Live Earth Farm Nwsltr 2007

Greetings from Farmer Tom
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Here at the farm we know how important pollination is. Every year in early Spring when our Warren Pear orchard starts blooming, a small swarm of human pollinators swing into action. Armed with long dust poles, they puff pollen dust on thousand of flowers several times over the entire orchard during the annual 10-14 day blooming period. For some still mysterious reason, this particular pear variety has poor fruit set when left to its own devices, so to ensure a reasonable harvest, every year we engage in this cumbersome courtship between us and the pears.

Like most crops we farm, pears typically rely on bees for pollination, and the most common and favorite bee among farmers for crop pollination is the honeybee. Everyone is troubled, however, by the recent collapse and disappearance of honeybee colonies (it is so significant it has been given a name: Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD). Although nobody knows what's causing it, the threat is being taken seriously since the losses are quite dramatic all across the United States and Canada, in Europe, and even as far south as Brazil. Here on the farm we have two beekeepers, and only one, Greg Muck, believes to have lost one hive to CCD this winter. Steve Demkowski from Willow Glen apparently didn't lose any of his approximately 10 hives. There is a lot of speculation about the causes of CCD; whether it is from parasites, fungal diseases, pesticides, poor nutrition, habitat loss, or microwaves emitted by cell phone towers, nobody knows for sure.
honey bees
The honeybee is truly one of nature's workhorses. What makes them so popular, besides the honey they share with us, is that they are able to pollinate a large number of different plant types. Due to their social nature, they tend to recruit other bees to visit the same plant several times during their blooming period, increasing the chances of higher yields of fruit or seeds produced per plant. Avocados, kiwis, apples, berries, squashes, cucumbers and broccoli are just a few of the more than 90 fruits and vegetable that depend on bee pollination. Imagine what the content of our shares would look like if pollination disappears. If alternative pollinators don't pick up the slack (in pollination loss due to CCD), we might face a "slow food" diet of bread and water.

As we already know (or should know), too much of a good thing, all the time, will eventually get you into trouble. So relying solely on one kind of pollinator for the bulk of the crops in our current food supply is proving to be pretty risky. Just like it's wise to grow a large diversity of crops to achieve a more sustainable farming system, we also need to encourage a more diverse population of pollinators. One way to do this is by increasing the population of native bees. Supposedly there are more than 3500 species of solitary bees in North America. Although native bees only make small amounts of honey (which is not collectable), the sole purpose of attracting them would be for pollination. Native bees can be divided between soil dwellers and wood dwellers. Soil dwellers include the bumble and digger bees, and forest dwellers include the mason (or blue orchard), leafcutter and horned faced bees. The best way to encourage and maintain their presence is to preserve wild land (habitat), set aside uncultivated areas (undisturbed hedgerows and field borders) and grow suitable crops to attract and increase their numbers, making sure to provide sufficient flowering/pollen producing plants to ‘feed’ them year round, especially through the winter.

Thanks to Steve Demkowski we are starting to introduce native bees into the environment here at the farm. Steve set us up with nests of mason and leafcutter bees this spring. These nests seem pretty simple to make; Steve’s design consists of paper drinking straws about 6” long, capped on the back end, then packed into an old coffee can which is attached to a post about 5 ft. above ground. The tubes need to face east, so they get a couple hours of morning sun, and also need some sort of roof to keep off the rain (and shade them so they don’t get too much sun and cook!) During our summer solstice celebration in June, Steve has offered to give a tour of the farm, and introduce interested members to his hives and shed some light on the importance of both honeybees and native bees. Maybe we can get him to do a workshop on how to make (and maintain) your own native bee houses!

Although Einstein has been quoted as saying "without bees, humans will only have 4 years to live," he probably referred to the popular honeybee and didn't think of the many native bees, some with pretty cool names such as Shaggy, Digger, Fuzzyfoot, and Hornface.

Do you ever get this feeling of complete insignificance in the face of all the news and information we are being bombarded with about the Earth's environment going to shambles? That the collapse of honeybee colonies are just another example of a "canary in a coal mine?" It is true that individually we may be insignificant, however the exciting thing is that everywhere you look a lot of ‘insignificant’ people are coming together, adding up to a real force of change, creativity, and hope for the future. I believe in that force and the opportunity it offers for our children.

Farmer Tom's children: David and Elisa