We’re having a bumper crop of rodents this spring. The darn cats just aren’t keeping up their end of the bargain.
But first a few announcements:
Payment for shares is still due if you haven’t made other arrangements. If you don’t know how much you owe please contact me and I can fill you in!
We still have VeggieShares available. I sent out an email with a discount coupon you can share with your friends, neighbors, etc. I appreciate everyone’s help selling the remaining shares!
Much like I did last newsletter with the FruitShare and SefoodShare I thought I would give a shout out to a couple of our other add-on shares: MeatShare and CheeseShare.
MeatShare is a great add-on for those members who eat meat. It is a monthly assortment of beef, pork and chicken. It includes simple cuts like roasts and chicken breasts but also processed items like bratwurst, deli meat and bacon. All processed meats are free of MSG, nitrates, nitrites, and high-fructose corn syrup. The animals are raised on pasture without growth hormones or antibiotics. We’ve enjoyed MeatShare over the last 10 years or so. I highly recommend it.
CheeseShare is similar to MeatShare in that the animals are raised on pasture. But instead of meat they give us cheese! CheeseShare is an every two weeks program (for a total of nine weeks) of approximately 1.5 lbs of cheese. Varieties include cheddar, blue, flavored cheddar and cheese curds. There is a standard offering that we provide however if you’d like to switch up your selections you just need to let us know ahead of time. If you like cheese this is a great way to enjoy raw milk cheese from a local source!
Now back to the Farm News
The first rodent incident was in the greenhouse. In the past we had problems with mice eating our freshly planted watermelon seeds. I can understand the appeal. Watermelon seeds are fairly large and I suppose they taste a bit like watermelon. When we had this problem many years ago I built a rather large cage out of 2×6 lumber and wire mesh. It was large enough to hold 24 flats of plants. I used it for a few years until we got cats. Leaving the cats in the greenhouse occasionally (sometimes even on purpose) resulted in no more mice problems.
So for the last few years the large cage has been propped up in the greenhouse waiting for a future use. It has basically been in the way. I would have removed it from the greenhouse years ago except in my engineering of the cage I didn’t take into account the height and width of the greenhouse door! So I had no way of removing it without disassembling it, which wasn’t in the design spec either. So it languished in the greenhouse tempting people to lean against it with the result of it toppling over and hurting someone. Someday I would get around to removing it.
But my procrastination has paid off yet again! This time the mice dug up our freshly planted pepper and eggplant seeds! Why pepper and eggplants? They are fairly small seeds. I can’t imagine there is much energy or flavor in these seeds. But those rascals ate about 80 eggplant seeds and 100 pepper seeds. I know for a fact that the cats have been accidently left overnight in the greenhouse this spring. They must not have been as hungry as the mice!
So I replanted all the disturbed cells and put all the eggplant and pepper flats under the mouse cage. It seems to be working. We have quite a few of the seeds sprouted. Once they are all up I will remove them from the cage just in time for the watermelon and squash.
That wasn’t the only rodent issue this spring. Last week we planted the onions. As we all know this winter and spring have been very dry. So dry that we felt we needed to water the onions after we transplanted them. We setup the sprinklers, hooked up the water and opened the valve. It takes a few minutes to fill the underground pipes before there is enough water to make the sprinklers work, so we waited. In the mean time we walked around the farm to see if any other valves were accidentally left open.
After about 10 minutes the sprinklers were still not running very well. Odd. So we walked about again and couldn’t find any issues. Then as I was heading back toward the main valve I spotted a pile of dirt just about where the pipe would run underneath the ground. I put my ear to the ground and heard the distinct sound of rushing water. Yikes! Grabbing the shovel I dug down to find what used to be a plastic pipe and now was an empty space between two ends of a plastic pipe. The ends were well chewed. Why would the gopher eat through the pipe instead of going below it just an extra inch? The mysteries of rodents.
Anyway, I fixed the pipe, and everything is working. With the recent rains there will be plenty of time for the gophers to eat through more of the pipe.
Other than battling rodents we have planted a few things. With the forecast of cold temps this week we decided to withhold transplanting any more plants but have direct seeded a few. So far we have last fall’s garlic, the recently transplanted onions, snap peas, snow peas and two rounds of carrots planted. This week we hope to get the hoop house ready for sweet potatoes and lettuce plus plant the potatoes if the soil dries sufficiently. We’re hoping the last week of April matches this past week!
As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, jokes, brain teasers, etc.