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A Total Eclipse of the Foxtail · Relatively Stable

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[music]
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SPEAKER_00: A total eclipse of the foxtail,
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SPEAKER_00: in which I go looking for trouble in a perfectly good field.
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SPEAKER_00: We're in the middle of eclipse season,
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SPEAKER_00: a time of observation and a free-floating sense of being untethered.
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SPEAKER_00: If you've been feeling sudden waves of grief that have no basis
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SPEAKER_00: in your current reality, you're not alone.
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SPEAKER_00: Last week I spoke with at least a dozen people,
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SPEAKER_00: myself included, who were slammed by a sense of heart-wrenching sadness.
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SPEAKER_00: It's a time for digging deeply into your feels and sorting through and tossing
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SPEAKER_00: the things, emotions, memories, and desires you don't need anymore.
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SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm going to talk to you about foxtail grass today.
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SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of wisdom and warnings packed into the maturity of those barbed seed heads.
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SPEAKER_00: Before we get started with this week's essay,
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SPEAKER_00: I want to remind you that I join you every Thursday morning to share stories from
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SPEAKER_00: the farm.
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SPEAKER_00: Your subscription supports our herd of senior horses and the preservation of this land.
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SPEAKER_00: Consider becoming a patron of this little farm in South Carolina that is changing
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SPEAKER_00: the horse world in a global way.
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SPEAKER_00: Now let's get started.
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SPEAKER_00: In what feels like another lifetime, I sold hay.
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SPEAKER_00: Our haybroker sold his farm during the pandemic and moved to the coast.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't blame him.
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SPEAKER_00: Faced with the reality of working alongside the temperamental whims
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SPEAKER_00: of other hay suppliers,
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SPEAKER_00: I worked steadily to track down the contact information for
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SPEAKER_00: the growers my previous hay dude had purchased from.
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SPEAKER_00: When that didn't work, I resorted to begging.
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SPEAKER_00: Finally, I had a name and number.
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SPEAKER_00: I have too many horses to feed to be pathologically choosy about hay quality.
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SPEAKER_00: I fed basic fescue hay most of my horse-loving life because it was once plentiful
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SPEAKER_00: in upstate South Carolina.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't keep pregnant mares,
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SPEAKER_00: so a potential sensitivity to a fungus growing on the fescue
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SPEAKER_00: that depletes their milk supply didn't apply to me.
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SPEAKER_00: Fescue was a great,
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SPEAKER_00: affordable,
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SPEAKER_00: mid-quality forage,
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SPEAKER_00: but there was always the risk that it was one step away from being cow hay.
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SPEAKER_00: Cow hay is stemmy, weedy, dusty, and weathered.
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SPEAKER_00: Cows digest tough fibers better than horses.
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SPEAKER_00: My supplier up until the pandemic imported richer hays from a grower in Kentucky.
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SPEAKER_00: I'd live the progression from a small two-string bale of hay costing $4 out of
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SPEAKER_00: the field to much of our region's hay being transported from other states at $15
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SPEAKER_00: to $20 a bale.
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SPEAKER_00: When the broker closed up shop, I would have done anything for a new supplier.
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SPEAKER_00: For a few months,
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SPEAKER_00: I purchased loosely bound bales that had been rebaled from large rounds and paid tax
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SPEAKER_00: on each shipment by having to listen for hours to the continuous,
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SPEAKER_00: relentless speeches of the bored driver who delivered it for us to unload.
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SPEAKER_00: We were a captive audience.
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SPEAKER_00: When I finally secured a number for the grower in Kentucky,
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SPEAKER_00: I knew I'd have to change my routine from buying small monthly batches to storing
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SPEAKER_00: and selling semi-trailer loads.
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SPEAKER_00: The farmer took mercy on me and agreed to take me on as a client,
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SPEAKER_00: but I had to learn how to move hay fast.
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SPEAKER_00: The hardest part was the labor.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm not alone in this.
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SPEAKER_00: We are no longer living in a time when people are willing or physically able to move
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SPEAKER_00: and stack hay.
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SPEAKER_00: I had to acclimate my body to moving a hundred or more bales at a time.
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SPEAKER_00: And this is coming from someone who works outside all day and is accustomed
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SPEAKER_00: to weather and lifting.
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SPEAKER_00: So much about hay is automated these days.
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SPEAKER_00: Small squares come in 21 bale bundles because there is no one left to lift
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SPEAKER_00: and toss hay as it's made in the field.
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SPEAKER_00: Machines do the work now, lifting and stacking the bundles.
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SPEAKER_00: To make matters worse, hay is baled in warm climates during the hottest part of the year.
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SPEAKER_00: As I started selling and lifting and stacking hay,
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SPEAKER_00: I received a lot of messages and calls from people looking for organic hay free
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SPEAKER_00: of herbicides and pesticides.
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SPEAKER_00: I am also a chemical-free sort of land manager.
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SPEAKER_00: Our long-term weed management is centered on out-competing the unsavory plants
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SPEAKER_00: by mowing and planting the grasses we want.
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SPEAKER_00: It's a very long-term strategy.
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SPEAKER_00: I just don't want our horses eating Roundup or having it seep into the well water.
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SPEAKER_00: Hay growers don't have the luxury of time.
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SPEAKER_00: We're losing land and farmers by the year.
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SPEAKER_00: Those same buyers who are seeking organic,
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SPEAKER_00: horse-quality hay make your basic white girl ordering at Starbucks look like
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SPEAKER_00: the most easygoing customer.
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SPEAKER_00: They're going to freak out if there is a weed in their hay.
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SPEAKER_00: The very same people who are spending thousands on back to nature retreats
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SPEAKER_00: in Costa Rica are appalled, angry,
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SPEAKER_00: and stricken if they purchase a bale of hay that contains anything but
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SPEAKER_00: the finest pure grasses.
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SPEAKER_00: They also need you to provide a recent hay analysis from
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SPEAKER_00: the Agricultural Extension Service for the current batch,
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SPEAKER_00: showing the exact moisture,
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SPEAKER_00: protein, fiber, energy, sugar, and mineral levels in the product.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm a sucker for good quality hay,
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SPEAKER_00: just like the other horse people,
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SPEAKER_00: but we're running out of hay growers,
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SPEAKER_00: and I realize that I'm not in a position to feed a herd of horses
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SPEAKER_00: without nature getting in the way.
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SPEAKER_00: I've purchased a truckload of hay that was about to combust from the heat generated
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SPEAKER_00: by fermentation because it was baled too wet.
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SPEAKER_00: I've had a boarder's horse eat a blackberry briar that wrapped around its epiglottis
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SPEAKER_00: and had to be surgically removed.
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SPEAKER_00: I once found a dead turkey in a bale of hay,
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SPEAKER_00: big botulism risk, and routinely find crushed soda cans smashed into flakes of hay.
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SPEAKER_00: I say all this because of foxtail.
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SPEAKER_00: The simple weed so lush and pretty to look at about brought me
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SPEAKER_00: to my knees my first year of selling hay.
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SPEAKER_00: The whole point of this endeavor was to keep a steady supply of hay for my horses.
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SPEAKER_00: Foxtail became my Achilles heel.
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SPEAKER_00: Often the hay we received was packed near or on top of straw.
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SPEAKER_00: A byproduct of harvesting wheat, barley, and other grains.
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SPEAKER_00: All of these plants have seed heads.
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SPEAKER_00: Over time,
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SPEAKER_00: every single seed head found in a bell of hay was suspected to be foxtail
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SPEAKER_00: by certain clients.
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SPEAKER_00: The seed heads of the very same grasses they wanted to feed became potential foxtail.
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SPEAKER_00: I had to listen to people bitch about foxtail so often
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SPEAKER_00: that I became intensely paranoid about foxtail.
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SPEAKER_00: I stared at plants in the field and I studied photos online.
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SPEAKER_00: Any greenery sprouting a fluffy head became suspect.
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SPEAKER_00: As the foxtail seed heads mature and dry,
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SPEAKER_00: their bristles become stiff and capable of causing trouble.
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SPEAKER_00: When young, green, and soft, this isn't a problem for the horses.
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SPEAKER_00: But once the plant finishes college and starts spreading its resume about,
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SPEAKER_00: the grown-up seed can embed its little fish hooks in a horse's mouth tissue
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SPEAKER_00: and refuse to budge.
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SPEAKER_00: When this happens,
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SPEAKER_00: a veterinarian is called to remove the microscopic interlopers
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SPEAKER_00: before they can abscess and cause infection.
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SPEAKER_00: I know this because the internet tells me.
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SPEAKER_00: If a bale of hay contains foxtail, it doesn't necessarily mean that a horse will have a problem.
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SPEAKER_00: Some will eat around it, others will ingest it.
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SPEAKER_00: A 2001 study at a Missouri boarding stable documented an outbreak linked to their hay source.
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SPEAKER_00: And a 2018 study of 323 Hungarian horses
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SPEAKER_00: I have
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SPEAKER_00: not found a published study showing that horses are affected
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SPEAKER_00: by foxtail growing green in a field.
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SPEAKER_00: Did the knowledge of the low threat keep me from absolutely freaking out
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SPEAKER_00: when we discovered foxtail growing in the wild for the very first time when we moved
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SPEAKER_00: the horses to Lavender Hill?
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SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
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SPEAKER_00: Unlike the weird suspects that seem to pop up spontaneously in fields like milkweed,
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SPEAKER_00: super toxic to horses but awesome for butterflies,
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SPEAKER_00: foxtail spreads by seed rather than underground rhizomes.
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SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
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SPEAKER_00: It's an annual plant meaning that it's one and done,
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SPEAKER_00: sprouting, living, dying, and then moving on to the great meadow in the sky.
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SPEAKER_00: But foxtail seeds are numerous and wily.
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SPEAKER_00: The plants love summer heat and hang out through spring and early summer
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SPEAKER_00: before sporting their telltale floofy seed heads in late summer.
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SPEAKER_00: A single plant can produce hundreds to thousands of seeds.
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SPEAKER_00: They fall to the ground and create a rich seed bank that waits for future ideal conditions.
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SPEAKER_00: Some germinate the next year,
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SPEAKER_00: Others remain dormant, waiting for the right drought or disturbance.
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SPEAKER_00: This summer we encountered the ideal conditions for foxtail to flourish at the farm.
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SPEAKER_00: An early, harsh drought followed by copious rains.
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SPEAKER_00: This plant is ancient.
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SPEAKER_00: It has followed farmers as far back as we can trace.
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SPEAKER_00: All the way to the moment when humans had had enough of the huntings and
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SPEAKER_00: the gatherings and decided to put down roots,
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SPEAKER_00: stay in one place, till the soil and complain about the weather.
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SPEAKER_00: The invention of agriculture was probably also the beginning of gossip.
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SPEAKER_00: Green foxtail is believed to be a wild ancestor of foxtail millet,
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SPEAKER_00: which we can trace back some 8,000 years to Asia,
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SPEAKER_00: where it was cultivated as a grain before rice became a staple.
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SPEAKER_00: Some foxtail made its way from Europe to America as agricultural stowaways.
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SPEAKER_00: This plant has followed the arc of the human story since we began keeping track
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SPEAKER_00: of our comings and goings.
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SPEAKER_00: When we moved into the new farm last September,
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SPEAKER_00: I noted seed heads that looked suspiciously like foxtail in the graveyard field
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SPEAKER_00: where the geldings now live and flourish.
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SPEAKER_00: But cold weather was coming,
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SPEAKER_00: we were all figuring out best practices,
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SPEAKER_00: and there wasn't enough time to worry about it.
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SPEAKER_00: This summer,
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SPEAKER_00: I noticed a few green seed floofs as I bush hogged the field,
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SPEAKER_00: but nothing that felt like an invasion.
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SPEAKER_00: Yet a few weeks after mowing, all I could see was foxtail.
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SPEAKER_00: The boys ate around the little islands of varying greens.
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SPEAKER_00: The foxtail was sly.
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SPEAKER_00: It calculated the relative height of the mowed grasses and produced seed below that line.
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SPEAKER_00: What was one or two patches in an unoccupied field last year bloomed
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SPEAKER_00: under hoof weight and drought.
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SPEAKER_00: I studied the grass islands where it flourished and noticed that
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SPEAKER_00: the foxtail braided itself between the bluegrass and fescue,
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SPEAKER_00: trying to blend in and almost succeeding.
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SPEAKER_00: I would never have noticed or worried about this plant if it weren't for
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SPEAKER_00: the people freaking out about it potentially being in the hay.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't sell hay anymore, thank heavens.
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SPEAKER_00: I'll leave that business to less empathetic brokers who are gifted at ignoring all the noise.
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SPEAKER_00: What I did was this.
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SPEAKER_00: I dialed down the smaller mower to a setting that wouldn't scalp the ground
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SPEAKER_00: and I roamed the field mowing patches of foxtail as I spied them.
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SPEAKER_00: This served two purposes.
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SPEAKER_00: It removed the young green seed heads from their food supply,
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SPEAKER_00: and it made me engage in a mindless,
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SPEAKER_00: meandering task that was slow enough to force me to notice all the other details.
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SPEAKER_00: I hadn't been seeing the field for the foxtails.
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SPEAKER_00: As always, the boys helped me as I mowed.
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SPEAKER_00: They inspected the mower while I paused to open and close the gate.
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SPEAKER_00: They alternated between curiosity and mortal terror as I mowed near where they grazed.
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SPEAKER_00: When their curiosity won,
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SPEAKER_00: which it always does,
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SPEAKER_00: they'd stand in front of the mower and we'd all pause in an impasse of politeness
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SPEAKER_00: where we'd stare at each other awkwardly and have no idea
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SPEAKER_00: which one should move first.
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SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing.
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SPEAKER_00: I didn't discover foxtail.
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SPEAKER_00: This plant is ancient.
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SPEAKER_00: It knows more about me than I know about myself.
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SPEAKER_00: Foxtail has been tagging along on the heels of agriculture for thousands of years.
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SPEAKER_00: I noticed the foxtail because I'd been conditioned to fear it.
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SPEAKER_00: Foxtail was such a problem for everyone else that it eventually became my problem.
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SPEAKER_00: When we purchased the farm,
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SPEAKER_00: I finally saw a foxtail plant,
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SPEAKER_00: a real one in all its green glory,
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SPEAKER_00: and it totally matched all the photos I'd seen on the internet.
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SPEAKER_00: My fear took a few industrious plants and turned the entire field into foxtail.
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SPEAKER_00: I couldn't see anything else.
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SPEAKER_00: By the time I wandered through the field,
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SPEAKER_00: chopping islands of random seed heads,
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SPEAKER_00: the horses went about their business saying, lady, we're fine.
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SPEAKER_00: It was so incredibly and so deeply frustratingly human to take something
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SPEAKER_00: that has been growing unnoticed beside us for a very long time and use our discovery
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SPEAKER_00: of the thing as evidence that something has changed.
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SPEAKER_00: We do this with weeds and symptoms in our bodies.
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SPEAKER_00: We do it with relationships.
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SPEAKER_00: We do it with grief and things that we regret.
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SPEAKER_00: Once something enters our field of vision,
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SPEAKER_00: we circle around it until the field disappears entirely and there is only foxtail.
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SPEAKER_00: It's lurking danger growing in every corner we search.
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SPEAKER_00: I've not been able to find documentation that the green
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SPEAKER_00: and growing foxtail plant has harmed a horse.
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SPEAKER_00: The leaves of the plant are considered safe and nutritious forage.
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SPEAKER_00: The danger is when those dried, mature seed heads are baled into hay.
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SPEAKER_00: We're not growing hay at Lavender Hill.
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SPEAKER_00: We're not growing hay because I will never again subject myself to the misery of selling it.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to be thankful for the guys who keep us stocked.
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SPEAKER_00: In this time between two eclipses, it's important to remember what an eclipse does.
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SPEAKER_00: A celestial object temporarily obscures another celestial object.
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SPEAKER_00: One thing has moved to just the right spot to obscure anything that exists behind it.
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SPEAKER_00: Foxtail became my eclipse.
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SPEAKER_00: As we feel our old feelings and sort through our inventory of the stuff rising to
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SPEAKER_00: the surface in this weird eclipse energy,
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SPEAKER_00: it's a good time to take stock of what has moved so close to our attention
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SPEAKER_00: that it's obscuring our view of the entire field.
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SPEAKER_00: My old hay clients wanted me to provide them with nature without all the nature mess.
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SPEAKER_00: They wanted organic hay without chemicals, but they also wanted that hay to be free of weeds.
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SPEAKER_00: We crave back to nature experiences,
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SPEAKER_00: but we want them in good weather with tidy beginnings, middles, and endings.
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SPEAKER_00: We're appalled at the seeming disorder inherent in actual nature.
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SPEAKER_00: And here I was wanting a healthy pasture, but my anxiety took over.
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SPEAKER_00: And I was obsessed with eradicating a normal thing that grows in fields.
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SPEAKER_00: I promise to be better when I'm ordering my drinks at Starbucks.
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SPEAKER_00: Spot mowing the field allowed me to practice discernment instead of eradication.
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SPEAKER_00: And all the while,
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SPEAKER_00: the horses gathered in front of me,
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SPEAKER_00: Creating an absurd traffic jam that slowed my thoughts and kept me noticing
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SPEAKER_00: the world in front of me.
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SPEAKER_00: This is my work between the eclipses.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm learning how to not rip out everything that frightens me simply
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SPEAKER_00: because I've learned its name.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm learning the difference between awareness and danger.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm learning how to discern what needs to be ripped out,
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SPEAKER_00: what needs to be cut back, and what needs to be left alone.
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SPEAKER_00: And I'm learning how to get out of my own way so I can start seeing the whole damn field.
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SPEAKER_00: Because the horses, of course, never mistook the foxtail for the field.
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SPEAKER_00: Love, Kim