Taproot Garden: Nature’s Call for Respect and Responsibility

Nature.

It is…well…so natural. It is the "what is" of all that surrounds us. As essential as it is precious, nature has nonetheless gotten short shrift in recent years — indeed, recent decades — by we "superior beings" who presume to know better and routinely manipulate it to serve our higher priorities. Nature, we have deduced, is simply one more benign raw material for us to variously plunder, ignore or bend to our will. "Respect" is, of course, conspicuously absent from that characterization, as is any recognition of the simple fact that we are necessarily but one constituent part of it.

Since arriving on this farmstead almost 7 years ago we have tried to maintain a different character of relationship with this small expression of the nature of which we are a part. We have resisted quick interventions on the land until gaining some observational experience with it so that whatever we do is more evocative than coercive. We have sought to emulate its patterns and cooperate with its contours rather than strong arm it into the shapes and behaviors we might imagine or even prefer.

But it isn't always easy. There is a ruthlessness to weather patterns, a relentlessness to growth, and a Darwinian cruelty to the natural prunings, predations, and witherings.

I've tried to be philosophical about it. Nature is, indeed, "red in tooth and claw" as the poet observed. When the worms attack the apples or the bugs destroy the squash or the storm breaks the fruit-laden branch or a chicken dies in the coop I have swallowed hard, taken a deep breath and reminded myself that "this is nature," right along with the blossom, the harvest, the waving prairie grasses in the sunset, and the eggs. But I am coming to realize there is an element of "cop out" in my repeated refrain.

Gravity is surely a fundamental element of nature, but when I clumsily step off a curb and twist my ankle I don't hear myself cursing nature. When two cars collide at an intersection, playing out certain loud and tragic laws of physics, no one says, "well, that's nature." No, we openly weep and think what might have happened differently.

And so it is that we live and thrive here in the midst of — indeed, as part of — nature, constantly discerning how best we can effectively, respectfully and responsibly play our part. We honor the patterns and the forces, but we don't simply acquiesce. Yes, it is the nature of rabbits to eat leafy green things, but that doesn't stop me from surrounding the garden with preventive fencing. Yes, in a perfect world rain would satisfy the thirst of all our fruit and nut trees, but just in case nature's watering schedule doesn't match our needs I have assembled an irrigation system to fill in the dry spells.

And yes, I am fully aware that chickens are nature's snack food — at least when viewed through the eyes and appetites of foxes and raccoons, among others. Nevertheless I am constantly relearning the painfully hard way that 99% of such predation happens after dark and is easily preventable as long as the vulnerable birds are secured inside before the light fades. I know that once inside they are completely safe. Outside is a different story. The six dead hens, victims of just such a recent intrusion, are reiterating the lesson. They count on me remembering.

There is one more part of nature I've been lately observing: terror leaves an imprint. In the past few days, as darkness has approached, four of the surviving hens — all related to those that were lost — scramble up onto the roof of a coop and crouch down...