November, 2004 On Wild Animals and those who may roam among them Tao Teh Ching Chapter 50 Being born, we come into life, one day we must enter into death. Out of ten people, three celebrate and are filled with life, Three hasten their demise through excess, And three pass through life without realizing it, Why is this? They try too hard to protect and preserve this life; thereby they hasten its demise. But it is said that one in ten knows how to preserve his life by emptying himself to the world and the Way. Such a one can go into the wilds unmolested by wild beasts; the tigers claws and rhinoceros horns will find no place to catch him. And he may enter battle unarmored; sharp points will find no place to pierce him. Why is this? Because there is no place for death in him.     We've had many animals on our porch. They often come up in the middle of the night hoping to find some cat food. On occasion we've had some vicious dangerous animals, and other times it is the cute, and always it is interesting and a delight to see these wild animals close up. We've had bears on our porch and on the roof. We’ve had a mountain lion near the front door and kill deer in our back yard. We've got foxes that come nightly, and deer that nibble the jasmine plant growing on the edge of the porch. The other night Vickie had a tarantula come up to wander around the porch. She said it was among the largest she's ever seen. The other day she saw a small baby tarantula on the road.     We've had a bear paw at the front window, Opossums in the cat bowls leering at us with those otherworldly teeth, and occasionally, much to our chagrin we get skunks coming by.     Well, last night Whitie, our Chihuahua dog went berserk in the house while we were sleeping, Vickie heard him and thought he needed to get outside to go to the bathroom. She opened the door and Whitie ran out to do battle with the insurgent skunk. He got sprayed in his open yapping mouth for his trouble. Immediately the front of the house was enveloped with the acrid gagging stench of fresh skunk spray, and we had a smelly whining dog running between Victoria’s legs and into the house where he ran to the bedroom and tried to get under the covers with me who was until this moment in delightful delirious sleep dreaming no doubt of sunny fields and a warm sky. I was so rudely brought out of my slumber by this whining skunked-out dog trying to burrow under the sheets, I woke and grabbed him and handed him to Vickie asking her to lock him into the living room so I could sleep.     She set him into the living room and closed the bedroom door, he whined at the door for hours while I fitfully slept dreaming of stinky swamps and dead animals. Finally I woke and tiring of his scratching at the door let him in holding him and with trepidation smelling over him a bit. The skunk smell was gone and he smelled pretty clean, as did the house (or was I just used to it? I used to kinda like the smell of tear gas in the Army, maybe something is wrong with me?). So we let him back into the bedroom keeping him on top of the sheets and not letting him under with us. Stay to the Middle Path, but how people love to leave the road and wander the sidepaths Chapter 53 If I possess even the smallest bits of wisdom, I would walk the great way, and my only fear would be in straying from this great road. The great way is wide and the going is easy, but how people seem to prefer the side paths. When the offices of government, the palaces and temples are richly adorned, and lavishly outfitted... when the ministers are concerned chiefly with pomp and display; the fields will be dusty and overgrown with rank weeds, and the granaries of the land will be bare. The gentry wear elaborate richly embroidered clothes, eat and drink in excess with their sharp swords at their sides, these are surely the robber barons. This is not in keeping with the Way.     Many of our neighbors have had their dogs sprayed by skunks, it is common, as is the occasional biting of a dog by a Rattlesnake. There is a dog trainer who comes by in the spring. Local Agricultural Supply stores set up his clinics. He will take your dog for an hour or so to train it to fear Rattlesnakes and stay away from snakes. He places a shock collar around the dog's neck, and lets him loose in a small field. He has a rattlesnake replica placed in the field. As the dog nears it the replica shakes his fake rattle, if the dog approaches the snake he receives a shock form the collar and associates it with the snake. When he has learned a bit to stay away from the snake a real rattler is placed in the field. This snake has a small muzzle to prevent him from striking (what a job being the snake muzzle-loader Huh?). If the dog appears curious about this snake and looks at it he receives another shock from the collar.     Now the trainer lets loose a couple of common local snakes such as king snakes and gopher snakes that are helpful snakes that you don't want dogs killing. If he approaches these beneficial snakes he also gets another shock. In this way the trainer makes the dog stay way from both hazardous and also beneficial snakes alike. It is gratifying to know that the majority of farmers and ranchers do differentiate between hazardous and beneficial species, and most landowners do want to keep the local fauna and flora intact. If they must remove some to make a living, they usually only remove as much as is necessary. And simple economics regulate how much can be removed; if it brings no profit it is not worthwhile removing native species.     There must be a balance in all things for life to move at a good clip without stalling or overamping. Look for the middle ground, and keep off the side paths.    We have a lot of brush and poison oak growing around the property. Every year we expand just a bit, adding a new set of terraces, or clearing some ground. Often I just knock the brush back a bit here and there, to give more fire protection and reduce the heavy brush in areas. This 'mottling' effect also has the good consequence of giving the wildlife some more open ground. Wildlife needs the mixture of open ground for grass, and the brush for cover and concealment.    I use a hand-held ‘weed whacker’, sometimes adding the round blade that can saw through the chaparral. Most of the time I use heavy gauge plastic weeding string, this cuts through the grasses and light weeds that grow along the fences. I also cut a wide area from the house, to protect from fires. It is good to have four zones around thee rural house. The closest should be a defensible space that is flat and clear of all vegetation except green grass and wet type plant materials that will not burn. Second should be light plants, of the types that will not flame much, spaced widely and excellently maintained so that there is no old dead growth that would fuel a fire. The third area is not likely to be watered, but the plants there grow on their own, with just clearing being done between the wild plants. They are lightly maintained to the extent that they are spaced a bit so there is little chance of a fire in that area being a raging monster, but it will likely still pass through, but be of low intensity. A critical ingredient here is that one weed whack between the plants a couple times a year if possible, and a minimum of once a year. The fourth zone is almost native vegetation in it’s natural state. But it is lightly gone over every few years to reduce the native brush just a bit, and the dead brush should be removed every couple of years. This will reduce the fire’s intensity when it comes by. This area will still burn in a scary way, but being the fourth zone out, it should not give too much direct heat to the structures. This are would ideally start about two hundred feet or more from the house.    Well, I do a fair amount of brush clearing each year. Some years I try to extend zone three and four out another twenty feet or so. I kind of like weed whacking. Hour after hour spent with my whirling motor, cutting grass and light brush, walking along with my high rubber boots, the rain slicker on over me, the green weeds slashing their juices all over me as I wander through the hills listening to music on my ear protector/speakers headset.    I was on the OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute) list of approved substances for Organic Farming, and saw that there are now several brands of herbicides that are approved for use organically. They are applied in the same way as Roundup, a liquid mixed with water and sprayed onto the leaves. They promise to achieve a good kill while not harming the environment and being made from non-synthetic sources. I must admit, it seems a labor saver to just spray the brush rather than pulling it up by the roots, like I often do. The brush would still have to be cleared in coming months, but it is easy to trample dead brush down, if this is done for a few years in a row the hillside would be pretty clear.    There is also a type of pre-emergent herbicide that is made from corn gluten. This material has some natural property that inhibits germination of seeds. It must be applied yearly before the rainy season here. It has the added benefit of being 10% nitrogen. So it would be an ideal fertilizer for us. Nitrogen is about the only major nutrient we tend to be a bit low on. So this material would help us in the cactus plantings and the terraces. We could broadcast it over the mulch in the entire hillside orchard and terraces. Along the fence line also, and all paths leading to these areas. This would improve the soil fertility, while inhibiting the growth of weeds that we have to spend a lot of time pulling by hand.    This is what the OMRI list says of Herbicides… HERBICIDES – NONSYNTHETIC AllDown Green Chemistry Herbicide (KPT, LLC dba Summerset Products) Matran™ 2 (EcoSMART Technologies, Inc.) Xpress™ (Bio HumaNetics™)    I found both Matran 2 and Xpress listed in a few online catalogs. I also found corn gluten.    There is only caveat about the use of these items… while they are on the OMRI list; they are listed as ‘Restricted’ in use. This means that I have to have specific approval from my certifying agency (CCOF) to use them. They will need to know what the specific uses would be, and how much I might expect to use, and why I cannot use a less radical approach in my treatment of the specific problem. My respose is that I could use a little of this material to spray the heavy patches of poison oak, this would allow me to safely reduce the brush for fire safety. I also would keep the fencelines clear, and be able to spot treat a few areas where I have some crabgrass growing. Other than that I’d not be changing form my approach as it has been to this time.    I’d also have the same argument for the corn gluten. I’d be able to keep the garden clear for the cactus, and not be affecting the environment negatively. This is area that is already cleared and cultivated, and adding this material will actually improve the fertility of the soil and allow me to devote more time to building terraces and not weeding them.    Now, when the new Federal Organic Standards law came into being, we were told that only materials on the OMRI approved list were to be used. It was difficult at first because very few materials manufacturers were listed, so the choice of approved materials was small, and all materials had to be brought in and could not be purchased locally. But as the years have gone by, manufacturers have realized that the cost of getting approved by OMRI is more than made up for by the huge amount of business you have funneled to you by virtue of their patronage. Wow, talk about a captive market! The government has in effect made a huge racketeering scheme by saying you have to belong to a certifying agency who gets money form the people forced to join them, then the manufacturers get a huge amount of money because you are told that to buy from a non-approved manufacturer might mean a de-certifying of their operation. So you can only buy from the list given to you by OMRI.    But now there are plenty of different manufacturers on the OMRI list, so I was pleasantly surprised to go there today and find the huge amounts of different materials that might help me or others in some way or another. This is a triumph of the capitalist system, and I am pleased to see that people responded in the appropriate way, buy registering their materials and getting in the lsit so they could sell their materials to people who need them. The government in co-operation with these other agencies has actually done a decent job at these new organic standards laws. I like the one big over-riding blanket of stability in law across state lines, rather than the patch work ‘every state has it’s own laws’ approach we had before. When it comes to an edible product traded freely across state lines the standards should be nationwide and uniform to a degree.