A few weeks after we arrived to help care for him, 95-year-old Uncle Joe announced, “I’ve had enough. Time to quit.” And so the mechanized, chemical-laden, century-old apple enterprise came to a halt. Our neighbors were amazed that tough Uncle Joe would cease growing his dozen varieties of apples. But quit he did, and by spring the grass between the trees had grown waist-high. Fall came and, with it, the migrant pickers. We politely turned them away. The apples stayed on the trees until the first frost, then they fell by the hundreds of thousands.
During previous winters Uncle Joe had tossed fertilizer and “mouse bait” (rodent poison that’s spread around the base of the trees) by the ton. Now, the ground was chemical-free. Consequently, small visitors came, uninvited but not unwelcome. After each storm the mice would tunnel a fresh maze just beneath the snow while our two terriers dug frantically after them. We laughed, but one morning Wolfie brought us an ermine, an eight-inch weasel in a winter coat. How the dog had found and subdued this scrappy, rarely seen animal was a mystery, but clearly our little farm was edging its way back to a more natural state.
The next spring my wife began collecting the nearly empty chemical containers that were scattered across the farm, containers we feared leached toxic residue after every rainfall. I quietly thought she was foolish. Didn’t environmentalists claim that it would take a millennium for those chemicals to degrade? But as my wife piled the containers on the flatbed trailer week after week, wild grapevines and rosebushes were popping up at every turn.
The next spring the peepers returned, along with red-winged blackbirds, bats, goldfinches and more warblers than I could identify. I wondered if it was our efforts at cleaning up or the absence of 20th-century agricultural industry that allowed this sudden surge in wildlife. Without anyone to contradict us, my wife and I claimed the victory. Like every suburbanite who has ever pulled a dandelion and felt as though he shaped his environment, we thought we controlled our corner of the world. For too long, man had disturbed the natural order on our farm; now we had restored the balance. Or had we?
Our next project was getting rid of the huge algae bloom in the pond, and the crop of weeds that made paddling across it on turtle patrol impossible. Our green response was to purchase a hundred catfish fingerlings to eat the weeds and perhaps clean up the algae as well. We didn’t expect instant results, and for the next two years we made do without swimming. During that time we noticed a distinct falloff in the frog population. The effects of a limited food supply, I assured myself. But I began to wonder if some unseen predator was enjoying frog eggs at every meal.
Three years after we introduced them to the pond, the first adult catfish appeared at the dock when we scattered canned corn for the sunfish. But the sunnys were now as rare as the frogs. In their place were two or three dozen catfish. And occasionally a three-foot, five-pound specimen–we nicknamed him Jaws–would lazily cruise to the surface, scaring off the other fish. “Kids,” I speculated, “I think we’ve discovered the reason the frogs disappeared.”
While we are not certain how we affected the balance of nature, we are not ready to quit mucking with the formula, either. It’s just a desire to lend a helping hand to species in trouble, and maybe add a personal touch or two that might work nicely. My son and daughter have learned both science and generosity in their efforts to rehabilitate car-crunched turtles and crippled crows. Around our farm, kindness to all creatures is the code.
But even that philosophy may have unintended effects. Last winter, my daughter rescued an injured pigeon, which stayed in our barn and attracted others to roost in the rafters. Cute, we thought, everyone needs company. Then we noticed that these guests were displacing other species at the feeders. This time we didn’t ask “What should we do?” but rather “Should we do anything?” The consequences of our actions go beyond what we intend or, apparently, what Mother Nature wants.
