As heads is tails

What a pleasure it is to have the windows open, to let a little taste of the great outdoors float into our house. It was dead still the other morning as I sat down with my first cup of coffee, savouring the fresh new day, when I heard a vaguely familiar call in the distance. Though it was barely audible (my hearing ain’t what it used to be), I detected a Whoo-whoo. Not an owl, I thought. Maybe a Mourning dove? No, the phrase didn’t have that two-note intro; it was just a single note repeated.

I was curious enough to haul myself upright and step out the back door, in hopes of hearing the call more clearly. Sure enough, there it was again, a distinct Whoo-whoo, at regular intervals.

And then I noticed the source. In our neighbour’s Christmas tree lot, maybe half a kilometre away, I saw the minibus they use to transport workers to the job site. Getting ready for a day of shearing, perhaps sharpening knives and slathering on bug dope, the crew had the radio cranked up. Though I couldn’t make out the words, the rhythm of “Sympathy for the Devil” became recognizable as the Whoo-whoo refrain approached a crescendo.

Mick originally conceived the song as a folksy acoustic number, but in the studio it was rehashed as a samba (with Marianne Faithful and Anita Pallenberg joining in on those distinctive backing vocals). Back in Peterborough, 30-some years ago, I heard a bar band do a raucous cover version that included a couple verses of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” – which can be sung to the same tune because the lyrics have a similar metre. The crowd went nuts.

The enduring popularity of both songs shows how we’re attracted to darkness. With all respect to Gord’s memory, “Sympathy” is more edifying (as well as more danceable), and it remains appropriate for our times. It’s not a celebration of evil, but a reminder that we’re all culpable in the violence that defines human history. Hearing it drift faintly across the bottomlands on a peaceful morning, I felt oddly comforted.

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This is the time of year when ants invade our kitchen. It’s disheartening to open the honey jar and find a few of them nestled around the edge of the lid. When one falls in, fishing it out involves wasting a bit of honey, which I resent mightily. Maybe I should just pop the sweetened insect into my mouth. Seems like a good start on diversifying our protein intake – although you’d have to scarf down a whole colony to get the equivalent of a cheese omelette.

For some reason, we confine ourselves to marine arthropods such as lobster, crab, and shrimp. In the many cultures that view terrestrial arthropods as potential menu items, there is a preference for the larger species. One example is Atta laevigata, a leafcutter ant that has long played a role in South American diets. Often eaten toasted, as a snack food like popcorn, it is widely known as the Hormiga culona, or “big-bottomed ant.”

Maybe those meaty ones make the rockin’ world go ’round, but the ants that lurk in our cutlery drawer are entirely unappealing. Casting around for a not-too-toxic remedy, I had an inkling that formic acid could be used. But no, formic acid is thus named because it was originally isolated (in the 17th century) by distilling ants. (The Latin for ant is formica, which is the basis for the family name Formicidae.) Later produced by synthetic means, it was found to be quite versatile. (Formaldehyde is a related compound.) Today formic acid is commonly added to silage and other livestock feeds, to improve storability by bringing down the pH. Its use as a pesticide is restricted to the beekeeping industry, for the control of tracheal mites and Varroa mites.

Learning more about ants turns out to be a great way to distract myself from our seasonal infestation. There are some amazing focus-stacked photos by Eduard Florin Niga in the April issue of National Geographic. (If you’ve never heard of this charming little magazine, you should check it out.) We all know ants are among the world’s strongest creatures, in relation to their body weight. Their ecological contributions include seed dispersal, soil aeration, and decomposition of organic matter. They have complex social structures and sophisticated means of communication (mostly olfactory) – and in terms of population, they are wildly successful, outnumbering people on this planet by about a million to one.

More remarkably, ants are good farmers. Some species collect leaves for the purpose of cultivating fungus as a food source. Others tend herds of aphids, in order to lap up honeydew, a sweet and nutritious liquid secreted by the aphids as they feed on plant sap. These ants will protect the aphids from predators, direct them to better foraging areas, house them for winter, and even take them along when they move to a new colony. Evidently, homo sapiens did not invent livestock husbandry.

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For an example of what failure looks like in the realm of agriculture, look no further than the barn fire this April at South Fork Dairy near Dimmitt, Tex., which killed more than 18,000 cows. That’s approximately equivalent to the entire dairy herd in the province of New Brunswick. There was speculation that the fire could have been started when a manure vacuum system ignited a methane explosion – but the investigation is ongoing.

Whatever cause is ultimately identified, there is the fundamental problem of size, which we have also seen in the feedlot and slaughter sectors. When something goes wrong, on that scale, it can go spectacularly wrong, with far-reaching consequences.

Even if the system functions as intended, mega-farms are antithetical to the concept of husbandry, which originally implied responsibilities assumed by an individual householder. The factory model is highly dependent on employees being well trained, well acquainted with the livestock, and possessed of the right disposition for this work. In the case of South Fork Dairy, we’re talking about a barn that covered 40 acres. The business was actually on track for growth, with approval from state environmental authorities to increase the herd to 32,000 head. I know we’re long past the days when farmers called their cows by name (except for the genetically gifted super-models whose embryos fetch big bucks), but surely a smaller operation allows for better observation and accommodation of herd dynamics, individual animal health, and overall well-being – as well as more ecologically sound nutrient management.

The average dairy herd in Canada is just shy of 100 cows. In the U.S., it’s more than 300 and climbing. Some U.S. farms juice up milk production by injecting cows with rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), which is illegal in Canada and the European Union; even if it does not affect the milk, it is known to affect the cows’ health, resulting in higher incidence of lameness and mastitis.

The Canadian supply management system is not beyond reproach, but it has served us well in many ways. If it were discontinued, my guess is that “craft” dairy producers in Canada would mainly serve affluent consumers, while tariff-free U.S. dairy products flowing across the border would fill an ever-larger share of our mainstream market. In response, many farms would scale up or consolidate. Maybe we would get to see what cheap milk looks like.

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Protectionism seems to have become a bad word, but we ought to be able to feel both pride and confidence in our food system – at the local, provincial, and national levels. Some degree of vigilance is necessary and justifiable. (Vacuous patriotism is not helpful.)

I’m also pretty keen on supporting local musicians. Banjo warrior Chris (Old Man) Luedecke recently put on a great show here on the South Shore. His patter included a funny remark about how he’d unwittingly waded into a highly divisive topic, contrary to the folkie philosophy of fostering peace and harmony. Then he played “The Sardine Song” (an original composition, not the one from Charlie Chaplin’s 1952 film Limelight). Luedecke is a devotee of this highly nutritious and affordable fish product. “A Brunswick can is a master plan / For lunch as grand as Grand Manan,” he sang.

I’m in the pro-sardines camp. The next day, I grabbed a can from our pantry – the kind with hot peppers. Cracker in hand, I glanced at the Brunswick label, which said “Since 1893.” Then I flipped it over and read “Product of Poland.” Amid globalization of the fishing industry, I guess it would have been naive to assume that Connors Brothers was still some kind of family business. It was acquired by George Weston Limited way back in 1967, and has since gone through a fairly complicated series of structural and ownership changes. Some of those little herring are still caught in Canadian waters and processed at Blacks Harbour, N.B. – but some also come from the Baltic Sea (which is not, I’m sorry to say, a pristine body of water).

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And yet, we can still be dazzled and energized by signs of life all around us. Looking out the kitchen window just now, I was struck by the vivid yellowness of dandelions in the midday sun. How amazing that they had multiplied since morning. And then, as I glanced again, several of them lifted from the ground – not dandelions, but goldfinches taking wing. DL