Category Wildlife
Nails wish they were this tough
On the 9th of November I had to stop over at the shop by the processing tower where I work. This is a tall building full of equipment to separate soybean seeds from plant debris, insect parts, and other non-seed items. Pretty industrial. Concrete and steal all around. Not the sort of environment one imagines […]
A turkey of a post
Too many things on my plate right now. But I do have a picture of a Tom and two hen turkeys. They are too wrapped up in each other to notice someone stop to take their picture.
Pests parsimoniously, and persistently purloining plenty…
Not all the biodiversity on the farm is welcome right there on the farm. There is space for the weedy species over yonder by the ditch. Herbivorous insects, and in particular those choosing to chew our crops could get along nicely by the edge of the wood. White tailed deer could mosey down to the […]
Farm music
Early of a morning, out in the fields, Mother Nature fills the quiet with a music of her own. Birdsong if you’re lucky, crickets otherwise. Sometime you might hear the patter of raindrops on the leaves, the pleating of a lamb, the grunting of a hog, or the crowing of a rooster. If you’d rather […]
The Poor Deer
Farming is a fascinating enterprise. We need food to survive, and as omnivores our food pallet is fairly extensive. If it’s not poisonous, make it a meal. Farming allows us to be selective in what we choose to consume. Farming also allows us to limit our footprint… though with over seven billion of us, the […]
Earth day 2020 – Relative size
Earth Day. If I were to pretend to be the Earth, and I realized these pesky humans running all about the place had actually planned to set aside a day for me – well, what would it mean to me? What sort of happiness might it evoke? Or should it cause me pain, knowing that […]
Bravely Buzzing Big Brother Bee’s Bug Biodiversity Boudoir *
Over the last year we (the GP staff) have written about bees on several occasions. And you may be forgiven if you’d thought we’d run through the subject. I thought so. Now this story comes along, and we couldn’t resist. In the course of evaluating soybean germplasm we rely heavily on an instrument (NIRT – […]
Dropping the ball
Philosophical reflection on New Years and a New Decade… how might we all do better
Bee ware
What ware would a bee wear if a bee could wear ware? A simple riff on the old groundhog question?* Ahh, not so fast. Apparently some Bavarians were wearing bee ware last Spring. And at least for their political aspirations – it worked. In Munich a petition was circulated last winter and spring to make sweeping […]
Leave them bee
As the summer of 2019 slows and the fall approaches there are a few critter notes to share. The Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica) were not too bad this year. Not absent, but not obnoxiously present either. I’m confident we’ll fall far short of the 5 gallons of beetle carcasses we collected a couple years ago. […]
Gulliver's Pulse 
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