Owning the Land

I’ve never felt that Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm “belongs” to me, in the conventional sense. Even before I decided, years ago, to put the 420 acres of blessed open space in eastern Jefferson County, Kentucky, into conservation easements, preserving it from development even after my lifetime and even if it is eventually sold by my heirs, I felt the wild fields and thin woods had long since belonged to the creatures that have always lived there. Here, in the Southwest, the land originally belonged to the Native Americans as well as the animals, but their presence in Kentucky—in spite of the many Native names in Louisville such as Indian Hills, Shawnee Parkway and so forth—has been so completely obliterated that their early ownership  may never be recognized. Native Americans, in their wisdom, never claimed to own the land where they hunted and lived anyway, granting that right to a Great Power.

But even my legal ownership of Wolf Pen entails issues. How do we—my talented farm manager, Ben Hassett, and I—make the land as fruitful and as safe as possible for the wild turkey, the beaver, the possum, the skunks and especially the deer, as well as for the smaller rodents and the birds? Three wild turkey hens with their long necks and closely-feathered bodies hunched across the path where I was walking last week; without the manic pride of the males and their beautiful plumage, they reminded me of a row of nuns, meekly shuffling away. They, too, must be protected.

First, we made the decision a year ago to crop the big fields only once a year, rather than twice, leaving the long native grasses to provide habitat for birds and rabbits especially in the spring nesting time. This answers son Will’s plea, years ago, to spare the baby rabbits nesting in the long grass.

Left uncut, the fields, amazingly, have sprouted few nettles or other weeds. In this photo of the young buck, you can see some of the Kentucky grasses, growing tall, Little and Big Blue Stem, Switch Grass, Gamagrass…

But here’s the rub. The farm is now home to perhaps a hundred deer, perhaps more, does, fawns, little bucks with their pretty crown of small antlers. And soon the bow hunters to whom we’ve leased the hunting rights for a few weeks in the fall will build their look-outs high in the beech trees and begin their careful, systematic elimination of some of the deer—and they will certainly want to bring down this little buck. They are respectful hunters; no firearms allowed, and they know how to butcher the deer they shoot, sharing the venison with family and friends. Without them, the deer population would become so large many would eventually starve.

But of course the little buck in the photo doesn’t share our reasoning, and since our hunters do not use the ritual of the tribes here, who ask their prey for permission before killing them, the arrows will do their deeds with no permission granted and no blessing.

It can’t be avoided, and yet I mourn the killing of these innocent animals and am very glad I will not be on hand to witness it.

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