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John Zander’s family has owned a stretch of land along New Jersey’s southern coast for 30 years, but he only recently dubbed the farm “Cohansey Meadows.” Meadows for the term that residents of the region use to refer to the vast marshes that create a fluid transition between solid ground and the water of the Delaware Bay.
But even during these dormant months, across 17 rolling acres just 30 miles east of Washington, D.C., Three acres of meadows provide habitat for insects. Compared to staple crops like corn and rice, wine grapes barely occupy a speck of the world’s farmland, at about 18 million acres. the landscape is filled with life.
Alfalfa hay, the nutrient-rich backbone of the dairy, beef and horse industries in the West, produces more protein per acre than any other field crop. To grow that much alfalfa would require about 100 acres of land with about 50,000 gallons of water every day, he estimates. But it comes at a great cost to the region’s water supply.
We had grand plans to install a curated pollinator garden in the front and a vegetable garden with a managed meadow in the back. I boasted about how indigenous flowers would aid pollinators that suffer from habitat loss, store greenhouse gasses and create a buffer against drought and heavy rains.
Hes also an accountant, squaring the numbers for his central Minnesota farm by hand; a herder, rotating 75 cows between pastures; a crop farmer, raising 300 acres of feed like corn and hay; and a mechanic, repairing the equipment necessary to tend that acreage. Ben Wagner may be a dairy farmer, but that job description is woefully incomplete.
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