The Unstung Hero

Having recently survived encounters with local wildlife, I feel compelled to share a few important points (no pun intended) to introduce those who may be uninformed to the variety of flying stingy type insects that are known to inhabit Georgia and the surrounding region.

First I give you the dirt dauber. These insects build pipe organ type structures where they feed spiders to their larvae and build more structures for more larvae and spiders and on and on. A serious insect scientist could share with you the myriad reasons that these bugs are beneficial. We always liked them because they looked like wasps but won't sting you. The only real detriment they pose is their occasional poor choice of structure locations. Like on the brickwork above my front door. And of course the nasty looking grub-like larvae that fall out when you remove the structures.

Other then that, they're harmless.

The hornet. Also known as the harnet (rhymes with garnet). Much maligned as vicious and dangerous, my experience with these bugs is that they are really hermits and so long as you don't go messing with them, they'll stay in their remote fortresses and do whatever it is that they do in their little paper cone.

The cone thing is the problem. Many a Jim Bob sees the mighty funnel and wishes to make it his own, which breaks the unwritten law of the hornet, "Leave them alone". Once you break this law, you are indeed on your own and the hornets will do with you what they wish. So, just let them bee...er...be.

The wasp. Also known as the warst. Ok, these are a bit meaner than the dirt dauber and maybe not quite as mean as the hornet but they tend to come a bit closer to civilization than their paper cone cousins. A stray baseball or maybe a misguided stream from a Super Soaker water gun might dislodge a few that come to seek you out. But, for the most part, they are the grouchy old men of the group. They don't want goof balls playing around their porch but they aren't very motivated to chase interlopers very far. Just run a bit and you will be ok.

The honey bee. My personal favorite of this bunch. They make honey and besides being tasty on biscuits or cornbread or in your morning coffee, raw honey is a natural remedy for seasonal allergies.

Honeybees pollinate everything. and they are incredibly busy. they don't have time to be bothered by you and you really have to freak one out to get stung. Let them work because I don't want to sneeze and you don't want to get stung.

Then there is this poor twisted soul. The casual glance says honey bee. The first close up might communicate wasp or hornet. This however is wrath incarnate. This is the yellow jacket. Georgia Tech chose this little booger to be it's mascot because both these animals and the GT football team tend to be bad this time of year. (thank you, I'll be here all week).

The yellow jacket lives where it wants to. Because forget you, that's why. If you venture anywhere near their abode, even for something so benign as to offer them chocolate cake or invite them to a dinner party, they will spring from their little portal of punishment by the millions and unleash havoc on everything in a 1 square mile radius.

Oh you can escape. But you'll go inside, enjoy dinner, read to your children, get a good night sleep, wake, shower, eat breakfast, shave, brush your teeth, kiss your spouse good bye and once you go outside, there they are. "Remember us? We've been waiting for you all night." and BAM! the violence continues.

Legend has it that if you kill one, its dead body emits a pheromone that tells its friends, "hey that dude in the red shirt just killed me" and then 5 or 10 will appear seeking a reckoning for what you have done. And there's more of them than there are of you. So run. Faster.

So there's a few tips for surviving encounters with flying insect in Georgia. Keep an eye out and you'll be fine.

Mounds of Farming.

To continue on a on the farming theme I thought I'd share some more about the history of Agriculture in Georgia. This idea was helped along by a recent field trip to the Etowah Mounds State Historic Site in Cartersville, Georgia. The video at right is of one of the rangers on site giving information regarding the Three Sisters of Mississippian Era agriculture. 

Corn. Squash. Beans. With these three crops, these people developed a broad menu of foods. 

Agriculture was a way of life in the South long before the arrival of European settlers. This particular community was populated by farmers as early as 1000 A.D. (over 50 years before the Norman Conquest of England) and perhaps even earlier. These "primitive" farmers had learned the value of crop rotation, or at least the benefits one crop can have for another. It would be centuries before the settlers learned some of these ideas. 

So this culture domesticated dogs and turkeys in addition to their three sisters. They gathered nuts and berries from the fields and forests nearby. They caught fish from the river and hunted the wildlife that lived in the area. They wasted nothing, having a use for everything they killed, grew and gathered.

At left you'll find a demonstration of the weapons advances they made in order to feed themselves and their families. With the use of fishing, hunting, gathering, and agriculture, these people formed a civilization that survived for about 500 years at this location. To this day, their artifacts are still being found in the ground. To this day, their mounds and fish traps still remain as visible remnants of their society. Structures that date back ten centuries. 

That's not bad when you figure practically no structure in Atlanta is over 150 years old.

Long story short, this is our heritage. A wise and diverse use of the land. A sustainable and interactive form of agriculture that we can still learn from today.

It's our past. But it's about our future. And with so many other troubles mounting against farmers, they're not getting any younger. You can't eat a legal writ. You can't eat a bank note. And, as important as health care may seem, if you don't have food to eat, a doctor can't help you.

Educate yourselves about farming. Ask a farmer about the challenges of the job and life in general. Make this an election year issue. Let's put emphasis back on the agrarian heritage of our region. 

No more canned peaches from China.

Farm

My first job out of college was with a corporation with a household name. The position was dealing with higher end food service. It was the type of operation that used chefs and "quality" ingredients. A higher priced operation with some fairly exclusive clientele.

My coworkers were from all over the world. They had left the far reaches of the Earth and worked in other far reaches before this particular stop in the shadows of Atlanta's skyscrapers. 

These folks knew good food.

So it caught my attention when I heard one of them comment, "why are we using canned peaches? Isn't this Georgia?"

Peaches weren't out of season. Some of the finest peach orchards in the world were an hour and a half down I-75. And we were using canned peaches. They might even have been from China.

The previous summer I had visited Atlanta. I was in Centennial Olympic Park with a couple thousand people from all over the world. One thing that sticks out in my mind was an exhibit to tell these visitors our story - to introduce us to them. It proclaimed "The South is Agriculture". 

It's true. If you can eat it, wear it, smoke it, chew it, turn it into fuel and burn it, we'll try to make it spring from the ground. Agriculture is such a big deal that parts of our agriculture depend on other parts of our agriculture.

And we eat canned peaches from China.

Georgia specifically: we grow peaches, pecans, peanuts, apples, native grapes (muscadine, etc.), Vidalia onions, cotton, corn, soybeans. We raise poultry, beef, pork. And more.

And we eat canned peaches from China. 

Earlier I read a Twitter tirade straight out of Tattnall County. It inspired this post. There's a man down there, a Chicken Hippie, if you will. He has this crazy notion that Georgia dirt, fresh Georgia air, and Georgia sunshine will produce quality, tasty, nutritious chicken, duck, quail, & turkey. No crowded chicken houses. (You can find him on Twitter at @GApasturedbirds and on Instagram at grassrootsfarmsga.)

Next time you pass a chicken truck on the highway, take a look at the cargo and see if you agree with him.

Admittedly, I don't buy birds from him. Not right now. He makes his birds available through a distributor and restaurants can offer customers sustainable, locally-grown, pasture-raised poultry. And then they can switch back to Holly Farms and not tell you any different.

Thus the tirade.

Listen to me. This isn't about being a foodie. It isn't about being a hipster. It's about being a Southerner. It's about English settlers founding Georgia on agriculture in 1734. It's about Native American tribes sustaining themselves on this red clay on agriculture seven centuries before the English came.

It's about Georgians not eating canned peaches from China.

And it's about not wondering how a small farmer in South Georgia is selling poultry to restaurants in Atlanta and beginning to wonder why such products aren't widespread in our grocery stores. Why do we settle for less just because it costs a little less?

And Grassroots isn't the only farm like this out there. I know several people raising cattle & crops the old ways. You'll find them if you look. 

There's more on this topic but it will have to wait for another time.

Until then...