(Do Not) Beware of Doug

It's been three weeks since I took "Doug," a fast-growing rat snake, to the back of our property and let him loose in a pile of scrap metal, invasive plants, and leaf-litter: snake paradise. "Go get 'em, Tiger!" I said, meaning that Doug would displace a few venomous Copperheads.

I rather miss him. He'd taken up residence in our newest large chicken coop, and once when I took him to the ravine at the western edge of our property, he was back inside a week. I found him curled up, with hens and a rooster just stepping over him. I put out feelers for a name on Facebook, and my grad-school bud Alan came back with Doug, for "I shall return" General Douglas MacArthur. Alan and I are both WW 2 geeks, so it was an easy pitch.

Now Doug is gone. I picked him up that last time with my snake grabber because he was trying to eat eggs, not just mice. And baby chicks were on the way.

I've long enjoyed having black snakes (Black Racers and Rat Snakes) in all our out-buildings, as they keep down the mice that eat wiring harnesses in vehicles and farm equipment. Though I can find no peer-reviewed study of the matter, black snakes are said to keep Copperheads away, which is more than enough reason to want these rather curious and gentle (unless provoked) creatures around.

Doug never tried to bite me, even when being carried and he slipped loose from the grabber, hanging out and inspecting his surroundings. I suspect I'll see him again. I already had a sign on our dog house that references an old Far Side cartoon, pictured up top. It feels like a welcome sign now.

Ad-Hoc Patches & Long-Term Consequences

All of us in education are scrambling, breaking old habits and a few rules to deliver remote education. I began to think about longer-term issues for Higher Education, really not the subject of his blog, but certainly fodder for my writing students' final project of the semester.

We'll figure it out. Right now there are bottlenecks, administratively, of the same sort that keep toilet paper and paper towels from getting to stores. The supply is there, but the system has temporarily bogged down.  Except for those items, our stores are well stocked.  Early runs on meat and other staples have abated. Produce is picked over, but for cooking oil, flour, vinegar, and other things low a week ago, stocks are up (just as the stock market is down).

All this thinking led me back to the local and rural; what will be the effects of our current crisis on localism, food networks, rural ways? Here are a few concerns, speculations, and hopes.

Loss of Elders

Though COVID-19 shows itself quite capable of wiping out young people, the mortality among the elders among us is likely to astound us all. I fear here a loss of rural memory, akin to what happens at my university when a key, long-term colleague retires or passes on. These folk have "institutional memory," a real link to the past and how things were done, including during crises past.

Soon we'll have no living memory, save for interviews and film, of how Americans coped the the Great Depression. We may have to rediscover the wisdom of our grandparents the hard way, but saving your twist-ties is not akin to learning how to tan leather, repair a carburetor (something I did today on a balky antique tractor), or fell a tree. YouTube is a pale substitute for first-hand, hands-on learning.

Farmers' Markets & Foodie Culture

These are closed, and some small farms dependent upon them and restaurant trade will go out of business.  One bright spot for a friend who farms at Dellicarpini Farms, Dominic Carpin, has been a Distributor / Online Farmers' Market, Fall Line Farms. Dominic had his biggest order yet this week. By combining services of many small farmers and taking a cut, Fall Line can get produce directly to consumers and allow farmers to, well, farm. From their Web site:

Each week our producers post the products they have available, setting their own prices, uploading their own descriptions and photos. You can read about their farming practices and contact them directly with questions.

Using our Buying Pages, you shop online with us any time between Friday at noon to Monday at midnight. You pay for your order online and then pick it up on the following Thursday afternoon at one of our Richmond area pickup locations.

Orders are delivered fresh, straight from the farms on Thursdays. Our producers share in the delivery process and we rely on volunteers to sort the orders at the pickup locations. This cooperative system allows us to keep delivery costs down to a minimum meaning more money goes back to the producers.

It's not as fun as strolling a farmer's market, but it keeps food local.  Foodies may have to settle for Spring Kale in place of their Tuscan Kale, but that is a real first-world problem. Thank goodness we have greens, period.

Home Gardens, Chickens, and More

A related issue is the increase of interest in home gardening. Where I live most folk keep a garden, but now they are doubling down on expanding for summer "just in case." I plowed and disc-harrowed my neighbor Lloyd's 1/4 acre plot last weekend. He had a garden there last year, but this year he's expanding. If seed sales are any indication, Lloyd is not alone.

Chick and pullet sales are up, too, as urbanites keep small flocks and rural folk expand. I expect there to be an egg glut soon. In Colonial times, as I learned in 2017 at King's Landing Historical Park in New Brunswick, eggs were not worth anything in barter. Everyone had yard-birds.

MOAR Data, Pleeeze?

Rural broadband is expensive, if it exists at all. We are on satellite via Viasat (clever name, that). We burned through our 50 GB of data last month without streaming one movie. We had remote teaching and lots of video conferences. But hope is on the way. Poking about in their Web site, I found an unlimited data plan for $50 more per month, less than I spent last month buying a few additional GB.  These plans may prioritize essential and less-essential sites....so caveat emptor. Still, it's a bargain and we can switch without penalty back to our old plan. They'll send us a new router, too.

I suspect many folks out here are doing the same, with a windfall coming for providers. Likewise this emergency will likely speed the rollout of 5G mobile networks.

So far, that's all I see, but the peak in cases locally may not come until June. Stand by for updates. Let's hope for better news, and stay safe, sane, and healthy!

Pandemic? Huh? Oh, Yeah, Like a Hurricane. With Lights and Water

In all seriousness today, a colleague asked others at our lunch table "you guys prepping yet?"

He is stocking up on food. With two young children, it's not a bad idea. COVID-19 shows every sign of a national outbreak. I figure in a week, the first widespread cases will emerge, and then the masks will go on and panic will set in. I'm certain we'll see a few supply-chain disruption and some empty grocery shelves. Americans do not handle emergencies well, in my experience during hurricanes.

For our part, we have enough non-perishable food to feeds two humans for at least a month. Since I spend a good amount of time in harvest season canning and dehydrating, we are set on that count. Unlike surviving a hurricane, even in a widespread outbreak we'll have power for the house, for tools, and to pump water from the well.

I live by the adage that my nephew Chris, an employee of Homeland Security, shared: every family needs clean water and food to last them two weeks, in the case of a natural disaster. In winter, if you live the country particularly, you need a backup source of heat (our woodpile more than suffices). If one approaches a scary situation that way, matters get much less scary. Spend a bit of time looking over likely emergencies at the CDC Web site's page on planning. You may feel a bit better after.

One thing we decided, however, was to stock up on food for the animals. Our two dogs go through about 80 pounds of kibble and 10 pounds of dehydrated treats in a month. Our cats might eat 10 pounds of dry food. So their needs are paramount. Humans do not consider it often enough, but these creatures who give us so much and ask for so little live at our mercy.

Our chickens have plenty of feed, and in an emergency we'd do what our grannies did every day: set them out further to free-range for bugs and greens. We might lose one or two to predators or a bad weed, but the flock would not starve.

What are you doing to get ready for what seems inevitable?  Are  your Plan B skills up to snuff?

Year of the Snake

If only the snakes were like the little Black Racer in my garage. Him I talked to.

But Copperheads, whose bite can make you lose a leg? In 7 years in the country, I have had 3 encounters with them too close for comfort (on the steps, in the yard, in the garden). Now, I've shot three right by the house or in the garden, plus another right beside the house we restored in Buckingham County.  And one of our livestock dogs was bitten, and though she made an excellent recovery, that means one more venomous snake is in the vicinity.

I have what a friend calls an "atavistic" reaction to snakes: I really dislike them. Unlike a neighbor who slays every one he meets, however, I understand that snakes keep down the rodent population.

Our solution to this population explosion (maybe from a very large snake that eluded me last year, in our butterbeans) has involved cutting the grass short, going out at night with powerful flashlights, and using snake repellent around the house. A snubnose revolver stays on the hip, full of snake shot, when I'm weed whacking or clearing garden beds.

The flashlights saved us one evening, when checking the chicken coops. A young Copperhead showed up in the beam, coiled up right in front of us. I shot it with a revolver at 15', using snake shot. I kept thinking "just five paces more and it would be time for the emergency room and a painful recovery."

Snake repellents are controversial. One widely available one, Snake Away, contains Napthaline, a carcinogen (read the EPA's page before the Trump Administration orders them to declare it safe). It smells like moth balls and I will not link to it or encourage you to buy it. We have used it sparingly, mostly to get rid of what we have on hand, and nowhere near food or animals. There's a video of tests with Rattlesnakes, who were not excited or prodded, moving casually over the product. It was an utter failure. The snakes also did not mind mothballs, crawling right over them to find a shady spot.

My go-to is Snake Stopper, an organic product far safer but also more expensive and short-lasting. The effectiveness of both products gets questioned by bloggers. That said, the hardware store does not sell spare legs.

Ortho makes a natural product called Snake Be Gone. That may be promising as it has longer-lasting crystals.

In the end, I'm not sure we'll know if they work. When I was using Snake Away regularly after my first near bite in 2016, I saw no snakes for a while. But was it the product or the weather? This year, without an April freeze, snakes emerged in did not perish as they often do in other years. And we did not have a wet, cool winter. That, some old-timers claim, causes a fungus that kills snakes.

Whatever the prognosis, the chickens have to be checked after dark. So what to do? Lights and slow walking. Be careful out there! And above all, do you know how to identify venomous snakes? Virginians might start here. Check your state's extension agency for a similar page.

Snakes have a long association with healing, rebirth, and immortality. I'll let the mystics judge that, and welcome harmless snakes into my yard and garden. I have a tetanus shot.

When You Have to Put an Animal Down

One of the hardest things any pet owner must do is make the painful decision to end an animal's life. That is most often done by injection at the Vet's. But what if you had to do it yourself?

Without going into the (blessedly non-gory) details, I had to euthanize a sick chicken (not any of the ones pictured) a few weeks back. It was harder than killing a wild animal, something I do with varmints or, for food, with deer.

Our Vet performs necroscopies, which confirmed cancer as the culprit for the creature's visible pain.  It's not likely systemic to our flock, but we are keeping an eye out.

That's only the fourth chicken we have lost in four years, with two to heat and another to a sudden illness, but it's the first where I had to end the animal's suffering. We really think so little of chickens, don't we? Those nuggets hardly seem to have come from something that once made noise and walked around, though industrial-production chickens lead lives of horror.

For many of us, however, the most personable pampered hen lacks the warm feeling of a loyal dog or purring cat, but they do have individual personalities and often follow you around clucking for treats.  We don't eat our birds, so they have become pets even after the flock grew to nearly 20 animals, with our first rooster and about 7 more hens on the way.

Chicken keepers may have a tough time finding Vets to treat a bird, unless one lives in town where urban chicken-keeping seems to have replaced beekeeping as the ecological hobby du jour.  I phoned one of those in-town vets and they treat animals but do not do any postmortem exams. Luckily, our  country Vet here was more than happy to assist.

As for the death of the hen, it was painless for her. There's a great blog post here with advice I used to euthanize the bird. When I have to process my surplus roosters I cannot re-home, I'll use the same technique. No hatchets or helicoptering for me. I treat living things with respect, and the method shown really keeps the animal comforted and tranquil until death. Yes, a chicken will thrash after severing its spinal cord, but that's involuntary. The deed is done and if animals go somewhere after they leave this world, our hen made the passage.

Since we began raising chicks, I've not eaten any chicken. Oddly, euthanizing the bird bothered me little more than killing a fish for supper. But I'm not quite ready to eat one of our flock.

Guns, Varmints, and the Farm

Almost no subject divides Americans as much as firearms. I probably use one more often than most civilians I know, mostly for shooting four-legged varmints at close range.

Yet I hesitate to write about guns here; the issue is so fraught with disagreement.

If you live on a farm, the answer to "what gun do I need?" probably does not mean "no gun." I leave that up to you. To me firearms are tools and owning them is not about defending one's property from humans; it means shooting critters. As I've written before here, my state's laws prevent me from "re-homing" varmints caught in my live traps. I do release skunks right where I find them, because shooting them is a nightmare of chemical consequences. Besides, they are cute and seem to enjoy my method of releasing them (itself worth an entire post). The same goes for the rare squirrel I catch; the hawks here make them a rarity.

Groundhogs, possums, and raccoons? Not so much. Kaboom.

In writing about shooting, I will not discuss the uses an urbanite or suburbanite might have for a firearm: deterring another human being or, failing that, killing him and not yourself or a family member. All I'll say on that count is "take some basic classes, shoot a lot at a gun range, rent various semi-automatics and revolvers, then pick a weapon with which you feel comfortable, not the coolest-looking or biggest gun. Keep it locked up and near where it can be gotten quickly by the right person." And though I have a conceal-carry license, I have yet to tote around a handgun. I might bag one to go to the range, but conceal-carry is a fine art. One needs to take holster-qualifying and defensive handgun classes. Such training is worth every cent, as your life or another's may depend upon your skills.

There are few classes in good judgement, so I leave that up to you and your inner conversation to resolve.

I also don't have enough recent experience with deer or waterfowl hunting to advise anyone there who might want to bag a buck or be wet and miserable in a duck blind. More on deer next year, as I'm going to haul my WWII era Lee-Enfield .303 up into tree stands and, if lucky, get some venison for our freezer.

For pest animals that can elude even well designed fences to murder your chickens, little ones can be live-trapped and then shot at close range with a .22 LR. I use a simple bolt-action Remington, a single-shot weapon that had been in my wife's family for many years. At 12 feet or so, it's deadly accurate though I swiftly dispatch my "visitor" with a single round to the head and a second round to make sure the creature does not suffer.  Such .22s are not expensive, and they are simple to maintain. Most such bolt-actions are.

Then there are venomous snakes. After my close calls last year, I've decided to open-carry a Taurus Model 85 .38 Special with #6 shot shells. I do not wish to get in garden-hoe range of a big Copperhead again. They can move FAST, so I'd prefer ten feet with the .38.  In the picture below, the shooter apparently had a "near disaster" at 5 feet. I'd, for one, have stood further away and not shot at anything crawling over cement.  Perhaps he posed the dead snake there, but he killed a 5' long Copperhead not unlike the one that nearly bit me.

I'll keep the gun on my hip when mowing fields and when working around brush-piles. The weapon holds 5 shots. One could, with practice, carry a specialized snake-killer of the sort shown here. If you want to save money, however, go for a used .38 revolver. What is called "Gun Culture 2.0" with its love of tactical rifles and high-capacity polymer guns has pushed these older and dead reliable (pardon the pun) steel guns to the side. One only needs a few shots for a snake encounter.

Such a simple weapon can still be upgraded; I'm in the process of zeroing in laser sights integral to the revolver's grips. Such sights are not cheap, and if the batteries die, you had best have trained with the "iron sights" native to your gun. Moreover, do not be a skinflint on a holster. I've no recommendations there, though I like what I read about the traditional leather belt-holsters from Wright Leather works.  There's also a local company right across the river from me, Master's, that makes some nice products. I'll let readers now how they work out.

The only "cool" gun I'll note is the Taurus Judge and Smith and Wesson Governor. These large revolvers shoot .410 shotgun shells or .45 Long Colt rounds. I give a slight edge to the Governor because it also shoots .45 ACP, my favorite handgun caliber for human varmints. You would need a BIG snake for either the Judge or Governor; I'll pass but I'd love to shoot one.

Like these large revolvers, larger critters are beyond my scope(s) but for smaller ones I spot and can safely shoot at a distance, I have used an old Marlin .22 Magnum rifle with a telescopic sight. That round is longer than a .22 LR and packs a bigger punch, especially in a hollowpoint. Just because one chooses to shoot an animal does not mean one should be cruel. Practice until you can be sure of a killing shot, or don't take the shot at all.

Once I saw a rabid raccoon stumbling around in broad daylight. I hit it twice with the .22 Magnum and, in a Zombie-Movie moment, the animal flinched, then turned to stare at me as my wife said "get a bigger gun." My shotgun was far away at the time. Thankfully, the raccoon staggered off to die. I'd not recommend an AR-15 for such work but if you prefer a rifle, some new bolt-actions chamber the AR's .223 high-velocity round. Whatever the weapon, you'll need to zero in your scope well, and nothing I've found works better than a laser bore-sight. It goes in the barrel of an (unloaded!) rifle. The shooter need only adjust windage and elevation of the scope until it lines up with the laser's dot.

I've not spent much time writing about shotguns, though I own a very old Mossberg New Haven 12 gauge pump shotgun that I used for sporting clays as well as goose, deer, and duck hunting thirty years ago. It's reliable and simple, though there's little I need it for these days as I rarely need to shoot anything at range. My chickens and garden would be downrange now when critters appear, which is why I adopted a "trap and shoot" policy. My mantra for shotguns has always been "the simpler the better," and like the Remington .22,  one cannot find a much simpler weapon.  I admit a fondness for double-barrel shotguns. Nothing could be simpler, except throwing a rock.

So how much for a simple Tractorpunk arsenal? For used guns checked out by a competent gunsmith, less than a thousand bucks will buy a long arm, revolver, cleaning supplies, and ammo to equip the rural landowner, not including training and a gun safe.

Then, mindfully, let the lead fly if and when you must.

Chickens in the Garden. Hah.

We have had chickens for more than 18 months, currently a flock of 13 hens. Number 14 (I don't like naming them; my wife does) perished in the heat last summer, getting trapped in a raised bed garden and unable to escape the fencing.

As we have discovered, those cute pictures on gardening books that feature chickens are comfortable lies.

Photos like the one above (not our garden, not our chicken! They'd make short work of the Nasturtiums) make a novice gardener think that hens will simply avoid plants you want for food in order to get at the lovely scratch and chicken feed you set out for them. I'm guessing that these are the same urban owners who put little sweaters on their chickens and walk them on leashes. Perhaps they are working on a much smaller scale than we employ; our big garden measures over 5000 square feet, about 3000 of it in raised beds, so projects like building "chicken tunnels" and other elaborate structures run into the steamy reality of Virginia summers where weeds can grow 6 inches after a bad week of heavy rain.

Our experience with chickens shows us that they can be wonderful in and around fallow beds, where they turn and manure the soil. They turn compost faster than I can. I did add boards to keep them from kicking out all the topsoil and compost into the paths, but when I added mesh fencing to beds, chickens would get into the smallest hole, and often they could not get out. They do fly, a bit, and one variety, the Golden Comet, is a great flyer even when we trimmed back the feathers on their wingtips. Over the fence they went!

To prevent more dead birds and ruined crops, we will keep the chickens out of all the beds in summer of 2017. The flock will now have a nice shady run and  their own coop area for scratching and resting. In fall, we'll have 5' tall permanent horse-fencing around our strawberry-and-rhubarb spot and the asparagus bed we are gradually expanding to about 150 square feet.  One other bed will get the 5' fencing and host our winter-greens garden.

I enjoy our chickens. They are good entertainment, they eat a lot of bugs, and they give me breakfast every day of the year. They can, as this author claims, do many things that farm machinery or back-aching labor accomplish.

But, in the end, they are livestock, not pets. If you want to keep chickens, keep in mind that vigilance is the price of having them near a garden, let alone in one.

On The Country's Own Terms

I ran across an antique postcard (remember them?) today. A couple has walked out of a country house and needs to visit “the Necessary.” That means crossing a moonlit yard to a little building labeled “this is it.”  Just don’t drop that lantern and spill the oil. The Honeypot might go right up in flames.

Having recently visited a preserved 1930 Farm at Peaks of Otter, VA, I have to say “that was not so long ago.” Yet trips to the outhouse are forgotten. So is carrying a lantern. So are my rituals of country life, including, as I recently discovered, always double-checking for snakes.

The country slowly makes you live according to its terms, though on a beastly hot and humid day like today, I am very grateful for air-conditioning. The router is unplugged for a passing thunderstorm, something we never did in town, but otherwise we might be in the middle of a city.

Until you step outdoors.  When I did that the other night, about half past nine, I stepped on or just beside a poisonous snake stretched out on our kitchen steps.

Fate was kind to me; either the Copperhead struck and missed (they do miss sometimes) or chose to slither off. I heard the sound and figured it to be a black snake. That elicited only a gasp of surprise and a loud curse, as I’m accustomed to the non-venemous snakes that eat our mice and live in barn and garage to festoon the rafters with their shucked skins. A bite would mean a tetanus shot. I did not let fly a blood-curdling scream, as it might had I spotted the markings on the serpent’s back.

Then I did see the snake clearly. It was a steamy night, but suddenly I felt very, very cold. My wife grabbed a flashlight and spotlit the intruder against a cement wall—no place to fire a shotgun— while I got the longest-handled garden hoe in the shop. Several chops later, I was more than certain it was dead. It’s possible our snake was heading for a White Oak to eat cicadas. Copperheads like to do that between dusk and midnight in the summer. I’m going to check at the base of the tree (from a safe distance) with a spotlight to see if I find a snake party.

Once I refused to kill a Copperhead my late father-in-law turned up when he moved a fallen branch way back in the woods, where part of a tree had fallen across a farm road. It was a tiny thing, perhaps a foot long. It just looked up at us, not coiled.  He walked on and I caught up. He said “kill it?” and when I said no he asked why. “We’re in his house back here,” I said. His reply, with a glare, was “this is MY house.”

I still could not have killed that snake unless I had to. But in or by my house? Every single time, just as I’ve sent to their just rewards chicken-killing possums and raccoons. Just as I've dispatched dozens of garden-ravaging groundhogs.

These are the terms of the country. Not all wildlife is cute close up. Watch your step. Keep the grass short near the house. Sweep up the maple leaves falling early in the mini-drought we get every July. Copperheads are marked to look just like those leaves.

Never forget the above. Never. Yet when suburbia overtakes rural areas to ruin them, the newcomers (and I’m a newcomer of a different sort) clear, mow, poison, pave until the Wild is at such a remove that it will not come back, at least until our unsustainable civilization wises up to the need for living in harmony the Wild or collapses into a new Dark Age.

In a way I’m glad for that snake. He can stay in his house, and even cross the grass to the oak tree. I use a flashlight at night in the yard. But the step? Too close.

I tell city people “you could not live out here happily.” First, they’d not be able to wear flip-flops in the yard. Even the mention of ticks terrifies. Have you noticed how often in home-improvement stores and advertisements for home products that the white suburban families cavort on their hardwood floors or lawns barefoot?

Do not try that here. Ever.

Now I check the steps with a flashlight when I go to bring in the dog from her guard duties, thankful of all the places too far for commuters to drive to jobs, places where agriculture is still viable on scales large or small, places that cannot be so easily tamed into “Deer Run,” or “River View” or whatever place or species has been ruined to leave only a name.

Mice in the Root Shelter!

I check our "Root Shelter," fashioned from a Cold-War Fallout shelter, weekly. So far the pumpkins and garlic in there have held up well, but I've had a special concern about the small harvest of sweet potatoes (no more than 25 pounds) that we gleaned this year. A neighbor gave me another 25 pounds, and I've kept them in a cool utility room. I've been planning to move them to the Root Shelter  but have been rather lazy about it.

Finally I went to check things today.  I am glad I did. The tubers already there were wrapped in newspaper to absorb any moisture and put in bushel baskets with lots of air circulation. The door is tight and features breathing holes with 1/4" hardware cloth. The walls are cinder block and the whole thing is underground.

Imagine my disgust when over half our sweet potatoes had been gnawed by mice!  I took a basket full of basket cases out to our compost heap.

Our pumpkins, garlic, and pearl onions were fine, untouched by the little gluttons.

This warning meant going back to the drawing board about the Shelter and how food get stored.  Baby mice can squeeze through an opening the diameter of a pencil; adults, I've read, can get through a hole the size of a human pinkie.  They can gnaw wood and plastic with ease. Metal will stop them. So will our building's resident black snakes, which are hibernating now, and barn cats.

We don't have a barn cat with access to the building, since we keep it locked. Killing mice myself poses no moral problems at all, but I won't employ poisons. A dead mouse could be eaten by our predators, killing our pest control service! Poison could also find its way onto the food in the shelter. I am not squeamish at all about setting snap-traps, but the potatoes still needed better storage. Next year we will harvest a large number of Kabocha Squash for a local restaurant, and I don't want this happening again for a cash crop.

Homesteading and survivalist forums are full of tales about how to store things in root cellars. Mice can gnaw through plastic, so a simple ventilated tote would not do.

Some folks employ metal trash cans, which I have used with great success for feed for our chickens, cats, and the dog. Drilling lots of holes (no more than 1/4" across would not be too onerous, but I had a tote and hardware cloth. So I got right to work.

My invention involved using a tote with a removable, one-piece top, rather than a hinged one. I cut away all but the rim, so the contents would breathe, and put hardware cloth inside, fastened to the plastic by screws and washers. Next I lined the inside of the tote with more hardware cloth, after drilling lots of 1/8" holes all over the tub's bottom and sides.  The metal sides come up high enough to meet the wire on top.

I plan to check this frequently, especially now that I have some snap-traps down, baited with peanut butter.  I hope we have sweet potatoes come spring! None of our seed potatoes were eaten, so we'll be starting fresh for a bigger harvest in 2016.

Hay Making Experiment!

A few times each year, we mow a couple of fields of pasture grass, with very few weeds, in Buckingham Country. I would like to mow less often and keep the hay. On second cuttings, we could get straw, with fewer seeds and more potential as garden mulch. If we start keeping a few goats next  year, we'd want hay. What's the difference between hay and straw? Read all you would EVER want to know, right here.

The inputs into our food matter, and when we can we grow our own food or buy organic. For animals we feel the same way. I am confident that our grass here and in Buckingham is free of pesticide and herbicides, so the fields we mow can provide good fodder or animals or mulch for our rows of plants.

Sounds great until one prices out a baler and tedder. I don't own a sickle mower for the tractor but the other implements can set one back $20,000 new. Thus I'm not likely to go that route for might amount to 100 or so bales annually (not that we currently use more than 20). Luckily, not all of the world has turned to massively expensive techniques. This page from Ethopia, for small-scale herding operations, shows some techniques I plan to adopt.

While I think a hay tedder for the tractor may be a reasonable investment, so I can windrow the hay easily after cutting with the rotary mower on the tractor, a baler is big money. I'd rather pay a farm-hand a couple hundred dollars a year to help me hand-bale the hay. Stacking would we really fun, if the fields were near where I have gardens and animals. Scratch that: it's 50+ miles from field to farm-site.

My research on this turned up the Rev. J.D. Hooker's article about how to build a baler-box. It's very similar to the box shown on the Ethiopian page. It was a snap to make. I only needed a few screws and some 3/4 plywood. I added L brackets around each side since I'd be standing IN the box, stomping.

We cut and transported the grass to dry at home, but I'd prefer to windrow the hay and bale it at the site.  I  turned the hay once and checked for moisture. If it rots or gets moldy, it will go out for mulch or be spread in the chicken run.

My experiment produced three 2'x2'x18" bales out of 3/4 load of hay from the pickup's bed. With its 8' bed, the truck will hold 16 bales. I baled three in 15 minutes, so when I next mow a few acres, I think I'll take a farm-hand and get 50 or so bales done. We can stack and cover the ones we don't trasport with a tarp, though a farm wagon for moving our tractor will one day double for moving bales.

I've ordered a European-Style hay rake and will now hand-scythe some rye-grass right here at home to see how well it does. I will get a few more bales locally before practicing on the big field at Buckingham.

No-Kill Fence?

After blasting four groundhogs and having Meatball the dog kill another while visiting with the owner of delli Carpini Farm, I figured that there must be a better way.

In the long run, a dog pen around the garden perimeter will accomplish a lot, as we plan to have herding dogs who live outside. They will go on walks to pee the perimeter, and this seems to keep animals away from gardens.

Now that we have chickens, too, there's the issue of predators after more than an ear of corn. I recently found a dead gray fox near our driveway, and that's a chicken-eater who can climb fences. I'd like to keep our wildlife alive, but at a distance. Killing everything simply seems wasteful, since we need wild predators and prey to keep the forest and field healthy. And of course such slaughter is impractical without poison baits or an army of hunters. I reject the former practice as evil and the latter as a waste of time and beer.

A mistake made in 2012 was in fencing. We have a fence that deer won't jump, thanks to height and some white streamers at 8' intervals, 8' off the ground. Ten feet would be ideal, but given that the garden is at the peak of a hill, it works. What has not worked is the game fencing itself for smaller animals. Field fencing consists of welded wire, with either with the same sized holes (usually 4 by 2 inches) or small holes at the bottom, larger ones up top.

No one but a hawk or barn cat will stop field mice, but groundhogs and raccoons can climb fences until they get high enough to slip through a big hole or go right over the top.

Thus, out come the rifle and live-traps. This year, however, I did more reading and discovered what some bloggers call "the floppy fence." I credit Debra Graff of Square Foot Abundance for inspiring me, as I found her post about fencing (ahem, a "fence post") and studied her design.

I have combined this fencing method with my technique of burying fencing to deter diggers and building everything around a firm barrier of 6' game fence. It works this way:

• 4' chicken wire, with 1' laid flat on the ground away from the game fence and buried
• Next 2' attached by wire and cable ties to the game fence
• Final 1' left to flop outward (Ms. Graff uses 2 or 3 feet. Let's see if my cheapass version works)

When an animal climbs up such a barrier, it gets to the top-most bit to falls back and, one hopes, off the fencing. Several writers who have tried this report that corner posts and gates are weak points. I have fixed the corners with extra chicken wire, also flopping out.

Such a fence is expensive. We have sunk over 1000 dollars into posts, game wire, cement, and now, the chicken wire. I do build my own gates, so that saves a lot of money.  We have seen a great deal less pilfering this year, with only one groundhog caught and killed in the garden proper. Thanks, Meatball!

Suburban Visitors Meet A Man From Mars

"There might be ticks," she said, stepping out of the car.

He replied, "I told you not to wear flip flops."

For the record, I don't own flip-flops or any open-toed sandals. Out here, they are not practical outdoors.

She doused her legs with bug spray. So did he, and he was wearing jeans and real shoes, good boots even.  I figured it would not be useful to tell them that I eat lots of garlic to keep the mosquitoes off, and sometimes I dust my boots with sulfur to repel ticks: not a great remedy if one wears that urban ubiquity, the flip-flop.

I also did not mention the tick jar I keep my pulled ticks in, until my bite looks okay, or the gizmo I use to remove several ticks a week from me.

That would lead to some sort of discussion about chemicals, and I'd get angry.

She got about 20 feet down our farm road and turned back. "I'll stay in the car." He said again, "I told you not to wear flip flops!"

I said something about street rods and the shell of a '55 Chevy I'm going to save, just to change the subject.

"So why are you selling these other old cars?" He asked. I have a few junkers on our property, none of them worth much, so I just gave him the real reason. "The wrecks are in the way when I'm mowing, and I've got two old cars already I fiddle with. We're going to cultivate the area to plant cover crops to feed our bees."

"Your bees," he said, as we trudged into the woods, me alert for snakes.

"You know, honey bees."

He nodded and was polite, but I was clearly the Man from Mars.

I didn't tell him, as I looked for snakes, that I'd said "hello, get a mouse!" to a big one that morning, on the steps by my garage. The serpent--a Black Racer--looked at me, stuck out his tongue, and slipped into a crack in the cinder block. My visitor would then probably recommend clearing all the undergrowth by the road, getting rid of brush piles, and so on.

Satisfied with the two pickup trucks he'd be saving from a rusty apocalypse, he and his wife went back to town. I'm sure they showered and deloused themselves. Nice folks, however, they are not my sort.

Later, another visitor came by, a talented painter and car-restorer who is going to do some body work on a car of mine. He and I walked to the garage to chat about the project, and he pointed to a patch of weeds.

"You know what THAT is?" He asked.

I looked, and looked back at him. "Poison Ivy."

He tilted his head but before he could offer advice, I said "We keep bees. I just string trim it, and we use no chemicals on our land, except some Roundup I paint with a brush on 'Tree of Heaven' after I cut them down."

Again, the Man-from-Mars look greeted me. But he too was polite and, again, not my sort.

I have seen the yards from the places where such folk come. Monocultures of grass not suited for our climate, foundation plantings just as water-intensive as the grass. Non-native trees far from the house, if there are trees. A sign on the lawn every so often, from a company with an innocuous name that cloaks its evil--GreenWays! EverGrow! BugBlaster!--that sprays poisons to kill bugs, all the bugs, or that puts toxins down so the lawn will continue its junkie life of constant chemical fixes. Meanwhile the owners of these properties breathe in chemicals daily, so trace amounts stay in their fatty tissue, accruing a little at a time...

I'd rather be a Man from Mars.

Here's a good test of a person I'd want to spend time with: they think the tick-jar is cool and talking to a snake is not odd.

I just pulled a tick off me, after my second paragraph of this post. I'll spare the readers a picture of him in the jar, crawling around.

Campaign-Season Row Covers

Virginia's off-year elections have passed (my guys won) but I'm perfectly bipartisan about one thing: stealing as many campaign signs as possible.

I don't so much want the red-and-blue reminders of our partisan divides. They go into the recycling. I do want the metal u-shaped frames from the signs. With the resulting row-crop covers, I can extend my lettuce-picking season far into the cool months.

I'm no Eliot Coleman, who picks lettuce in a New England winter from his cold frames. I have done that here, but this season of moving we did not get the cold frame up in time.

So we'll enjoy lettuce for another few weeks this  year, cabbage and collards longer still. With the groundhogs decimated or hibernating and the raccoons scarce, it's a good harvest a few times each week.

The trick to row covers is to let the sun in on warm days and replace them before dusk. The results are not lovely, but they are tasty.

We'll enjoy some greens come Thanksgiving.  Thanks, Dems and GOP! I love my bipartisan row-covers!

"Fort Tomato" Nearly Complete, and Just in Time!

Readers may be familiar with an annual tomato-fight in Spain, La Tomatina, held in the Valencian town of Buñol. Spain has lots of tomatoes, as I found out when I lived there for a year, but I'd claim that no one has enough to simply wallow in them. I certainly don't. Each year, depending on our harvest and time, we put up in pint and quart jars between two and four gallons of my Mediterranean tomato sauce, a slow-cooked delight that serves as the the basis for everything from pasta dishes to Lubee (a baroque Lebanese concoction of string beans with lamb).

That means I need a lot of tomatoes. Some years, when the garden is lean or the weather poor, I hit the farmer's markets near closing time; last year I got a twenty-five-pound box of "crooks" for  $10. These are the mishappen tomatoes from the bottom of the vine. My dad was a produce wholesaler who taught me to savor these oddballs from the tomato patch. Their flavor is exqusite.

This  year, we have no shortage of plants or produce, but I'm watchful after two "corn raids" by racoons and earlier incursions by groundhogs. If they finish with the corn, the tomatoes may be next. And that means all-out war.

Note for the non-snarky: that's a plastic Johnny Seven rifle that belonged to my old buddy, the late and legendary Gary Braswell. Before his executor sells his antique toys, I had to pose, just once, with the toy gun every little boy craved in the mid-60s.

Firearms aside, the groundhogs cannot penetrate our new fence, over or under, but raccoons have a little advantage: thumbs.  I've trapped and shot one already, since it's illegal to relocate animals in Virginia. As I write this, I've two traps outside ready for the bandit who gobbled down half our corn last night. I picked the rest, as I wait for the next rows to come in.

Tomorrow "Fort Tomato" will have a finished garden gate. Next year, it will have electric and some dogs to run around 3/4 of it, after I do an outer fence that includes our little apple orchard.

More money, but worth every penny to grow one's own food. Even if the critters get some of it!

Conversation with a Groundhog

Today a groundhog pulled up in a pint-sized BWM sedan. He wore a spiffy suit and carried a little briefcase. Soon I was looking at prison-time in a whistle-pig burrow.

Groundhog: Mishtur Essit? Is that you, sir?

Blogger: Among other things. What can I do for you?

Groundhog: Do? I hopes you don't DO to me what you done did to Lucius T. Groundhog, offspring of Phyllis T. Groundhog. Namely, shot and killed! Twice!

Blogger: You have evidence of this crime against your species? Blogger then mutters under his breath: second shot is always to be certain.

Groundhog, presenting papers: Evidence, you say! Oh Yesh I does! I is a attorney you knows! I gots testy-moany (Phyllis bein' both in a testy mood and moanin' about her dear dead boy) that you done trapped and killed little ol' Lucius, on account of him nosing around a garden you claims as your own!

Blogger: I admit to live-trapping, then shooting and killing a varmint, yes. He did not give a name when confronted.

Groundhog: He was just a pee-wee, and didn't know nuffin' about gardens, 'specially ones that ain't been fully fenced.

Blogger: That's his problem. Human law lets me remove pests, lethally.

Grounghog: That am SO cruel! An' we ain't humans! You could o' sent him to Miami Beach instead!

Blogger, looking for trap and rifle: I asked the kind-hearted administrative assistant at work if SHE wanted him, when she quailed over my planned use of lethal force. No dice.

Groundhog: You ever seen Caddyshack? We demands restitushun! Demands it!

Blogger: That was a gopher, and this ain't no golf course. See you in court, fuzzy-wuzz.

Read The Owner's Manual, Or Maybe Not?

 

Having convinced myself that I damaged the gear box on my rotary mower (machines commonly called by one brand's name, "Bush Hog") I opened the owner's manual.  Yes, I read them, partly to see the illustrations for what can go wrong on the farm.

I've a Frontier 2060 that cost us over $2000 new, and it's the sort of implement that one would expect to give many years of service. I've used these types of mowers for many years, without incident and without doing more than adding gear oil to the gear box or lubing a few grease fittings.

Little did I know, and little did the dealer tell me, that my new mower arrived with a slip clutch. It's a device that has gradually replaced an older technology, a protective bolt designed to shear when the mower hits a stump, big rock, or other obstacle. Lawn mowers have a tiny version of one, and even as a twelve-year-old clueless boy, I helped as a neighbor replace a little one-dollar pin that I broke on a sapling's stump. It's a simple procedure and a logical one. The operator using that sort of mower must sometimes hammer out the old bolt with a punch, but then the mower can be restarted and used.

Slip clutches, conversely, require maintaining, something not explained in my manual but only found online. The farmers at online forums seem to love the things, which can save a tractor or gear-box damage, if the clutch is adjusted and allowed to "slip" a few times a year. Otherwise, it seizes up.

Mine has, and I'm looking at a serious repair. But the antiques again beckon: I've an older rotary mower, with the bolt and not clutch in place. It is as safe to the operator as the new technology, so it will go back into service while the new-fangled one is in the shop.

The new one sure is pretty, but pretty is as pretty does. I may get so angry that I'll sell the new mower!  While old tractors can be dangerous, many old implements are not. Yet dealers do want to sell us new stuff, don't they?

I've got fields to mow, so our little family of groundhogs (Phil ended up being Phyllis, with three offspring) don't grow too brazen about coming near the new garden. Open ground being a farmer's first line of defense, there's cutting to be done.

Garden Journal: Late Planting

I used to keep a "Garden Book" of my observations on paper, and I still may record facts there, but a blog provides an excellent record-keeping device in the form of tagging and fodder in case this project morphs into a book. So here goes for what has been a brand-new garden.

We had to pony up for a cubic yard (about 1500 lbs) to good bedding soil from a local firm specializing in soil, mulch, and gravel. That began but did not end the Kitchen Garden just outside our back door. We fenced with short, green-enameled welded wire, fastened to 4' tall treated posts set in quick-setting cement. That took only a day and the seedlings are now in there.

Yesterday we also seeded the back half of the big garden, really a field, with yellow clover as a soil amendment and as forage for the honey bees. The big garden, 88' by 42', awaits fencing 10' tall and with subterranean barriers for Phil, our groundhog. I don't relish shooting Phil, but the second he gets into the garden, Phil will learn "Rule 303" as quickly as any character in the old film Breaker Morant.  Groundhogs can excavate 700 pounds of earth for a single burrow and dig down a foot, so the old chain-link sections, rolled and buried about the field's perimeter, should keep Phil at bay.

Given our recent move to this land, I did not get my basil and tomatoes germinated on our porch but instead purchased them from firms doing business at Maymont's annual Herbs Galore show. In particular, for my fellow Central Virginians, I recommend Amy's Garden for veggies and A Thyme to Plant for herbs of all sorts. I tend to raise from organic stock or seed, but in the case of tomatoes I went with old favorites among the hybrids suited for a clay soil. Heirlooms have brought tears to me and mortality to my plants, so I  chose Mortgage Lifter, Big Beef, and a Roma variety. In my experience, they have all shown good VFN resistance. The only amendment these plants will need is some calcium spray as they flower and begin to set fruit. This will prevent blossom-end rot.

Tricycle Gardens, a local urban-farming nonprofit that has revitalized empty lots all over the metro area of Richmond, sold me rhubarb.  I love the plant and recall it fondly from my grad-school years in Indiana. In a couple of years, our patch should produce enough for pies and rhubarb divisions for friends.

With a cool and generally wet Spring, I can get away with planting this late. Corn will be sprouted indoors and transplanted to deter crows from picking seeds, and cukes will grow up and over a trellis. Soon the hot weather will arrive. We are lucky for this rain and coolness, even if it delays our gardens.