Okay, we’ve been overrun by some really pesky critters here on our half acre homestead and me and Mother Nature are on the warpath! We have mice in the grow room. We have moles in the yard. And we have voles in the garden beds. Yee gads!
I have been doing research on all these nasty little vermin and am slowly but surely sending some of them to the great beyond. The mice in the grow room are being controlled (read being kept outside) using those plug in, ultrasonic devices. Except for the rare mouse that doesn’t seem affected by the high pitched (beyond human hearing) sound, putting three of them in a room that’s 10′ x 20′ has worked well. And for the odd mouse that thinks my sunflower seed is worth the mouse-ear-splitting-racket, we keep a mousetrap baited with some peanut butter and topped with sunflower seed. That usually works.
For the moles, I am leaving them alone. For now. Moles make little raised areas in your yard so if you’re seeing little mounds of dirt here and there you have moles. I leave them alone because 1; I am not overrun by them at this point and 2; they are carnivorous. While that means they will eat my much desired earthworms, it also means that they munch away on grubs. That’s good news because, until this past year, we were absolutely overrun with grubs in the ground. I rarely find them now.
And for those pesky little #%*!# voles, I am not so nice. I have gone mouse trap crazy because those little sons-of-guns are vegetarians. That means they just live to eat all the plants and seed they can find. MY plants and garden seed. Oh, it’s on voles, it’s on! No more nice guy. Or rather, girl.
Voles look kind of like mice to me. You’ll know you have voles if you see little raised “tunnels” in your yard or garden because they burrow along just under the soil and only pop up every foot or so. That leaves tell-tale air holes at ground level. I don’t like to use poison because 1; I think it must be a horrid way to die, even if you are a bothersome little vegetable-seed-eating critter and 2; I have cats that don’t need to be eating those poisoned voles. I have found an excellent brand of mouse traps that are efficient and IMMEDIATE. There’s nothing worse than having to pull a seriously injured mouse from a trap and then finishing it off yourself. One experience with that and you will look for more lethal traps. The ones that I like best are made by SF International Trading. They’re really strong and super easy to bait without risking your fingers. I bait them with peanut butter and sunflower seed and put them next to one of the vole’s air holes. To keep cats and other nocturnal critters away from the traps I turn a bucket upside down over the trap and put a heavy rock on top. I haven’t kept a real close count but I think I’ve sent somewhere around twenty voles to Vole Heaven this winter.
Here’s the interesting thing in all of this. We had no voles until we had an area with lots of seeds and bulbs. But after the arrival of the voles, we had a feral tomcat start hanging around and then I gave nature a boost with the traps. We had tons of grubs in the ground until the moles showed up. We had field mice that stayed outside IN THE FIELD until we provided an insulated, warm building for the field mice to move into.
I think what I am trying (very clumsily) to say is that for every action, nature reacts with her own solutions. If we have enough time to just keep out of the way of nature she pretty well takes care of things herself. Here’s one other quick example. My asparagus has been ravaged every year by asparagus beetles once I let the smaller spears grow into ferns. Until this past year. Now all the handy dandy praying mantises that moved in over the past year and a half take care of that little problem for me because I didn’t spray or interfere with the natural design of things. We don’t eat a ton of asparagus and I don’t grow enough to sell at market so I wasn’t in a hurry for a fix on the issue.
And lastly, that brings me to a fabulous book that covers all of this. I love reading Gaia’s Garden over and over. It’s my “bible” for growing things on our homestead. When I can, I just wait and let Mother Nature come to the rescue and when I can’t because I need to earn income from all my organic veggies, fruits and herbs, then I jump in and solve the problem myself and hope I haven’t upset the balance too much. So, asparagus beetles, you can relax. But you voles? Look out cuz I’m coming for you!
