Multi-species, regenerative agriculture in a predator friendly system
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Building community through responsible,
sustainable stewardship
Love Is In The Air
June 19, 2026
A few weeks ago, I found a Polyphemus moth; well, most of it, anyway. It was on it’s way out, as I say. Not yet dead, but on its way to being so. With no energy to escape being caught, it didn’t resist as I gently worked my hand under its damaged wings, and worse-for-the-wear body. Its antennae were still fairly bushy and I actually apologized out loud at the possibility of flooding its olfactory senses with whatever residual smells might be on my skin. Moths are Olympic level smellers. They may appear to us to be drunkenly flying around when we catch a glimpse of them at dusk or night-time hours, but they are actually surveying the world based on scent. Flying here, then there, and back again, picking up scent molecules on the air, reading an invisible GPS. Male Polyphemus moths will sometimes fly miles tracking the pheromones of a female. Looking for love, following an invisible trail on the wind. That’s all a Polyphemus moth has once its final transformation from egg to caterpillar to pupae to moth is complete.
A life of transformation that might include overwintering as a pupa in a cocoon, culminates in emerging as one of North America’s largest moths, its wings stretching about five to five and a half inches across (only the Cecropia moth is larger with its six inch wing span). Polyphemus moths are quite impressive, but they are short lived. The adult moth has no functioning mouth. Its prime directive is to mate, lay eggs, and then die.
When I found the Polyphemus on the steps of our mudroom porch, I could only wonder if those magnificent antennae had succeeded in finding a mate. Was the air of 21st century suburbia too saturated with car exhaust, citronella candles, or pyrethroids from the pesticide companies, for the moth to find a mate and secure a genetic legacy? Did it successfully navigate around the Fresh Mountain Mist scent that escapes the neighbor’s dryer vent on laundry day? Was it able to avoid the acrid burning plastics from someone’s burn pile that hung in the air just a quarter mile up the road? Were the sensory organs of this ephemeral creature assaulted or damaged in its quest to simply procreate?
Or…was there a moment when the scent of its own kind cut through these other odors and smells and called to it… the molecules hanging in the night air, guiding it to fulfill its one mission in its week-long life span? I wondered if the moth felt a sense of peace and calm when that desired scent enveloped those antennae.
I’ve very often wondered how my own life, of seemingly flying in circles trying to find direction, landed me here on this farm, on this land, on this patch of dirt to which I have no familial ties or ancestral connection. The existential question of “Why am I here?” is more “Why am I HERE?” As I sit with words of anger that can never be unheard, I am not home here; the offer of welcome was rescinded. And yet, so very, very often this place – these trees and buildings and the very dirt and lives within it – opens her arms and embraces me with familiar smells that produce a sense of peace and calm within me.
There is an area of ground near the old pack house, where, among many plants, the Creeping Charlie grows. Its scalloped leaves crushing underfoot and sending out a distinct smell that takes me back to my grandparent’s Appalachian farm, where a child’s feet ran bare in games of tag, and hide and seek. It grew on the creek banks and covered the way to the shallow wash where the periwinkles drew lines across the glistening sand. When I walk the path to the north garden gate, or mow around the pack house, I am seven years old, and the sound of grandma’s creeks are in my ears, the cool of the mountain air is on my face; the smell of dinner on the wood cook stove is calling me to supper.
A few years ago, this farmhouse, despite its newness and youth, pieced together an overwhelming collection of old smells that brought me to tears. It was a damp, cold day outside; oak and persimmon from downed trees, cracked in the fireplace, while on the stove top, our farm raised bacon sizzled in an old cast iron pan. I was immediately in my grandmother’s kitchen. My bare feet, cold against the vinyl sheet floor, while I stood in front of the wood cook stove taking on its warmth and inhaling the salted pork cooking on the stove top. The fire inside consumed dried wood from the forest above Uncle Kenneth’s old house. Wood that had been felled by my daddy and his brothers. Sawed and split and left to dry until it was hauled to the wood shed behind Bird and Nell, the breeching on their harnesses pressing into their strong hind quarters as the heavy sled ground against the state-maintained gravel road; and the English Shepherd, Joe, trailed off to the side, at my grandfather’s heels. In that one, winter-morning-moment here in McLeansville, I traveled back in time and place.
Just yesterday evening, while finishing up evening chores, I hugged Pig Pen the Wonder Pony and his current Partner in Grazing, Smokey. Wrapping my arms around their necks, I laid my face into their mane and breathed in deep and slow: the smell of honest horse. No fly sprays or coat conditioners or liniments. Just the scent of a horse in the sunshine. It was intoxicating and I was once again a young child. Perhaps sitting behind the collar on Bird or Nell, tiny hands holding the brass knobs on the hames, begging to ride all the way up to the Burley patch. Or maybe I was hugging a foreleg, my little face pressed tight against the muscular forearms that pulled Grandpa’s walking plow; the damp, salty sweat from pulling that plow coating my face, making the skin tight as it dried. In the setting sun of yesterday, I was a child, underfoot while my grandpa and daddy pulled harness in the cool of the barn and walked horses to the spring where fine, green algae floated in the old wringer wash basin that caught icy water for animals to drink.
My days are punctuated with farm chores that usually begin and end in the big barn here. It’s not my barn, but it does feel a bit like my very own church. It is a sanctuary full of life, and lives that have gone on. I have conversations with the ghost of a man I never knew, while watching spiders throw silken threads as the barn swallows dart in and out, feeding young whose gaping maws line the edge of mud nests. The smell of dust and old wood and animals fills this space. Sitting on a bucket at the milk stand, goat’s milk streams into my metal bucket and its sweet, sticky scent on my skin, takes me to a moment in my grandparent’s barn. Soft dirt staining the bottoms of my bare feet, I was on my heels watching my grandmother’s practiced hands wash the milk cow’s udder. The milk would let down and she would deftly draw a bucket full of warm, rich milk that would clabber in Mason jars setting on the worn Formica countertop of her kitchen. Milk that would become pale butter and melt inside scratch made biscuits. And then from the barn, I’m back in grandma’s kitchen. The smell of the barn and the farm and meals together with people you love and who love you back…the smell of… love.
I placed the dying Polyphemus moth into the branches of the blooming gardenia at the mudroom steps. I watched it sit for a moment before attempting to fly off, its torn wings useless. It clumsily drifted to the dirt below, landing upside down. I righted the moth and let it be. Maybe it tried to fly away because the scent of the flowers was too overwhelming. I fully understand that. Somedays all these scents are rather overwhelming. But if you get lucky, maybe you find the smell of love…and if you get really, really lucky, maybe you can find your way to it.
Get in...We're Goin' On a Field Trip
Friday, March 27
Tomorrow is our first field trip of 2026. I’m writing this at the end of the day…exhausted from the getting ready portion, the catching up from being off delivering wool for four days and being already behind, the “this old meat suit” aspect of it all these days…my brain is plum wore out this time of night…but, I love field trips. I’ve got some strong feelings about field trips…as a former middle school teacher and as a student…and as a life long learner. Field trips are full of opportunity.
As a school kid – from primary grades all the way thru high school – I loved taking field trips. And I learned so much during those trips outside of the classroom. It was a different time, to be sure. No Google or Internet to take us far and away with sound and sight; no instant gratification to answer “what’s the weather in Katmandu this morning?” And for a lot of people, traveling to the shore or the coast or the mountains or the big city…well, it really wasn’t a thing. Later on, when I was teaching, I had students who had never left High Point until they went on a field trip.
Just this past Tuesday, while driving through Virginia, I was telling Darrell about a high school field trip to Charlottesville, Virginia. I don’t remember what grade it was, or who I sat with on the charter bus; but I absolutely remember the architecture at UVA, how Thomas Jefferson engineered the layout of the buildings so that the perspective would really bring the Rotunda into focus. I remember Monticello well. Did you know that Jefferson awoke each morning and put his feet into an ice water bath? Or that there still exists a deep cistern of sorts that was used to hold ice hauled up from the river during the winter months? That he considered himself a farmer, first and foremost, keeping extensive gardens and livestock breeds that today we call rare. As an adult, I confess I’m not shocked we were left ignorant of Sally Hemmings…but that’s another writing. We also visited James Madison’s property on that trip but I don’t remember much about it; there was no docent, no interior tour for our large group. I mostly remember wishing we had had more time at Monticello.
My favorite field trip ever happened in the fourth grade. I was part of a group of students who participated in enrichment classes at my school; the program was countywide, maybe statewide. One dark morning, a collective of Guilford County and maybe even Forsyth County, students met at Jamestown Elementary School. We stashed our luggage in the bellies of big, silver charter buses and loaded up for the long drive east, our destination being the sleepy coastal town of Beaufort, North Carolina. We spent several days engaged in activities in the marshes and wetlands; I saw a baby flounder whose eyes hadn’t yet fully migrated, it’s body some sort of carnival oddity suitable for gawking at. There were hundreds and hundreds of fiddler crabs, eager to play chicken with the interloping bipeds, scurrying sideways stage left and then sideways stage right, hiding among the clumping marsh grasses. We toured the Maritime Museum, witnessed wooden boats being built by master craftsman using ancient techniques, and randomly met a family of four who were sailing around the world. They gave us a tour of their sailboat…what lovely people to allow dozens of fourth grade strangers to wander through their efficient, floating home.
That trip opened my eyes to a great many things: disease in the 17th century, sea life and the natural world, different ways of living and educating children on a sail boat in blue water, hundreds of miles from the nearest blackboard or library…too much to list. As a parent, one of the first places I ever felt compelled to make sure our daughter Sophie visited, was Beaufort. And so we did…many times. It remains one our favorite places to visit; kayaks in tow, we adore a paddle across Taylor’s Creek and a day spent walking along Bird Shoals or sitting in the shallows of the inlet while baby everything congregates around the safety of our feet and legs. We have so many fond memories to include a circumnavigation tour of Rachel Carson Reserve, complete with a tiny neonate dolphin and the summer pod “sharking” along the southern shore across the sound from Shackleford. Paula Gilliken, now maybe the director of the whole shebang, was in charge of our small group that day. Her excitement over seeing the sharking and the passion she expressed in educating us all about Rachel Carson and the Reserve and the prolific life within it, was infectious. I wonder if any of the other participants that day went home and did the deep dive into all things Rachel Carson and estuary and Silent Spring…
I had done a similar dive for information back in fourth grade… except back then I became a little obsessed with Dr. Eugenie Clark, world famous marine biologist and shark expert in Baltimore. That’s what happens when a kid growing up four hours from the coast gets to go a field trip and pet a dogfish shark in a touch tank…that kid remembers the sensation of the shark swimming under their hand, the skin that’s smooth in one direction and not so much in the other (denticles, in case you’re wondering). That kid counted the gills on that dogfish and then wondered if all sharks had the same number of gills (they don’t); and in digging for that answer, learned that with a couple of exceptions, sharks must continuously swim forward and force water across their gills or they effectively drown…they suffocate and die. That led to all sorts of discoveries about sharks and their livers and their cartilage and cancer treatment discoveries that saved humans and sharks’ persistence as a species while dinosaurs disappeared and mammals laid claim to the earth.
From there, that kid learned about taxonomy… and structural similarities between all species…there is a giant sea turtle skeleton exhibit at one of the North Carolina Aquariums and you can easily match some of the turtle bones to their human equivalencies. And speaking of sea turtles, did you know they are an indicator species? Their success, or demise, serves as a bellwether as it relates to the health of our very planet. And that leads us to plastic bags and litter that is clogging our oceans. All of those plastic shopping bags, flying about in the breeze if not properly disposed of…as if there’s anything proper about an item that takes hundreds of years to decompose and floods the environment with microplastics that are ingested whether we intend to or not…and then those microplastics migrate throughout our bodies to our brains. The sea turtles don’t suffer that; they die sooner because the floating plastic bags look sort of like jelly fish, a favorite meal for sea turtles. Gastric impaction and starvation. To be such a brilliant species, we sure do drop the ball on being good stewards of the very planet that sustains us…
I could go on and on about how much I learned about all sorts of stuff simply because of a field trip. Exposure to information in a way I’d never encountered it before, IF I had ever encountered it to begin with (usually not)…exposure that motivated me to learn more…to muster the initiative and drive to know all I could about a thing or an event or a person.
Field trips often give birth to life long learners who move from one topic to the next with deep curiosity that demands to be satisfied. Field trips are opportunities for growth in so many different ways. They are the springboard for who knows what…so many new things to see and hear and do on a field trip – not to mention that for many young people, a field trip is the chance to travel and see things they wouldn’t otherwise ever have a chance to. Field trips are invaluable.
Tomorrow morning I’ll be running around with my hair on fire, hustling through chores and getting all my ducks in a row so that we will be ready to receive our field trip guests. I just love the unpredictability of a field trip…the best laid plans of mice and men, a plan that must be flexible to accommodate the questions and curiosity of the group at hand, the variability of the farm and its uncanny ability to know when we’re expecting guests and allowing for things – like loose hogs - that keep me on my toes and give me the opportunity to show off our hog skull and talk about the teeth of omnivores versus herbivores and the dense bone and terrific muscling that allows them to use their faces, heads, and necks to move just about anything out of their way. Everything is a learning opportunity and my gosh, do I love a field trip.
Don't You Worry About Coyote?
Saturday, March 21
I’m out and about, or here or there, or somewhere that’s not farm-ish, or somewhere that is farm-ish, and people learn that we raise no small amount of poultry, free ranging on our farm…
“I bet you worry about the coyote, yeah?”
“Aren’t you worried about coyote?”
“You probably have to worry about the coyote, right?”
Absolutely, I’m worried about the coyote.
But NOT for the reasons you’d think.
I don’t worry about the coyote taking poultry or baby livestock. I don’t worry about coyote running off with the barn cats. I don’t worry that the coyote are going to lure Larson or any of the other goon squad house dogs out into the woods and unalive them.
I don’t worry about the coyote as it relates to the coyote’s behavior.
I worry about the coyote as it relates to humanoids, the false narratives spread by humanoids, and the humanoids that love to talk big about suppression and infrared and if it’s brown it’s down.
I worry about the people on NextDoor and Facebook and Instagram and where ever else people congregate to yap about anything and everything, often without much regard for the truth. Social media has the capacity for so much good… but a lot of it has replaced the old school telephone party line, or the church prayer list, or the PTA phone tree. It’s the end cap of the snack aisle at the neighborhood grocery store where traffic jams of buggies ensure shoppers hear the latest gossip about So & So. Lots of people, excited beyond reason, to share what they think they know, and to hell with the consequences so long as they aren’t the ones to suffer them. We’ve become a culture with access to a tremendous amount of accurate information but so many times, very little interest in availing ourselves of it.
And before anyone reading this rolls their eyes and mumbles something about “city folks” or “tree huggers” or some other pejorative remark about people who seem to care about wildlife and the environment, let me just interject that MANY times the worst offenders when it comes to a reluctance to embrace fact based information as it relates to coyote, in particular, are the very folks who profess ethical stewardship of land and resources. Now you can roll your eyes at ME…but I said what I said.
Canis latrans, your average run of the mill eastern coyote, was not brought here by the government to reduce deer populations. You can thank some of the hunt clubs for the few they brought in, BUT the real reason we seen them east of the Mississippi River at this point is simple: we extirpated the apex predators and Mother Nature absolutely abhors a vacuum. If you create a hole in the habitat, she’s gonna fill it. Furthermore, evidence supports coyote movement based on HUMAN activity. We’re pretty trashy…we generate a lot of waste and that waste attracts rodents and guess who loves a hearty meal of rodents? Coyote.
While coyote (like all wildlife) are most interested in the easiest meal available (eg the cat food left at feral cat colonies or out on your back deck for the stray that comes around), coyote eat LOTS of small mammals – mice, rats, bunnies, musk rats…small reptiles, birds, insects, dead things, and dumpster diving for human garbage. Will the coyote make off with your toy poodle or shih tzu or cat if that’s the easiest meal? 100%. Which is why you should be supervising the aforementioned teensies. But that’s your responsibility. It’s also your responsibility to supervise your larger dogs…because coyote aren’t luring them to the woods to unalive them…your unattended doodle or lab or golden or whatever enters territory the coyote claim are interlopers - and coyote defend against interlopers. They don’t acknowledge specs on a land deed; it’s your responsibility to supervise your pet. Without coyote filling that apex predator slot, what do you think happens to populations of rodents and small mammals? And when those populations explode, what’s the answer? Poison? Glue traps? Some other horrible death that often includes the death of an unintended target…like songbirds or owls or other raptors? Coyote fill a niche in the ecosystem that humans created by wiping out the animals Mother Nature already had in place.
But I totally understand that the presence of coyote can freak people out; I’ve been there. When I was depending on confidently conveyed but oh-so-wrong information about the coyote, I was fearful. And then I realized that wrong information producing nothing much other than fearfulness, isn’t actually helpful in any way. Facts and accurate information – whether it’s about spiders or snakes or coyote – do a lot to combat worry and fear. So, here are a few facts about coyote that you can depend upon:
Eastern coyote vocalizations make it sound like there’s dozens of animals in their “pack.” It should make you feel better to know it’s usually just the parent animals (a single pair of breeding animals; 1 male, 1 female) and maybe two to three juveniles/non-breeding coyote, and sometimes older pups who have earned the privilege of mobility away from the den. That’s it. If you’re on a fishing boat and one of the crew tells you his buddy has a pack of fifty to sixty coyote hunting his cattle farm every night, just nod and say wow and keep fishing while knowing that isn’t true. (This oddly specific example generated by real life and no one is arguing with crew when you’re in blue water off shore.)
Eastern coyote can have a mishmash of DNA but they are not some giant dire-wolf coy-dog Franken-K9 of astounding size. Average size is 35-40 pounds. That’s the same size as current farm resident Scout, a beagle cross, with a nose for trouble and counter surfing. Because genetics are super cool, you’ll find coyote in an array of color schemes and body shapes; some are more leggy than others, giving them a more German Shepherd type look, especially when they’re in winter coat. But they just aren’t that big. For point of reference, the Pyrenees in this picture (the infamous Hazel), weighs about 85 pounds. Our largest livestock guardian dog is a fit 120 pounds. We know dogs around here, big ‘uns and little ‘uns…and coyote just aren’t anything more than a really average medium-ish size. Coyote are incredible survivalists not by brut force or Schwarzenegger strength, but by their wits. They are (in the voice of Casey Affleck in Good Will Hunting) wicked smart.
There is a wonderful book about animal intelligence by Frans De Waal, titled Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? It’s worth a read and shines light on the gaps in our immediate understanding about how animals interact with the world and their environment. Intelligence is not simply a pyramid with humans at the top of the brainiac chain. Once you view coyote as something other than an over-embellished killing machine that’s trying to take over the world, their brilliance becomes evident. In addition to complex vocalizations and social structures, they are excellent problem solvers and have astounding memories. They rapidly adjust their behaviors in response to their environment…plasticity instead of just evolutionary. This is why you will find them living successfully in ALL types of environments – from the wildest of wilds to urban settings where they’ve been known to accidentally “shop” at the corner bodega. Because they are so smart and happy to shape-shift in order to survive, the best way to navigate coyote is to co-exist and embrace non-lethal management.
Now that the camo-crowd is fully wound up over the mere mention of non-lethal management, let me dump some more important info…
Coyote are reproductively responsive. This means that if/when their family numbers come under lethal pressure (eg the one breeding female in a family group gets picked off by that guy you off NextDoor who offered to show up at night and “solve” your so-called coyote problem), the family group responds by increasing the odds of survival. Non-breeding females will come into estrus and breed; litter sizes will increase. Efforts at indiscriminate lethal management actually just make any problems caused by the presence of coyote, worse. Outsmarting the coyote; however, and managing the resident family group, has much more positive effects for everyone involved. Habitats are not destabilized when you learn to manage your residents (remember Mother Nature hates a vacuum and she always bats last…unaliving the entire family of coyote simply means the habitat now has space for a new family). And there are a lot of easy-enough ways to effectively manage coyote without resorting to pew-pewing everything.
Because we are involved in livestock guardian dog rescue/rehab/rehome, I do no small amount of consult with folks who are considering adding LGD to their farm/homestead. The first thing I always ask is what they’ve already got in the way of deterrents to dissuade the wildlife from taking poultry or livestock. I always, always, always recommend the following deterrents to manage the wildlife: strategically placed electric fencing (addition to existing fencing or stand alone on step in posts; compost bins, chicken coops, and rabbit hutches can also be “wrapped”), fladry, solar-powered predator eye lights, apex predator urine (you can also use things like hair from the barber shop floor in knee high stockings, hung at perimeters and moved frequently; pungent smelling bars of soap hung the same way can effect wildlife traffic patterns), portable radios (again, move them around to different locations), motion lights, motion activated sprinkler systems (only where it doesn’t freeze), and hazing. Coyote – and all foraging/hunting wildlife – depend in part on stability. They don’t like the strange and unusual; wildlife is generally quite risk averse. If the habitat feels risky and unstable, they tend to avoid it. This is why you change things up with the portable radios and smelly things. And if you actually see the coyote…grab some baking pans and head to the yard, yelling at the animal and banging those pots and pans together. Disrupt and be loud and stinky about it.
If you’ve gotten this far into today’s ramblings, you’re probably still wondering why I am worried about coyote. I’m worried about coyote because, like all the wildlife (and US), they have a place in the ecosystem. Whether we like it or not, the ecosystem has a design…those pesky mosquitoes and ticks that cause us such trouble, are actually food for animals we deem cute or cool enough to live alongside us. Dragonflies consume mosquito larvae; birds eat ticks. Remove food sources with Captain Death Cloud pesticides and you’ve just taken a hard hit at the songbirds you enjoy…or the magical dragonflies that bring a smile to your face. Coyote are no different; they aren’t here to heist the family car, steal your hard-earned cash, or knock up your daughter…they aren’t criminals. My worry comes from the fact that SO many people have decided that they are criminals and then the humans behave accordingly…freaking out and posting reactively on social media; others grabbing an array of lethal tools and heading to the scene of “last seen.” While the misinformation runs rough shod over facts, the developers continue to wipe out swaths of green space, cutting forest to the ground, bulldozing the horizon, and recreating a new habitat that is suitable only for novel fescue and HOA rules that serve the good of nothing except aesthetics. Warehouses line interstate corridors in the hopes of housing the stuff we just can’t live without, and the promise of economic prosperity and jobs…a promise that is all too often mythical, and the cost to the environment rather high and permanent. All this meddling with the natural world and its non-human inhabitants appears rather unchecked at this point…the area where I live, becomes more and more brown and asphalt black every day. Where are the voices to speak up against destroying the environments that support life? The silence is deafening.
So, yeah, I worry about the coyote.
For additional information from people who are in the know, we recommend a trip to www.atlantacoyoteproject.org. Lots of great, accurate info you can depend upon.
Familiarity and Comfort
Thursday, March 19th
