A modern gal like me knows that to control weight gain, we need to watch the carbs.  Many diets urge “no whites” – that is, watch the intake of potatoes and other high- carb foods.  Since we tend to look at potatoes as a food to be discouraged in excess, it seems strange to associate potatoes with famine, yet millions died of starvation when the potato crops failed in Ireland in the mid-1800s.  On a recent trip to Ireland, I was particularly curious to know about the history of the famine – an event that brought many of our Irish ancestors to America.

I found Ireland to be lush and beautiful, very capable of raising food crops as well as much grass and hay.  In the 1840s, many of the landowners resided in England, often never seeing their land but renting it to farmers.  At the time of the great famine, the grain crops grown were exported to England, Scotland and Wales, along with butter, sheep, pigs and cattle.  The potatoes, cheap and easy to grow in abundance became the staple of the majority of rural Irish. 

Fungus, the cause of the potato crop failure, was a condition that occurred with a wet and warm season.   There had been lessor failures, and when fungus was identified early in the 1846 season, officials predicted a partial loss.  When the fungus devastated the complete crop, the British officials responded with much mixed political adieu, as well as some relief measures and employment programs, for not only was there no potato to eat, there was no work to earn money to buy other food. 

Eventually England began to supply corn to starving families, but Irish farmers couldn’t grind it sufficiently to eat it.  Later England sent pre-ground corn, but it didn’t supply the right nutrients and dysentery was the result.  To make matters worse, the winter was especially hard and harsh, forcing ships off the water that would have fished.  Had fish been available, the peasants would have lacked the money to buy it and if caught personally, could not afford the salt to preserve it.  Author Cecil Smith, in The Great Hunger, describes the 1845-49 famine as unnecessary; the Irish poor died of starvation while food in abundance was exported to other countries.

The peasants sold everything they could to get money for food, including the clothes they wore as rags. In desperation, families fled to the coast looking for work. The few who could get work did, others begged.  Living in makeshift shelters in close quarters, filth brought contamination from lice.  An estimated hundred died every week in the Cork area and the estimate for other southern cities was equally as bad.  During 1847, 400,000 people died and 1,500,000 died during the three year famine. 

The Quakers tried to help and initiated soup kitchens, utilizing the ground corn as the major soup ingredient, but quickly more knowledgeable people told them it was worse than no food at all, for it wasn’t digestible or nutritious.  Soon meat and vegetables were added and some felt the Quaker effort was significant in assisting the starving.  While in Ireland, I visited a site where a “famine pot” had been located.

Of course, we know that thousands emigrated to the United States as a result of the potato famine, but it was important to me to see the country they left and understand why they left it.  My Irish ancestors must have been made of strong stuff and I hope their resilience was passed along to me.  I am truly proud of them.

Seems like there is always an insect attacking the garden and I think mine must send out signals that I use few chemicals.  Last year was a vegetable bust due to drought and if anything did manage to sprout a leaf, the grasshoppers were on that in a minute.  This year our wet and early spring has produced a good garden, but the last two weeks have brought on the grasshoppers in small size and big herds.

The extension office had a flyer that provided some basic information:

“The young grasshoppers (nymphs) resemble small adults without wings.  Nymphs pass throug h 4-5 growth stages (instars) before they reach the adult stage and obtain functional wings. Eggs are deposited in pods in the soil in August, September, and October. Depending on the species, each female may produce up to 25 pods with up to 100 eggs in each. There is usually only one generation produced each year.”  

How, I ask, can a person think organically when the hoppers are chewing the plants off before your very eyes?  I did take on the fight though.  In desperation I applied liquid Sevin around the perimeter of the vegetable garden and on the iris.  The flyers indicated the hoppers like areas that are sparsely vegetated, so the dryer grass around the garden seems to be badly infected.

I also invented a couple of coverings – pretty fancy stuff made out of lace like you'd buy to make a wedding veil.  I have seen hoppers eat the tomato foliage, and then the tomatoes as well and this looked like the start of that degree of invasion. 

I have sprayed twice on the root crop plants and my “lacey covers” seem to be helping.  If anyone has some good ideas that might help, I sure could use them.

Although most think of Kansas in reference to golden wheat fields, there is another aspect of Kansas that anchors our history as a state – the prairie.  That is the ecosystem that was conquered by the plow; it is the native land that was lost as the grasses became farmland and eventually cities. It is that part of Kansas that we are now trying to restore and preserve.  The prairie has stolen our hearts.

It is not easy making a living on ranch land, especially if it is done right and with conservation practices to protect the grasses.  New sciences now tell us that some of our old practices are destructive and we are trying to both profit and conserve.  Dioum, a poet and conservationist, once wrote,

“In the end, we will conserve only what we love.

We will love only what we understand.

We will understand only what we are taught.”  

And so I joined my fellow naturalists this week to learn about the prairie – the biota, the ecosystem, the preservation of the precious root systems while grazed, and the need for pollination.  I already love what I have – even if it is only thirty-eight acres of mid and short grass prairie – and now, I want to understand it.  It is precious to me, as a shelter for animal and bird life, and as a remnant of the Great Plains Prairie that I am a part of.   

The tallgrass prairie is well known and is now a national preserve.  There is now a Prairie Discover Center near Junction City ( http://www.flinthillsdiscovery.org/index.php) and there is a  Konza Prairie Center (http://keep.konza.ksu.edu/visit/).  This weekend I will be a volunteer at the prairie preservation effort of “Symphony in the Flint Hills,” www.symphonyintheflinthills.org), a unique and unforgettable esperience for all who participate. 

Our Kansas prairies are a personal interest - I hope we each have one that holds this precious earth as sacred land. My efforts go to prairies, but also all of nature.  We hold that responsibility in our hands as earth dwellers.  I am enjoying doing my tiny little part to leave a good earth to our children so that they too will conserve because they love - because the understand - because they were taught. Our examples and our teaching are what we have to give.