Column: Soybeans are animal magnets
Published 7:47 pm Thursday, August 16, 2007
By Staff
My house, or I should say the location thereof, is about as atypical as it gets. It sits in obscurity a half mile off the road. Beyond a diminutive patch of grass most people would call a lawn is the real yard, a 20-acre soybean field.
I'm no farmer so I leave the big lawn business to Terry. Sometimes Terry makes a corn lawn, which can be a little claustrophobic, but that's okay. It makes you appreciate the bean lawn all the more when its time comes around. Everything must not always be perfect, you know, for all sunshine makes a desert.
Not being the farmer type I've never paid much attention to the animal-soy bean relationship. I've heard the farmers bemoan how the deer ravage the beans but I always figured that was hogwash. I've spent many deer season hours standing guard over soybean fields and what few deer I have seen merely walked across without so much as a dip of the head. Evening sundowner discussions with other non-farmer hunters supported my conclusion that the farmers were doing a lot of whining over nothing. Only now that I have a soybean yard do I realize what they are talking about.
Remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about the herd of geese that took over my pond? They were defiling the whole area with such copious amounts of defecation that it was unfit for anything but a goose. Despite my continual harassment they adamantly refused to leave. The reason? The soy beans. Whenever they weren't making pooh in and around the pond they were out in the bean field refueling their pooh tanks. The plants hadn't yet formed pods so I wandered out into the field to see what the big attraction was. All the plants where the geese frequented had the ends of the leaves lopped off, just the most succulent part out near the tip. I don't know how much that impacts bean production but I presume the plants must take at least some offense to that. By the way, Terry, I recently figured out how to save your beans and reclaim my pond. It appears that a .357 magnum spewing up geysers all around them is more than even they could bear. Note I said around them, there were no fatalities. It took nearly a whole box of ammo to break their addiction to bean leaf salad but they haven't been back since. You owe me a beer for single handedly keeping your books in the black.
On second thought, you'd better hold off on that. I forgot to mention the woodchucks. Next to the house is a log cabin with a nice sitting porch overlooking the creek. I know it's a nice porch because every woodchuck in Southwest Michigan is vying for hole space underneath it. The moment I execute one another dashes in to take its place. It's truly a porch to die for. I don't know how much wood a woodchuck can chuck but they sure can chuck a whole lot of soybean plants. They don't mess around with leaf tips, they take the whole top of the plant. Behind the cabin the bean yard looks like a Weed Eater testing ground.
Guess I neglected to tell you about the deer, too. A while back it was just a single doe that took up residence on the east edge of the bean yard. Now her two fawns are old enough to partake as well. You can tell where I'm talking about. It's the area of bare dirt 85 yards long and 15 yards wide where all the bean plants have been killed. Well, I won't exaggerate – there are a few scraggly things that might be bean plant remnants. Over on the west side of the bean yard a buck and doe have become regular fixtures, too. That's become a good area to get dirt for potting plants as well.
Now I know soybeans are a magnet to all sorts of creatures. However, it's not those old, dried up, crunchy beans I was thinking of, it's the bean leaf salad. Carpe diem.