Change is inevitable, along our coastline, and everywhere. Buildings go up or fall down, people move in and move out, and our relationships with the land, sea, and each other are not the same from year to year. Community, citizenship, and the understanding of our connectedness to one another are essential to coping with these changes if we hope to recognize the place we love in the coming decades. A little self-restraint on all our parts will go a long way, because our actions affect those of our neighbors, and the land on which we live. We should consider this in our everyday thinking.
These observations were stimulated by two things: First, I’m involved in waterfront communities as part of my daily work, and am exposed to the changes that are taking place in coastal Maine. Secondly, I live in a town where farmers still fertilize their hayfields with manure.
For those who may be familiar with the principle but perhaps not the practice, fertilizing with manure qualifies as one of the not-quite-so-subtle aspects of rural life. A good hayfield is well tended with the stuff, and results in the kind of vigor that you can recognize even while speeding by in your car. Believe it or not, but here in Maine there is often a limited supply, and more would be better. Farmers in England apply it to their fields several times a year, and the grass responds in kind, growing fast and so green it makes your eyes ache. Due to our local shortages though, Maine farmers commonly only fertilize their fields once, perhaps it’s after the first cut, or before the fields are put to bed for the winter. The time is right when the field is dry enough to be able to put the equipment on it, when the grass is short, and when you have some manure to put there. A little well-timed rain and sun always helps the cause.
While this may seem to be a perfectly normal and to-be-expected component of our pastoral lives, there are prices to be paid. To wit: if you live close to a field being fertilized, you will be affected, either by odor, or flies, or noise, etc. Most farmers spread either cow manure or horse manure, which isn’t too bad. As a matter of fact I rather welcome it, though I suspect that I’m in the slim minority. The story changes with chicken or pig manure (and then we are in different territory altogether, people!), but the age and moisture content of the material will be especially important regarding what happens to your nose and how out of joint it is. Smell aside, there is the consideration of farm equipment, which may or may not be operating at what most people figure to be normal working hours. There are farmers who prefer to work by twilight or by dark; they avoid the sweltering daytime and you can find them at twilight or dead of night, bouncing along in the tractor seat in the evening cool, engine rumbling and lights shining. In any event, you may well believe that those who live close to an active hayfield have some issues to contend with.
This situation would seem untenable to many, or at least unfair. After all, the farmer’s actions are affecting the lives of everyone who lives around the field, and potentially for a couple of weeks. Why do they put up with this nonsense, smelling bad smells, enduring flies and encountering noise at unusual hours of the day?
The answer, I believe, is that those living close by have made some decisions and value judgments. First, they have realized the value of the farmer’s actions to the greater community. We’ve all heard the saying about how ‘once a field grows houses, it won’t grow anything else.’ Farmers help to keep the land in a state that most of us like to see: open. It is a warming sight to see a farmer laying the grass down and baling it up – equipment in the field, people working to get things squared away before the rain comes, or the swallows and kestrels that swoop and dive to get at the feast left in the swath of the mower. In short, these farming activities and others help maintain part of the cherished image of the locale. As the son of a farmer, these things are important to me too.
The second reason is that members of farming communities have made decisions that, based on the benefits of open space, they can live with the inconvenience of a freshly-fertilized field. If you want a nice field next door, you have to accept something of what it takes to keep it in production. The tradeoff in this case is a smelly few days vs. being able to see the early morning mist over the field, flocks of turkeys, herds of deer, or an open and starry sky at night.
And so we arrive at self-restraint and sacrifice, which every person who is great at what he or she does – athlete or artist or businessman – has recognized. To get what you want takes plenty of both of these qualities, and to the point: to keep our communities in such a state that we’d still like to live there requires some give and take by all of us.
Working waterfronts and all that they entail are key examples, smelly bait sheds, loud diesel engines, floating mussel rafts and all. A life of a farmer or fisherman is inseparable from his or her work – they are the same thing – and the activities that go on in our beautiful state are every bit as integral to the way this place looks.
The alternative to accepting this behavior is fairly evident; suburban sprawl, loss of individuality and “cookie cutter” towns that look so much the same that it’s not worth making a distinction. It is a fact that there are more people on the planet every day, and they (who are actually WE!) all need someplace to live. It is also a truism that democracy is a messy process, and it is incumbent upon each of us to participate. However, a coastline without an active and working waterfront, or an inland community without active farming is robbed of its character.
Moreover, the people who are involved in these various and sundry efforts are interesting people, with knowledge and history of their own. We learn from them, and benefit from their presence. Who among us has not felt pride in knowing a little bit about some marine industry, and sharing that with our friends and family from away? It’s great to be able to tell your visiting friends how to tell male and female lobsters apart, or to know how seeding a mussel raft works, or the difference between the sounds of a GM or a Caterpillar diesel. How about “Oh yeah, I got these lobsters straight off the boatC9I know a lobsterman”C9..? Much of this knowledge that we take such pride in having comes from our physical and cultural proximity to one another. It’s part of living in Maine, and it is valuable, even precious.
What do you want your future home to look like?
In a movie I saw once, a cowboy got a black eye during a fight. Another cowboy asked him who gave it to him, and he replied “Nobody gave it to me – I earned it.” I figure that we’ll have to earn our future, if we want it shaped by things other than market forces and sheer capitalism. Likely, the courses of action that we may take, while change takes its course, will involve a little pain and sacrifice. But the next time you wrinkle your nose at a field covered with newly-spread manure, ask yourself if the difficulty is worth it: I feel pretty sure that the answer won’t be long in coming.
Dana Morse is an Extension Associate with the Maine Sea Grant Program and UMaine Cooperative Extension, and works out of the Darling Marine Center in Walpole.
