Flies

Once, when i was a graduate student, John and I lived in an old observatory that was infested with flies. (terrrible living conditions, but free!) There were so many flies that you could smell them (a kind of sickly sweet, rotten meat kind of smell). We would vacuum the windowsills, and fill the vacuum bag. EVERY DAY. We had an exterminator come out, and he said they were in the cement block, in the mortar, under the tile floors, infesting the entire structure, and nothing he could do would get rid of them, the only thing to do was to tear the building down, scrape away the ground, and start over. There were so many flies that they formed a kind of self-sustaining, Soylent-Green ecosystem. Other people went out of their way to mention the swarms of flies in Amityville Horror to us, which was funny for them, i'm sure. So that was a miserable experience, which has left me with a lasting impression that flies are an indicator that something is wrong somewhere.

This year, we have virtually no flies on our farm. That's unusual, and clearly something unusual is going on. It's by design, and I'm so excited that it's working, I am going to tell you all about it!

1) Cleanliness: we are devoted to keeping the entire property absolutely immaculate. We have only 2.2 acres here, so it's not that hard to do. At least twice, and sometimes three times a day, we run poop patrol in the paddocks, picking up manure. When the horses are in at night (just now, they are turned out all the time), one of these pickups is mucking stalls. Jo does a run (or two, or three...) in the afternoon. Most of these runs take just a few minutes, And it's important to keep ahead of the poop, and it never sits on the ground around here for more than half a day.

2) Composting: we have one central location for the compost bins where all that manure goes. As it begins to compost, it heats up, killing weed seeds, bug eggs, and fly larvae. The resulting compost is beautiful and rich, giving us the best garden we've ever had, despite the late spring.

3) Fly Predators: one central location means that we are perfectly set up for a relatively new biological control known as Fly Predators. These are teeny-tiny wasps that eat immature flies. The company that sells them delivers a box of bugs via UPS periodically throughout the summer, and all I have to do is open them up and sprinkle them on top of the compost heap. They are sterile, which is good for the company, and relieves any worries about the law of unintended consequences. It means an ongoing expense of about $40/year, but that seems worth it to me!

4) Other Predators: our ecosystem is healing, since the abrupt ceasing of petrochemicals last spring. This happened at our old house too---we stopped the pesticides and herbicides, and for about a year, the weed and insect populations roared back, one intense wave after another. I should have another post about that... But here, now, we are seeing the birds come back, as food and habitat comes back. And birds eat flies. So we couldn't be happier.

5) Other Animals: our other domestic species on the property at the moment are dogs, chickens and goats. We don't yet know what's going to happen with the goats---their poos look like a little handful of raisinets, and are un-pitchfork-able. Interestingly, when I peer at them with my little eye, I don't see flies hovering around, like they do around the horse manure. Perhaps because goats are ruminants, so their poop is sort of pre-composted by the time it leaves their body? I don't know, and the Internet seems unconcerned about the critically important issue of flies and goat poop! The dogs must be making piles, but most of the time we can't find them. Sometimes we will find a bunch of piles in one spot, and we pick them up with the horse poop. The chickens are deep-bedded---we start with straw and/or old hay and/or shredded paper and/or old weeds and/or fallen leaves more or less six inches deep. They poop in that, and stir it around, and add more manure, and stir it around, and so far, it hasn't smelled at all, and the chickens dig out all the flies and fly larvae, and turn them into tasty, unbelievably yellow eggs. We are about at the point where we need to scrape out all that newly formed chicken compost, and begin again. But first, I want to finish their new portable coop, so we can just put them in there while we clean out the old bedding. That will make it so much easier that it's worth waiting for.

So that's why we don't have any flies. Because we are looking at this little farm as a whole system. We are making biology work for us whenever we can. We are always on the lookout for some way to rebalance the system. You don't get swarmed with flies in the woods, (in general). You don't get swarmed with flies when walking across the prairie (in general). You don't get swarmed with flies when walking on the beach (in general). To me, that means that swarms of flies are a symptom of an ecosystem that's broken, and needs to be fixed. All of those "in generals" above refer to the fact that sometimes you DO come across swarms of flies in the woods. Usually swarming around a dead deer. If there are swarms of flies, something is dead and decaying. NOT composting, but rotting. While that's a really good way to take care of dead deer in the woods, I don't want it here on the farm!