Adjacent to our house is a 20-acre field that we rent to Farmer Terry. Like nearly all farmers in this area, he plants either corn or soybeans, rotating back and forth on some schedule I haven’t tried to figure out.

That’s really neat for some years we have the wide open spaces of low growing soybeans and other years we live in a dense corn jungle. It’s like moving back and forth every couple years between the prairies and the tropics.  In some respects the corn years are nice, because it guarantees a banner year for wildlife viewing.

Corn draws everything from songbirds and turkeys to deer like a magnet. Of course, we don’t see much until it’s picked but from late fall to the following summer the place is teaming with creatures.

When we see the tiny, rounded soybean leaves breaking through the soil, we know we’ll be spending the whole year in the open. It’s refreshing to have a reprieve from the stifling corn jungle but the wildlife entertainment will be much less. Early on, the tender new bean sprouts draw a plethora of wildlife just about as well as corn but as the plants mature they lose their appeal. By late summer about all we see is the odd critter just passing through.

Apparently the beans themselves aren’t particularly tasty for I never see anything eating them. So it will be until next summer.

However, last year was amazingly different. It was a bean year and the constant parade of deer, turkey and woodchucks during early summer sprouting time was significantly more than normal. The critters seemed to be living in the field around the clock. As summer progressed and the plants matured, the activity tapered off some but didn’t come to a screeching halt like it usually does. If you’ll recall last fall was exceptionally wet.  Portions of our field could almost qualify as a marsh in the best of times and last fall much of it was a gooey mess.

After skidding and sliding and finally sinking his combine to the axles Farmer Terry abandoned thoughts of harvesting it all and left a large, unpicked swath in the middle.
As previously mentioned, I’ve never seen anything but people eat the actual soybean itself, especially once it has dried in the fall. This stuff, though, must be creature candy. Most anytime of the day or night there are anywhere from six to over a dozen deer out there munching on crunchy beans. For a while a flock of about fifty geese were dropping in and hanging out amongst the beans all day long.  Not even our vehicles coming and going along the nearby driveway could make them abandon their beans. All winter long a large flock of turkeys have been wandering in and out of the field throughout the day. They vary in number but I’ve counted as many as 42, a duke’s mixture of toms, jakes and hens, happily plucking beans.

Packed squirrel trails come from all around the surrounding woods out into the beans and a maze of rabbit tracks wind amongst the dried plants. It’s a nature fantasyland. About the only thing I haven’t seen out there is the dozen mallards that are sticking tight to the creek on the other side of the house.

This is so out of the norm I was compelled to ask Farmer Terry if he had any insights to this. “Oh yea,” he said, “those aren’t regular soybeans, they’re the kind used for making tofu and animals love it.” Soybeans are native to East Asia where they have been relied upon for over 5,000 years to add nitrogen to the soil, just as today’s farmers utilize them. In recent times several especially delectable varieties have been developed for making tofu, a common protein source for the expanding number of vegans. I’m a carnivore to the core and just can’t warm up to tofu but this is some kind of bean. I can’t help but wonder if it might have a place in wildlife food plots.

Carpe diem.

Larry Lyons writes a weekly outdoor column for Leader Publications. He can be reached at larrylyons@verizon.net