10/07/2026
Look at what I found living among my onions this year.
I found this little worm snake living under some plastic mulch at the farm while clearing beds.
I looked it up, and apparently they can live their entire lives in an area of a few thousand square feet or less. They can live up to four years, rarely travel more than a few feet at a time, and mostly eat earthworms, along with beetles, spiders, and other small bugs.
This snake could potentially live its entire life on just a tiny part of my farm. It could very likely spend its whole life within one “bed block.”
There’s a word called sonder- the feeling you get when you realize everyone is living an entire life of their own, as vivid and complex as your own.
This might not technically be sonder, but it’s the closest word I have for it.
Without me ever knowing, this snake has apparently been living its life alongside my farming in this field. Was it here before I started farming this ground in 2024? Is it young? Is it old? Has it spent most of its life within a few feet of me while I had absolutely no idea it was there?
And that's what really gets me.
We normally think about this kind of thing with insects. You kick over an ant mound. You walk through a spider web. You step on a roach. There are countless little lives happening around us that we never notice the potential depth of, and how our actions can completely change.
This is a vertebrate- a little animal that may live for years. It may have been born here. It’s probably reproduced here. For all I know, there could be generations of worm snakes living in and around this tiny piece of ground, completely outside of my awareness.
And meanwhile, I have been farming here. Living my own life, just trying to feed people. Working the ground the best way I can to get that done.
The plastic mulch was its shelter. The onions growing in this bed were part of its home. The compost I added before planting brought more earthworms and soil life into the bed, which became its food source.
It might have had a pretty cushy year with all those worms.
Every time I cut the grass in the pathways, ran irrigation, planted onions, or pulled them out, I changed its home and its life in ways I never knew about.
At times, the work I was doing probably made this little fella think its life was hanging in the balance.
And I didn't even know it existed.
We can live our entire lives affecting other lives in profound ways without ever knowing those lives are there. Not because we're careless or cruel, but simply because we can't perceive everything happening around us.
These were my onion beds- and I never realized it was someplace this little fella called home.
I am going to need to till these beds too, which makes me wonder how this lucky little snake managed to miss that experience. If the timing hadn't worked out perfectly, I never would have met it.
We would have lived within mere feet of each other and never crossed paths.
Our lives affecting each other without either of us knowing the other existed.
People like to think we live in a vacuum, but we don't. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Every single thing we do makes an impact on something else, in big or small ways.
That's one of the most profound parts of farming to me.
I think of this as my farm, but it's not really just mine.
It's ours.
That one bed block might be this snake's whole life.
And I had no idea it was happening right under my feet.
I picked him up and carried him a bit away- definitely more than he would have traveled in a whole week- muttering about how I hope he doesn't have a wife and kids I just took him away from, or a home place he was attached to.
Stay safe, little friend.
We probably won't cross paths again.
At least, not face to face.
