Sometimes the problems in farming have nothing to do with farming but with living in the country. I suppose the same problems exist in the city but the solution may be different living here in the country. A good example is one problem we solved this week. It has been an ongoing problem with several causes. But first a few announcements.
We are still selling shares for this summer. Please continue to spread the word!
Final payment for shares is due this month unless you have a payment plan. If you don’t know what you owe contact me.
We are taking orders for other items like fruit, coffee, flowers, winter storage share and cheese. These are great additions to your vegetables!
Now back to our story! We have a couple of cats who live here whose purpose is to rid the farm of small rodents. I can honestly say that their presence has had mixed success in ridding us of rodents. I think there are just too many rodents and too old cats.
Anyway, to keep the cats hanging around we put out cat food for them to eat (maybe this is why they aren’t catching mice). It keeps them around so that’s good. But it also brings around less desirable critters. We’ve caught more than our share of possums. I won’t mention how we dispatch of them but suffice it to say that some of the nocturnal scavengers around here have had their fill of possum this winter.
Today I discovered a new cause of our rapidly depleting cat food – skunk. I didn’t think far enough ahead when I set up the trap. How do you move a cage full of skunk? Skunks don’t enjoy being carried around in a mesh metal cage. And a mesh metal cage doesn’t contain the spray skunks are known for. So I had to neutralize the skunk’s ability to spray before I moved the cage. Unfortunately the neutralization process caused the skunk to release its spray. Thankfully I didn’t take a direct hit but the smell seems to travel; it seemed to linger. In fact it seemed to linger, and linger and linger even after I drove up the drive to the house where we live.
It lingered when I came inside. It lingered after I took off my coat and my shoes. It lingered and lingered. I went back out to the car in the garage and it continued to linger in the car. The bottom of my shoes smelled like skunk. Everywhere I went I smelled skunk. I started to think the smell was just stuck in my brain like a bad song. They say if you want to rid yourself of a song stuck in your head you should sing it like Bob Dylan. I find it is quite effective but how do you get out a smell stuck in your brain? Smell it like Bob Dylan? How does Bob Dylan smell? The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind.
Anyway, I had to do something. So I washed all my clothes and took a shower. I sprayed the inside of the car with Lysol. The shower washed the smell out of my brain. The washing machine seemed to remove the smell from my clothes. However the Subaru now smells like a Lysol’ed skunk. Ugh. I suspect as I was “removing the problem” I stepped into the wayward skunk spray and carried it around on the bottom of my shoes. Luckily I didn’t walk around the house with my shoes on so the smell has well contained – my shoes and my car, oh and everything around the pick-up tent. Hopefully the smell doesn’t linger there once the season starts. Unfortunately before then I still need to walk around that area to get supplies from the storage area. I think I will put on my barn boots. Nothing gets rid of the skunk smell like fresh horse manure.
As always, do not hesitate to contact me with questions, answers, jokes, puzzlers and recipes for skunk or possum. And for all of you with the Lynyrd Skynyrd song “That Smell” stuck in your head you should try singing it like Bob Dylan. Works every time.