John Lagier is one of my mentors, and he has helped me a countless number of times over the many years I have known him from the farmers market in San Francisco. Recently he came to our farm looking for help. He has a problem in his cherry orchard with aphids, which his ants are farming. So what does ants farming aphids mean? Basically they protect them, they eat the exudate from the aphids and keep predators at bay. The aphid eggs are laid on leaves that are curled up to prevent any organic spray coming into contact with them.
John wanted to look at our cherry trees to see if we had the same problem. Four years ago he had seen us running the chickens under the trees and wanted to know if the chickens had kept the ant population at bay. After careful inspection he did find some ants, not many, considering that it had been four years ago that the chickens were there. He is going to experiment this fall by keeping chickens under his cherry trees to reduce the ant population. If the ants are not there, then he believes that the aphids will be much less of a problem.
