I’m a pumpkin farmer and as harvest time approaches I look back and realize there’s a battle going on in our profession. It’s not with the neighbors or the UPS man who occasionally visits. The spray planes that frequently buzz our house are even tolerated. The real battle is with all the little critters that are living among us and who assume we are renting space from them!
The first critter to make life miserable for a pumpkin farmer are those pesky little cucumber beetles. Once the seed leaves(cotyledons for you biologists!) poke through the soil a pumpkin farmer must patrol his infant plants daily looking for the beetle’s activity. And what is that activity you ask? The beetles have sharp, piercing mouth parts that they use to suck fluids from the pumpkin leaves. If unchecked a swarm of cucumber beetles will destroy the baby plant in less than a day. Some years the little insects are abundant and other years not so much. This was a mild year for the beetles and was reflected in the lowering of the blood pressure of this pumpkin farmer.
Yesterday I had to surrender to probably our most common ‘enemy’ critter when I tried to remove a few weeds from our garden. Like a cloud they appeared from no where and descended upon me draining me of who knows how much blood in seconds. And that infernal buzzing in my ears. I think that’s their way of warning us of the upcoming bite. The extinction of the mosquito would not bother me one bit although as a biologist I realize that would leave a lot of critters like dragon flies, bats, and numerous water critters hungry.
I have long ago surrendered to the raccoons. It just took several attempts to grow sweet corn for us to realize they will always beat us to it! It seems they like the corn in a much earlier stage than we did. Consequently for years now we have been forced to keep our eyes open for sweet corn stands along the highways and byways to get our corn ‘fix’.
Several summers ago we had a population explosion of the Richardson Ground Squirrels. Most people would refer to them as a ‘gopher’ but technically they are a ground squirrel. We spent almost an hour one spring day watching a ground squirrel searching for Dandelion leaves in our lawn and than shoving the leaf into his mouth and eating it like a pretzel. It was the cutest thing to watch. When the strawberries began to ripen in our garden guess who loved strawberries? Dandelion leaves suddenly lost their appeal for the ground squirrel as it began devouring our strawberries. For us the ground squirrel lost its cuteness very quickly also!
Another squirrel that created havoc in our garden was the Red squirrel. They discovered our pumpkin crop. They especially loved the little pumpkin gourds. Throughout the fall I would glimpse a squirrel lugging an orange gourd across the lawn to some secret hiding place. It’s plan I am sure was to return later to where it was stashed and enjoy a winter feast. When the pumpkins were harvested and displayed on the lawn and priced for sale I would arise almost every morning to discover a beautiful (they always chose a beautiful one) pumpkin with a large hole chewed in it and pumpkin seeds scattered on the ground. I did catch that squirrel in a live trap and after a ride in my Jeep it now lives miles from our yard.!
By far the most destructive critter affecting our gardens and pumpkin fields is the deer. In fact I don’t even call them deer. I refer to them each as “Damn-bie”. They will eat a whole pumpkin. First they will take a bite out of several pumpkins…. a little taste test. When they find one they really like that pumpkin is a goner! The pumpkins with the bite gouges will over time get rotten and turn into a pile of mush. Six foot chicken wire fencing, netting and an electric fence have been used over the years to get better control but it is a constant battle.
I know as you take a drive out into the country all appears peaceful and calm. That is very deceiving . There is a constant battle occurring in the outdoors and if you don’t believe that next spring break up a little ground by your house and start a little garden. Then sit back and watch the battles begin!
Until next time!
