Year 3 here of no pesticides and we’ve seen a striking increase in not only the number but diversity of just about everything, It’s really fascinating to watch! A couple of my favorite are looking down rows in the early morning after the understory gets mowed and the entire ground is a shimmering sheet of spiderwebs, massive clouds of dragonflies numbering in probably the hundreds hunting en-masse in places where mosquitos and other flying prey are found, and finding more Mantis species in greater numbers. There’s some pest species but not to any worrying degree, and where there are pests you find a number of beneficials equal to or greater than them.

One thing I’m not sure if it has any relationship to making changes is we’ve been finding a lot more rattlesnakes as well, which isn’t too much of a problem for me or the other field hands but in areas where the public is it can be a problem. We usually just grab them with a catch pole and relocate them as best we can.