I've been reading a lot about wheat lately (and super excited since I got some new grains from Prairie Garden Seeds for 2022!).
Anyway I stumbled on this article about a group in Jordan that are working on seed sovereignty in their native crop, wheat.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/7 ... overeignty

The article talks about them planting extra seed for the birds and the ants.
It made me stop and think, because my relationship with ants is not so great. There are ants a plenty and they don't just mind their own business, they also get into mine, especially when they bring aphids into my house.
Anyway I thought about it, and it's a fact the ants have a special relationship with the grass family. They bring this special grass around here which makes a very dense thatch - the ground underneath it is completely dry - and the ants build their nest underneath and stay dry.
So it makes sense that ants are probably dispersers of wheat grains or wild relatives of wheat, where those are the native grasses.
I thought it was very cool that they acknowledged a share of the crop for the wild things that disperse them and tend them in the wild.

I was just reminded of this today because I went out and shoveled the driveway, which has turned into quite a nice patch of some wild relative of rice - Orhyzopsis or similar. It flowers and sets seed really late, and the seed heads stay on into winter. Every time I shovel I see the grain and I hear the sparrows up in the trees, chirping away and (I imagine) saying how glad they are that I'm clearing the snow for their snack.
I wonder if they brought it there on purpose or is it a happy coincidence? that this stuff is growing only where I shovel the snow in winter...
Clever birds!

(Bird) poop happens.

Yeah, I can hardly believe I used to fight the robins for one strawberry out of my little 'patch'. Then I gave it up. Many years later, made raised beds for garlic with rails on em so moose would notice and not plod through. Robins love the garlic arrangement. Just right room between rows and they patrol for worms and other bugs up and down the garlic. They also appreciate the perch, and they sit on the rails and poop. Strawberries begin to grow around the raised beds. They get more and more productive and spread everywhere... robins barely seem to eat any of them.. No fence, nets, row covers... They leave me lots!

Bower wrote: ↑Mon Feb 14, 2022 2:49 pmThey get more and more productive and spread everywhere... robins barely seem to eat any of them.. No fence, nets, row covers... They leave me lots!

When I was a kid, we used to go visit an old friend of my parents, who had a couple of long rows of raspberry plants, all trellised up. So I asked him, in my little-boy innocence, "why do you have so MANY?" To which he answered, "so there's enough for the birds and for me".

Mulberry is the real bird magnet. Plant a fruit bearing female and the birds hardly touch anything else in the garden.

My mom's german farming family always said you plant one [fruiting whatever-it-is] for you and one for the birds
They also.planted mulberies at the edges of orchards to keep birds distracted.

If we only had a similar distraction for rats & squirrels! I had a big cage built to grow vegetables in, after finally admitting defeat. The rest of my former veggie real estate is now devoted to roses. But dang if some tender new growth hasn't been eaten . Thought the thorns would be a deterrent, alas...

I just asked my husband and he says this idea is actually an Islamic idea from one of the companions of the prophet who planted every field and mountain they could find with wheat so animals had something to eat as he felt reaponsible for them in front of God. Figured i would see if he had heard of it as a wider context than just those people or in the Amman area.

That is interesting, and not surprising that the context is wider. I suspect it goes even further into the past. I've been reading about the evolution of wheat, and the genetics of wheat and its wild relatives, which allows some crossing between species - it's pretty amazing. The early tetraploid wheats came from diploid ancestors. These later hybridized with wild grass relatives "goat grass" species and produced our hexaploid bread wheats and some other species wheats. The history of wheat cultivation goes back to the Neolithic so about 10,000 years. I just imagine the early days, when somebody finds a patch of wheat with bigger grains, or later, the ones that were easy to thresh. Ants and birds are always bringing seeds around. I'm guessing they were seen as the agents of those lucky crosses, and in some way they probably were.
I just imagine some stone age farmer, clearing a bit of ground to plant the earliest wheat. Annoying ants take advantage and bring the goat grass into his bare patch and set up house. Birds come to eat and bring more seeds of parent grasses - weeds into the patch. How annoying! But then the strangest thing of all, that combination of wild and tame produces seeds of an even better food, so the work becomes easier and more for all. Where did it come from? I think even without understanding the (extremely wierd!) genetics, the emergence of a fantastic new food grain must've been credited to the ants and birds by the perceptive and puzzled farmer.

@peebee it's too bad our relationships with other critters are not as easy or mutualistic.
I notice they didn't plant any extra grain for the rats!
And indeed, humans adopted cats for the reason, that rodents were attracted by our early farming.
One thing I realized after pondering about birds and ants, is that they both work to create the habitat that provides them food and shelter.
Ants work with the grasses, specifically. Birds of course bring seeds of many things, including tree seeds when it comes to Blue Jays and similar.
I suppose a squirrel in context of a forest could also be a builder of habitat...
But not all animals are so savvy about fostering an ecosystem where they thrive. Moose and hares actually degrade the ecosystems where they live, instead of fostering them. Animals like rats will destroy all your crop, not taking a share.
It's a challenge to find a balance.

Too bad planting extra to share with the critters doesn't work with voles. If there is a limit to their appetite, I haven't found it yet. They will harvest an entire bean or soybean seed crop within days.

@zeedman someone mentioned in another thread, jerusalem artichokes make a great trap crop for voles.
Of course the real problem is that voles make more voles. But I thought I'd mention it, in case you'd rather eat beans than JA.

@Bower , the funny thing is that I already grow Jerusalem artichokes on my property! They are a named variety originally sent to me by SSE member Will Bonsall (Clearwater, if I recall). The patch is located far from my veggie gardens though, in a corner by my tree line, fenced off from the deer which would otherwise mow them to the ground. To DW, it is a patch of wild sunflowers. They have been growing there for nearly 20 years (mostly undisturbed by me) but I've seen no sign yet of serious vole damage.

@Bower
We had a squirrel that planted plenty of English walnuts on our property. I still don't know where it got them.

@Shule although I've had none that sprouted, I have numerous times found peach pits and nut shells in the yard, which birds must've brought hoping to see it sprout. Or I guess it could be squirrel too! Blue jays took a great interest in my planting of tree seeds, back in the day.