SO MANY tiny spiders. They have a message for us.

Have you ever had one of those unexpected moments in nature that take your breath away?

The ones where the sight is so beautiful, so awe inspiring, that your heart fills with joy and the earth seems to stop spinning.

Where for just a moment you can almost sense the full majesty of Creation – can feel your one-ness with the universe.

I can think of a few such moments where I’ve stepped out of time.

Standing at the top of a high mountain peak with nothing below me but clouds and nothing around me but the wind.

Sitting on a far-distant, warm, sandy beach, watching a glowing sunset stretching across the entire distant horizon, with the cries of unfamiliar sea birds above and the exotic hum of cicadas in the jungle behind.

Hiking beneath a giant old growth cedar and suddenly realizing what it had witnessed in the lives of the 30 generations of humans who had walked beneath it before I was born.

For me, and perhaps also for you, such moments of awe have often come while on a journey, perhaps a quest, even, where my mind and soul were primed by expectation of the new and unexpected. Seeking, and therefore open to finding and truly seeing, astonishment.

Imagine those events of enormous perspective. Then think smaller. Much, much smaller. The moments, perhaps rarer, when suddenly the ordinary, the familiar, becomes extraordinary. And the world, for a moment, stops just the same.

I had the privilege to share in such a moment with Martin and our Farmhands. A moment of something ordinary becoming extraordinary. Shockingly beautiful and, honestly, even a little terrifying. Because it involved the creatures who are my biggest (perhaps only) phobia.

Spiders. So many spiders. And their webs. 🕷️🕸️

A blanket, a wispy scarf, a solid carpet of webs. And SO MANY tiny spiders. An abundance, a manifestation, a lavish profusion of little arachnids.

It happened in the fall – Thanksgiving, actually – in the Chimacum Valley in a pasture where cattle often graze. Though acres away and far down the valley, I could actually see the event unfold from my kitchen window – though at first, I didn’t know what it was. In the morning sun, I thought it was frost on the ground. And in a fleeting moment I wondered that it had frosted in that one isolated location. But I long ago quit questioning the vagaries of the tiny microclimates in this beautiful region we call home, and back to work I went preparing the holiday meal.

It wasn’t until the next day that Farmer Martin had cause to visit that field, and by that time I’d forgotten all about the errant “frost.” Apparently, it was not frost at all. I still remember sitting at the table in the evening as he came home and told what he had seen.

A whole sea of spider webs, absolutely covered with tiny spiders. He didn’t dare walk into the pasture. Stunned, I blurted out, “That’s my favorite part of The One Straw Revolution!”

Immediately I ran to the bookshelf and pulled out said volume - a 1970s manifesto on ecological farming by Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka. The book that is our farm’s namesake and the essence of which inspires our daily actions. It opened easily to the page, as I’ve read this particular section about the spiders countless times.

It’s from the chapter titled Humanity Does Not Know Nature. In it, Fukuoka contemplates his observation that our fields of study have become so specialized that we miss the actual interconnections encompassing a single perceived event. In this instance he refers specifically to a researcher investigating the relationship between spiders and leaf hoppers (a crop pest) – but who was only interested in one type of spider, and was not concerned with any of the other predators of leaf hoppers, like toads.

To illustrate his point, Fukuoka shares a beautiful story of the same natural miracle of the spiders that we were privileged to witness.

As I read the passage aloud to Martin, my voice choked up. I hadn’t yet seen the spiders with my own eyes, but just knowing it was actually happening was deeply stirring. And when I glanced up there was a glisten to Martin’s eyes, too.

I share the passage about the spiders here with you in full, as it does deep justice to the event we were privileged to witness here in our valley.

      “I remember a few years ago when somebody came rushing over to the house early one morning to ask me if I had covered my fields with a silk net or something. I could not imagine what he was talking about, so I hurried straight out to take a look.

      We had just finished harvesting the rice, and overnight the rice stubble and low-lying grasses had become completely covered with spider webs, as though with silk. Waving and sparkling with the morning mist, it was a magnificent sight.

      The wonder of it is that when this happens, as it does only once in a great while, it only lasts for a day or two. If you look closely there are several spiders in every square inch. They are so thick on the field that there is hardly any space between them. In a quarter acre there must be how many thousands, how many millions! When you go to look at the field two or three days later, you see that strands of web several yards long have broken off and are waving about in the wind with five or six spiders clinging to each one.  It is like when dandelion fluff or pine cone seeds are blown away in the wind. The young spiders cling to the strands and are sent sailing off in the sky.

      The spectacle is an amazing natural drama. Seeing this, you understand that poets and artists will also have to join in the gathering.

      When chemicals are put into a field, this is all destroyed in an instant. I once thought there would be nothing wrong with putting ashes from the fireplace onto the fields. The result was astounding. Two or three days later the field was completely bare of spiders. The ashes had caused the strands of web to disintegrate. How many thousands of spiders fell victim to a single handful of this apparently harmless ash? Applying an insecticide is not simply a matter of eliminating the leaf-hoppers together with their natural predators. Many other essential dramas of nature are affected.

      The phenomenon of these great swarms of spiders, which appear in the rice fields in the autumn and like escape artists vanish overnight, is still not understood. No one knows where they come from, how they survive the winter, or where they go when they disappear.

      And so the use of chemicals is not a problem for the entomologist alone. Philosophers, men of religion, artists and poets must also help to decide whether or not it is permissible to use chemicals in farming, and what the result of using even organic fertilizers might be.” ~Masanobu Fukuoka, The One Straw Revolution

I took these photos at least one day into the spider event, perhaps more, so they were already beginning to drift away. Imagine what they were on the first day.

I can bear witness that it is as beautiful – and nigh unbelievable - in person as it is in imagination. And now that I’ve been allowed to see it with my own eyes, I am in no doubt as to why it led Fukuoka to postulate that it is the poet and philosopher in each of us that must decide the fate of our green earth. We don’t know why they come or where they go… Actually, nearly 50 years have gone by since The One Straw Revolution was published, and I suspect arachnid specialists now know the technicalities of this event.

But why, and why right here, and why not always, and why in the combined 90 years of life that together Martin and I have witnessed have we not only never seen this, but only read about it once in a rather obscure little volume.

Years ago, we hosted a farm tour for teachers from Port Townsend Schools. At the end of our walk, one of the English teachers (now a cherished customer) and I picked up a conversation about a topic near and dear to both our hearts – books. She asked for recommendations for agriculture reading for her class, and wondered whether The One Straw Revolution was the inspiration for our name. When I answered in the affirmative, as any good English teacher would, she quizzed, “What is your favorite part?” I answered immediately, without thought – “the part about the spiders!”

And now, having been blessed to see it in person, it is even more dear to me. And encompasses for me the “why” of what we do.

Our earth is a sacred gift. This we hold dear – that we are called to be stewards of Creation. For this we strive to provide you with the opportunity for your everyday choices to make an actual positive change in this world.

There are no synthetic chemicals or fertilizers on our pastures. We make this choice for the life of the soil, the health of the animals, and the safety of the food. Your farm welcomes the birds and the bees. The frogs and the snakes and the field mice. The soil life. And now we know full well, the spiders, too. And every once in a while, we get to share these unbelievable moments with you.

The One Straw Revolution opens with these lines:

      “I believe that a revolution can begin from this one strand of straw. Seen at a glance, this rice straw may appear light and insignificant. Hardly anyone would believe that it could start a revolution. But I have come to realize the weight and power of this straw.”

We are part of the revolution, you and I. We are farmers and philosophers, men and women of religion, and artists, poets and scientists, too. That grazing cow, that rooting pig, that scratching hen. That dozen eggs, that package of ground beef, that bacon. That is our weighty and powerful straw. It is how we live not on the land, but with the land, and in the land.

(That's not a dusting of snow. That's millions of tiny spider webs. I took these photos at least one day into the spider event, perhaps more, so they were already beginning to drift away. Imagine what they were on the first day.)

Click here for food that makes space for the spiders.