Figuring out first-hand food
I come from a long line of furriers. Okay, that’s not strictly true. I come from a long line of Austro-Hungarian cattle rustlers and one furrier, my grandfather, who apparently became a furrier only because Minneapolis got too hot to hold him, apparently because the mob was pissed at him, apparently because he was an [...]
It was back in December that we were trying to trap the raccoons that were gnawing at the boards of our chicken coop. After much discussion about the best method to kill a raccoon, we decided on a high-powered air rifle, so we bought one. It’s a Benjamin 22-caliber break-barrel version, and it’s said to [...]
The first snowfall always shatters my illusion of privacy. I go out, the morning after, to discover that it’s Grand Varmint Central out there. There are rabbits criss-crossing the driveway. There are raccoons (still!) trying to get in the chicken coop. There is the occasional wild turkey. There is a coyote, or maybe the neighbor’s [...]
There’s something I don’t understand. Okay, there are a lot of things I don’t understand, but I’m going to limit this discussion to one thing in particular, and it isn’t quantum mechanics. It’s why people seem to want to believe that some traits are hard-coded in our genes, while others aren’t. Usually, it’s the crappy [...]
The raccoons continue their attempt to gnaw their way into the chicken coop, and I’ve had about enough of it. The idea that a passel of varmints, fattened up on turkey feed, could one night breach our defenses and snack on our flock just as they’ve started laying is too much for me. So I have [...]
It was several weeks back that Kevin and I noticed that one of the battens on the outside of the chicken coop had gotten a pretty thorough gnawing. A good swath of wood was missing, up to almost three feet off the ground, and there were unmistakable teeth marks. Until now, we’ve had a pretty [...]
It’s a banner year for chipmunks. And no wonder. The boneheads who own the property they live on seem finally to have figured out how to create a chipmunk-friendly environment. They scatter cracked corn on the ground for their chickens. They’ve actually managed to grow a few nice tomatoes, just at ground level. And they [...]
This year, in planning our garden, we made a mistake. Surprising, eh? We planted a lot of winter squash. We picked two varieties: Delicata, and a giant kind I don’t know the name of but what we call Sasquash. We chose Delicata because it is supposed to taste very good. We chose Sasquash because it [...]
It’s very disconcerting to get up to pee in the middle of the night and find a wild animal in your house. It’s not like it was a tiger or anything – it was just a raccoon – but still. As I stumbled out of the bathroom, half asleep, I saw a small furry thing [...]
I know what you were thinking. You were thinking, “Gosh, I’ll go over to Starving off the Land and see if Tamar’s posted yet more pictures of varmints!” Well, it’s your lucky day.
Tamar Haspel has been writing about food and health for over a decade. She recently moved from Manhattan to Cape Cod. She’s adjusting well. [Read More …]
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