I do not have a personal connection of any magnitude to what goes on in the making of laws or an influencer in any way in my chosen profession or in my normal life. I am a follower. I am the guy who refuses to park in no parking zones even in off hours. I am not sure if it was my Lutheran upbringing that made me this way. Once while visiting my girlfriend (now my wife) who lived about twenty miles away, I would drive through the town of Mattawan, Michigan. It was a very small town in the late 70’s. There were no stop lights and you could drive straight through to the highway. Mattawan has a steep hill on it and it was quite a speed trap going north. I was heading south which was straight uphill. It was just after midnight and someone was going extremely slow in front of me. I needed to pass. It was late. I put my left blinker on and gunned it which put me at thirty miles an hour. As I glanced to my right, I noticed it was a police car. Whoopsie. Well no turning back now. Then I realized another car was in front of him and there was no room to squeeze between the two of them. I continued with my pass. Once again I glanced to my right only to realize it too was a police car. It was too late now. As the lights went off behind me, I immediately tried to figure out what I did wrong. I used my turn signals. One of the officers was very upset for some reason. He wanted to know what sort of shenanigans I was up to. He asked to look into my trunk. Why not? I’m Lutheran. When he opened the trunk, you could see his eyes light up with anger. I had firewood in my trunk. It was a Chevy Nova so not a surprise and thanks to my dad, a huge stack of Scientific Americans and National Geographics. It was like a granola mixture of wood and knowledge back there. Hey, everyone uses their car in Michigan to haul firewood and pertinent scientific literature. Right? The whole thing was going south after the trunk incident. Finally, after some time, they let me go home without a ticket. As time went on the hill in Mattawan became a legend. My customers, my parents, my employees all got pulled over and issued speeding tickets. We would warn people about this on a map we would send people in the mail when they picking up plants from my farm. The laws were not very flexible there and seemed a bit unfair. So it was in Mattawan.

Nature on the other hand has a whole different level of employment of laws. You can violate them all and appear completely immune to violations. You can speed down that hill at a hundred miles an hour and nothing will happen. You may not notice your errors until much later if at all. You can do things that can bring down a whole nation like build an atom bomb or damage the food system in an irreversible way for generations to come like GMO foods. Such is the case for trying to use fragments of scientific knowledge to live more in accord with the laws of nature. It is not like gravity or some other obvious effect. It is much more subtle and beyond our comprehension because it is so complex. Even if we knew all of the laws, we would likely just sit in our house afraid to go outside and violate any law. Yes. We would become super Lutherans. Just poking fun at myself.

In the beginning of my nursery, I used a popular weed killer. I was told it was safe. I was not happy with that answer so I contacted a soil expert who was very familiar with soil remediation and how to reverse bad things that happen to good soil. He suggested a tank mix of humates when I sprayed. The humates are a naturally occurring form of humic acid which is said to increase biological activity in the soil as well as aid in breakdown of materials both organic and non-organic in the soil. It was like a concentrated form of compost tea. I used his form of humates because they were better than the ionized versions. They actually dissolved in water. I was not sure this was true either, but I accepted it as a means to solve a problem I was creating by using this toxic well known weed killer. Even today, I am not sure it worked. But for sure there were other negative consequences of my actions including amphibian deaths, micro nutrient effects and shared toxicity of non-target plants in my plantings. I also became more conscious of my own health too. I finally quit this and found other ways to do the same with less effort and cost. The plants grew even more vigorously with support of these new laws of nature which focused on soil and plant health. Everything benefited and thrived including me.

Every now and then I have the thought, how could I be so stupid not to see this? Well I didn’t see it. That was the issue, ignorance. But then is ignorance an excuse for violating the law? No. But then I am not going to buy a red Ferrarri and head north at hundred miles an hour through the town of Mattawan flipping the bird to the police officers at the bottom of the hill hoping I don’t get pulled over just to see what happens. I know those laws.

Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus