Page 19 - Brandon Sun - Your Home your Way (2019)

THURSDAY, MAY 9, 2019 • YOUR HOME YOUR WAY • THE BRANDON SUN 19

» Continued from Page 18 so globally known,” Darby said, ty, then we have no shortage last winter, a decline of 15 per-
“but also seeing it come togeth- of people who want to buy it,” cent blamed in part on brutal
“This was a whole field, from er with agriculture in such a Leonard said. storms that season. The but-
here to the woods, of just beau- beneficial way.” “We are really pioneers,” she terflies covered more than five
tiful alfalfa,” he said, gesturing It takes two or three years added. “We could lose it all. times that territory 20 years ago.
over the dense green crop of after planting for milkweed to That’s how it works. You always Now the cycle continues: On
purple-flowered milkweed, 3 flower and produce the pods need dreamers and people who Rainville’s farm, monarch eggs
miles (5 km) north of Alburgh, bursting with fluff. Once estab- are stubborn enough to keep have been spotted on the leaves.
Vermont, as he awaited the lished, they can be irrepressible. going when people say it’s time He and Darby have seen the
monarchs on their northern On her Lac-du-Cerf farm, to stop.” butterflies — and honeybees —
summer migration. Leonard will have her first har- come in higher numbers, and
“You get along roadsides and vest this autumn, her second THE BUTTERFLY they anticipate more each year
there’s not much fertility there. year after planting. She’ll pick The monarch population is as the pathway becomes better
I tell farmers, if you’re going to the pods by hand because no cleaved by the Rockies: Those known through butterfly “sig-
grow this, if you try something way has been devised to har- east of the mountains winter in naling.” Such increases have
new, do it on your best soil,” he vest them mechanically while Mexico by the tens of millions, been reported in Quebec, where
said. Farmers from across the preserving the long, wide fibres while much smaller numbers milkweed farming got an earlier
U.S. call him to ask how to get essential for fine clothing, the in the West migrate to Cali- start.
going with milkweed. lucrative end of the market. fornia. It’s one of nature’s mir- Over coming months, the
At Rainville’s farm, Darby It’s a short harvest, about acle migrations as the delicate monarchs will get their fill, find
waded into waist-high milk- three weeks, making for a la- insect ranges over as many as their wings and flutter away
weed, bending to sniff tightly bor-intensive, inefficient pro- 3,400 miles (5,500 km), as far south, setting up the harvest for
knit flowers that she likened to cess, and a bottleneck that pro- as southern Canada, in a round the milkweed they leave behind.
lilacs. The ugly-duckling weed ducers must overcome if they trip that takes several genera- It’s a fraught journey — for the
was looking handsome and are to make a milkweed indus- tions to complete. insects in their against-the-odds
smelling fine. try take root. Mexican officials reported in flight, and for the farmers trying
“What better opportunity to “If we can manage to find a March that the wintering mon- to help them and make a buck.
preserve an insect that’s just so way to harvest at a faster rate, archs, clumped tightly in trees,
dearly loved by so many people, dry it and give it fine quali- » The Associated Press
covered 6.1 acres (2.5 hectares)

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