When EECO Farm started seven years ago, it was straight out of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The soil had no insects, no earthworms, no soil life at all. Because of this, there were no birds, not even crows. No hawks or falcons. The silence was eerie.

Well, we have certainly succeeded in bringing life back to these 42 acres. The soil is now full of living organisms, from microscopic little critters to six-legged beasties that like to munch on our plants. We even have a bird nesting in one of the gardens. It’s called a killdeer, not because it preys on deer but because of its call that sounds like kil-deeer, kil-deeer. It is a good bird to have around, because 90 percent of its diet is insects, including even ticks. The female is sitting on a single egg that we hope she and her mate will hatch and fledge. He is very defensive, making mock attacks on anyone who ventures too close, and she will pretend to have a broken wing, running away from the nest crying piteously until the intruder is lured a safe distance from the nest.

At that point she will enjoy a miraculous recovery, and fly away. We have a few rabbits, too, particularly since our neighbor cleared some nursery trees and planted saplings. They haven’t done much damage that we are aware of, although a couple of gardeners have reported nibbled tops of plants. Let us know if you observe anything like this.

A very young male deer, a buck, was hiding in the woods over by the compost area for a couple of weeks. His footprints told us that he was making nighttime visits to the gardens, but he didn’t seem to do much damage. We were trying to figure out how to shoo him off the farm, but he seems to have found his own way out because he is nowhere to be found. Unfortunately this means that he now knows a way in, too. We will watch for him, and double-check our fences.

One gardener has an infestation of aphids, and it was interesting to see the balance of nature at work. Ants were “farming” the aphids for their sticky-sweet honeydew, while a mass of ladybugs and their larvae were fending off the defending ants and gobbling aphids as fast as they could. Two gardeners have reported bees’ nests in their gardens, which proved to be bumblebees. These big insects are quite gentle, and if left alone will help fill the gap in plant pollination left by the decline in honeybee numbers.

We are lucky in this respect, however, because of Mary Woltz’s beehives out in the middle of the field. Without pollination, we’d have very few if any tomatoes, cucumbers, or other fruit. There are, of course, some insects we could happily do without. Colorado potato beetles and their larvae are chomping on our potatoes and eggplants, and tiny flea beetles are eating little holes in our radishes and arugula. Soon we will start seeing Japanese beetles and rose chafers, that wreak their own unique havoc. But if you have healthy organic plants that are not stressed by lack of water, they will (perhaps with some help from you) withstand these attacks and produce enough for you to enjoy and share with all the forms of life that now live at the farm.