we interrupt our regularly scheduled programming...

I was thinking about doing a post on the equinox, about how some signal has been received by the trees in the last several days re the amount of leaves that are being shed or about the slow creep to the longest night that is beginning, but I got sidetracked.

I was checking my stats today and saw I had (the total is now) 55 referrals from www.agairupdate.com. Agairupdate is a website and on-line newsletter for crop dusters. It took me a little while to find the link he posted to my blog. But find it I did...This is the mentality and mindset aerial applicators face as urbanites move to the country...as if I'm leading the pitchfork armed mob storming the pilot in his plane.

He seems to take issue with my opinion concerning poisons in the environment. Never mind that my post only had one little sentence at the very end about the local crop duster. Never mind that my post was not about 'aerial applications' or how conscientious (or not) the people who do it are. Never mind that I did not lambaste agribusiness specifically or farmers in general. Never mind that he doesn't know anything about me. Never mind that the bit about the crop duster was about the irony in my life and not about the crop duster, who was btw just doing his job.

The ever supportive partner, when I showed him the rudely worded link, said, “He's right.”

“No, he is not right!” I replied indignantly.

I'm not some urbanite getting away from it all on my little ranchette on the weekends or complaining about the noise of the plane and the smell of whatever chemical from my gated community big city suburb recently carved out of ranch or farmland. Yes, I would prefer if the farmers engaged in a more sustainable form of agriculture and stopped pumping chemicals into the air and ground. Yes, I think that people and other living things would be better off without all the poison that is used everyday without thought. But if I was going to engage in any kind of protest I would start with my neighbors and try to get them to reduce the amount of household and garden toxins they use.

I guess he needed a bogeyman and thought I fit the bill. Apparently he's not aware of all the country people (as opposed to us transplanted urbanites) who think aerial application is at the root of a lot of serious illness in their families.

In the meantime, I will just take care of my little half acre making it the healthiest ecosystem I can without poisons.