Trauma Farm (10 page)

The life of the hive, like much of farm life, is female. Males serve for stud service or slaughter. In the hive, every worker can become a queen—if she is fed royal jelly—but one suffices. Multiple drones hatch in the spring. Big and useless, they roam around like bumbling bachelors, enjoying the run of the combs, living in luxury, sometimes moving unrestricted from hive to hive, awaiting their glory moment. The young queen will make several preliminary flights, scouting her kingdom, perhaps to remember it for the dark years within the hive that lie ahead. Then one day she will leap out of her hive and take to the air, releasing a jet trail of pheromones, emitting a
chip-chip-chip
sound as she lunges for the sun. So loud is her cry, so strong her odour, males will find her from ten miles away. Those that fly the highest and fastest will reach her in the “drone zone,” a hundred feet above ground. Obsessive beekeepers claim they’ve heard the snap of their tiny genitalia as they break away from the queen and tumble to the ground, ripped apart by their one act of copulation. Sex and death with altitude.

Once is not enough for a queen. She will accept several drones, ensuring the genetic diversity of the hive, each one having to lunge higher and harder in the ecstatic nuptial flight, lushly described in Maurice Maeterlinck’s
The Life
of the Bee,
perhaps the most romantic passage on natural history ever written. After the nuptial flight, she returns triumphant, trailing her lovers’ genitalia like streamers, and the failed drones revert to their old bachelor mode, mumbling about the hive while the female workers grow more annoyed with them until, in what’s known as the “summer slaughter of the drones,” they are evicted. Some will fight bitterly, uselessly, as the relentless females shove them out of the hive, suicidally stinging them to death if they resist, heaping up clumps of bodies on the landing and tumbling them down into the waiting mandibles of wasps.

For thousands of years the Americas thrived without the honeybee. Pollination was accomplished by bumblebees, mason bees, carpenter bees, stingless bees, and other insects. Mesoamericans learned how to extract some honey from varieties of bumblebee. Then, only a few centuries ago, Native Americans gazed in horror at a sky full of “stinging flies.” The arrival of a honeybee swarm meant that white colonialists were not far behind, eager to seize and change the land.

Now in this new world, small farmers like myself are also endangered. Modern agribusiness spends more money on chemicals than on machinery or seed. Their pesticides are poisoning millions of bees, already suffering from other introduced pests, such as foulbrood—a bacterium that eats bee larvae from inside out—varroa mites, tracheal mites. The wild European honeybee is approaching extinction, the large commercial apiary operations floating in a plethora of chemicals. Our islands, until ten years ago, were the last in North America to produce organic honey, but the mite was illegally introduced by an ignorant beekeeper, and now we have to use chemicals also, merely to keep our bees alive.

Yet I stubbornly continue to learn the world of the singing bees, who teach me small new lessons every day while going about their lives. Civilization, communication, progress— these are the myths we tell ourselves. I don’t have faith in them anymore, but what’s left of the natural world, though it’s often brutal, I can still love. Resting my hand on a hive, I feel the thrum of the bees’ conversations, and I dream about the mysteries they are discussing inside. Sometimes, on my better days, I think that language is just another word for the poetry of the earth.

ONE OF THE GLORIES
of living on the land is the freedom to fertilize it, and the need is suddenly upon me. I’ve always felt a secret enjoyment pissing beside a tree when the body makes its demands. I avoid the smaller plants because I don’t want to feed them too much concentrated nitrogen. Elimination outdoors used to be common for our species, but as we move away from the land, it’s become unusual. I love watching the expression of bliss on Sharon’s face when she suddenly drops her pants and squats in the woods. Maybe we just recognize the growing repressions of culture, and there’s a special pride in regaining our freedom. Though, after a while, I’ve found I’ve become so used to freedom I sometimes catch myself looking for a likely tree in the city, and realize rural life has created dangerous habits.

SURROUNDING THE HIVES
, the orchard is in full leaf, seeds and fruit already swelling. I stride past them, followed by the dogs. Pecan, almond, quince, pear-apple, hazelnut. The apples are the most diverse—heirloom varieties: Wolf River, king, Cox’s orange pippin, Lodi, Gravenstein, Boscoop. I shut the field gate and pass the white hawthorns, newly planted to shade our driveway. I’ve nearly come full circle, heading toward the barn, the moon gate, and the house.

The sun never sets on this land. In winter it’s a grey ball permeating the mists. To the west a hill blocks the luxurious coastal sunsets. East, we look upon the United States, across the blue, metallic skin of the Pacific Ocean—more islands, the glaciers of the coast range, and a volcano, Mount Baker, coughing up a spittle of steam. Beyond that a continent vibrating with life and urgency. We live at the edge of the ring of fire—the volcanic Pacific Rim. Streaky clouds unfold over the coastal mountains, reflecting off the strait between Salt Spring and Pender Island. Standing in the driveway above the garden, looking down beyond the low field between two maples, I watch a ferry, as big as a cruise ship, slide between the islands.

The garden rail fence is lined with mulberry, kiwi, winterberry, climbing rose, and eucalyptus whose branches we sell to florists. Close to the house, in a fit of whimsy, we planted bananas and palm trees, so very un-Canadian, but they’re surviving in our temperate climate. The queasy acknowledgement of this menagerie haunts me on occasion. I remember when we arrived, pulling up with a five-ton truck filled with trees and shrubs. “You’re bringing trees to the Gulf Islands?” my friend said, laughing. These islands are known for their lush, unique flora and fauna, and the first thing I did was introduce strange trees, fool that I was.

Within only a few years I recognized the consequences of our appetite for gathering original companions around us.

“
WHAT’S THAT? ” I YELLED
. “Stop the car!” In the road was a sprawling, twitching, brown-green creature the size of a dinner plate. I climbed out of the passenger seat and walked back. It was a giant frog, one side of its face swollen and its eye blood-red. I scooped it up and took it back to our car. We were going to visit the grandchildren, and I thought the little ones would be mighty astonished by it. Sharon was. We released it in their small pond, but after the afternoon party the frog appeared less stunned, almost healthy, aside from the bloody eyeball. I didn’t want it to eat the children’s goldfish, so we collected it and returned to the lake near the road.

Although this monster was the size of a small chicken, and I’d heard somewhere that it had a bad reputation, I let it go. There was an odd sense of fair play in me that demanded giving it a fighting chance. That was five years ago, and I’ve regretted the decision ever since. It was as surprised as I was when I liberated it in the reeds. It hovered there a second, and then kicked off.

The American bullfrog,
Rana castesbeiana,
is a species introduced to southern British Columbia by delusional entrepreneurs in the 1930s who thought they were going to corner the frog-leg market for French restaurants. When the frog farms failed they released the frogs, and their numbers have been increasing since. Now they are swallowing endangered red-legged frogs whole, along with rare salamanders. Not long after the incident I saw a video of these frogs sucking down a flock of tiny ducklings, one by one, as they paddled behind their mother. There have been reports of attacks on kittens. This is one mean creature. And it’s not alone. Whether it’s gypsy moths, starlings, zebra mussels, or Himalayan blackberries, we are introducing an increasing quantity of alien creatures into ecosystems where they can cause untold harm.

If you fly over my island in June, the hills are yellow with Scotch broom flowers. Broom seeds can be “banked” in the soil for thirty years. A single plant can, theoretically, produce eighteen thousand seeds every year. Captain Walter Grant of Sooke, a homesick Scotsman, brought twelve seeds in 1850. Three survived. The invasion of Vancouver Island derives from the offspring of these three seeds. Broom will overwhelm entire fields in a few years, driving out native plants, and it has no North American predators. Its oily branches can suffer tip die-off, making it one of a few plants capable of spontaneous combustion—a real hazard in our dry summers—and we’ve got it forever.

A line of broom follows our snake fence alongside the gravel road leading to our home. A neighbour has suggested, several times, that I remove it. I keep intending to, but on a farm, one never has enough time to reclaim an environment under constant threat. After an acquaintance mentioned how beautiful all the yellow blooms looked from the air, I began to wonder what other invasive species there were on our ten acres. Reading the available material I was shocked to learn how much our species is changing the world’s environments. British Columbia’s original grasses (before colonization) now cover only 2 percent of their native habitat.

The number of invasive plants and species across North America is astronomical. Only in the last few decades have we begun to restrict the traffic in animals. Meanwhile, brown snakes, insects, and diseases like West Nile virus are hitching rides everywhere. When I tried to look up Canadian government regulations for introducing plants and seeds I realized that, except for a few specific disease watches, most of the guidelines are
voluntary
—the bureaucratic term for “anything goes.”

Lately there’s been a ban on importing certain potted plants from the United States, out of fear of oak root fungus, and plant soil must be fumigated. Some disease outbreaks are recognized and the plants sprayed. Otherwise, the nurseries are wide open. My horticultural friends tell me the oak root fungus is already here and the government inspectors are just going through the motions so they will look good. Every day the skies are filled with planes airlifting exotic orchids and plants from all over the world, along with their insect or disease hitchhikers.

On Salt Spring the cornucopia of plants at our nurseries is a lush Eden—bulbs, seeds, rare species from the Himalayas or the deserts of New Mexico. Most people are not aware of how dangerous these plants can become in a new location. The history of farming and gardening is the history of infecting landscapes with beautiful plants that turn into monsters in another habitat—like the kudzu “mile-a-minute” vine that grows a foot a day and can overwhelm a parked car in a week. A few years ago I decided to plant milk thistles for their healthy seeds (good for the liver). I missed a few flower heads at harvest. Five years later, milk thistles are still appearing. We now have them under control, but the experience made me realize how quickly an alien plant can escape. That’s why Canada’s fields are plagued with so many varieties of thistle.