One of the the great events of my family farm was the sand mining operations that left two large distinctively different ponds. In the process, it also created a completely different landscape. It was one we fully enjoyed as now the ‘swamp’ had swimming and fishing. The image above captures the vegetation 100 percent created by a bulldozer over 50 years ago in the process of pond construction. The bulldozer in its bulldozer way eliminated all the vegetation by crushing and burying wood of all sizes. The peat was stock piled and the sand was extracted. The peat was put back and leveled as the trucks drove off with their sand. Meanwhile the plants came back slowly while surrounding the moonscape reseeding themselves in great abundance. I use to go there and look down and wonder what will happen to this land. It was not pretty. Today is another story. With the images displayed, you see the red stems of the seedling blueberries in front followed by the white birch near a road and ditch which was installed to drain the swamp and lower the water table. As that dried up, the birch really took hold in the new black muck and moist sand. The white pines are seedlings that were directly planted by my father and his partner in business when we purchased the farm in the 1960’s well before the pond construction. The bulldozers went around them. The seed repository that was surrounding the land quickly filled in the vegetation. For that I was grateful as diversity only increased as time marched on. A small apple seeded in within this framework thanks to a bird that dropped the seeds years ago carried from a nearby neighborhood. It is the exclamation point of ecology at the end of the sentence of evolutionary history in a chapter filled with biological novelties.

One thing about diversity in plants is that it does little good to keep it for yourself. Whether you sell, exchange or give it away, the seeds and plants are restricted with limited effects with no benefits to the humans that need it most. At my farm while I was running the nursery, we decided to create packets of seeds and tubers that people could easily order and obtain in a timely fashion at a low cost. Saying goodbye to my Jerusalem artichokes was sweet with the help of the U.S. Postal Service. The fulfillment aspect of it creates an excitement in that you are finding and creating new types of food plants not found anywhere and putting it directly in use by those receiving their ‘orders’. I tried to find other companies interested but no one seemed positive of its potential. In fact, some found it repulsive. Wherever my little packets went, they are now part of that landscape and could potentially become established beyond the garden. I hope so. One customer told me,” Ken. Compared to anyone else, you have more artichokes than you can shake a stick at. That is nothing to be ashamed of.” I found that very amusing.

Without a question, the white tailed deer is one my favorite animals at the farm. I was always surprised how many people wanted to ‘take care of my deer problem’. I did not know this problem. I only saw a solution. When I first bought my pasture-farm, the original trails through my farm were small in number but hinted at the movement of deer in the area. There was not many of them. As my tree crops grew, so did the legend of the sweet high density fruits at the tree crop farm including the persimmon and pear as well as the nut crops of acorns and chestnuts in the deer community. Word was out. Certainly the deer could provide food for someone. I have nothing against that. But removing a plant or animal never creates a magical utopia. The deer provide a direct benefit for my tree crops and create diversity in their wake. The evidence is over whelming. It is difficult to explain because it turns out that it is highly complex. My wildlife cameras capture them eating different forage and I am always surprised about their diet. Even today there are few deer that reside on my farm full time. Most come from outside other adjoining properties and locations far away. I see where they sleep. I saw the birth of a deer. I saw the death of a deer. Sometimes I think they followed me around for a while because I would look up from planting and there they would be staring. I think deer are naturally curious and so am I. We share that in common.

You do not have to look far to discover beauty in art. The above drawing was done for one of my catalogs by Rob Lawson. It was taken from a slide image shot in the cemetary in Springfield, Illinois. The original is very nice but this drawing says so much more. It shows the structure and intelligence in nature far greater than the image I shot using Kodachrome 64. You can experience the structure of the oak and the function of the acorn because the drawing magnifies it. It is more than just an oak and an acorn.

A farmer nearby told me of this cherry dump on his property. This is where someone had to dispose of fruit quickly that did not have a market and it was dropped at the edge of a field. It can be several tons of fruit. It starts out as a pile of brightly colored fruit smelling like fresh berries before passing the wine stage quickly and then going to a kind of swamp gas aroma. Only the seeds that are not fermented or heated in the compost conditions make it to germination. Those that survive are in the position to grow fast to stay within the canopy. There is no way to recreate this. This sweet cherry-sour cherry forest structure tells a story of waste, reclamation and crop biodiversity. The birds cloak the tops of these trees. The chipmunk colony below benefits as the seeds drop one by one. A neighbor drops by to harvest the fruit for wine. I’m harvesting the fruit for tree seeds. It’s busy at the dump where structure and function meet.