Beth's Everything Blog

Archive for the ‘Nature’ Category

Have you heard of CAFO? It stands for Confined-Animal-Feeding-Operation.

Some years ago, our farm neighbor gave us a call. His sow had farrowed  and she didn’t have enough teats to feed all her brood. Would we like the runt? Our then twelve year old daughter went wild with excitement. Of course she wanted the piglet. So on a moment’s notice, we went into the agribusiness even though we knew nothing about raising pigs.

Lynn named the baby Trefa, a take off on the Yiddish word tref which means unclean. At the time we thought it was pretty funny. We kept the pig on the screened-in porch and nursed her from a bottle every four hours. It was during the school year, and no one was home during the day to feed Trefa, so Lynn took her to school and left her in the nurse’s office. Each student nurse assistant got to give the piglet a bottle. In the next few weeks everything about her grew very fast. The school principal, who up until then had been very indulgent, call and said Trefa couldn’t come to school anymore.

After a few days at home, we totally understood why. Trefa’s back porch stank. Everything within twenty yards of her stank. Suddenly, we no longer thought her name was so funny.

In the past few years, worldwide demand for pork has risen almost 50%. Understandably, Kansas with its vast amount of land mass used for agriculture, would like to be part of the solution. The question is: can agribusinesses raise huge numbers of animals in a humane way while protecting the environment and the workers who care for them?

And why has Governor Brownback already opposed an Environmental Protection Agency law that would require Confined-Animal-Feeding-Operations (CAFOs) to report directly to the EPA?

Seaboard Farms, located in Johnson County, Kansas has recently obtained approval to build a Confined-Animal-Feeding-Operation (CAFO) that will house 264,000 hogs in Greeley County, Kansas located just east of Colorado and north of Oklahoma. It will be the second largest such operation in the country.

As to Treifa, we took her back to the country and returned her to our farmer friend. But if one little pig can produce so much odor (and that which causes the odor), imagine what 264,000 Trefa’s will do. I’m just saying . . .

Talk about courage: President Obama showed the nation he  has plenty of it when he rejected the application of TransCanada to build a pipeline right through the middle of the United States.

He knew the GOP would howl. He understood the oil companies  like B.P. would cry foul and threaten huge political fall-out (remember it was due to poor regulations that B.P. was allowed to build a slapdash well in the gulf.)

GOP candidate Mitt Romney  said, “It shows a President who once again has put politics ahead of sound policy,” Really? How about instead it showed a President who puts the welfare of the people ahead of politics.

My bet is that the folks in Montana are grateful for President Obama’s courage. Last year, one of the Keystone Exxon/Mobile pipelines broke under the Yellowstone River spilling 40,000 gallons into the water before it could be sealed. (See Discovery Magazine’s Jan/Feb 2012 article) By June of 2011, the first Keystone Pipeline, only a year old, had sprung 12 leaks spilling 2100 gallons of icky crude in my home state of Kansas, and in North Dakota, a Keystone Pipeline fitting broke spewing  a 60 foot geyser of 21,000 gallons of crude oil into the air.

Don’t forget that the proposed pipeline would go right over the Ogallala Aquifer, the shallow underground  water reserve upon which eight states from South Dakota to Texas depend to irrigate their crops.

What convinced President Obama to take this gutsy action? It happened because naturalists have organized, 350.org worked hard and is becoming better known, the Sierra Clubs are doing their job and because thousands of people like you and me stood up said, “Mr. President, You can do this. We’ve got your back.”

Every year, I start off the summer full of great ambitions and overzealous hope all due to the beautiful seed catalogs that begin arriving in January. However, over the years I’ve learned to be more realistic. I now only order a couple of plants I know are indigenous to my backyard. For us, that’s daisies, black-eyes susans and zinnias. So this year, I ordered what I thought was a variety of big, colorful, tall zinnia seeds. In April, I broke out the peat pots and grow lights. I’ve also learned that when all my plants are ready to go outside, it’s me that has to put them there, so I’m careful about how many I start.

The zinnias looked strong and healthy from the minute they popped up, the best I’ve ever grown. I had to set them outside a little early because they grew so fast they began to get leggy. I hadn’t yet gotten around to preparing their sunny bed by the porch. Panicking, I planted them around the brand new walking stick bush by the front door not remembering it gets sun only in the afternoon.

I won’t bore you with details, but the zinnias were a huge disappointment. Though they grew at least three feet tall, they have the tiniest, puniest flowers I’ve ever seen. Most are pale in color, not the vibrant reds and yellows I’d expected. I tried pruning them to make them shrubbier, but that didn’t work. They just got taller. They weren’t even suitable for cutting.

Still, I have this obsession about killing things (except cockroaches) so even though I have to look at them every time I go in or out, I’ve left them alone.

Well! Beauty is definitely in the eyes of the beholder. After writing all day, I often collapse into a comfortable chair in the family room near a window overlooking the ugly zinnias. One afternoon, half asleep, I saw something iridescent quivering above the plants, a tiny female hummingbird. She hovered over a puny butter colored zinnia before flitting on to a pink one the size of a thimble. I saw her the next day and the next and soon she’d brought a whole herd of hummer friends with her, fluttering and fighting over my zinnias.

It’s still only the middle of august so the hummingbirds won’t leave for another month. Meanwhile, every afternoon around four thirty we have the pleasure of watching them feed, their voracious appetites demanding they suck the nectar out of my apparently delicious zinnias.

PS: Honeybees and butterflies like them too. Yipee!!

Nebbish zinnias

honeybee on nebbish zinnia

If you live in Kansas, there are about four days in the spring and four days in the fall when you can comfortably get outside and garden. (Comfortably is the operative word.) Like the rest of the country, we’ve had incredible amounts of rain so weeds are bountiful. One day last week, I decided I had to do something about them before they choked out everything else. I knelt in the bed by the patio with my back to the fence ready to weed my way forward when I heard the most beautiful bird song. I looked up to see a brown thrasher not ten feet away pecking between the patio bricks. I sat very still until he flew up to a branch on the silver maple and continued singing. Then he flew into a bushy spirea under our bedroom window. I waited until he emerged and then cautiously peeked around the bush until I spotted his Missus sitting nervously on a nest. Thrilled, I backed away.

Nesting birds fascinate me even if they are only sparrows. Our yard is a jungle of cedar, pine, perennials, bird baths, ponds and weeds so ferreting out all the bird nests isn’t easy.  For example, a cardinal pair chose the gutter over the recreation room as their ideal spot. ??? I kept seeing the mom and pop team on the roof but it took me awhile to figure out what they were doing up there.

The silver maple is over a hundred years old. It is hollow all the way up and down and I shudder every time we have a big windstorm for fear it will blow down. It is, however, the perfect place for the neighborhood wild life to raise their young. Many generations of squirrels and raccoons have grown up there, not to mention blackbirds and woodpeckers. Fights do occur but all in all, they seem to get along remarkably well and to see two black eyed baby raccoons huddled together in the crouch of the tree while mama goes a hunting brings a smile to even the most urbanized souls.

Near the back fence sits an old shed in which we once stored gardening stuff. I mention it only because a hole underneath has become the favorite place for a ‘possum to raise her seemingly inexhaustible supply of young.  A year or two ago, Louie carefully brought in six babies, one at a time. Each was about six inches long not counting the tail and had little needle sharp teeth. The first one ran under the sofa and we had to call the Prairie Village dog catcher to get him out. After that, we learned to pluck them up immediately by their tails (being extremely careful of those sharp teeth) and put them on the far side of back fence hoping mom would find them there. That summer we also learned, much to our neighbor’s relief, that me must shut the doggy door at bedtime. Otherwise, Louie would roam his territory all night long chasing and barking at nocturnal beings.

Back to bird watching, we now have purple finches at our feeders. I used to see them when lived on our farm down south but climate change has forced them to move further north. Now, they mingle with the red house finch and we have to look close to tell them apart. They aren’t the only backyard birds on the move. The Audubon Society did a study in 2009 and found 305 birds that are changing their winter and summer grounds including Robins, owls and chickadees. Wherever you live, be on the lookout for new species to your backyard.

Purple finch on the  left: House finch on the right

From where we stood, the town lay in a picturesque valley protected by a range of distant snow-capped mountains. Off to the west, a bank of dark clouds rolled our way headed straight for Trinidad. Dudley, my miniature dachshund, and I had gone out for a brief camping trip.  We hurried to the car and followed the markers to the State Park. I pitched our tent near a stand of pine trees. Someone told me that if you hang something red nearby, the hummingbirds will come so I tied a red sock on the antenna of the SUV. It wasn’t long before a squadron of tiny, ruby throat hummers showed up. Noisily, they buzzed the bit of red cloth, their tiny, iridescent bodies flashing in the fading light.

Then, like angry giants, black clouds roared out of the mountains. The sky grew ominous. We crawled inside just as the first big drops splattered on the roof. Dudley wasn’t afraid of lightning and thunder but the sound of the rain worried him a bit so he nestled next to me, his little chin resting on my knee. He perked up when I broke out a can of spam and shared it with him. (I know . . . spam. . . but it can be surprisingly good at times like these.)

The night turned cold and we crawled into the sleeping bag. Dudley wiggled his way down to the bottom and we fell asleep to the din of a typical summer rain.

Morning came early. Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I peeked out the flap and gazed with delight at a pristine fairyland. Sky and earth had been scrubbed clean leaving the air crisp and fresh. Translucent droplets of water clung to pine needles like tiny magnifying glasses. As we made our way to the lake, our feet left footprints in the dew. Peering into the still water, we stared at the reflections, our own and those of surrounding mountains. Dudley spotted a tiny water bug skimming across the glassy surface and leaped after it, shattering the mirror and the fragile images of birds flying overhead.

We returned to our tent and shared a breakfast of fruit juice and cereal. Too soon, the sun rose high, signaling time to leave. I removed the sock from my antenna and watched sadly as the little hummers disappeared.