The Asberry Acres Homestead

What I Have to Work with
Last summer, I purchased a property with an acre and a half of land with a house built in the late 1800s. The house was the original homestead for the family that owns the several hundred acres surrounding me and was moved from the original location to a corner plot that had been industrially farmed. A big bonus of the house being moved is that it sits on a brand new, well constructed foundation with a big crawl space! Unfortunately, with the house being so old and the previous owner (not from the family that built the home) having treated it so poorly, I've had to spend significant amounts of money for repairs and remodeling.

Nitrogen fixers and nitrate accumulators

A natural guild seems to be forming here in this field of soybeans and amaranth! Unfortunately for the GMO soybean farmer, amaranth is (and was the first known species to be) glyphosate resistant.

Aside: Maybe I'm taking a leap here, but it seems the smart thing is to grow and harvest them both! I'm aware of the difficulties farmers have with 'weeds' interfering and damaging harvesting equipment, but I'm betting that some one, some where could find a solution?!

Anyway, back to the title of the post. My intuition is bringing out some interesting features of this situation, like... how did the amaranth become so quickly resistant? is it the soil biota? did the roots from the soybeans transfer genetic or epigenetic material to the amaranth? It seems a strong possibility that these two species 'want' to coexist - mutually dependent, mutually beneficial. Is there a higher function at work - nitrogen fixers guilding with nitrate accumulators, for instance? I've been googling for research about this possibility but haven't found anything yet. Hmm.

---

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranthus_palmeri

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/04/super-weeds-bees-diabetes-7-food-safety-predictions.php