Blog That Frog

I haven't been down to the farm this spring (your editor speaking here) but John tells me that at night, he's hearing spring peepers. (That link will let you hear the sounds of spring peepers, too.)

I am, too, and tonight -- while I was taking out the trash in the apartment complex I'm living in for a while, with my family -- I heard them again. And so I took a flashlight around to the area behind the playground and temporarily borrowed a frog from the swamp. This is Shrewsbury, but the frogs are the same species that are calling down in the Great Cedar Swamp near the farm in Westborough.

Now, spring peepers are not quite the indicators of water quality that something like a caddisfly is. But they mean that free water is close enough to the forest so that the impossibly tiny frogs can overwinter in the woods' shelter.

This is the point of responsible farming, of good food in definitions that extend past taste. The peepers are next to the farm field; the spring is the time that the plants go in but not the time that planting establishes hegemony over the land. The farm is fit into the landscape; the landscape is not subordinated to the farm.

Comments

[shannon]

I made our positive spring peep id on our farm in a less fortunate way - fished one out of the swimming pool - but like you, it makes me very happy that the way we are managing our land in a way that allows these little critters to thrive. The noise is deafening!

[Whit]

"Deafening" in a good way, of course. !)