The Homestead Gardener: Are Animals Necessary?

By Derrick Gentry –

I realize that the question raised in my title may sound awkward and insensitive, especially since it appears in print right beside the photo of an animal that I have known and lived with for several seasons now.  Contrary to what some have assumed, this is not a photo of me; it is a photo of Lyle, the only male who lives among our otherwise all-female herd of goats.  Lyle is a wethered buck and therefore not necessary with respect to breeding. He is a jolly good fellow, though, and loves to pose for the camera.  The girls love him, and so do I.

Lyle is much better looking than I am and has far more charisma. That is why his picture has been up there for the past year that I have written this column. I do not think consciousness is the quality that separates Lyle from me. Consciousness breeds conceit, and I am pretty sure that Lyle is never as self-conscious or as egotistical as I can sometimes be.  

So, back to the uncomfortable question raised up above:  Are animals like us necessary?  I’m pretty sure Lyle doesn’t give the question much thought.   Speaking for myself, I’d like to think I am necessary or at least in demand.  All of the research I have done, however, indicates that my own sense of self-importance is little more than a conceit.  Here is what entomologist E.O. Wilson has to say about me and Lyle and our place in the larger ecosystem that is home to insects and plants and invertebrates:

“The truth is that we need invertebrates but they don’t need us. If human beings were to disappear tomorrow, the world would go on with little change …. But if invertebrates were to disappear, I doubt that the human species could live more than a few months.” 

Well, then …  That is the sobering verdict from a scientific and ecological point of view.  Take a few slow breaths, let it sink in, carry on with the day.  

So let me now rephrase the question and make it a little more self-centered and practical-sounding:  Are animals necessary on the homestead, in the garden?  From what point of view is it worth having animals around?  

These are questions that naturally arise during the lean winter months, the long period when keeping animals often involves trudging through the snow to haul water long distances on bitterly cold days.  Operating an animal boarding house during the winter also means going through stockpiled reserves of hay and grains and winter forage.  Year-round animal husbandry demands a considerable amount of work and planning ahead.  One of the rewards of all this patience and labor, of course, is a barn full of rich organic matter ready to transfer to the garden beds in the Springtime.  (But then again, you can also have manure hauled in from other people’s barns…)

Yes, it is worth reminding ourselves that it is entirely possible to have a garden and a farm and a homestead without any animals around at all: no poultry, no ruminants, no diseases to watch for and treat, no hooves to trim, no predators to watch for, no culling of the flock or herd before winter.  You don’t even need to haul in manure from outside.  

Will Bonsall, the iconic Maine grower and author and founder of the Scatterseed Project, has shown us how to practice agro-ecology based entirely on vegan principles.   Bonsall has spent decades building soil and cycling organic matter and nutrients with cover crops and leaves and plant matter, with no animals needed for processing.  (Bonsall does, however, make use of composted “humanure.”)

Bonsall himself is a practicing vegan and makes as compelling a philosophical case for veganism as I have heard.  What Bonsall has to say is all the more interesting to me because he has such an intimate knowledge of how ecosystems work and of how to produce food in harmony with ecological principles. He knows that nature is mostly about eating and being eaten and about creatures exploiting each other symbiotically for their own benefit. And yet, Bonsall has found ways to participate in that system on his own terms.

I am not vegan myself, but I always enjoy the challenge of cooking for vegan friends when I know they are coming over dinner.  There are some tasty vegan dishes involving fruits and vegetables and legumes and grains and pulses.  Apart from the artistic satisfaction that comes from working within limits and with limited materials, there is also some satisfaction that comes from the knowledge that you can do without something —another form of aesthetic appeal, a principle of parsimony.  And thinking about what we can do without — whether it’s eating meat, spending money or driving places—is a philosophical stance worth cultivating and celebrating, particularly in the context of a larger culture that so often glorifies indulgence and over-consumption.

Though I am neither vegetarian nor vegan, I do agree that there are many good reasons for consuming much less meat than most of us currently do.  There is no question, moreover, that producing meat and dairy products within the current and dominant industrial model — with more than 50% of energy-intensive corn production going to fatten up confined animals living in squalid conditions — is a system that is profoundly degrading both to the animals and to the environment.  People have naturally come to view all images of livestock, regardless of the setting, as emblematic if a larger problem.  But the problem, of course, is not with the animals themselves.  Nor is there a fundamental problem with the deeply ethical practice of (true) animal husbandry. And while I admire Will Bonsall and have learned a great deal from his vegan methods of growing food and building soil, I am nevertheless of the opinion that there are many good reasons for having animals around.  

Just because we CAN do without something does not necessarily mean that we SHOULD do without it.  My ongoing education in permaculture has taught me that thinking in terms of efficient processes and thinking in terms of resilient systems represent two very different ways of looking at the world.  Resilient systems, unlike efficient systems, involve a certain amount of inefficiency and redundancy by definition.  That is what makes natural ecosystems resilient. 

The concept of resilience may offer a measure of consolation to the more pensive and insecure denizens of the animal kingdom.  Animals, myself included, may not be strictly necessary in an ecological sense.  But we are here; some of us are queer; a good many of us are deer; and as plant-eating nutrient recyclers, we all have some positive role to play as promoters and facilitators of ecological biodiversity. 

Over the next year, I would like to dedicate this space to reporting and reflecting upon the animal-intensive practice known as “silvopasture.”  Steve Gabriel, of the Cornell Cooperative Extension, wrote a wonderful treatise on silvopasture techniques, and here is his definition:

“The intentional combination of trees, domesticated animals, and forages as a multilayered system where each benefits from its relationship to the others, with multiple yields harvested from the same plot of land.”

Silvopasture is enjoying something of a vogue at the moment, in part because it ranked near the top of the list of carbon-sequestering and regenerative practices in Paul Hawken’s much-discussed Drawdown Project of a few years back.  I have no desire to go against the grain of this popular trend; in fact, I am eager to ride the wave and join the crowd and try out what so many others across the world are trying out.  And I am excited to share with you what I have learned from others, from my own experience, and from the small library of inspiring books on the subject that I have recently begun to live with: books by extraordinary individuals like Steve Gabriel, Rebecca Thistlewaite, Sarah Flack, and Fred Provenza.  Their names will likely appear in these pages over the coming year, and I hope to report as well on what my readers tell me they are doing and what they have learned.

In all important respects, I consider silvopasture to be a form of gardening.  There is an expansion of the term, perhaps, but no stretching of it.  My decision to undertake a long-term experiment in silvopasture and to write about it here feels like a natural and logical development.  I will still write about other more traditional aspects of gardening, and this column will still be called the Homestead Gardener and will still have Lyle as its avatar image.  In fact, Lyle will be playing a newly important role in this silvopasture-gardening experiment.  I need him now more than ever.  Let’s hope his new celebrity status does not go to his head…