GUINEA SCORE.
The goal was to buy more guineas. We like what they do to the tick population around the house and, admittedly, we like their meat. The noise we could do without, but as we've said several times before, there are no perfect creatures, only perfect systems. And our system needs more guineas, loud or not, to be perfect.So we decided to go to the Amish auction in Scottsville, Ky. This is a wildly popular event. People come from all around the country. But auctions are also intense places. It's hard not to buy all the random rabbits, fowl and miniature livestock available. On several occasions we found ourselves itching to bid on rabbits. But we've made a deal with ourselves this year: any animals we decide to get, we have to be ready for first. So we waited impatiently for some guineas to come up.And finally, after twenty or so lots, they did. We didn't want to spend more than $25 on a bird, and when the auctioneer began at $15, several people jumped in, as did we. It was three one year old guineas—two hens and one cock. Exactly what we wanted. But when the bidding ended at $22.55, I was a little surprised to see everyone else back off. We had won. We had won three guineas for less than what I had expected to pay per grown bird!But if you've been to an auction like this before, you know what a newbie assumption we'd made. Because the biding is per item, I learned in the check out line, not per lot. Oh well, we'd still paid less than we'd wanted to per bird. I can't say I wasn't a little disappointed, but not nearly as much as the guy in front of me who thought he had just scored twelve Tennessee Quail for $10. That's a lesson you don't learn twice.Of course, when we got home we kept them penned for a couple days before letting them out with our other guinea who seemed uncharacteristically excited. We were, however, a little dismayed when they promptly flew off into the woods.They are still (as of now) hanging around the property, living in an old barn. But so long as they eat ticks around our woods, they can live wherever they want. Rough Draft Farmstead, indeed.- Jesse.
BONEHEADS.
Nearly every morning for the last week when we would go to check the garden, we'd discover a plant has been brutally ravaged. Decimated even. At first it was a single tomato plant, then fell another. A squash was next. Then lastly, the fourth in four nights, a cucumber plant toppled. That was enough for us. A plant per night is devastating to our small operation. If 30 nights equalled thirty tomato plants, we'd be pretty bummed little gardeners. The plants look like someone was coming into the garden, arbitrarily selecting a transplant to torture, and snipping the leaves off hatefully before leaving them there as some sort of weird pestilent calling card. Our first thought was an over-zealous bird, pecking away at leaves chasing down insects. And that might make sense for one plant, or even two, but not four. Our papa farmer, Eric, said it might be a "damn squirrel," and suggested I should bury myself in the dirt and wait for it. We went through the list of pests it could be and felt completely stumped, until my savvy and beautiful wife found somewhere on the internet that mice fancy this type of M.O..Having mice in your house is one thing, you can tighten up your cleaning efforts, set traps, buy a cat if you'd like––there are things you can do to keep them out of your house. But a field is a much bigger space and we wanted to do things--whats the word?--humanely, so we looked for natural ways to ward them off the plants. One article suggested hot sauce or a garlic/salt/water mixture sprayed upon the plants to deter the mice, or other small menaces, from destroying our precious plants.That seemed like a pretty straight forward and natural approach. As luck would have it, we have some wonderful hot sauce! I made it myself, in fact. Great! We loaded the juice into a spray bottle, diluted it with some water and applied it to every squash, cucumber and tomato plant we had in the garden without a second thought.Now, if you want an alternative to round-up, you can use vinegar...and although our concoction wasn't entirely vinegar, it was pretty darn close. One by one, the plants began to wilt and terror overcame us. We had just, actively and aggressively, applied natural herbicide to our plants. Stupid. We rushed to clean them with water and luckily, in the end, only one plant died because of us. But sadly, the nightly devastation continues, and we've resorted to mouse traps. Which brings us to this...anyone else have good ideas to keep these little buggers out of our plants? Good stories of being a dummy farmer in your early years? D'oh.
- Jesse.