|
|
Post by prairiegardens on Nov 17, 2017 19:50:19 GMT -5
Speaking of urban deer, parked on a main street of a suburb of Victoria (already more than a city in its own right) and could easily have bonked a 5 point buck from the car as it ambled down the road, certainly could have touched it if the window had been down when it came by. Signs even in Victoria to watch out for the deer as you are likely to see them, and so I did, happily eating away on peoples lawns. No signs about watching out for raccoons though, guess they're fair game.
|
|
|
|
Post by walt on Nov 18, 2017 14:03:47 GMT -5
Off topic but not worth its own thread. Olney, Illinois has signs saying to watch out for squirrels. Most of the squirrels in that town are white, and there is a $500 fine for hitting one. They are dark-eyed, not albino. A common morph of the eastern gray squirrel.
|
|
|
|
Post by oldmobie on Nov 18, 2017 20:11:56 GMT -5
Off topic but not worth its own thread. Olney, Illinois has signs saying to watch out for squirrels. Most of the squirrels in that town are white... I know what you mean. I used to live in Marionville, MO. That place wouldn't even be on the map without the pigment defecient tree rats. Pity they understand they're protected. They aren't scared of cars; sometimes they're hard to miss. Heavy fines there, too. |
|
|
|
Post by steev on Nov 19, 2017 21:29:43 GMT -5
The farm's weather has become primo; cool enough to work without breaking a sweat; nights cold enough to sleep like hibernation.
Got enough rain to make the soil tillable, so I roused Sukie; she was a tad rank, but once in the traces, she remembered her purpose in life and we tilled a nice patch, in part of which I planted spuds (I don't really expect much, if anything, from planting them now, but they're mark-downs of several varieties from my produce market, so if they survive and produce seed-spuds, I'm off and running) and peas (Amplissima Victoria Ukraineskaya; I love that name! My mother's forebears spent about a century in southern Ukraine before coming to the USA); I put the peas under plastic water-bottle cloches to fend off the birds and rodents; I cut the least off the bottoms so I can remove the cloches from some when they're well-grown, but not yet out the necks, to see if that's adequately past predation, thereby freeing the cloches for more planting; this is a consideration, since I have limited sources of such bottles and the farm UV is hell on plastic (air's too clean to moderate the UV).
Harvested sparse quince, only two rootstocks produced fruit; my three named shrubs produced zip.
No snow visible on the Coast Range, but plenty on Mount Shasta in the Sierras.
Scored another bag of seed-spuds today; maybe Yukon Gold, whatever.
I expect the coming week-end I'll find the first planting of peas sprouting (Austrian field peas, un-cloched, mostly of interest for salad); I think I've enough cloches for another planting of some more interesting variety, although I'll have to check the seed boxes to know what that will be. I'm enthused to see how this cloching experiment works out; sure hope I'm not gonna have my hopes dashed, not that I would admit to defeat, if they were, nor more than chagrin; no way in hell that I'll accept defeat by ground-squirrels, dirty verminous bastards whose fleas harbor Bubonic plague, endemic in Cali. Seriously, that's true; Cali maintains stocks of vaccine against it; when I worked at Cutter Labs, we ran tests to check the stability of our stocks, to ensure their continued potency (cost a lot of guinea pigs, poor buggers; they died to ensure that we might not).
|
|
|
|
Post by steev on Nov 23, 2017 12:25:38 GMT -5
Opened the third f2 Dry Wit melon: fragrant; yellowing; longish; somewhat cucumber-ish inside; neither awful nor worth eating; trying to avoid ground-squirrels, I may have picked it too early, as the stem-stub slipped off (two weeks off the vine); that might explain the lack of sugar. Still, I'll include some of this seed in the next grow-out.
|
|
|
|
Post by steev on Nov 25, 2017 0:58:54 GMT -5
Tomorrow I'll go to the farm, carrying more bunny-mulch (the farm is so damned mineralized); spark Sukie up to work another patch; maybe plant some peas and spuds; might start pruning fruit trees. S'posed to rain Sunday, so this may be cut short, not that I'm complaining about rain. Within reason, there can't be too much for me.
Someone I met at Phil's barbershop, where I go weekly (it's a social venue; I've not cut my hair since 1975; hey, it's getting shorter; that damned gray hair is brittle), also from Stockton, is an avid hunter; he gifted me a couple pheasants and some antelope; Holly got some of that; it's looking like this may be the year I can repay his generosity, finally, after the drought; that was some damned fine meat; I don't hunt, but I totally get it, being a zoologist. I just grow plants, but no way I'm a vegetarian; humans didn't evolve as vegetarians. While I understand the social impulse for vegetarianism, I think it fails to grasp the ecological impact. I think agricultural/animal usage needs to be totally re-considered, not just from the question of what are we trying to do, but what do we want to do?
Are we to continue to produce the greatest (salable) quantity of product, or do we care about the ecosystem, which our heirs will inhabit? CAFOs, really? Waste-pond spills, really? Am I wrong that there is a point at which one must say "I am sick of this shit", which, hopefully, is not literally true. It wouldn't be true if you were of the 1% and had picked the right family in which to be born; so it's your own damned fault, where you are, dumbass!
Say, anybody paid any attention to India's caste system since Gandhi?
I'm sorry, if I seem harsh, but I really have little patience for humanity; so much promise; so little result; let's get it over with and let the bats and cockroaches have a shot!
|
|
|
|
Post by richardw on Nov 25, 2017 13:18:25 GMT -5
If we all turned to vegetarianism here in New Zealand that would be ecologically disastrous, with introduced deer, pigs, possums, stoats, goats, tahar, wallabies, horses etc etc etc having no predators other than humans, they need to be hunted and eaten. Makes you think what would happen if humans were to suddenly jump ship? you would hope that the gates to the zoo's were left open for the tigers and lions, 'help ya self lads'. Accordingly to our media though trout and salmon were not introduced but immigrated here, packed there wee bags and decided on a better life down under. Cant use that word 'introduced' for trout, even though they pray heavily on our native fish species, they have NO protection and yet you could be sent to jail if rules around the taking of trout are not followed, hows that for fucked up?
|
|
|
|
Post by steev on Nov 26, 2017 22:42:59 GMT -5
Being a zoologist, I sometimes get my knickers in a twist about the effect of introduced species in a previously stable ecosystem; Cali, having been a relatively closed-off environment for countless millennia, not so unlike an island, has had its share of such introductions by human agents; while I'm pleased with honeybees, ladybugs, crawdads (love those tasty mud-bugs; if I get a pond, I'll get crawdads, fer shure), and possums (I just find them so haplessly amusing), I'm not that happy about starlings, star-thistle, or humans.
Yesterday I planted spuds, peas (cloched, Admiral), Tibetan purple barley, and Narcissus; cleared the weeds from a bed for tilling and put a new tarp (rain-protection) on some of my stuff, which is on pallets in my open field, pending storage structures in which to sort and store it. Have I mentioned that I'm a scrounge and pack-rat? Say what you will, but when my neighbor and I were using his survey-kit to run property-lines and he couldn't see clearly far enough, I had the yellow plastic shopping-bags to stuff with weeds for visible targets; when we were mixing cement for a pump-house slab and one of our wheelbarrows had a flat tire, I had half a can of fix-a-flat. I rest my case for pack-rattery. The nearest hardware store to the farm is a forty-five minute drive, each way; that's a steep price for not having what can get you fixed for the moment, leaving you free to provision when convenient.
|
|
|
|
Post by templeton on Nov 29, 2017 2:13:23 GMT -5
If we all turned to vegetarianism here in New Zealand that would be ecologically disastrous, with introduced deer, pigs, possums, stoats, goats, tahar, wallabies, horses etc etc etc having no predators other than humans, they need to be hunted and eaten. Makes you think what would happen if humans were to suddenly jump ship? you would hope that the gates to the zoo's were left open for the tigers and lions, 'help ya self lads'. Accordingly to our media though trout and salmon were not introduced but immigrated here, packed there wee bags and decided on a better life down under. Cant use that word 'introduced' for trout, even though they pray heavily on our native fish species, they have NO protection and yet you could be sent to jail if rules around the taking of trout are not followed, hows that for fucked up? Deer are protected under the Wildlife Act here, along with the endangered little marsupials. you need a permit to shoot the bastards, a hangover from the british class system. bunnies and foxes are fair game tho. We have similar rules re trout here too richard. T |
|
|
|
Post by steev on Nov 29, 2017 6:58:22 GMT -5
"a hangover from the British class system"? You mean when it was fine to shoot the lower classes, instead of transporting them?
Seriously, I sort of regret the re-appearance of deer on the farm, since the mountain lions have been "managed off"; I never felt threatened by the pumas, even when I fell asleep outside sky-watching.
|
|
|
|
Post by richardw on Nov 29, 2017 12:58:33 GMT -5
Deer are protected under the Wildlife Act here, along with the endangered little marsupials. you need a permit to shoot the bastards, a hangover from the british class system. bunnies and foxes are fair game tho. We have similar rules re trout here too richard. T You can hunt all the deer you want here, we have a number of Americans come over here to shot em, problems is quite a few dont 'go bush' and use any hunting skills, they instead pay big bucks to walk out into a paddock of a 'managed' herd, pick one out that has the best antlers and BANG between the eyes while its eating hay, get a 'look at me, i'm a big man' photo and fly home again. |
|
|
|
Post by templeton on Nov 30, 2017 4:11:25 GMT -5
"a hangover from the British class system"? You mean when it was fine to shoot the lower classes, instead of transporting them? Seriously, I sort of regret the re-appearance of deer on the farm, since the mountain lions have been "managed off"; I never felt threatened by the pumas, even when I fell asleep outside sky-watching. Nah, we post-date the shoot 'em period, we were all transported. Unless you are indigenous, but that is way too serious an issue for a Steev thread  Deer are upper class sport, so got protected - rabbits and hares are lower class game, so no regulation - ditto trout - regulated, bag limits fly only water, closed seasons etc, but redfin (perch), carp, and the other introduced eating fish - the so called coarse fish, are open season year round. |
|
|
|
Post by steev on Nov 30, 2017 12:11:10 GMT -5
You also post-date the period when the American colonies were the destination for transport; we were much more convenient, pre-Revolution.
|
|
|
|
Post by steev on Dec 2, 2017 0:28:53 GMT -5
It's so Fall; I've half a truck-load of oak leaves to haul to the farm, with whatever bags of bunny-bedding come to hand; oak leaves, pine, and redwood are all I can use to mulch my out-lying trees, since the horses will eat anything else, even macerated bunny-paper-bedding.
The marked-down Italian stone pines have arrived, so I'll invest a couple hundred bucks in those; I'm a tad wary since they seem to be predicting a very dry December, which would greatly impact the first hump of our "camel" rainy season. We "usually" get our heaviest storms in December.
|
|
|
|
Post by steev on Dec 3, 2017 23:01:54 GMT -5
I saw a little snow on three of the highest coast peaks; really a puny show for this date; am I starting to worry about drought? Oh, hell, yes! Driving home the back way, the unpaved road was bone-dry, when it should be mud-o-rama. I tilled a bit; the soil was nearly dry. This does not bode well. I may need to re-think the stone pines; I can up-pot them in hope of better conditions next year, but that's a PITA. Things will be different when I'm in charge.
Planted a patch of garlic and several dozen scallions (they'll multiply for next year), mulched Narcissus, and serviced the compooster (I'm really liking the hardwood sawdust); took quince to a neighbor yesterday, who came by today for pruning advice, so we went for show-and-tell about her fruit trees and roses; she's a rancher; I'm a gardener/farmer; I think we complement each other well; when you get down to the nitty, rural life is all about community; she's been there her whole life and is totally knowledgeable of and integrated into the community; I lucked out, getting her for a neighbor, being an auslander city boy. Even a blind pig sometimes finds an acorn; actually, all pigs hunt by scent, but you get the metaphor.
Driving in, there was a flock of ~60 wild turkeys, three times what I've ever seen before, and me with no shotgun; I think lots of critters profited from the past year's record-rain-fueled growth. If this does become a drought year, those abundant critters will become problematic; I've never been a hunter, but I may be forced to help thin the ranks of turkeys and pigs; what can I say but "yum"!
Driving home, I stopped for a "rest" break (being an old guy, "rest" breaks have become more urgent); up the off-ramp, I saw a roadkill cat, which saddened me; driving past, I saw it wasn't a cat, but a Barn owl, which was even more sad to me; Barn owls are largely adapted to life close to humans, unlike other owls; they are nearly obligate rodentivores; (unlike cats, which will take anything small enough; don't get me wrong; I love cats, but I know them for what they are) being no fan of rodents, while recognizing their important place in the Web of Life, anything that eats rodents is an ally of mine (may all rodents be upgraded to owl-hood). I just found the sight of that beautiful, beneficial bird, killed to no purpose, depressing.
|
|
