In Ancient Egypt, the Nile Delta was a floodplain.  Every year, the waters of the Nile rose far above the banks and deposited silt and sediment across the golden plains.  Then the waters would recede and leave extraordinarily fertile soil for Egyptian farmers to plant.

The Nile Delta of Ancient Egypt

Herodotus, the celebrated historian of the 5^th Century BC, tells us in his Histories that farmers have never had it so easy as the Egyptians of the Nile Delta.

He said that once the floodwaters receded, farmers would simply walk into their fields and broadcast their seeds by hand, and then turn pigs loose to trample the seeds into the soil.  The farmers then took away the pigs and returned in three months to harvest an amazing bounty of barley, beans, lentils, fruits, and vegetables.

The Nile Delta transformed Egypt into an empire, and the surplus of the farms fueled the work of the pyramids, the armies who conquered the desert, and the coffers of the mighty pharos.

Herodotus tells us that King Sesotris, one of the great pharaohs, divided the land of the Nile Delta into large squares of equal size and gave one square to each family to farm.  He then taxed all of the farms equally.

However, each year, the river rose and receded to different levels, causing some parts of the squares to go out of cultivation.  King Sesotris allowed farmers to file a tax return based on the amount of their land that had fallen out of production.

Unfortunately, the math to compute surface area did not yet exist, and the tax collectors were not able to calculate the unequal and odd shapes of farmland submitted for tax returns.  According to Herodotus, this is how geometry was invented; to help King Sesotris evaluate the tax returns of his farmers.

Euclid, the father of geometry, came along much later, and he set his axioms to geometric law long after the writings of Herodotus and the reign of the pharaohs.

But if you were a farmer in the Nile Delta, you could be sure that the IRS agents of the king, armed with their new invention of geometry, could assess your taxes with unprecedented accuracy, and not a bean nor a barley seed would be missed.

Ancient Egyptian Farmer’s Calendar.
Wall mural showing land preparation, ploughing, reaping, winnowing, grain storage (image courtesy biblearcheaology.info)

Friends, stop by Moore than Feed in Rockport to get your very own baby chicks.  Moore than Feed now sells chicks that came straight from our farm.  When your chicks grow up, their beautiful eggs will be blue, green, pink, white, light brown, or dark brown.

We collected the eggs from our own laying hens, and our friends Fred and Linda Marshall, of M-Tree Quail Farm, incubated the eggs for us into healthy happy chicks.

These chicks are the fourth or fifth generation of chickens born on our farm.  We have been incubating our own eggs to develop laying hens that are more tolerant of the intense heat of a Rockport summer.  We have also selected for the most beautiful roosters and hens, and every new generation is more beautiful than the last.

A Good Ameraucana Rooster

The chicks at Moore than Feed are straight run and mixed.  The breeds of chicks available include:  barnevelders, cuckoo marans, ameraucanas, black langshans, black australorps, production reds, white leghorns, dominiques, and barred rocks.  Melvin and his team will help you select your chicks.

Melvin also offers everything you need to start your own backyard laying hens, from feeders to hen houses.  Begin now with your own chicks, and soon you will enjoy your own beautiful eggs, freshly gathered, and your laying hens will be lovely to look at.

When Cortez discovered the Aztec Empire in the year 1519, he found 200,000 people living on an island in the middle of a lake.  Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, was the biggest and best-fed city in the world, and this fortress city was completely surrounded by water.

To feed their enormous population, the Aztecs ingeniously built chinampas, or floating gardens, to convert the marshy wetlands of Lake Texcoco into arable farmland.  These floating gardens were a masterpiece of engineering.

Each garden was 300 feet long by 30 feet wide.  To make a garden, workers weaved sticks together to form a giant raft, and then then piled mud from the bottom of the lake on top of the raft to create a layer of soil three feet thick.

The rectangular gardens were anchored to the lake by willow trees planted at the corners.  Each garden was lined on all sides by canals to allow canoes to pass with workers and materials.  This network of gardens extended for 22,000 acres across the surface of the lake.

The floating gardens were companion planted with corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers, and flowers, and these incredible gardens yielded seven crops per year.

(Image courtesy anthropogen.com)

The Aztec religion was a cult of sacrifice, and the gods were fearsome.  The victims of sacrifice, standing on top of the great pyramid, could see the floating green gardens in the far distance, with the sun sparkling on the lake, and then their hearts were cut out and roasted in a fire.

Tens of thousands of heads rolled down the stone steps of those pyramids, and the rivers that turned the temples red in the noonday sun were a plea to the gods to keep the gardens growing.  But in the end, when the sky went dark over Tenochtitlan, and the earth shook beneath the feet of Montezuma, it was not the sun god who brought judgment; it was the Conquistadors.

The Spaniards’ military advantages over the Aztecs—the swords, guns, and horses–were nullified in the sanctuary of the floating gardens, and Cortez was covetous of gold, not Indian corn, so he ordered the destruction of the chinampas.

The floating gardens of the Aztecs, the key to their great civilization, were torn to pieces by the hands that built them, and thrown to the bottom of the lake, never to rise again.

The Ruins of a Civilization (image courtesy jupiterimages/photos.com/gettyimages)

Audubon Classroom at the South Texas Botanical Gardens

Last month, Kayla and I attended a meeting of the Coastal Bend Audubon Society, and I led a discussion about bees.

The Audubon Society graciously welcomed me and Kayla, and even baby Emma, who was exactly a month old.  They are such a wonderful and interesting group, I wanted to share information about their next meeting, this Tuesday, March 4, at 7:00pm, at the Botanical Gardens of South Texas.

At this meeting, Cord Eversol, of Texas A&M–Kingsville, will be talking about alligators.  All are welcome for this presentation, stop by if you are able.

Africanization of Bees

During our presentation, one of the topics we discussed was the Africanization of bees.  In the 1980’s, an African bee colony was surreptitiously introduced to South America, and these hearty bees began to replace the European colonies of bees going north all the way to Texas, and now throughout the United States.  It is possible that the honeybee population of North America will eventually become Africanized.

Bee with Head in Broccoli Flower

Bees in America before European Discovery

I noted in the presentation that the Pilgrims brought several colonies of European bees with them on the Mayflower.  They did not know whether bees existed in the New World, so they brought their own to make sure their plants were pollinated, and to harvest their own honey.  Spanish Conquistadores likewise brought European honeybees to Mexico and South America, and Portuguese settlers to Brazil.  These European bees spread throughout the continent.  (I am indebted to Terry Carter, our leading beekeeper in Rockport, and maker of Rockport Local Honey, who shared a great deal of excellent information with me about bees for the presentation.)

The question was asked during the presentation whether honeybees existed in America prior to European settlement.  I did not know the answer, but have since found the following information in Notes on the State of Virginia by Thomas Jefferson:

The honey-bee is not a native of our continent.  Marcgrave indeed mentions a species of honey-bee in Brasil.  But this has no sting, and is therefore different from the one we have, which resembles perfectly that of Europe.  The Indians concur with us in the tradition that it was brought from Europe; but when, and by whom, we know not.  [Jefferson was not familiar with the cargo manifest of the Mayflower, because those notes were still kept in England, and England and America were at war at the time of his writing.]  The bees have extended themselves into the country, a little in advance of the white settlers.  The Indians therefore call them the white man’s fly, and consider their approach as indicating the approach of the settlement of the whites.

In modern times, bees are the chief pollinators of plants.  Before European settlement, 0ther pollinators must have performed the mighty work of perpetuating plant life in America.  If anyone knows which were the chief pollinators before the arrival of Europeans, I would love any details you can share.

Phyllis Yochem (photo courtesy Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine, copywrighted Yochem Family)

The Bird Lady of Corpus Christi

At the Audubon Society meeting, I had the privilidge of meeting Phyllis Yochem, “The Bird Lady of Corpus Christi”.  Phyllis writes a birding column in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and she is the longest-running birding reporter still working in Texas.

It is worth going to an Audubon Society meeting just to meet this wonderful person.  It was such a pleasure visiting with her and discovering her passion for birds and the wildlife of South Texas.

You can read Phyllis’ column at Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and there is a good article about Phyllis in the Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine.