Busy Beavers and Bees

Valleys are the most fertile areas to grow food. Over the eons, creeks and rivers flowed bringing down silt, full of everything plants need to grow, and deposited it on the valley floor.

Beavers build dams. And dams stop the water, flood the area and spread silt over the valley floor. The dams get washed away, and they build in different areas, dispersing the silt even more, until the whole valley floor is covered deep in silt.
Also the beaver dams attract fish and other wild life that add their nutrients to the water and area around the water, making the soil even more fertile.

Silt is a combination of sand, plant material, manure, everything from the watershed that is drained. Bone, limestone, you name it, it is in silt. It is by far the best soil for growing made by nature. Beavers help concentrate this silt in the valleys. Thanks to beavers, we have very good top soil in Martinez, a very important reason why people chose to settle here.

Here are a couple interesting facts about Beavers.

The beaver is the second largest rodent in the world. ( The South American capybara is the largest. ) It's ears and nose snap shut when the animal dives underwater, and the eyes have a third transparent eyelid that helps the beaver to see below the surface of the water.

And now onto bees.

 Bees pollinate blossoms. Every plant I can think of has a blossom at one time or another. Tomato. Squash. You name it. Bees fly from one bloom to another fertilizing them and making it possible for the plant to provide fruit and vegetables. Other creatures do this as well, but nothing like bees do.

Search honey bee facts on google for some interesting reading about bees. Here is one I just read.

It takes one colony of honey bees (around 30,000 bees) to pollinate an acre of fruit trees. Now that is busy!

Martinez owes so much to these two busy creatures, who made a perfect location for a city to be born. Vineyards and orchards once covered the whole of Alhambra valley. When settlers came, they took advantage of thousands of years of hard work by beavers to grow their food. Also the never ending, sometimes thankless job of the honey bee has helped make possible every apple pie!

I love the new mural downtown, but it only reflects the people and the places they built. Maybe the beaver and bee should be front and center if you were to put things in order of significance to the forming of Martinez.

But saying all this, especially back in 1849, it was literally grow food, raise livestock or starve. We battled nature and used nature to survive. Even today we must compete with other animals to grow food.

Today, more and more people want "organic" foods. Organic has come to mean clean, fresh, natural food that is not sprayed with pesticides and so on. Yet as always, buyer beware. By definition, organic means, "of, relating to, or derived from living organisms: organic matter." Look to see that it is certified organic and check where and how it was grown.

Insects are survivors too, as are all animals, and we still have to protect our crops from them. Many people do not realize how many so called pests there are wanting to eat that field of corn. Eat all the nuts in an orchard before we can. Squirrels, crows, you name it, they can eat every almond in an orchard if not controlled. The deer do drive me crazy sometimes, but I would not trade seeing a deer for anything. We should be humane, but we still have to survive.

So beavers and even bees can become pests. I only wish all animals are dealt with humanly. We owe so much to these fellow creatures. And everything has a reason. Even mosquitoes produce mosquito larva that starts a food chain that leads to the fish we eat.

One thing is certain. Once you change one thing in nature, even with the best intentions, you throw the balance of nature off, and you will inevitably make things worse. And thank you busy beavers and bees, for making the soil we have so rich and for bringing us the fruit we love so much.