Steev's stuff

[steev]

I've seen fires within two miles twice; all sides are grazed off except the south, so it's pretty secure.

Harvested a bucket of the feral rye; thinking of planting a patch for harvesting with the scythe; have to adapt it to a cradle. I enjoy scything; must be my Ukrainian-German wheat-farming genes expressing.

[prairiegardens]

To revert to a former comment re ground squirrel....I found a replica pioneer cookbook the other day in a thrift store and was bemused to learn that ground squirrels are apparently - when well fed- quite delicious and were eaten regularly, the meat reported to be sweet and tender (but not much of it per animal, like squirrels, which were also eaten but tend to be tough as an old boot.) Revenge? Or to be considered a " crop"? Problem would still be getting enough of them without losing your whole garden! The quote in the book had to do with it not really being necessary to develop regulations about how many could be harvested for food.
Sounds a bit like the Canada Geese...protected because someone thought too many being shot....and now they are a bloody nuisance in parks, airfields, golf courses etc.

[steev]

Right; damned Canada geese no longer migrate from the Bay Area, so you don't want your kids playing on any grassy area.

Re ground squirrels: I have no animus against the species, but I plant veggies for my use, not theirs, so I will take them out when they get into my veggies; never occurred to me to eat them; makes sense. On down the road, I'll have a wood-stove heating the house, so putting a squirrel into the pot works; of course, they're active when the stove isn't, but that's what a freezer is for. Yum, tasty rodents!

[reed]

Here you can easily attract them in winter with sunflower seeds or pecans. Wouldn't be too hard to raise them up. But I think I'd rather eat the pecans myself.

[flowerbug]

one year i trapped over 50 of them using the water bucket and sunflower method. we were being over run. this year i've hunted some of them but i don't eat them directly. i use them as fertilizer in the gardens though. waste not. i feel bad killing any creature and would love to have a fence that would keep them out, but they are crafty little rodents.

[prairiegardens]

Um. I can't imagine feeding pecans to ground squirrels, even just as bait, although I suppose it would flavour them, like apples fed to pigs or herbs planted in pastures for beef cattle...apparently a custom in Britain for many years by some farmers. Never heard of anyone here planting thyme and such in their pastures.

[steev]

I've got room enough to plant out herbs that do fine without irrigation; I'll get on that when rain comes, late October; herb-fed pork, lamb, or beef could only be good; something to do, fer sher.

[flowerbug]

all i know as of yet is that chipmunks have no problem breeding. with all the rock piles here they are always around.

[reed]

We are very lucky here to have a lot of pecans, every year I go gather at least a couple 5 gallon buckets full. I don't generally feed them to the chipmunks except as bait in the traps. Fun fact though. How many medium sized pecans can a chipmunks cram in its face? Seven, I watched on do it and it was hilarious. I have love hate relationship with them as they are so completely cute and destructive at the same time. When I was college we had a family of pet ones. They lived in the ivy by my dorm. Indiana University has a lot of cool old trees, everybody would gather acorns and beechnuts on the way back from class so our chipmunks were well fed and very tame.

[prairiegardens]

The ground squirrels are exactly like that, one was running around and had no second thoughts about coming within a few inches of my feet during his explorations. They are indeed cute but damn they cause a lot of damage. I know a guy who would have tried to stomp it, but I couldn't contemplate doing that at all. Getting the traps out againthough...thisone was the first I've seen in a month or so.

[steev]

~4:10 yesterday a black plume of smoke came up close east of Lodoga, so ~2 miles east of the farm; easterly breeze was driving it west; occasional flames topped the hills, then started down the near side. It was arrested ~7:00. This morning, it re-kindled ~11, when a breeze arose; as I was driving out at 2:30, the road was closed at Lodoga. I saw that the fire had come a pasture away from town.

Ironically, my across-road neighbor had come Sunday morning to ask If I'd want my roadside mowed before they took the mower off their tractor.

The Japanese Maple that was moved to the farm seems to be surviving; I'd mulched it thickly, and water it every week; it's putting out new leaves.

[flowerbug]

nice that they were thinking of you. too bad we can't send some of this rain out there to quench the fires, but then it just would grow yet more fuel...

[steev]

Going to and coming from the farm, I was able to see that it was more extensive than I'd thought, but I think no structures were damaged.

[reed]

Well that's good. Not that I like hearing that people lose their homes but in general measuring such things by how many structures are burned gets on my nerves a little. Few years back when the Smoky Mountains National Park burned for weeks it barely made the news. When the 90 mile an hour fire storm incinerated the trinket shops and tourist shacks in Gatlinburg all of a sudden it was important.

The tourist shacks and trinket shops grew back right away, the trees on the steep mountain slopes, not so much.

[steev]

We do think ourselves and our doings quite separate from everything else. Makes sense; we didn't evolve along with the rest of the world; we were made from whole cloth by the beardy guy in the sky.

Just got invited to take part in a covid-19 study by Cal; sure, always a lab rat; which way to the maze?