Landrace, Evolutionary Gardening, "Biotic learning", Biomomicry, Whatever
What's calming? Writing about the principles of landrace gardening.
The principle is, it's more likely that a plant will be able to determine if it can survive there its own self than that I can predict what will grow well based on generalized descriptions from unlike soils/climates/water regimes/altitudes/biotic communities/growing styles/etc. Give something three years of trying to grow and by the end of it you will know whether it will grow well there.
More excitingly let genes mix. They won't be shackled to the rest of the genetics in that one variety. Over time the genes that aren't suitable will drop out of the mix and ones that are will combine in new ways. Each plant will have a larger and larger percentage of genes that work well on your site, for you, in your situation.
There needs to be some survival and some mortality for this to work. Genes need to be propagated at different frequencies. If you carefully save every seed from every plant, and keep every plant alive, there will be no change in frequency of surviving genes and thus no selection. Obviously if no seeds survive to make the next generation there will also be no propagation of genes.
For a gardener this means that things will often look bad or die. A garden grown this way is a garden that, on walkthrough, displays visible failures. Maybe some of the food tastes bad before it's removed from the gene pool. Maybe locusts or aphids descend and eat 80% of the crop.
Up to a point more failure of individual plants means more success for the project. When only 10% of the plants are dying out you're not getting tremendously strong selection; that's when you can step in and remove something that sprawls over the pathway or is too upright or doesn't look pretty or is bitter without erasing the whole project.
I think this is a different paradigm? We like nourishing the little plants, taking great care of them, feeling pride and love when they thrive. It can feel like a loss if they die, because of course it is. Those genes might well be propagated elsewhere but the individuals are what we get attached to. It is a different feeling to pivot from caretaking the individual to a fierce curiosity as to what the next generation will be, and to caretaking this balance between genes and hyperlocal spot of land.
In any case it's a much humbler and more intimate interaction with natural processes. Instead of doing all the intellectual and physical work to keep nature out and thereby create a perfect specimen myself, I am partnering with a cloud of resources and processes that function all around me whether I'm there or not and will grow something whether I am there or not. My goal becomes half guide, steering the process of selection to include my own needs layered on to those of the specific spot of land; but also half student, leaping along from development to development and trying to decipher what just happened and why. The process is in some ways more violent - there's more death, after all - but also less hubristic and narcissistic. We cease warring with nature when we cease warring with death. I suppose that makes sense.
So basically my garden will now always have things dying and failing. That's how new things are born and how new life comes forward. My garden will also likely always have things held static, preserved out of sentimentality or utility or just lack of energy to change them. Balance, right?
This doesn't feel complicated or hard to me, even though it kind of is complicated. Lots of sources and varieties and uncertainty as to particular outcomes is part of this process. I am created to love this kind of thing and to resist one-to-three-cultivars-that-get-planted-every-year-forever.
Is it hard for you to think about? Would it feel wrong?
The principle is, it's more likely that a plant will be able to determine if it can survive there its own self than that I can predict what will grow well based on generalized descriptions from unlike soils/climates/water regimes/altitudes/biotic communities/growing styles/etc. Give something three years of trying to grow and by the end of it you will know whether it will grow well there.
More excitingly let genes mix. They won't be shackled to the rest of the genetics in that one variety. Over time the genes that aren't suitable will drop out of the mix and ones that are will combine in new ways. Each plant will have a larger and larger percentage of genes that work well on your site, for you, in your situation.
There needs to be some survival and some mortality for this to work. Genes need to be propagated at different frequencies. If you carefully save every seed from every plant, and keep every plant alive, there will be no change in frequency of surviving genes and thus no selection. Obviously if no seeds survive to make the next generation there will also be no propagation of genes.
For a gardener this means that things will often look bad or die. A garden grown this way is a garden that, on walkthrough, displays visible failures. Maybe some of the food tastes bad before it's removed from the gene pool. Maybe locusts or aphids descend and eat 80% of the crop.
Up to a point more failure of individual plants means more success for the project. When only 10% of the plants are dying out you're not getting tremendously strong selection; that's when you can step in and remove something that sprawls over the pathway or is too upright or doesn't look pretty or is bitter without erasing the whole project.
I think this is a different paradigm? We like nourishing the little plants, taking great care of them, feeling pride and love when they thrive. It can feel like a loss if they die, because of course it is. Those genes might well be propagated elsewhere but the individuals are what we get attached to. It is a different feeling to pivot from caretaking the individual to a fierce curiosity as to what the next generation will be, and to caretaking this balance between genes and hyperlocal spot of land.
In any case it's a much humbler and more intimate interaction with natural processes. Instead of doing all the intellectual and physical work to keep nature out and thereby create a perfect specimen myself, I am partnering with a cloud of resources and processes that function all around me whether I'm there or not and will grow something whether I am there or not. My goal becomes half guide, steering the process of selection to include my own needs layered on to those of the specific spot of land; but also half student, leaping along from development to development and trying to decipher what just happened and why. The process is in some ways more violent - there's more death, after all - but also less hubristic and narcissistic. We cease warring with nature when we cease warring with death. I suppose that makes sense.
So basically my garden will now always have things dying and failing. That's how new things are born and how new life comes forward. My garden will also likely always have things held static, preserved out of sentimentality or utility or just lack of energy to change them. Balance, right?
This doesn't feel complicated or hard to me, even though it kind of is complicated. Lots of sources and varieties and uncertainty as to particular outcomes is part of this process. I am created to love this kind of thing and to resist one-to-three-cultivars-that-get-planted-every-year-forever.
Is it hard for you to think about? Would it feel wrong?
Tech metaphors
I've been doing a dive into open-source seeds, modern landrace creation and grexes, and deliberate crafting of locally-adapted species. This is definitely my kind of thing: my land philosophy sits comfortably in the "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks/the land is your partner in selection/change the genetics to suit the land and not the land to suit the genetics/lots of different locally-adapted cultivars" space that a lot of these experiments live in.
I definitely have a direction to take my tomato trials next year: whatever produces this year, plus some of the multicultivar groups. Seems like one of the holy grails of this style of tomato breeding is to get tomatoes that cross-pollinate easily rather than self-pollinating. There are a couple varieties that do this (the specific flower architecture is recessive) and if I pull one of those in with my survivors from this year, then at the end of next year I should have some crosses, and some of those will be heterozygous for the cross-pollination flower architecture but won't display it, plus have a bunch of my survivor tomato traits. Those will self-pollinate, and about a quarter of them should be cross-pollinators with a bunch of my incorporated trailts.
So that's a bit of a direction, which is nice.
It means I really want a tunnel greenhouse, though. I mean, for other reasons too: birds in winter, snow-free area for hay storage, not dealing with these weird last frosts, etc. The cheapest I can find that'll handle snowload is ~$3500, which would be manageable but not this year.
Anyhow, for next year when buying seeds: wild mountain seeds and the experimental farm network, and maybe lofthouse if he's selling them. They're a bunch of high-altitude, cold-night breeders of squash and tomatoes who release biodiverse sets of seeds that can hopefully adapt to what's going on up here. At least they'll have a leg up.
I definitely have a direction to take my tomato trials next year: whatever produces this year, plus some of the multicultivar groups. Seems like one of the holy grails of this style of tomato breeding is to get tomatoes that cross-pollinate easily rather than self-pollinating. There are a couple varieties that do this (the specific flower architecture is recessive) and if I pull one of those in with my survivors from this year, then at the end of next year I should have some crosses, and some of those will be heterozygous for the cross-pollination flower architecture but won't display it, plus have a bunch of my survivor tomato traits. Those will self-pollinate, and about a quarter of them should be cross-pollinators with a bunch of my incorporated trailts.
So that's a bit of a direction, which is nice.
It means I really want a tunnel greenhouse, though. I mean, for other reasons too: birds in winter, snow-free area for hay storage, not dealing with these weird last frosts, etc. The cheapest I can find that'll handle snowload is ~$3500, which would be manageable but not this year.
Anyhow, for next year when buying seeds: wild mountain seeds and the experimental farm network, and maybe lofthouse if he's selling them. They're a bunch of high-altitude, cold-night breeders of squash and tomatoes who release biodiverse sets of seeds that can hopefully adapt to what's going on up here. At least they'll have a leg up.
Tech metaphors
I've been doing a dive into open-source seeds, modern landrace creation and grexes, and deliberate crafting of locally-adapted species. This is definitely my kind of thing: my land philosophy sits comfortably in the "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks/the land is your partner in selection/change the genetics to suit the land and not the land to suit the genetics/lots of different locally-adapted cultivars" space that a lot of these experiments live in.
I definitely have a direction to take my tomato trials next year: whatever produces this year, plus some of the multicultivar groups. Seems like one of the holy grails of this style of tomato breeding is to get tomatoes that cross-pollinate easily rather than self-pollinating. There are a couple varieties that do this (the specific flower architecture is recessive) and if I pull one of those in with my survivors from this year, then at the end of next year I should have some crosses, and some of those will be heterozygous for the cross-pollination flower architecture but won't display it, plus have a bunch of my survivor tomato traits. Those will self-pollinate, and about a quarter of them should be cross-pollinators with a bunch of my incorporated trailts.
So that's a bit of a direction, which is nice.
It means I really want a tunnel greenhouse, though. I mean, for other reasons too: birds in winter, snow-free area for hay storage, not dealing with these weird last frosts, etc. The cheapest I can find that'll handle snowload is ~$3500, which would be manageable but not this year.
Anyhow, for next year when buying seeds: wild mountain seeds and the experimental farm network, and maybe lofthouse if he's selling them. They're a bunch of high-altitude, cold-night breeders of squash and tomatoes who release biodiverse sets of seeds that can hopefully adapt to what's going on up here. At least they'll have a leg up.
I definitely have a direction to take my tomato trials next year: whatever produces this year, plus some of the multicultivar groups. Seems like one of the holy grails of this style of tomato breeding is to get tomatoes that cross-pollinate easily rather than self-pollinating. There are a couple varieties that do this (the specific flower architecture is recessive) and if I pull one of those in with my survivors from this year, then at the end of next year I should have some crosses, and some of those will be heterozygous for the cross-pollination flower architecture but won't display it, plus have a bunch of my survivor tomato traits. Those will self-pollinate, and about a quarter of them should be cross-pollinators with a bunch of my incorporated trailts.
So that's a bit of a direction, which is nice.
It means I really want a tunnel greenhouse, though. I mean, for other reasons too: birds in winter, snow-free area for hay storage, not dealing with these weird last frosts, etc. The cheapest I can find that'll handle snowload is ~$3500, which would be manageable but not this year.
Anyhow, for next year when buying seeds: wild mountain seeds and the experimental farm network, and maybe lofthouse if he's selling them. They're a bunch of high-altitude, cold-night breeders of squash and tomatoes who release biodiverse sets of seeds that can hopefully adapt to what's going on up here. At least they'll have a leg up.
Dinosaurs
My collection of dinosaurs is getting restless.
The geese are starting to pair off and hiss at me. The Embdens are trying to stake out the saddlebacks' spot beside the door, although I think Avallu keeps them away from it at night. They're there in the morning when the dogs are gone, and walk outside when I show up.
This morning when the geese hissed and honked it was a little cold and very humid. Whenever one honked a little cloud of vapour trailed out of their mouths like a speech bubble. It was adorable and lovely. With light in the mornings how it can be so hard to leave.
My fall ducklings that I brought inside ended up getting some cold damage. 2 died before I brought them in, 2 have misshapen feet from frostbite, and one has lost one leg up to the elbow and may lose the other. Those were all muscovies and I pretty much swore off on muscovies moving forward, despite their being delightful creatures.
Well, someone the next town over has muscovies that survived the winter without any heat. I have less than zero money right now: had to fix the trailer due to a stupid n00b error on my part, all my LED lights from week 1 in the house burned out, I have a surprise school fee, and I do not have a contingency fund this year because of this move to the new job. However. I would *really* like to try keeping going with muscovies and add those genetics to my flock. Bah.
I need to actually get outside and set up my pens.
I want to spend so much time at home doing stuff. It was +6C yesterday, which with all the slush makes it feel terrifyingly cold. Sunlight, though, is so good, and the dinosaurs are restless.
The geese are starting to pair off and hiss at me. The Embdens are trying to stake out the saddlebacks' spot beside the door, although I think Avallu keeps them away from it at night. They're there in the morning when the dogs are gone, and walk outside when I show up.
This morning when the geese hissed and honked it was a little cold and very humid. Whenever one honked a little cloud of vapour trailed out of their mouths like a speech bubble. It was adorable and lovely. With light in the mornings how it can be so hard to leave.
My fall ducklings that I brought inside ended up getting some cold damage. 2 died before I brought them in, 2 have misshapen feet from frostbite, and one has lost one leg up to the elbow and may lose the other. Those were all muscovies and I pretty much swore off on muscovies moving forward, despite their being delightful creatures.
Well, someone the next town over has muscovies that survived the winter without any heat. I have less than zero money right now: had to fix the trailer due to a stupid n00b error on my part, all my LED lights from week 1 in the house burned out, I have a surprise school fee, and I do not have a contingency fund this year because of this move to the new job. However. I would *really* like to try keeping going with muscovies and add those genetics to my flock. Bah.
I need to actually get outside and set up my pens.
I want to spend so much time at home doing stuff. It was +6C yesterday, which with all the slush makes it feel terrifyingly cold. Sunlight, though, is so good, and the dinosaurs are restless.
Dinosaurs
My collection of dinosaurs is getting restless.
The geese are starting to pair off and hiss at me. The Embdens are trying to stake out the saddlebacks' spot beside the door, although I think Avallu keeps them away from it at night. They're there in the morning when the dogs are gone, and walk outside when I show up.
This morning when the geese hissed and honked it was a little cold and very humid. Whenever one honked a little cloud of vapour trailed out of their mouths like a speech bubble. It was adorable and lovely. With light in the mornings how it can be so hard to leave.
My fall ducklings that I brought inside ended up getting some cold damage. 2 died before I brought them in, 2 have misshapen feet from frostbite, and one has lost one leg up to the elbow and may lose the other. Those were all muscovies and I pretty much swore off on muscovies moving forward, despite their being delightful creatures.
Well, someone the next town over has muscovies that survived the winter without any heat. I have less than zero money right now: had to fix the trailer due to a stupid n00b error on my part, all my LED lights from week 1 in the house burned out, I have a surprise school fee, and I do not have a contingency fund this year because of this move to the new job. However. I would *really* like to try keeping going with muscovies and add those genetics to my flock. Bah.
I need to actually get outside and set up my pens.
I want to spend so much time at home doing stuff. It was +6C yesterday, which with all the slush makes it feel terrifyingly cold. Sunlight, though, is so good, and the dinosaurs are restless.
The geese are starting to pair off and hiss at me. The Embdens are trying to stake out the saddlebacks' spot beside the door, although I think Avallu keeps them away from it at night. They're there in the morning when the dogs are gone, and walk outside when I show up.
This morning when the geese hissed and honked it was a little cold and very humid. Whenever one honked a little cloud of vapour trailed out of their mouths like a speech bubble. It was adorable and lovely. With light in the mornings how it can be so hard to leave.
My fall ducklings that I brought inside ended up getting some cold damage. 2 died before I brought them in, 2 have misshapen feet from frostbite, and one has lost one leg up to the elbow and may lose the other. Those were all muscovies and I pretty much swore off on muscovies moving forward, despite their being delightful creatures.
Well, someone the next town over has muscovies that survived the winter without any heat. I have less than zero money right now: had to fix the trailer due to a stupid n00b error on my part, all my LED lights from week 1 in the house burned out, I have a surprise school fee, and I do not have a contingency fund this year because of this move to the new job. However. I would *really* like to try keeping going with muscovies and add those genetics to my flock. Bah.
I need to actually get outside and set up my pens.
I want to spend so much time at home doing stuff. It was +6C yesterday, which with all the slush makes it feel terrifyingly cold. Sunlight, though, is so good, and the dinosaurs are restless.
What feels right
Diversity is important.
This sounds like the kind of slogan I heard growing up, trying to convince folks my age not to be racist (or at least not overtly verbally racist; I'm not sure if tearing down the underlying structure of white supremacy/heteropatriarchy was what they had in mind).
It's also foundational to how I understand ecosystems, evolution, and survival. People think of evolution's "survival of the fittest" as some sort of survival of an abstract best. Instead what it means is survival of the thing that best fits a particular environmental space, and of course the environment is always in flux. That means the "fittest" is always in flux. Think of the environment as a lock that's always changing; some keys may fit in easily and well, some you can kind of jam in there and make it work, and most just will not go. In this situation, with a lock that's always changing, you want the largest possible pile of keys to try when you need to open the door. Taking only the key that opened the lock yesterday, when you know it's going to change today, well. That's not helpful.
Maybe you're great at patterning and you think you can predict which key will be needed tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after. You probably still want some keys in your back pocket for insurance, and you probably want that big pile somewhere in reserve for next year, or for the year after that.
Opening the door is, of course, survival.
Diversity is the means for survival.
Life is pretty great at creating diversity. Sex, genetic mutations, and epigenetic and other non-genetic inheritances provide a pretty robust suite of tools. Life creates diversity, this diversity effects (is, really) the environment, and complicated niches pile up that allow even more diversity to form.
"We" (our current dominant society) is breathtakingly wonderful at eliminating diversity. This is not a great long-term survival tactic.
When I work with ecosystems one of the things I love so so much is being surrounded by those shades of difference. Not only do they convey information and give me entrance points with which to engage with the systems and do my work; they also feel good. When I am immersed in a complex system my mind feels at rest. Data collection and analysis are happening, often far enough in the background that I am not aware of them, and so I should feel... maybe overwhelmed, or busy, or apprehensive, or exhausted. Instead I feel stable.
This is why I ran away to live in the woods. I wanted to engage with living systems on a regular basis. I am tired of the capricious, arbitrary, and dead-end ecology of cities. I don't feel there is space for humanity in them, really, only an increasing self-absorption and then an end. Life will take over; they are an excellent niche full of microclimates and resources.
I don't think I can live in the woods without some kind of human society, of course. I'm maybe hopeful that society will come to embrace the importance of flexibility and using the ecological tools at hand rather than trying to impose a static form on nature. I mean really, humans vs nature: who will win? That's not even at question.
Now we're getting far afield, but I wanted to engage some background here. I wanted to pull in the enormous history of life, I wanted to bring the sense of future survival and my own reactions of peace and rest in the face of biodiversity into the light.
This is the context in which I say I love my pigs. My ossabaws are, well, they are a genetically distinct population. The population was feral on an island (Ossabaw Island, ha) in Georgia for quite some time. That niche was quite different from the places other hogs were evolving and the sea was enough of a barrier that the population became genetically distinct (instead of mixing with nearby hogs without those constraints and "swamping" that uniqueness). So you might expect a relatively small population to be very uniform.
I have four foundation sows and a foundation boar that, altogether, come from three lines of Ossabaws. I've had a total of fifteen piglets grow big enough to begin to notice how they're turning out.
The pigs are astonishingly diverse. The piglets are astonishingly diverse. I don't know how much livestock you see; quite often folks never really see animals raised for normal domestic use. My pigs are orange, black, white, and peach with spots and random splashes on them. Some are longer and some are rounder. Some are taller and some are shorter. Some get fat on less food and some are leaner. All are rounder than conventional pigs, with long noses and shaggy mohawks on which the tips of each hair are split like a little broom.
Originally I was going to keep the boar and the best 2 sows and eat the other two. But. They're so different. The babies are so different from each other. The sows are so different from each other. And there are so few ossabaws in the world; I may not be eliminating genetics forever as long as the person I got them from continued her herd, but there's a chance it could happen.
Humans, in that way they do, tend to select for useful traits. With pigs right now we select for length (more bacon), heavy shoulders, that sort of thing. When I save breeding sows I have a human tendancy: save what works best for me. Winter hardiness for sure! A little bigger maybe? I really like the apricot colours with spots...
If I do that for long enough then my own pigs become less diverse. They start to standardize into, not a landrace like the Ossabaws, but a breed. If my neighbour does the same but she likes black pigs and shorter ones, hers will also start to standardize into a different breed. Then maybe the diversity is not lost, but is separated out into two niches. Or, maybe the white colouring is lost over time.
So I need to be careful as a steward of these genetics. What am I selecting for, my convenience, or for diversity? Every time something doesn't breed I'm selecting *something* and if I'm not mindful of what, unintended consequences can occur. What genes will pigs in the future need if there are no more humans? What genes will future humans need in their pigs? It's hard to guess, so I need to try very mindfully to be diverse in my selections.
I believe it is important to have diversity, not only within species but among them to have a huge range of plants and animals that may at some point save us from a future we cannot predict.
And here's the thing, I love it. I love, inside my bones, going out and seeing the variations in shapes and colours. I love hearing the difference in vocalization sound and frequency. I love seeing different behaviours in different individuals.
It causes me to feel at peace.
This sounds like the kind of slogan I heard growing up, trying to convince folks my age not to be racist (or at least not overtly verbally racist; I'm not sure if tearing down the underlying structure of white supremacy/heteropatriarchy was what they had in mind).
It's also foundational to how I understand ecosystems, evolution, and survival. People think of evolution's "survival of the fittest" as some sort of survival of an abstract best. Instead what it means is survival of the thing that best fits a particular environmental space, and of course the environment is always in flux. That means the "fittest" is always in flux. Think of the environment as a lock that's always changing; some keys may fit in easily and well, some you can kind of jam in there and make it work, and most just will not go. In this situation, with a lock that's always changing, you want the largest possible pile of keys to try when you need to open the door. Taking only the key that opened the lock yesterday, when you know it's going to change today, well. That's not helpful.
Maybe you're great at patterning and you think you can predict which key will be needed tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after. You probably still want some keys in your back pocket for insurance, and you probably want that big pile somewhere in reserve for next year, or for the year after that.
Opening the door is, of course, survival.
Diversity is the means for survival.
Life is pretty great at creating diversity. Sex, genetic mutations, and epigenetic and other non-genetic inheritances provide a pretty robust suite of tools. Life creates diversity, this diversity effects (is, really) the environment, and complicated niches pile up that allow even more diversity to form.
"We" (our current dominant society) is breathtakingly wonderful at eliminating diversity. This is not a great long-term survival tactic.
When I work with ecosystems one of the things I love so so much is being surrounded by those shades of difference. Not only do they convey information and give me entrance points with which to engage with the systems and do my work; they also feel good. When I am immersed in a complex system my mind feels at rest. Data collection and analysis are happening, often far enough in the background that I am not aware of them, and so I should feel... maybe overwhelmed, or busy, or apprehensive, or exhausted. Instead I feel stable.
This is why I ran away to live in the woods. I wanted to engage with living systems on a regular basis. I am tired of the capricious, arbitrary, and dead-end ecology of cities. I don't feel there is space for humanity in them, really, only an increasing self-absorption and then an end. Life will take over; they are an excellent niche full of microclimates and resources.
I don't think I can live in the woods without some kind of human society, of course. I'm maybe hopeful that society will come to embrace the importance of flexibility and using the ecological tools at hand rather than trying to impose a static form on nature. I mean really, humans vs nature: who will win? That's not even at question.
Now we're getting far afield, but I wanted to engage some background here. I wanted to pull in the enormous history of life, I wanted to bring the sense of future survival and my own reactions of peace and rest in the face of biodiversity into the light.
This is the context in which I say I love my pigs. My ossabaws are, well, they are a genetically distinct population. The population was feral on an island (Ossabaw Island, ha) in Georgia for quite some time. That niche was quite different from the places other hogs were evolving and the sea was enough of a barrier that the population became genetically distinct (instead of mixing with nearby hogs without those constraints and "swamping" that uniqueness). So you might expect a relatively small population to be very uniform.
I have four foundation sows and a foundation boar that, altogether, come from three lines of Ossabaws. I've had a total of fifteen piglets grow big enough to begin to notice how they're turning out.
The pigs are astonishingly diverse. The piglets are astonishingly diverse. I don't know how much livestock you see; quite often folks never really see animals raised for normal domestic use. My pigs are orange, black, white, and peach with spots and random splashes on them. Some are longer and some are rounder. Some are taller and some are shorter. Some get fat on less food and some are leaner. All are rounder than conventional pigs, with long noses and shaggy mohawks on which the tips of each hair are split like a little broom.
Originally I was going to keep the boar and the best 2 sows and eat the other two. But. They're so different. The babies are so different from each other. The sows are so different from each other. And there are so few ossabaws in the world; I may not be eliminating genetics forever as long as the person I got them from continued her herd, but there's a chance it could happen.
Humans, in that way they do, tend to select for useful traits. With pigs right now we select for length (more bacon), heavy shoulders, that sort of thing. When I save breeding sows I have a human tendancy: save what works best for me. Winter hardiness for sure! A little bigger maybe? I really like the apricot colours with spots...
If I do that for long enough then my own pigs become less diverse. They start to standardize into, not a landrace like the Ossabaws, but a breed. If my neighbour does the same but she likes black pigs and shorter ones, hers will also start to standardize into a different breed. Then maybe the diversity is not lost, but is separated out into two niches. Or, maybe the white colouring is lost over time.
So I need to be careful as a steward of these genetics. What am I selecting for, my convenience, or for diversity? Every time something doesn't breed I'm selecting *something* and if I'm not mindful of what, unintended consequences can occur. What genes will pigs in the future need if there are no more humans? What genes will future humans need in their pigs? It's hard to guess, so I need to try very mindfully to be diverse in my selections.
I believe it is important to have diversity, not only within species but among them to have a huge range of plants and animals that may at some point save us from a future we cannot predict.
And here's the thing, I love it. I love, inside my bones, going out and seeing the variations in shapes and colours. I love hearing the difference in vocalization sound and frequency. I love seeing different behaviours in different individuals.
It causes me to feel at peace.