(Submitted by Rodney in Missouri)
Two months ago a Broadleaf weed started to pop up all over my hay fields and pastures– I happen to be blessed with a large farm in Missouri— but I didn’t know what it was and had never seen it there before.
I went to my local MFA and asked a friend if he had any type of weed killer that would not kill my grasses only the weed. He asked what type and how much of this weed there was, and I told him there’s around 100 acres in horse and cattle pastures and a few hundred acres in my hay fields. He asked me if I was sure that I wanted to kill off this weed, and went on to tell me about common Milkweed and how all the row crop farmers have killed it off over the years with the use of Roundup and now it is becoming endangered along with the beautiful Monarch butterfly.
He told me to check with the USDA, that they have a program to restore the butterfly habitat all over the Midwest, so I did and went into the program that same day.
The very next day I was sitting on my front porch and two monarchs landed on me, one on my chest right were our hearts are, and the other one landed on my wristwatch. They stayed a visited for 10 minutes then flew off. I took the first one as a sign of thanks and the other one as a sign telling me they are running out of time!
That’s my story, and we will do our part to help restore the habitat for this beautiful creature in hopes we are not too late to help. They say we have 22 varieties of Milkweed in Missouri and I have already found 5 on our farm. I believe if we all come together on this, we just might be able to help this beautiful butterfly recover from what we have done to it. It’s very sad this has happened, but I believe we can do it!
