Melanie Barnett

Shelter belts are the lines of trees that border farmyards and fields. In areas with little tree cover, shelter belts protect the topsoil from wind erosion. They also trap snowbanks that melt in the spring and provide water to young crops.

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Agroecosystems are inherently manufactured. Quaking aspen forests were clearcut generations ago in the area I call home. Homes are wrapped in skirts of aspen trees that were left to stand. Their roots stretch under the soil of the vast fields reaching like fingers under the earth, waiting to grasp the hands of their kin. Manitoba maples are native, too, but most of these trees in this particular ecosystem were planted deliberately by my grandmother. They guard the house against the wind and when the gusts blow through the net of branches their twirly-gigs spin and twittle to the ground.

Wild roses prick shins as children scramble past. Vetch was planted once upon a time as forage or as a way to hold the soil back from the twisted hands of erosion. It’s tendrils wrap around muddy toes and flip-flops straps.

The bellowing croaks of frogs in the dugout echo the pesticides that fought against the armyworms’ advance on canola crops over a decade ago. Their songs have only just begun to revive.