Working its way along the ditch that was a creek.
It will be beside the house sometime today. It will pass through, hauling slime and muck and rubbish and dead things up out of the ditch and slinging it down into the grasses where the pheasants are nesting and all manner of other creatures live. Where I work. It will be a big heaving stinking mess. He rips out all the trees in his way and will destroy our pathway along the bank.
All along the bank that we see in the background here he will dump the filth in great uneven bucketfuls. He is aimed straight for the beavers damn of course. There is nothing like a natural made blockage to raise the ire of the farmers here.
I am going to lay in wait for him today and try to get the driver to come down out of his stronghold up there and talk to me. I am going to gently ask him to please avoid yanking out all my trees. Not throw shit on top of the Fellowship forest. Try to avoid the asparagus. And why not a truck to take this crap away. People throw bags of trash into the ditch from the bridge – all that will be brought up and dumped in my backyard. And I am going to ask him if he can not wreck the path that I walk when I go to the other barn every day. Sadly, I will have lost the moment I open my mouth.
Knowing all this, I sat and watched him for a long time yesterday trying to put a positive spin in this. Trying to say – Excellent here is the problem – what shall I do. It is true that the water will move faster for the farmers who want their land to drain better. The Fellowship Forest is still just far enough away to survive I think and all the trees have very obvious guards on them. But losing the bigger wild trees and the milk weed is awful.
Thankfully the trees that survived the fire last spring are on the other side – so as long as he does not turn around and go back the other way – one whole side will be ok. This is good. Just not the house side sadly.
Then a really positive thing came to me. Last year one of the fellowship and frequent commenter, Pat Rousseau, donated a considerable sum for wild flowers along the bank. I had another patch picked out and was going to sow the seeds next week. But now I think I will try and work with the dense tailings. Once it is dry I will go through and pick out all the rubbish, then till it, then sow her wild flowers into this stretch behind the house.
Maybe this is a way to make a little lemonade from these lemons.
At the same time I am going to plant more native fruit trees into this space to replace the ones they have yanked out of the bank. Don’t they know that trees and their roots are imperative to movement of water and drainage AND hold the bank up – then there would be no need for a digger to keep digging it back out. River banks in nature are lined in trees. Wild flowers for the bees and birds and butterflies – these work together to form a critical component in a land mass ecosystem.
Anyway I cannot let myself focus on the destruction, I cannot stop them, I have to work with the mess, so my thought is that if I plant more trees and more flowers into the muck they leave behind; maybe when the ditch digger passes again ten years hence my forest will be so established they cannot bear to pull it down.
It will look like a bomb site for a long time though, and the nice walk to the other barn will be gone. I am never walking it again. I am not walking through rubble. We will walk the long way – around the road.
I thought we owned the land to the ditch, we do own it, but we own the land the digger wrecked two years ago when he dug out the ditch by the road and threw the tailings into my hay field and that did not stop them. Hugo and I spent weeks cleaning that up. They do not ask and do not care.
I am firmly told that I cannot stop them – it is the way things are done here. Makes me want to go home.
The beavers will hear him coming and escape – the men dug them out last summer and they returned so I have faith in the little animals to get clear. They will have plenty of warning. The digger is methodical and slow. But I mourn for them already for all the animals and birds affected.
Helplessness will follow me today.
But after the monster is gone I will come back out and begin again. The beavers and I.
Love celi
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
98 responses to “See this big digger?”
That’s very annoying and would get my goat too!
Yes, if only they could spring for a truck to cart it away – it would not be as bad.. he is getting close to my land now- we will see .. c
I’d be inclined to stand in front of the endangered trees, but don’t put yourself at risk.
Oh for heaven’s sake what a crazy world “this America” is right now. If the political scene were not enough to make me weep on the big world picture as I read your story I also wept for your beautiful land and your unabated love for it. I do not often take the time to write a comment on your wonderful, special blog but I am out hear following you and your animal family. I so appreciate your approach to life and regularly refer friends to your site as I do think what you are doing and writing about really matters. My heart is with you as the landscape around you is scarred and ravaged visually and deeply. Best, Teresa
Thank you – I love that you are reading. They have been clearing out ditches with the big diggers since they started digging ditches i imagine. I just wish they did not have to leave all the tailings in the prairie grasses. There is a lot of run off chemical and fertilizers in these ditches – the weeds will take off – however that might help my wild flower plan? c
My goodness Miss C that sounds like an ecological disaster, but nature has a way of survival if it is not 100%devastation…l can understand your anger.
Yes and we are part of that nature. So I will do my part to help mitigate the impact.. c
Oh dear, this just made me tear up. How awful! Agribusiness should have more conscience.
I often wish my farm was in a real farming area. I have pretty much clawed my little fields from the corn and beans so i am actually in their way not the other way round.. never mind – I will work with it. I am lucky in many other ways.. c
So sorry to read of this Celi. I do love how you looked for and found a positive spin to put on it. And hopefully, in a few years, the wild fruit trees and wildflowers will make it so no one in the digger would even think to tear it up.
I may not be here when the digger comes around again – so I will never know – but even under threat I have to keep planting the wildplants and native trees – I am compelled. c
Oh how awful. I’m so sorry this is happening and I hope you can talk at least some sense into him.
I hope he will stop at my boundary and we can have a chat – it is not his fault of course he is just doing his job. c
That is what I hope too, sometimes sowing words, thoughts might be the start of change. We have elderly neighbours who do what they do the way they always did it, chopped down, dug out, weedicided… destroyed anything with no thought. Where my response to this is like a tactless wrecking-ball the G.O. has slowly, gently opened their eyes to alternatives… some of the time. But they see over our side of the fence tangible evidence of our ways, and he’s helped them make a vege garden, lop trees rather than cutting them down etc. Take a deep breath, have your say, maybe show the guy around if he’s amenable and do what you do best ♡
That’s miserable. Up here when they ‘ditch’ as we call it, they put up signs advertising ‘free fill’ – anybody who wants it can phone up and they will truck and dump it wherever you want. Many people take advantage of this – thankfully around here all you’ll get for trash is the odd beer can. I don’t need fill so I’ve never had any dumped here. Once every few years they also mow the ditches – saplings and all – but they will not touch a coniferous tree unless it’s directly in the ditch. It’s too bad you don’t have a dump truck – you could have him fill it and dump the stuff elsewhere.
I would not mind so much if they were to truck it away, or even laid at the top of the bank to further develop the ditch -but there you are – this is just the way it has always been done and a small foreign woman is not going to change that. c
You might be surprised. Me? I would march out there and see if I couldn’t at least sway the man on where he dumps it 🙂
Clearly they do not care about nature in the least. How very annoying. I will be thinking of you and keeping my fingers crossed, the damage is not too bad for you or the animals or flora.
No. It would be very very hard to farm like this on this incredibly huge scale without having to dominate nature itself. However every kind of farming is a battle with, for or nature – even a barn is built to try and change an environment to suit ourselves.
What a horror – and what a wound this digger will leave to your landscape. Why not just cut that trees but tearing them out? What a rape to the nature. They have no clue about nothing, they’re just rude.
Isn’t it your private land? What’s his being there about? Oh my… what a mess and pure destruction. Poor you, poor Farmy and poor beavers. – Bitter lemons they are – hope you can make the best out of it to get a somewhat sweet lemonade…
Yes it is our land but I think there is a rule about the drainage ditch. It will have something to do with water rights and allowing access. It will be a real mess but I have a tractor and when it dries up we will get to work to turning it into a jungle!
My heart aches for you to have to witness that and deal with the consequences.
And you have walked my pathways so you know the loss .. c
I’m getting wound up reading this, that digger has got my back up ore than Trump! What about putting a fence there with signs ‘ damages will be sought for destruction of the fence’ In a country obsessed with litigation it might just make them stop and think? Shame about the beavers, they are protected here in Poland which is viewed with mixed feelings depending on who you are. I recently listened to BBC Radio 4 and they discussed the installation of ‘Beaver deceivers’ in the dams that the beaver built, which allow the flow of water without the builder catching on 🙂
Good luck, hopefully it wont be as bad as your imagination allows.
How I wish some of that wisdom would come down here – there are posts and things up there but I had no warning so was not able to put wires up. Also the unfinished flying fox will be in the way, with ladders and tools up there – i have left everything because I cannot believe he will actually dig his way through my land. It is only a short stretch, maybe he will go around.. c
I really dislike these men and their large toys that mow trees down and disrupt wild animals habitats with total disregard, grrr. Laura
Some of these machines are huge – c
Can’t you get a court order to stop the destruction on your own property – post no-trespassing signs and get the sheriff to enforce it. Just a thought.
It is farm land – there are no trespassing signs – he is only feet away from them now. All the land around us is rented out to someone else not mine, only this little strip is mine. And they probably do not realise – but to clear a whole ditch and leave a small part uncleared? They won’t do it. And honestly he is only maintaining an existing ditch. It is their job to do this. It is already an eyesore. c
The road crew just came down our lane and removed all the trees that had any amount of dead in them in the rare event that they might fall into the road (that we clean up ourselves when it does happen) so all of my woodpecker habitat is in rubbish piles of wood chips along the ditch. Nowhere as invasive as your situation though :-(. It would be worth a shot to at least try to “dumb it down” and “sweetly” talk to them and pray upon their “hey, a pretty blond hair lady…” Or maybe that only works down south :-/. At least you have a heads up. I got caught off guard here.
Oh NO! That is actually worse – taking down big trees is worse. And you know me. I could no more sweet talk than fly to the moon. I have no wiles – and by law not a leg to stand on – so I am going to use this as a way to get as many seeds and trees planted as possible. We are not supposed to even mow these buffer blocks – they are supposed to be left completely untouched but i feel that this level of ‘laying to waste’ will enable me to sow all the natural species I have always wanted in here. i will be calling the council to try and find seed that i can afford. I think the environmental people will help me restore it.. i think.. c
It’s a bit of a longshot, Celi, but what about putting the area (you own) along the ditch into the governmental pollinator plot program? I just signed up six acres of my land for it this year. Then you could put up a sign to that effect…..even the most hardened farmer knows not to mess with land under contract to the government. Check it out: USDA Pollinator Plot Project…there are financial incentives to do this, and they will even reimburse part of the costs of getting the land ready for use. Or if you prefer, there is a Butterfly Project also on offer.
The local power company removed a row of telephone poles from one of my fields a few months ago. Their huge backhoe left big holes where the outriggers dug into my carefully maintained lane where I carriage drive my horses. I spoke to them about it, and they have promised to return and fix it. Time will tell, but they did seem very pleasant to deal with. Depending on whether your digger is private or agency sanctioned, you might ask around about it. Our local soil and conservation service would be in charge something like your ditch project…again, a governmental agency. Privately these problems are a lot harder to deal with. Although I have bribed my neighboring farmer with honey to stop aerial spraying of one field. I’ve learned the hard way “the way things are done here” is hard to fight, but I’ve had better luck with bribery! I hope your digger operator is open minded. You go girl.
Jan’s suggestions sound like great prospects if you have time to get it done. If not, keep as calm as possible for your own well being go with your best lemonade plan. My heart is pounding & blood pressure rising thinking of this situation. I remember a therapist once telling me to try to be calm & positive when I was exploding over a trailer park being dug in on a a pasture hillside as beautiful as an English down in my very front porch view. She told me I had No Control Whatsoever over it, which indeed I did not, but I’m sure that destruction took several yrs. off my lifespan. Eventually I moved away. I hope for a good outcome for you, Celi to stay & recreate beauty & healing natural environments.
Jan this is a great suggestion – I already plan to go to them anyway to get help with the tidy up- I did not realise they had a pollinators programme – i wonder if they do that here. c
As I recall you are only a few counties North of me Celi. The pollinator program is national. Google USDA pollinator plot program. They are really pushing this program and the folks at the Vermilion County office are great to work with. It requires signing a contract with the government but helps protect the land—and the bees.
I hope you have good luck today with the operator. For the most part it is an ongoing struggle for me to deal with The Guys. Sometimes I give in and ask my brother The Farmer to say the same thing I would simply because they will take him seriously