of chemicals unknown in nature, the genetic engineering of organisms, and the headlong growth of our own population, we are disrupting all the life-sustaining processes on Earth. As our actions throw into disarray the conditions that have nurtured humankind for hundreds of thousands of years, what conditions will replace them?" (Scott Russell Sanders, Buffalo Eddy)

What are we learning from the tsunamis, the earthquakes, the volcanoes, the floods, the droughts, the tornadoes, the typhoons, the hurricanes? We should react to these extreme workings of nature with some humility and a determination to rebuild and adapt. When we witness melting glaciers, ice sheets and polar caps; massive oil spills; radiation leaks from damaged nuclear plants; and extreme weather volatility across the planet, we would be wise to take a hard look at our world, size up the gravity of the situation and set out systems to mitigate the severity of the threats. As we witness the poisoning of our bodies and the poisoning of our planet’s lands and oceans, it only makes sense to make substantive changes to the way we live our lives. Our governments, drowning in debt and consistently sucked in by unrestrained multinational corporations, are driving us not away from but into the storm dragging us in a downward spiral. In tandem, governments and corporations lead us toward the brink, just as the herders led the buffaloes to the cliff to jump to their fate.”

The Rolling English Road

Photo from http://www.flickriver.com/places/United+Kingdom/England/Egton+Grange/

G. K. Chesterton was a fascinating, erudite social critic who espoused a more just political system called Distributism, which has often been described in opposition to both socialism and capitalism, which distributists see as equally flawed and exploitative. He also had a joyous sense of humour as the following testament to the ways of old attests:

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,

And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;

A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread

The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,

And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;

But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed

To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,

Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,

The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run

Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?

The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,

But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.

God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear

The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,

Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,

But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,

And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;

For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,

Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

Economists Said the Market Would Save the Planet. It Didn't.

Economists Said the Market Would Save the Planet. It Didn't.

Fork the Economy

Fork the Economy

To Farm or Not to Farm?

A reminder of sultry summer in the fields at Rolling Hills Organics

(First posted August 6, 2014)

To farm or not to farm? For me, there is only one answer to this existential conundrum – a hearty affirmative. As an organic market grower, I would be bereft if I were not to be able to farm. I dread the day when my bones ache so much and my back is stooped to such an extent that I shall have to surrender my body to the waste heap and give up this farming life.

Yes, farming has its challenges – the trying weathers with their spikes and extremes, the bugs, the pests that gnaw away at the leaves, the weeds that grow faster and bolder than the sown plants,  the fatigue, the various downsides that Montana describes, but…

There is nothing in this world that I would rather make a livelihood from, nothing I would rather be doing, dreaming about, planning, experimenting on, learning about, innovating with, or even getting wrong, not perfecting. Each season always throws up something new – new crops, new failures, new shortages, new over-abundances, new challenges, and fresh successes, fresh insights, fresh joys.

What could outdo the pride and joy gained from seeing seeds germinate, planting out rows of transplants, dripping with the early morning dew, watching the red sun come up over the horizon hills, harvesting the fragrant blooming lavender and the strong garlic bulbs, looking back from the tractor as the earthy soil folds over with the furrow plow, being in tune with the weathers and seasons, inhaling drafts of fresh country air, feeling the glow of robust good health, interacting with cheery regular and loyal customers, coming home from market sold out of produce again, tasting the bounty, falling into bed and deep sleep as head hits the pillow? Only by sinking hands into soil, out in the fields, in the glorious landscapes we steward – only by farming – can we do all of this. To me, farming is a learned trade; as with everything, proficiency comes with practice. And yet, it is also a romance, a passion, a marriage, and a full-time commitment. There is occasional heartbreak, but there is endless beauty. As in life in general, we do it for the love.

So, it’s off to farm I go. Let’s keep on encouraging and inspiring fresh, new, young farmers, and count our blessings.