Our land ethic can be summed up with the phrase, "do no harm to land or water." This simple admonishment involves a high degree of sensitivity and earth awareness on our part. When we venture into managing other life forms such as chickens and bees, we assume responsibility for the well being of these farm "partners." We do not take this responsibility lightly.

Why we are in the honey, egg, fig, and bean-seed business....

Every farm has a core product(s) it shapes itself around. For our farm, bees and chickens are the most numerous agricultural workers who assist us. This is the story of how our core products fit with our overall farm program.

The Chickens

At the cultivated center of our farm is "Chickenville," a well laid out, fenced in grid of wooden structures (all built with 85%+ recycled materials) for egg laying, chick brooding, and peep rearing. These houses and pens are clustered on either side of the feed and supplies shed.

Adjacent to the south side of all the houses are fenced, grass paddocks that can be expanded or diminished with a series of interconnecting gateways. Outside of the chickenville perimeter fence is the largest of our three gardens. Manure and floor litter are rotationally spread on individual garden plots, while greens and blemished or bug damaged vegetables, as well as grubs, hornworms, june bugs, etc. are fed over the fence to the waiting chickens. Watermelon rind, cucumbers and tomatoes are some of their favorite treats.

In turn, the chickens provide more fertilizer, eggs for eating and hatching, meat, and soil tilling services. When we bring a load of compost or horse barn litter to chickenville, we just unload it into a pile and let the hens work it down. Eating and scratching are a chicken's bliss. Twenty-five pairs of chicken feet can level and widely distribute a pickup truck-size pile of leaf compost in less than two hours. After that, they begin to till it into the top layer of soil after methodically picking it clean of insects. After 5 days, we move the chickens out, level up the worked soil, and plant. They do a good job tilling, and they are a lot cheaper than a tractor.

The two laying houses have cement floors (discarded chunks of sidewalks cemented together) that are sloped to a drain. Every morning we shovel up the manure and wash the floor with a pail of captured rainwater and a long handled scrub brush. This daily chore removes odor causing fecal residue, eliminates disease carrying flies, and provides the hens with a clean area to rest on hot summer afternoons. The wash water drains outside to a lush, overgrown trench along the side of a fenced (from the chickens) garden plot. We routinely bring visitors and workshop participants into a chicken house, where they are surprised at both the cleanliness and pleasant smell. This is how we show both respect and honor to our feathered flock's contribution.

The Bees (honey and bumble)

In early May of 2003, the upper Tennessee River Valley was inundated by a 100 year flood event. Our area received 13 inches of rain in three days. Shortly after that, our squash plants began to blossom. My first indication that something was wrong occurred in the early morning, after dawn, when I would cultivate the squash patch. The morning garden work was punctuated by silence! Where was the hum of the bumble bee moving about from squash flower to flower? Day after day, the bees failed to appear. I began to hand pollinate.

It quickly became apparent that hand pollination would not be effective as I could not hover above the squash plants to avoid stepping on stems and runners. I called a beekeeper friend and told him our problem. He brought over a small and rather weak hive of bees as a temporary solution to help with the squash pollination. Now, four years later, that hive has grown into our strongest hive, and which produced over 150 pounds of honey in 2007.

Bumble bees nest in the ground, and the flood of '03 was catastrophic to their colonies. Once a dominant pollinator in the U.S., the decline of the bumble bee is directly linked to the decline of the horse as the primary work and transportation mainstay of this country. The countless red clover fields grown to feed the horses, also provided ideal conditions for the bumble bee colonies to flourish.

Because bees are so necessary to our farming endeavors, we sow and protect areas of flowering plants that both honey and bumble bees can work to produce food for their colonies. Never again do we want to experience that ominous silence that pervaded our 2003 spring garden.

Figs

Besides tasting great, figs are a most fascinating plant. Over millions of years of evolution, it has turned itself inside out: the flowers, as well as the seeds, are inside the fruit. Pollination takes place there too, in the dark, and the agent is a tiny wasp, a millimeter long. The wingless males inseminate all the unborn females and die. The females gather pollen from male flowers, find the tiny exit hole, and fly to another fig. They squeeze in, often tearing off their wings, transfer pollen to some flowers, and lay eggs in others. Exhausted, they die too. Since each fig species has its own wasp species, they are totally interdependent. No wasp, no fig; no fig, no wasp.

Beans

Beans are probably the first seeds I ever planted as a child. They germinate and grow quickly, wrapping and climbing their way up any vertical pole or wire. They are space efficient, seem to posess a native intelligence, improve soil fertility, and produce the nicest compostible biomass as they grow and shed leaves. The profuse flowers feed the ever busy bumble bees, and they can be grown at any frost-free time of the growing season. Shelling the colorful beans from their dry, crispy pods is one of the most satisfying harvest chores we perform on the farm.

In conclusion

We feel that our primary products produced here on our farm help contribute to the overall symbiotic relationship we are promoting with our stewardship philosophy. We are mindful that we are not separate nor independent from the web of life that repeatedly manifests itself in our daily lives. Through observation, we have learned about the needs and lifecycles of other species, and how we can promote their well being within our farming practices. We are also keenly aware of the interdependent links of all the species of plants, insects, birds, reptiles, and mammals that call our farm home. We seek to honor this circle of life by being good caretakers of the Earth.