As we are finished with our production season we are starting to get time to breath in the crisp air and harvest the wild abundance from the land that we cherish.
Here is a little quick note I wrote on a peculiar little ray flower.
Which came first, the duck or the seed?
It was 2018 if my memory serves me well. We rented the neighbors excavator to expand one of our irrigation ponds and put in a couple very small ponds on the hill beside the forest to retain water for fire suppression and wildlife habitat enhancement. Also, extra water holes to cool off in during the heat of the summer for my family.
Not long after we dug the ponds, aquatic vegetation arrived, and the insects, and the waterfowl.
Our area historically prior to being logged and flattened for hay production to keep the draft horses fed while constructing the railroad, was / is the SBSvk2 biogeoclimatic zone or in other words, “ a snow forest with snow swamps”. It’s cold with low frost pockets with bogs, big spruce trees, big moose and frequent small ponds woven into the valley floors thicket of alder with hills surround the area with aspen, birch, sub alpine fir, the occasional Douglas fir and “swamp lodgepole pine”. To the Lheidli Tenneh, it was the hunting grounds. To the logger it was the country of big spruce, plank roads and clouds of mosquitoes.
The area not only fed draft horses hay after colonization but also fed the rail workers, loggers and trappers with it’s produce. Back in the day, according to one of my elder mentors who has since passed. Dr. Walter Carlson, his father and family back in the early 40’s had no need for irrigation as the rain was reliable. It really is a wet area or used to be but is slowly becoming drier with the changing climate.
Our well being 550’ deep and only producing 3 gallons a minute was not suitable to irrigate our vegetable and fruit crops and produce reliable yields. The saying goes, “it’s better to water a small area properly than a large area improperly”.
Too much water and not enough is the story of our farming adventure as we’ve improved soil conditions of our clay gleysol over the years.
One of our small ponds up near the forest that I tested various varieties of sweet corn near had a peculiar flower bloom a few years after being there. Bidens cernura or nodding beggar-ticks.
At first glance I thought it was an arnica variety and as it’s aster ray flowers told me. Admittingly, I never id’ it properly. My botanist friends would shame me a bit I think as it was my job to know every plant in the north at one time and identify species in remote areas of the province.
Fast forward to this year, 2024 after we constructed a much larger pond and an attached wetland to that would allow us the water supply we need for continued growth on our farm for the next 70 years worth of climate model predictions. I saw that curious flower patch at the edge of the marsh that had become inhabited by green wing teal. I decided to ID the plant. Bidens cernura or nodding beggar-ticks is an annual of shorelines and the edges of pools and wetlands and it’s seeds are often eaten by ducks.
My desire to bring more water storage to the farm brought the ducks that now frequent our ponds and the ducks brought with them the seeds that now give me my own little wild northern sunflower patches.
One of our next adventures is to introduce rainbow trout into our ponds and I look forward to it’s consequences like that of the duck. Nice big fat trout are a rare thing in the lakes and streams around our farm as the incessant felling of trees has removed the a big filtering sponge from the land that keeps the waters cool, clean and oxygenated well for the trout and other salmonid species. With the giant scars upon the land the rain events pour across the surface picking up nutrients, warming from no shade of a canopy and depositing these warm nutrients into our lakes, streams and rivers. Legend has it the stream that runs through our property at one point had salmon in it. I can only imagine how rich that must have felt to live beside.
Without stocking in many areas, the trout population would simply vanish in matter of time, specially given the heat events we are experiencing now.
Stocking the ponds feels like the right thing to do not only for the ecosystem but to also help provide my family and friends with healthy local trout.
The cost to heal land is great but it’s an enjoyable journey to know we are doing what we feel is the right thing for people and place.