05/10/2026
LUBBERS!!!
It's native lubber (Romalea) season in the southeast united states, that's right, I said native, because they are native to this part of the country.
My goal 12 years ago was to build a food forest. In doing that, I've learned more in 12 years than I did in the previous 37 on this earth.
When I’ve allowed nature to thrive by planting and allowing a diverse palette of plants, trees, herbs and weeds to thrive, I've given bugs places to live, hide and eat; I've given the soil more food, as leaves die and fall, the millipedes show and compost them, when a brassica is at the end of its cycle, the harlequin bugs appear and nearly vaporize them, then disappear as fast as they appeared, the mushrooms clean up everything else. This is part of nature's cycle, when we jump in and decide that we as humans know better than nature, we instantly put ourselves in an unwinnable game.
The great equalizer is nature. If a plant or creature is here, I promise it's part of a far larger plan than any of us can wrap our small human minds around. To disrupt it and expect a positive result from a negative action such as killing without any understanding, goes against the laws of nature.
If I plant something and it gets devoured in no time, I step back and ask myself a few questions:
1. Did I plant enough?
2. Was that plant happy, in good soil, fed, watered well and thriving?
3. Was that plant in the proper spot?
4. Was there too much sun or not enough?
I ask these questions because almost every time when I see a plant or crop devoured, it's because it was emitting its, "I'm weak, I need to be composted," pheromones, which bring the bugs to do the job of feeding my soil, by composting my weak plant in place, creating nutrients for the next plant I'll put in that spot. Crazy how nature puts fertilizer right back in the same spot to feed the next generation! Humans are the only creature on earth that try to control and kill everything; everything else on Earth just kinda goes with the flow and has to deal with the wreckage that us brilliant humans leave in our path of "progress."
Lubbers eat leaves not roots. They are virtually unnoticeable at my place, except when I occasionally see one munching on some random leaf, and I appreciate how beautiful these colorful creatures really are. There is diversity here, tons to eat for everyone, native, non-native, I don't care, if it's useful, medicinal, edible, it stays.
A food forest is a thriving ecosystem that must be treated as such. Every organism, whether or not we understand its role, is as important as every other organism. If you remove 1 single link of chain from the middle of a long, extensive length of chain, the whole thing breaks and collapses.
If you've been to The Reid Farm, you know what's here and what it looks like. Now you have a little view inside my mind and how I look at things to create this place. Please don't kill your bugs.....
Here are a couple of pictures we have taken over the years of our predatory wheel bugs eating lubbers.
