Let It Grow Organic Gardens

And I resumed the struggle. -Vladimir

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

FORE!

I may have solved my deer problem, and the solution, as can be expected, has come from a golf course. It’s one down in Haywood County, and it had a driving range right alongside a highway. They’ve solved the busted windshield problem: nets beside the driving range.

But not just nets. No. That would never do. Not in Haywood County. The nets are strung from a cable that runs between twenty foot poles. It looks like a curtain.

That can be replicated, with very little difficulty, here on the farm. I’ll run poles along the perimeter of the field, cable from pole to pole, and hang deer fence from that. I’ll even use zip ties the way they did. Maybe not as many.

It’s further evidence to support a theory I’ve been busy developing lately, that all challenges facing agriculture today can be addressed with solutions borrowed from corporate America. If golf course don’t hold the answers to the problems of organic farmers, then we may as well all give up right now.

The divisive attitude taken by so may in my field is truly troubling to me. (Yes, that was a pun.) (One of my favorites.) Only by working together with golfers can sustainable agriculture hope to thrive in the future. We need to welcome them and all they have to offer. Celebrate our commonalities.

Mark my words. The biggest mistake the movement ever made was to start pulling the old holier-than-thou liberal crap. We need to work together. Why, just last month I was talking to a friend with a background in soil science. He was starving to death working as a consultant to farmers, so he (like so many who have failed in agriculture) went to a golf course. What the greens needed, he told them, was a boost of nitrogen, with a side of molybdenum and maybe some potassium. He recommended spraying ground up fish guts all over the fairways. Well, to make a long story short, they’ve become one of his biggest accounts, and he’s seen frequently bending elbows at the clubhouse.

We need a bit more of that these days, people. I’m no happier with the results of the election than you are. The new attourney general has more in common with the German speaking ex-patriot contingent in Buenos Aires than he does with Thomas Jefferson. The Patriot Act makes mulch of the Fourth Amendment. And there will be Supreme Court nominations made, perhaps even before we start cutting Fraser Firs again. I could go on and on. But instead, I chose to embrace those with views different from my own.

The next time you feel your problems are becoming just a little too much, don a nifty little sweater vest and take a walk to the nearest golf course. That’s where the answers are.

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