Let us acknowledge at the outset our gratitude for the progress we’ve made in learning to live with pests that might otherwise make growing our own food difficult. We worry less than most about deer, for example, because we work behind (so far, effective) deer fences. We worry less than most about insects because we carefully maintain a healthy balance of native insects that help keep the bad guys in check.
We still worry a lot about voles, the tiny, cute rodents that burrow under the F’armer-in-Chief’s root vegetables and literally eat them out from under us. Today’s program describes the symbiotic relationship between moles and voles and how it threatened Amanda’s Lenten discipline. We catalog the ways we’ve tried and failed to control them, and we finish with the latest ploy in our continuing campaign to save a few root vegetables for ourselves.
Listen – 19:10
Here’s the wikipedia article on voles
This is Bed #1. Ironically, we built our beds in reverse chronological order, so this is one of the last. You can see Amanda putting the finishing touches on the layer of hardware cloth at its base that we hope will frustrate the little buggers.