To save the birds, I'm killing my farm [View all]

Not long after I bought a dilapidated farm in the Virginia Piedmont, I was surprised to learn that it came with its own farmer.

For years, a cattle farmer from up the road, a salt-of-the-earth guy named Travis, rode his big John Deere over and cut the hayfields in late spring and then again in early fall. The arrangement, common out here, works for both parties: The farmers get hay for their cows, and the landowners get their fields mowed for free.

But this summer, I delivered bad news to Travis. I asked him not to cut most of my fields and paid him so he could buy his hay elsewhere. For decades — perhaps a couple of centuries — this has been pastureland and hayfields. But no longer.

Now, this place is for the birds.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/09/27/bird-habitat-disappearing-hayfields-shrubland/