The Butcher and the Bobolink: Randy's Thoughts on the Connectivity of All Things

The male bobolink can often be found resting on
 the tips of blades of grass.

This time of year is the time when we need to start cutting hay. There is a lot to be considered; weather forecast for 3-5 days, how tall the hay is, how much of the alfalfa and clover is in blossom, when will I have time, and finally have the ground nesting birds fledged their young. We have a lot of ground nesting birds, in particular we have a lot of bobolinks. Apparently, though its not evident at our place, the bobolink is a species at risk in the province of Ontario. They are a prairie bird that migrated to Ontario and naturalized after one of the greatest deforestation efforts in human history and the clearing of the Carolinian forest to make way for agriculture over the last 300 years.

As an ironic aside, the concept of deforestation for agriculture was only half followed through on Hill Giant Farm.

We recently learned through OSMA (Ontario Sheep Marketing Agency) that sheep farms now account for the majority of bobolink habitat in Ontario. This presents us with a paradox. We are asked to consider the birds when making haymaking decisions while at the same time being in a position of loss on the farm if our hay crop is poor or not big enough. If we don't have good quality hay we can't sustain the farm and by extension, we can't sustain and protect the bobolinks.

All of this has led Megan and I to discuss at great length the complexity of interconnections between things. I'm asked to protect the bobolink because they prefer my pasture while our neighbour, who feeds his dairy herd on corn silage, is not asked to
do anything at all as his method of farming makes his farm undesirable to ground nesting birds. The larger questions of why the bobolink is in trouble now in Ontario and why are they plentiful on sheep farms seem to be largely overlooked.

It's often the large systemic questions such as this that are overlooked. Why does poverty exist in certain areas more than in others? Why do so many people leave rural communities? Why do we forget to celebrate the simple things in life? Everything is connected. We need to ask what are we going to do about these problems in the here and now. But we also have to ask how and why things got this way. The bobolink and the local butcher provide a parable that shows this connectivity.

The sheep at Hill Giant Farm taking advantage of
pasture on the front lawn.

There was a farmer and for many years he kept cattle and sheep, chickens, a few pigs, an orchard and a garden. His cattle would graze in the pasture, his sheep would follow the cattle and finish grazing the field while the chickens and pigs would eat the by products of the kitchen and the garden. Keeping most of his land for pasture and hay, he would plant a field of grain per year. Natural habitat for birds and other small animals was plentiful. In the fullness of time he could sell his grain to the grist mill or the brewery and send his fattened steers and ram lambs, his pigs and chickens to the butcher who would in turn sell the meat. But what happens if we take the butcher out of this story? The farmer can still produce in this way but he can't sell his livestock, and therefore he can't make money, and therefore his method of farming must change. The further he has to drive to the butcher, the more he has to pay the butcher to cover costs incurred, the less profitable his farm becomes. Naturally, he is forced to make decisions, such as to downsize his herds and flocks leaving his pastures and hay fields unnecessary, and he plants more crops therefore removing valuable habitat for birds such as bobolinks. We see this kind of connection between everything all the time on the farm. Often these kinds of observations on connectivity are dismissed as being nostalgic or backwards, non-progressive, and that's a shame. If we thought more in terms of how what seems like one small thing (a bird) depends on other small things (a local butcher) we might find things starting to change in our society.

Where in your own life do you see two seemingly unrelated things being connected to one another? Share your observations with us in the comments section below.
Randy