I
received word recently that sev-
eral native bees have been added
to the endangered species list,
and while I’m distressed by the news,
I’m encouraged too. Fundamentally,
I wish we didn’t need an endangered
species list, nor the political posturing
and environmental game-playing that
surround it. At the same time, I am
guardedly pleased that bee health is
getting some real attention — mostly
in Hawaii, in this case — and I hope
that the classification will lead to real
environmental stewardship and help
diverse interests come together in
a meaningful way to create effective
practices that will spread throughout
the mainland. It’s
tough for me to imag-
ine a world without
bees in it, even as I
watch a nearby oil-
seed sunflower crop
dry down ahead of
harvest quite sud-
denly, thanks to the
wonders of modern
chemistry. It’s tough
for me to imagine a
world without honey
on my ‘Hopi Blue’
cornbread, too. So I choose hope over
despair and continue to manage our
farm so that the bees will find more of
what they need right at home.
Six years ago, near the beginning
of a typical Kansas drought (imagine
watching your hand-pollinated heir-
loom corn crop turn from lush and
alive to crispy green and dead in four
days), I was heading to town with a
tractor tire that needed repairs, and I
saw my neighbor heading to the field
with a pallet of seed on his flatbed. We
waved and stopped right there in the
middle of the gravel road, cab to cab,
window to window, and chatted about
the crazy season we’d experienced. My
neighbor asked me what I thought
about cover crops and proceeded totell me that he’d decided to skip the
fall chemicals and plant a mix of field
peas, turnips, barley, and buckwheat
on his failed corn ground. He had
hope that there would be some late
fall moisture — and there was! That
winter, he didn’t have to sell his brood
cows (due to a severe shortage of hay)
because of the excellent forage those
cover crops provided.
So, impressed by the soil health in
that field, the following spring my
neighbor committed to using cover
crops for part of his annual rotation
on about 4,000 acres — hoping to re-
duce his use of synthetic fertilizers and
pesticides in the process. In time, my
neighbor converted
all of his tillable acres
to a program employ-
ing polyculture cover
crops as part of the
annual rotation. And
this knowledge has
already been passed
down to the next gen-
eration of his family.
Environmental, eco-
nomic, and personal
crises can all knock
us out of our comfort
zones. Hope can come out of the great
need those crises evoke, and hope can
drive hugely positive outcomes.
I’d love to be inspired by your sto-
ries of overcoming or even coping
with crises by choosing hope over an-
ger and despair. If you’d like to share,
please feel free to send me an email at
[email protected], and
we just might put together a list of in-
spirational stories that will help us all
keep on keeping on in these interest-
ing times.
See you in February,News from MOTHER
Just Choose HopeJust Choose HopeJust Choose Hope
68C 100Y 24K Pantone 363CTHE ORIGINAL GUIDE TO LIVING WISELY®Editor-in-Chief O H. W III
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M E N (ISSN -)
December 2016/January 2017, Issue No. 279
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