To save the birds, I’m killing my farm https://t.co/RuoFVgDaR3
— Barb Florey (@FloreyBarb) September 28, 2024
Because even a DC journo is capable of growth and grace… Dana Milbank, at the Washington Post — “To save the birds, I’m killing my farm” [gift link]:
Not long after I bought a dilapidated farm in the Virginia Piedmont, I was surprised to learn that it came with its own farmer.
For years, a cattle farmer from up the road, a salt-of-the-earth guy named Travis, rode his big John Deere over and cut the hayfields in late spring and then again in early fall. The arrangement, common out here, works for both parties: The farmers get hay for their cows, and the landowners get their fields mowed for free.
But this summer, I delivered bad news to Travis. I asked him not to cut most of my fields and paid him so he could buy his hay elsewhere. For decades — perhaps a couple of centuries — this has been pastureland and hayfields. But no longer.
Now, this place is for the birds.
I’ve begun turning the hayfields into pollinator meadows of wildflowers and native grasses, with the goal of providing food and cover for grassland and shrubland birds, as well as for all the other critters who need these biomes to live.
These birds desperately need a break. A landmark study for Science in 2019 found that bird populations in the United States are down by nearly one-third over the last 50 years, the equivalent of removing 3 billion birds from our skies, because they’ve lost their habitat to development and their food sources to the overuse of pesticides. Birds are an indicator species — it’s much easier to see and hear them than, say, amphibians and small mammals — so it’s likely that other critters are declining similarly as our planet hurtles into a crisis of shrinking biodiversity and accelerating extinction…
Before humans began their meddling, grasslands and shrublands were created by natural disturbances such as fires, windstorms, landslides, insect infestations, beavers and bison that turned portions of forest into meadows and the like. These areas, technically known as early successional habitats, would gradually revert to forest, but for a decade or two would provide temporary havens for the creatures that thrive in grasslands and shrublands. Now, however, people have disrupted that process of natural disturbance, mostly by suppressing forest fires. Forests remain forests, and cleared areas for homes, industry, farms and manicured lawns offer little food or shelter for birds.
“Nobody actually creates this shrubland on purpose,” Rosenberg observes. Yet that is what I am about to do…
It’s not easy to convert hayfields into bird-friendly meadows. You have to kill off the fescue and other non-native grasses, fight off the invasive weeds that will try to spread into the fields, and drill in the seeds of native grasses and forbs. Then, every couple of years, you have to level the meadow with prescribed burning or mechanical means to prevent it from growing into forest, thereby mimicking what happened in nature for thousands of years before humans messed everything up.
Creating these shrublands isn’t cheap, and there are all kinds of ways in which it can go wrong. But, for the sake of the birds and the other creatures of the fields, I’ve begun the process — on a wing and a prayer.
As a child of the suburbs and a resident of the city, my birding knowledge had been limited largely to the ability to distinguish blue jay from cardinal, robin from crow and pigeon from sparrow. Thankfully, artificial intelligence can make us all expert birders. Download the Merlin Bird ID app, produced by Cornell, and you’ll be able to identify the call of every bird in the neighborhood.
In the city, it’s likely to find the common ones — a Carolina wren, a house sparrow, a northern mockingbird. But out in the country, Merlin immediately populates with 15 or so of the less-usual suspects: ovenbirds, wood thrushes, eastern bluebirds, pileated woodpeckers, red-eyed vireos, black-throated blue warblers and others. I couldn’t identify a tufted titmouse if it flew up and bit me on the nose — but Merlin assures me that they are singing all around me.
Then Johnson, an ornithologist, came to visit me on the farm one morning, and she showed me in two hours all that I hadn’t been able to see. Passing me a pair of binoculars, she led me through the fields:
“Ha! There’s a fledgling mockingbird — and there’s a red-eyed vireo.”
“That was a cedar waxwing calling.”
“Oh! Yellow-breasted chat. That’s a good bird.”
“Your bluebirds have fledglings with them so they’ve been nesting here somewhere.”
She pointed out an indigo bunting in the grass. “Look how blue he is! Isn’t he awesome?”…
History buffs may recall that, during the First Gilded Age, the early Audubon Society took off as women fought to end the species-killing trade in bird feathers for millinery. If our current degraded era can save species by encouraging a ‘fad’ for hobby no-longer-farms, I for one will be happy to applaud the process.
Chet Murthy
I’m sure I’m not the only one who remembers dana milbank and chris cilizza in their beer swelling videos where they slagged on Hillary back in the day. I guess it’s good that he’s grown up a little.
eclare
Thanks for this good news article!
Anne Laurie
@Chet Murthy: Milbank got better. ‘Mad Bitcher’ Cillizza got worse. (Last I heard, Chris was unemployed, and still slagging Democratic women. *Not* a quick learner, our Chris.)
Aris Merquoni
While I’m glad to hear about this plan, I have to push back against this description. This landscape that she describes was the result of human meddling for thousands of years, including using fires and cutting to maintain a highly productive ecosystem. Native communities had been living here for generations before white people started importing their own farming techniques, plants, animals, and pests. Let’s not forget that the evil is colonization, not human habitation!
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
He’s auditioning for right wing media.
Jay
@Aris Merquoni:
#1 grass in North American pastures, is fescue.
Fescue is not native to the Americas. It’s an invasive species from Asia.
Used to own TFL lands in the hills south of Kamloops. It took 10 years of fallow, burning and replanting to restore out meadows to a natural state rather than a mono crop.
Nukular Biskits
Quick morning flyby: I have the Merlin app on my phone and am amazed at the birds it identifies.
We have a couple of owls who (no pun intended) frequent the area but I could never catch sight of them to see what kind. Merlin said they were Great Horned owls, which I didn’t think were in this area.
Frankensteinbeck
@Aris Merquoni:
There are so many odd twists to that, too. A lot of native agricultural practices, native practices period, were lost when smallpox wiped out whole civilizations. Then with the creation of DDT American farmers abandoned and forgot centuries of their own agricultural practices.
Baud
This reddit thread is amusing.
TBone
Heather Cox Richardson covered The Purge comments that some speculated might get ignored. Also this, which got me spitting mad:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-29-2024
Plus much more at the link.
I am ready to throw down!!! 🤬
TBone
@TBone: (*Joe Pesci voice)
Okay, okay, okay, ‘kay…
Looking at the photos my cousin sent last night of her and Tim Walz and now my blood pressure is back to normal from the TONIC.
I sent them to my brother and said guess who? It ain’t Jim Gaffigan!
Rachel Bakes
Love this. Read last night that the CT state DEEP has started prescribed burns to protect our grasslands and endemic species. Very good news
hells littlest angel
@Anne Laurie: Milbank has gotten a lot better. He went from smug, supercilious and cynical to compassionate and progressive. I hope some day he writes a memoir, I’m that curious.
Baud
@TBone:
I can’t believe antiabortion activists would lie like that.
Jay
@Baud:
Didn’t we just talk about The Snark last night?
TBone
@Baud: I would like to personally make them eat those lies, close up and really personal. With my fists. Otherwise, I will settle for spontaneous combustion of their pants while they are wearing them.
🎶 🤜
https://youtu.be/-sOSr7n_8YU
TBone
College radio news just informed me that Norway wants to build a fence along its entire border with Russia. 121.6 miles seems doable until you take the rivers into consideration.
Geo Wilcox
We did the same thing. We took half our farm land and planted a ton of trees and left the other to go fallow. That part has trees on it just not as dense nor as much variety of species. The fallow field is mostly goldenrod, ironweed, and aster. It is gorgeous in the fall and a riot of color but spring and summer are all just green.
cintibud
I also have to applaud Milbank for a story sometime earlier this year where he discovered his farm is in a dark sky area and adjusted and removed lighting to preserve the darkness. As an amauter astronomer I pay attention to that stuff. He wrote about his dark sky education and why it’s important to nature as well as astronomers.
Princess
I dunno. If he says so. I assume he’s getting some expert advice. My grandfather had a meadow and it was mowed yearly, just like this one. It was a paradise of different species and flowers. Farmers stopped wanting the hay so my uncle stopped mowing it. It’s basically just grasses now. No increase in bird life either. But of course he did not replant it.
TBone
I was informed that birds aren’t real 🙄 and I had to quit being online for quite a while to recover. I didn’t know the guy personally but he lived near me at the time and worked for, get this, Boeing! Of course Qanon was involved.
Baud
Glad to hear Milbank turned out to be a decent guy.
Ramalama
@Geo Wilcox: So the other half is for farming?
Ramalama
Cornell long ago had a citizen scientist project for anyone anywhere to record the birds people saw out their windows. Cool that they made a bird song app. I should get it. There are certain birds that make sounds that are either so compelling or it just the acoustic reverb from certain sounds pinging off the trees round here.
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: The Birds Aren’t Real thing started out as very much a joke, basically a parody of QAnon and similar conspiracy theories, but every time someone starts something like that I get concerned that the true believers are going to gravitate to it. I remember when Flat Earthism was mostly a joke too.
(that’s what Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” was about–you can’t control these things once they get started)
TBone
Taking Noah the Love Cat to the vet in a bit. Despite his behaving normally in every other aspect, he still had bloody diarrhea again this morning (yesterday stool was not as loose and not bloody so I was relieved). I had to save this morning’s sample to take with us. A thank you in advance for sending good thoughts along with us as we travel 40 minutes to the best animal care available in these parts. Hubby in foul mood 😔 as he is also having a five day bleeding issue (blood thinners) from a small wound on his arm. Too stubborn to allow me to drop him at Urgent Care on my way to vet. Gah!
Ramalama
@Jay: Louise Erdrich wrote a terrific novel (The Sentence) where Native people / Indigenous Americans in Minnesota harvested wild rice, which seemed to be some kind of native grass. I need to read that book again.
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: it is so fucked. Amazing. You don’t think these things could possibly affect you, and then BLAM some idiot comes along and proves you wrong!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s a good way to identify these people without having to brand them, which for historical reasons is considered immoral.
Kayla Rudbek
@Baud: that’s what the MAGA attire, the Don’t Tread On Me, and/or the Molon Labe stickers/flags/bumper stickers/etc are for. Heck, the state of Virginia even has Don’t Tread On Me license plates, which really makes identifying the jerks easy, and they have to pay more money every year for the plates.
Leto
@Ramalama: the wiki page on rice cultivation says that Native people harvested wild rice, but that it was a species native to South America. Good read.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rice_cultivation
Matt McIrvin
@Ramalama: Yes–North American wild rice is a different genus from regular rice, but both of them are grasses.
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: Many of the Birds Aren’t Real jokers seem to just be doing it as very elaborate, long-term, in-character roleplaying as true believers, so it may be hard to tell the actual ones from the pranksters.
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: well, the entirety of his timeline, when taken together as a whole, left no doubt about that fucking guy! 😆
Albatrossity
Thanks for this, Populations of grassland bird species in North America are tanking, and efforts like this will help. The pressures from human populations are becoming more intense; we need to make room for all of our fellow travelers, but that can be a tough sell. For example, the prescribed burning mentioned in this article is the best way to manage grasslands in a lot of places, but it terrifies humans and their elected reps when a fire is near their farm or house. Good luck!
Memory Pallas
I wouldn’t be surprised if Milbank got some serious pushback for doing this woke coastal elite environmentalist thing that a salt of the earth farmer couldn’t do.
JAM
I’ve always wanted to buy land in the country and make wildflower meadows. I never could, but I’m trying to make my little yard home to more pollinators.
xephyr
Few people have the means and the vision to do this, but I sure respect those who do.
TerryC
Most of our acreage was farmed in rotation until about 20 years ago. It is really difficult to grow stuff you want on a soil-depleted field! We don’t do burnings but we do plant trees and bushes – 17,000 so far, in 10 years. This year we let about 6 acres of our acreage go wild and went from 36 to 27 disc golf holes. This was planned. As I get older and can do less we will cut back and eventually let it all go.
Saturday we hosted the autumn meeting of the Michigan Nut and Fruit Growers Association at our farm. I was delighted to introduce my farm to the assembled tree fanciers this way: “This tent and tables setup is in the middle of the 230′ fairway for Red 3, one of my 36 disc golf holes. Along just this one fairway, within about 100 feet of where we sit, you will find one of more of the following: American elm, slippery elm, sugar, maple, thornless blackberry, black raspberry, black walnut, white mulberry, red mulberry, hazelnut, redbud, green ash, white ash, buartnut, heart nut, red oak, paw paw, pecan, redbud, native plum, bald cypress, Ohio buckeye, catalpa, Kentucky coffee tree, native persimmon, box elder, larch, a variety of apples, sycamore, bur oak, red buckeye, corkscrew, willow, lilac, basswood, red cedar, and more.”
Capri
I am a member of a local organization that promotes using native plants rather than non-natives. Recently pulled out burning bush and Bradford pear – the worst of the worst – and replaced with button bush and American plum.
For anyone interested in seeing what is possible. The Home Grown National Park is a good start.
homegrownnationalpark.org
TerryC
I have had great success with my trials, three trees so far, where I am topping off all my invasive Bradfords (Callery pears) with scion wood from domestic pear varieties! It’s great: The invasives are rugged and thriving but we replace their tops with good fruit tops.
Lynn Dee
I’ve been following Dana Milbank’s farm musings and reveries for a while now, and they’re really nice.
Ramalama
@Leto: Thanks. Interesting read. That page links to a different page on wild rice:
Lynn Dee
@hells littlest angel: His recent musings are quite nice but also interesting in the way they seem to reflect both his changing and (maybe) the effort that has involved. There’s a certain undercurrent of agitation; you can almost feel him calming down as he looks out at ol’ Virginia.
SteverinoCT
I have both the Audubon bird app and Cornell’s Merlin bird app. The song ID on the latter is pretty impressive– it can pick up a really faint call. I used it to ID the Carolina Wrens, a really pretty call, but they are wicked hard to spot: my feeder is swarmed by house sparrows, and a little brown bird with an eye stripe is hard to pick out. A tufted titmouse once landed on my head, sat for a bit, then plucked a hair for its nest and flew off.
West of the Cascades
@Memory Pallas: But Milbank’s mini-essays aren’t like that at all. They’re about his gradual education in things that salt of the earth farmers already do — keep things dark, leave parts of farms in their natural states as good bird habitat to encourage the presence of birds (a great way of having resident/transitory bug eaters to cut down on how much pesticide you have to use). The only thing that even calls to mind “elite” is his mild self-deprecation about how his former city dwelling self would never have thought to do the things he’s doing (and sort of a “I know this will sound crazy to everyone back in DC” tone).
The best thing that ever happened to Dana Milbank was Cilizzzza moving on from the Post.