We know y’all know about pollinators. We all know honeybees are crucial to food production blah, blah, blah. We all know monarch butterflies are under threat blah, blah, blah. But we want to highlight some unsung pollinators folks tend to not know about. For example, fig production would be virtually impossible without scary-ass looking wasps. Or that pollinators aren’t just relegated to cute bee and butterfly species…they range from birds and bats to ugly beetles and menacing horse and deer flies. We’ve taken a good, bad and ugly approach to pollinator species on our farmstead. To us, ultimately all pollinators are good pollinators. So yes, let’s save the bees, let’s save the monarch butterflies (and we work hard to do this by dealing with the ramifications of using zero pesticides and herbicides and providing these endangered species with year-round food sources) but let’s also strive to protect the ugly, sometimes scary pollinators too. Far more of our food and the entirety of our planet’s ecosystems depend on these lesser known and less loved insects than most people are aware of.
