[TheForge] OT: My floor is poured: the saga OT:

Sat Oct 25 15:54:46 EDT 2014

We're fortunate in that our rats are wood rats, a kind of packrat, and not nasty, primarily veggie eaters. But hell on the garden and saplings...The bane of local pot farmers. So we have a lot of " barn" cats. A bobcat decimated them  3 yrs ago and we were down to 3 disgruntled tomcats until we got 3 unfixed ( hard to find locally) Craigslist cats. They all turned out to be female, contrary to the former owner....And now we have 3 litters...Mail order kittens anyone? Mostly blacks for the season.
Metal content. I have a bunch of boxes of small decorative metal stamping samples, mostly brass, from a defunct costume jewelry factory design room. Most of the stampings are from the 50s and 60s, a few are copper or sterling, and all were in little paper envelopes.
The wood rats got into the building where they were stored, and being packrats, hauled lots of them off to the nests they built in the  wide, stacked racks in my junkyard, along with masses of sticks and leaves, etc.. So i used the warferin, blue grain wax bait blocks,finally to get rid of them. Then spent a couple of  long,  pissed off days in really awkward positions, cleaning out and picking through rat nests to recover as many of the stampings as i could.
That was years ago and i still have them..We've used some of them, but not of late and many remain.
I envy your topsoil Andy.

On Oct 25, 2014, at 6:02 AM, Andrew Vida wrote:

I don't like it either, but we had literally hundreds of rats in the barn.  We were over run and they were BIG.  I'm talking 16-18" from nose to end of tail.  I don't even care except they destroy pretty well everything, so they just had to go.  Bit fat Miss Kitty wasn't keeping up and Mittens almost never goes out.  Besides, half of the rate were as big as she.

The worst of it is they would kill and eat the baby geese and that is what tore it for me.  Took two in one night thsi summer past and that's when I nuked them for the first time.  But yes, you have to have places where nobody else will get to the bait.  I just slipped it into the bus (still have that thing) and under the 8' thick hay in the other side of the barn.  Speaking of which... I almost dread doing the hay next year.  I cut with a Gravely, tetter and rake and bale by hand and am getting a bit long in the tooth for it.  My left shoulder is pretty well nerve-wrecked and am not sure what to do. Next year if lucky I will be able to get a disk mower for the tractor (small 24hp Kubota w/low cg for work on the steep-ish pasture).  Cutting 4 acres of hay by hand is not for us old farts, but the goats need to eat and we need the goat poo for the garden. We get about 25#/day in the barn, which we compost.  I've build several thousand square feet of the most beautiful, 12" tick topsoil you could shake your stick at and want to continue.  The garden produced very well this year.  We should have potatoes into April. But I digress.

One more thing: this year we grew a bean they call "same" in Guyana.  It is a purple-green pod.  They are not good raw, which is a shame because I love raw beans, but cooked they are very good.  If you steam them lightly, they freeze very well.  We planted 5 or 6 and the vines that erupted from those were monstrous and are still going strong.  They produce fruit by the barrow load... most fecund bean we have raised thus far - we must have 30 pounds of it in the freezer and have eaten a load already.  Next year I intend on saving a whole lot more of the seed - have only a small vial at this time... less than 100 seeds.  If in a year the world has not gone to dust and anyone is interested in trying to grow this bean, let me know at that time and I will send some your way.  To my palate, the steamed bean's taste is reminiscent of artichoke.  I like them. Thinking to run them along the fence on the west end of the orchard.  That would give them plenty of room and the neighbors can pick some, too.

-Andy
On 10/24/14, 2:46 PM, jerry Frost wrote:
> The thing I don't like about poison bait vermin control is poisoning your
> pets if they eat the carcasses. Still, they have to go so you do what you
> must. The gage kernals is how I do it too though not with corn. The mice
> around here LOVE cat food and the barn cats won't eat it if it isn't in the
> correct bowl. You gotta love good barn cats, ours have food and regular
> medical care.
> 
> Jer

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