Bats and Small Farms: Endangered Species

Bats and Small Farms: Endangered Species

Listen to this story, as it's a story of our times, a story about big fish and little fish and a story of endangered species striving to keep their place in the world.

Yesterday our problems were smaller in the morning than in the afternoon, when we got a call from our neighbor.  A surveyor had been by to mark the property line running between his property and the protected wetland and habitat for the endangered Indiana Bat next door.  While the woodland sits on the eastern side of  our neighbor's farmland, one of our fields resides on its western side with a great view of the trees. He was calling to share his concern that this wetland was to be removed and built upon by the recent owner of the property: General Motors.

Let's take it back a bit.  In 2016-2017 when Rich and I were searching high and low for a farm property that we could afford, we found that access to land for small farmers was limited by the incredibly steep price per acre of farmland and competition from powerful entities who can more easily swallow up large acreages.  The reality that we found ourselves in was one in which we could only reasonably afford a farm that was either highway-adjacent, or tucked deep in the country over an hour away from our markets, or housed within a corroding town in a school district we'd be less than excited to send our kids through.  By a stroke of luck after a year-long search, we found our property...a haven compared to other listings: a 30-acre property in Brookville, less than an hour from Dayton, with a modest old farmhouse sitting on it and a barn too.  The catch was that though we were largely surrounded by protected farmland at the end of a quiet row of country homes, there was a large Payless warehouse in the near distance, partially obscured by trees.

With a sweet school system to feed into, and great plans to plant our border with trees, we chalked the warehouse up to being a lesser evil.  In 2018 we bought this home of ours, moved our 1-year-old daughter in and prepared ground for our first year of growing.  Each year we evolved, erecting a permanent 72 by 30 foot high tunnel in 2020 enabling us four-season harvests.  On a night soon after Christmas 2021, we found ourselves sitting in bed reading a story about General Motors purchasing 50-odd acres in Brookville.  We did some recon and our heads spun as we discovered the acreage in question was visible from the kid's playset...south of the old warehouse and closer to our farm.  This purchase included the land that our town and the NRCS understood to be protected as habitat for the endangered Indiana bat as well as an established wetland.  We held each other and spent the night rather sleepless, both lost in our minds considering the implications of this news.

At sun up we called town.  What was GM planning to do with this property?  How would this affect the land we are relying on and eating from and letting our kids dig their toes and fingers into?  How would this impact the value of our land if we needed to leave?  Was our leap of faith into this mortgage to result in a crash landing?  Our hearts rested more peacefully the next night after finding out that the proposed facility would be much further from our property than we imagined.  It'd be rather specialized, simply producing machined engine components to feed into a bigger plant miles down the road.  The stricter building codes for new construction and the reassurance that our new neighbors would be quiet, with no substantive impact on air or water quality expected by the EPA, offered us some relief.  You see, we know how difficult it is to find a comparable property in our established market area.  Transplanting a farm and a family to a new property with its own baggage and with our limited resources...the idea was enough to send us reeling.  Needless to say, we were grateful to see the EPA approved plans and understand the rather innocuous nature of this new beast.

Then along came yesterday, the first day of spring-typically a day when we celebrate our hemisphere's tilt toward the sun and the initiation of our next growing season.  But this year, it was more notably the day we heard bad news about the big fish next door from our neighbor .  Amidst an agenda of bread baking, triplet lambs being born, and our own little ones to attend to, we could hardly find the time to digest this information. Instead we both internally panicked, waiting for a call back from our town to get yet another series of unnerving questions answered.  We hugged each other in passing throughout the day and found solace in the fundamental fact that we have each other no matter whether it's here or the next place we may need to abscond to.

I picked May up from her school, our school, and one I've grown fond of and tried to steady my heart, to hear about her day and to protect her from greater stresses which aren't meant for any kid to bear.  And later when the kids were tucked away, I fed the bottle lambs their last milk of the night and collapsed with Rich in the living room to cry and to wonder if anything is sacred.  We had been told years ago that the wetlands were protected from being farmed, and yet we were learning that they weren't protected from being decimated and built upon.  

This morning we woke remembering that the nightmare was not confined to our sleep.  I bottle-fed the lambs, packed May's lunch and slapped breakfast together.  It was off to school with May, and when I drove back up the drive my heart sank, imagining what our new homecoming would look like once the woods were gone.  And what about the birds?  And the wild bee colonies that we know to live in those old woods?  And for goodness sake, this space was supposedly protected for the sake of the doomed Indiana Bat.  Is all for naught?

Well, during his morning rounds today, Rich scouted a surveyor again at the woods.  He crossed the fields and met the middleman, a rather sympathetic contractor, who shared what he knew. GM couldn't take all of the trees down due to a silt line, but would take down what they could.  Soon after a representative of our town returned Rich's call, thankfully answering questions which had begun to truly torment us.  And to our alleviation he shared that no building had been approved yet and also confirmed the surveyor's notions about the maintenance of some of the woods.  A hearing will be held next month once their plans are submitted to the town, and you better believe we little fish will be there, for whatever it's worth.

Calling around in desperation, I was steered to the EPA, the infamous EPA, to get my questions answered about our concerns for the protected land, for the bats, for us.  And as it would turn out, the EPA has to abide by the DNR federal regulations which state: if the bats aren't disturbed during breeding season, the habitat can be disturbed (or in this case destroyed) before the next.  My question for this EPA representative was: How is this protection?  Those bats who have bred here for generations will no longer return to these woods.  Those bats who are an invaluable part of this ecosystem, eating an unbelievable number of pests and up to 1200 mosquitos an hour, who pollinate and spread seeds, they just bred for their last time here.  Is anyone notifying the bats?  How in the hell is there a loophole written into the regulation that allows bats to be protected until a colossal corporation finds a window of time between breeding and decimates a well-established habitat unique in this vast expanse of cultivated farmland?

The answer is that GM will be required to pay into a trust which protects wetlands and habitat who-knows-where.  And finally the reality of the way that this country has been coded to feed the big fish and swallow the little fish has become personal to us.  The next question is how can we change this ludicrous legislation that protects no one and nothing?  I'm so deeply disturbed by the empowerment of corporations, the disregard for the individual and for small businesses, and ultimately the endangerment of this special way of life of a family living on the land.

Though a great relief has settled our hearts, knowing that we have acres of buffer and trees between us and the whims of General Motors, we feel helpless against defending the bats and also against the the essentially lawless obliteration of habitat.  At least we still have control over our sweet 30 acres, which will see the rise of trees and wild species as the years pass.  And we will continue to grow this small farm green enough to add color to the Lorax's vision of a better world.  This farm of ours whose namesake lays bare our sentiment that this place is our refuge, safe from the endangerment of the outside world, has enough buffer to flourish. And so we will continue to do our small thing the best we can.

Long live the Indiana Bat and long live the small farm.  Here's to the dream of a countryside made up of a network of small, resilient, dependable farms, scattered around the communities they feed, interrupted by wild spaces.  

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.  -Vincent Van Gogh


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