Wendell Berry and ‘agriculture’ ended by melonworms

Last week, this editorial page celebrated a modest and (in a way) bountiful crop of butternut squash in Cape Haze, all taken from a volunteer seed. The seed came from Charlotte DOT grass turf from farms most likely in the Everglades Agricultural Area. By the way, the squash itself, a bastardized variety of Cucurbita moschata, was tasty baked in olive oil, salt and pepper.

However, on Monday, hundreds of melonworms devoured all 100 square feet of this editor’s vigorous patch in a few hours. So quickly, the green worms, which look quite harmless, ate the whole thing. It all had to be cut down; only two squash were rescue-worthy. The worms, which make ugly moths, hide under leaves and come out in force to eat all the tasty leaves before they start on the squash themselves. They leave the veins intact; apparently the tasty green leaves are all they want. After finishing with the leaves, they move on to the fruit itself. 

We were able to rescue a handful of squash; going by street value at Walmart, they would have been a value of about $9.24, at $1.54 each. They now await a fate of soup and more baked side-dish action.

In researching the issue of the cause of the worms, they thrive in Florida as they are not killed off by a freeze. In addition, many of their natural predators, including certain wasps and tachinid flies, have been diminished or eliminated by the overuse of pesticides.

There are apparently some ways to foil them, according to the University of Florida, including the biological poison Bacillus thuringiensis.

The ruin of the patch came a day after the southward migration and arrival of a dear neighbor, who said he has received a dire medical diagnosis. Even after telling this news, he pointed out that the squash’s yellow flower was a particular delicacy. 

The end of this accidental Cape Haze Agricultural Experiment also came the same day that news that Kentucky writer and theorist Wendell Berry died. Berry was perhaps the world’s foremost thinker on sustainable agriculture and its connection to a wholesome way of living in community. In the wake of Berry’s death, “The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry” is now America’s best-selling essay book. The reader is edited by English writer Paul Kingsnorth, who is one of hundreds who are carrying forth with Berry’s ideas not only on agriculture, but on a way of life that is not obsessed every moment with technology and growth.

Kingsnorth is thinking about how to live when we know “something is wrong” in the culture, too. He writes, “The future is STEM and chatbots and cashless parking meters and economic growth and asteroid mining forever and forever. There is no arguing with it … you just know that something is wrong.”

The good news is that the retired farmers of the neighborhood have had their hopeful say on their walks. One couple, who had a farm in a desert area of British Columbia, Okanagan, where there is less rain than Florida, is always busy searching up Florida-friendly seeds. He and his wife have raised beds, and are still experimenting with Florida’s endless seasons.

There have been so many who have written about Berry this week. The wisdom in his writings will all be there for us as a legacy, both in nonfiction, fiction (in his Port William stories) and his poetry. He is widely read here on the island. His ideas have gone beyond Christianity, town planning and agriculture; perhaps his most notable contribution to American thought is the idea of Solving for Pattern, from a Rodale essay in 1981. The idea is that agriculture gives us lessons in government. We have quoted it before. Writes Berry:

My immediate concern here is with the irony of agricultural methods that destroy, first, the health of the soil and, finally, the health of human communities. But I could just as easily be talking about sanitation systems that pollute, school systems that graduate illiterate students, medical cures that cause disease, or nuclear armaments that explode in the midst of the people they are meant to protect.

Perhaps a favorite tribute comes from technology writer Dan Gillmor, who interviewed Berry in the 1980s when he wrote for the Kansas City Times. 

He quoted him as saying that, “The humble farmer tries to align himself with nature, and the arrogant farmer tries to replace nature’s intelligence with his own.”

True for so many things and situations.

Garland Pollard is editor of the Boca Beacon. Email your letters to editor@bocabeacon.com.