spk_0:   0:00
Hello. Hello, everybody. And welcome to the show. The big shows. Most important incorrectly. But guess that is recorded in our vehicle today. We are in the southern island. We're heading north, heading toward desert. Moin the happening were actually heading toward Indiana, which is a suburb of those mines. And we're gonna do something up there, and then we're gonna go home.

spk_1:   0:24
Excellent. Paved trail.

spk_0:   0:26
Yes, I have a nexus of paper trail that we're gonna visit. We're gonna visit that. We're going to do a couple of things in Dez Mines area. On the way back, we're gonna pick up some most excellent old fashioned Anderson Erickson cottage cheese, which is not sold in our area. And when every time we go to Iowa, I pick up, I feel those papers. And here's your hint. Do not become a fan favorite of things that are not sold in your area. This is one of the two that I am a fan favorite up one of the three. Actually,

spk_1:   0:54
you don't want to know how much Yngling beer we've got in the cool of our basement.

spk_0:   0:58
You really don't. I don't want any. Oh, anyway, But

spk_1:   1:03
he likes it so he buys a case. But we're actually drink that much.

spk_0:   1:07
Yes. I don't think the nearest place we can get to is getting mingling inward. Missouri is Indiana and hello, Indiana. What is up with that tax rate on your gasoline? Are you people nuts? Just letting you know that is insane. I'm glad my car had enough gas to get to Ohio where I could get reasonable price on my gas. My goodness, people, have you Have you lost your minds? That's an insane rate of amount of tax on gases. But anyway, we're not here to talk about the gas rate. Mean gas tax rate in Indiana. We're not, although have ends. That's really a lot off. There was nothing but a

spk_1:   1:50
thing that

spk_0:   1:51
I love.

spk_1:   1:52
Stuff we're on over.

spk_0:   1:55
I'm sorry. We have to imagine what it sounds like to you at home. This is kind of the Gulf stream of consciousness weirdness, but we're actually we actually have a subject taking ways. I'm babbling.

spk_1:   2:07
We've talked before about how to keep pest side of your garden. But a point we hadn't made before that we thought you should know because I have learned that the hard way with several different species of animals is the amazing rapidity with which the hordes of pests can appear seemingly out of nowhere and clean out your entire crop the very night before you intended to harvest, said Crop coming here, a couple of nice spot,

spk_0:   2:38
What really lies? Bucks? I

spk_1:   2:40
mean, one of those probably chasing the other one off his females.

spk_0:   2:43
Yeah. My gosh. Those are nice. But look at those. Yeah. Wow, that

spk_1:   2:48
could be

spk_0:   2:48
nice. I mean, for those of you are buck hunters, each of those was no, at least 12 points drawn out because we're still in the were Still has just started to dry up. Yeah, of Elvis to starting to drive. Both of those were at least 12. Both them had the really wide, wide racks that score out. Really well, somebody's growing so big bucks around here. Let me tell you what Wait. That's

spk_1:   3:18
where the tall corn grows.

spk_0:   3:19
Those things that score, if you if you care about such things, is how your buck scores. Those would be good

spk_1:   3:26
if you live where we live. Lots of people care. Yes. Here's the thing. You may not have ever thought about it before. Why do you plan to make fruits in the first place? And why're the fruit so unappealing? Until they ripen? Well, it's a plot. The fruit part is a bribe to get animals to come and take the fruit, carry it away. Eat the fleshy part of the fruit. The seed inside is much less appealing. Most of the animals will leave the seat alone. It'll either come out in the feces, depositing it with a nice pile of fertilizer of its own to grow with or things like squirrels will eat around a peach seed because it's not worth chewing into for the prize inside and drop it. It's a way for the plant to disperse its offspring further away from itself. It's hard to say you can't just send your kids off to college when you're a plant and everything's gotta grow where it's planted for best survival of the species, it works best if the seeds get dispersed and this is a plot to get seeds dispersed. Ah, much nicer plot than these stickers that just are made to stick to animal fur and fall off eventually somewhere else. So the idea is the fruit is unappealing while the seed is maturing and the plant is providing nutrition to the embryo in the seed. Once the plant is done making the seed, it'll let the fruit ripen up to make it appealing so it can get dispersed. So the fruits are designed to suddenly become appealing in color and scent right about the time that the seed is ready to be dispersed. We know that and we wait till the fruit is ripe and we pick it and we eat it. It's delicious, but the dang other pests know that toothy animal pests know that, too. And what they're doing is they're leaving it be while it's unappealing, and as soon as it goes right there like up its right time t and they descend and math and eat massive amounts of this stuff and what that can do. What it has done to me several times in the past is your watching the crop develop all summer long, and you're like, Yeah, it's almost ready. Tomorrow I'm gonna harvest those suckers tomorrow and you wake up to a waistline

spk_0:   5:55
going todo a nice looking little hand turkey. We're very wildlife. Taylor in Southern Iowa. I know what they're getting disturbed because on why are like North Missouri. The corn crop failed here, too, and so they're cutting the corn for silage. And whenever you're cutting crop, that's where the three animals live in the crops. So they're getting disturbed. And some you didn't have to watch out for wildlife this time of year. Yeah, and yeah, it's It's amazing how fast that you could lose a crop, and it's just literally overnight. You could lose a crop this time in another podcast, which you may have heard or may not have, depending on the order of these Come out in, we told the school stories, Why don't you retell the squirrel story? Just that everybody knows.

spk_1:   6:43
So we have a peach tree, and it's a young peach tree, and this year was hard on peaches because we had a late, hard frost. But it's a good peach tree. A few a few blossoms managed to get through. I The peach tree had maybe 15 peaches developing this year two dozen something like that, and I'd already picked a few of the early ones and eating them because some ripen and fall off. Earlier than others, and I snag him up and eat him. But I was looking at that tree and they were still dozen peaches on. And I'm going there almost ready. Next day or two, I'm gonna come and pick them all and preserve the ones I can't eat fast enough. You're

spk_0:   7:29
right now, and, uh, I went out. No, we're a cross section after this vehicle there. You got kind of a bad of you out. Okay, Thank you. It's like we are in our car were actually literally driving in our car. So you figure that I'm sure. But

spk_1:   7:44
so eight o'clock in the morning, I'm out picking my tomatoes and things like Dad, I check on my peach tree. There's a dozen peaches on it. I'm like, tomorrow or the next day. I'm picking these guys. Comes to mid afternoon salty, is going somewhere, driving around the back of the house to get something.

spk_0:   8:02
I don't remember where we're going. I may have been driving over to the gym, but I'm not sure.

spk_1:   8:07
And he sees a squirrel making off with one of my peaches, a tree rat

spk_0:   8:12
and ah ah! Uh, maybe you're better as I go around to look at it. Take a good look at the tree, which had a budget peaches on it before. And there's not that many peaches left, s I literally she's she's going for a walk.

spk_1:   8:29
I was out in the garden, was working. You were

spk_0:   8:31
going for a walk. You were going for a walk, okay? And so it's kind of drove around looking for you a little bit because I couldn't find out where in the world you went. You went back in the house. I don't know. Pick up some I don't want you back in the house, but so you went back in the house, even though that's not sure. Yeah, so I called her you. Normally you don't call somebody who's 50 feet away from you. I don't know where she waas Well, okay, Normally, if you're our age, you don't. That's apparently a thing to text people who are sitting right next to you for some of you people. I don't get that, but, you know, to each their own. And so I called her and I said, Hey, if you want your peaches, you really better go out there and get him now. because, I mean, these squirrels are d populating your tree.

spk_1:   9:18
It was like, How bad can it be? I checked him this morning, but I had 12 peaches that morning. I was down to what, 34

spk_0:   9:27
44

spk_1:   9:28
teachers left. And, yeah, he's key. Scared. The one that was making off with my peach, and it dropped it with only a few squirrel bite marks in it, which I cut off the rest. Because I am, by golly, not putting that in the combat post pile for the squirrel to come arrayed and get the rest of the beach. No, I will deny you just to be that way at this point. So in five hours, they stole nine beaches.

spk_0:   9:56
We don't have a yard full of squirrels. We have, like, two now. What does this mean? It means that we need a re mediation and you always shoot the things I will never live in town. Shooting the things is not really an option. Our options, I mean, because it's like against the law to shoot them. And we always

spk_1:   10:19
land somewhere. Yeah, And even if they go straight through the squirrel, they're gonna land somewhere.

spk_0:   10:24
Even with an air gun, and I did check. Even with an air gut, it is illegal to shoot them in town. Even if you have a hunting permit. Is illegal hunt in town? So that leaves as options of, uh, live trapping them because you can't put an actual killed trapped in your yard. I mean, you just can't do that so you could live. Trap him.

spk_1:   10:50
We're not gonna kill the neighbor's cat. We're

spk_0:   10:52
not gonna kill the neighbor's cats

spk_1:   10:54
by putting in a live trap early,

spk_0:   10:56
dawg. You know, whatever else

spk_1:   10:58
potentially putting up a barrier like a net around the whole tree,

spk_0:   11:02
right? Or probably both. I mean, we're going to get some life trapped. This is part of our prepping that we don't have. Right now. It's a whole I want. I'm gonna buy three or four lives, always a couple decent size live track, because we've also got some other pests that were kind of let live because they're not that big of a past. We're kind of like we've got a whistle pig in our area.

spk_1:   11:25
It's a grand talk. Oh,

spk_0:   11:27
sorry. It's a crowd on. That's how that's how s Missouri and say ground whistle, Pig. We got a whistle pig in our area, and it definitely it's okay now because not tearing up our gardener. But I would live trap that thing and get out of there if it was actually tearing stuff up. It lives under. These are shed. And, you know, there's other pasts. Rabbits.

spk_1:   11:53
This is Yeah. So the trick is to not only have the methods to protect, but also to apply the protection before the actual crop gets right. I remember my first BlackBerry year, a plan of the blackberries one year. And of course, I didn't get anything the first year you don't. But the next year, I was actually gonna have some blackberries, right?

spk_0:   12:18
So excited

spk_1:   12:19
because they looked delicious, But they weren't quite right. And we went away for a weekend trip and we came back and the blackberries had been totally obliterated by birds.

spk_0:   12:30
We're not talking decimated. We're talking obliterated. Big.

spk_1:   12:34
Yeah. They left me about 10%. Instead of taking 10% that's in the

spk_0:   12:38
side. Decimated means to lose 10%. Most people don't realize what decimated men means, but it is to lose 10%. It's not like troops were decimated. Well, yes, but that's not that bad. I mean, 10% bad. But it's not, you know, like,

spk_1:   12:54
yeah, if the Roman legions broken ran when the what for it's supposed to. They would have to draw lots, and every 10th man was killed decimated.

spk_0:   13:04
So do you know

spk_1:   13:06
I end? I remember when I was kid. The sweet corn would be this way because raccoon Guy's raccoons are particularly evil pests. Because the sweet corn was grown. We were gonna go, of course, and harvest it the next day because we noticed it was right to. But when we went out there, the entire sweet corn crop had been attacked by raccoons, cause what raccoons will do is they grabbing your sweet corn? They pull it down, take two bites, say yeah, back that year was pretty tasty. They leave that one, go to the next plant, pull it down, open the year, take two bites. Hey, that one's not bad either. But maybe the next one's a little better. They actually pull down and trash entire rows of corn to eat the equivalent of a single year. So yeah, we may do. We went picked up after the raccoons, and we cut off the places where the raccoons bitten and we save the rest of the corn. But that's not the best way to keep the crop.

spk_0:   14:13
Now here's a hint. If you ever have to live trap a raccoon, I could tell you what to bait that trapped with no customer records. The smart does so light. Trapping them is gonna be really difficult. But the way you

spk_1:   14:25
do it to have an Achilles heel,

spk_0:   14:26
they do. They have. They have a soft spot that you know where the pope.

spk_1:   14:30
They have a soft white cushiony spot. Marshmallows like marshmallows. Man, those guys love marshmallow

spk_0:   14:40
go nuts over marshmallows.

spk_1:   14:43
But we hadn't seen any sign of raccoon around there in particular all summer long. But in one night, three whole rows of sweet corn were destroyed by it.

spk_0:   14:54
In fact, a bird seed company usedto give out as a kind of an advertisement for their seed corn. They purchased the popcorn. I mean, the the sweet corn. See, they didn't grow it themselves, but they purchased it. But they used to get a little packages of Burress raccoons choice. So I mean, this is a well known thing rock, oohs and sweet corn. And then you have the other kind of pests which were just They're not the warm, furry, somewhat cute if they weren't, like from the devil. Like squirrels are just from the devil. Yeah, cute. But he's killed, but

spk_1:   15:34
they're really cute. See? You won't kill him on first sight. You have to get to know him first. Then you want to kill him.

spk_0:   15:39
Squash bugs are not cute. No, grasshoppers are not cute,

spk_1:   15:45
but they could descend in entire hordes and their reproduction is timed to make the horde right at the time when the crop is gonna be right. So it's the whole horde of locust thing. That's a real thing. And it still happens, Especially in places like Africa. Clouds that darken the sky of insects will descend on fields, eat entire fields, clean and ruin whole crops. It happened in America during the Dust bowl, for example. They had some grasshopper plagues in some places. So a disaster of biblical proportions literally, if you had intended on eating off that crop. The main story here is just because you don't see the pests all season long doesn't mean you can rest easy about your crop being protected from him. If you need that food, you have to have a way to protect that food that right at the time. And you put the protections up right before it's gonna be ripe because the animals tend to think things already about a day before humans think things were ready in my experience.

spk_0:   16:54
So what does this mean? It means that us, as people who are preppers, need to make preparations. Because if the stuff had hit the fan and we were depending on this food, if this was important not just nice tohave but important food for us. I mean, this is this is part of what we were surviving on. We need to be prepared to protect that crop. We need to have a wrap for our peach trees. Keep the squirrels off of it. We need to have live traps to get rid of this world, coordinating now our Berries and gardens. If the stuff it hit the fan, I really don't care what the what the laws are. I'm popping those squirrels with that air gun. Yeah, there are a lot of the still Not that there's not much meat on a squirrel anyway. But actually the scrolls honorable, they go on the Stewart out there might be in the dog food for for the dog. We don't have a dog with the neighbor. Does, um,

spk_1:   17:59
girls that ended up in this

spk_0:   18:01
rabbits? Squirrels. I'm going to do a post on my squirrels are not worth shooting to eat. Takes more calories to shoot that does and prepare them. Then you get out of them.

spk_1:   18:15
I have, ah, disagreement of opinion with salty on this one.

spk_0:   18:19
They're filthy animals. They have, you know, disease possibilities with

spk_1:   18:25
It's true for rabbits, too.

spk_0:   18:27
So you just gotta make sure that the rabbit bones don't poke you. That's a big deal to I'm not just kidding. I've got

spk_1:   18:34
a post on tularemia.

spk_0:   18:35
Yeah, you don't want to

spk_1:   18:36
contribute. What?

spk_0:   18:37
Really don't on that, But rabbits, at least you know, there's, like, four times the meeting a rabbit. Then there is a squirrel.

spk_1:   18:45
But getting rid of the pest ahead of time will help, but you often don't know about them or don't really see them until they're ready to come read your crop.

spk_0:   18:55
Right. So that's where we get to protective netting. Yeah, that's where we get the will. The Rays. Actually, the raised beds in itself is a huge protector.

spk_1:   19:06
It does help.

spk_0:   19:06
That stops turtles, for example.

spk_1:   19:08
Turtles, love melons,

spk_0:   19:10
Turtles. Oh, my gosh. Turtles, Cannon. How many turning your mom have to deal with? Oh, yeah.

spk_1:   19:18
I know exactly what to do with Turtle nibbled melons, but they don't need them till they're right. So you just take him and you cut out the little piece the turtle had And

spk_0:   19:25
I remember last with last year. Two years ago, the guy was just like it was a beautiful melon. But I can't I can't really sell it. It's got a turtle with a ticket, a chunk out of it. Right? You can take it, You know, you know what to do with it.

spk_1:   19:37
I know how to eat turtle. Turtle of shared melons. So the race beds help. Uh, fencing the garden to start with helps

spk_0:   19:47
a lot.

spk_1:   19:48
But there are some things that just, uh, squirrels climb over things awfully well. And birds descending from the sky. Bracken's can really tear stuff up in our amazingly clever You can't trust them to keep out of gates. and stuff. They'll open gates. There's needle

spk_0:   20:10
really soon. Problems in town.

spk_1:   20:12
We don't, but we easily could, because we actually have a whistle. Pig. We could certainly have record and same habitat. But

spk_0:   20:18
here's the other thing. Okay, we go to bed at night because we have to get to work in the morning. If I depended upon this stuff for my livelihood, I would be patrolling the garden at night with a past elimination firearm.

spk_1:   20:40
Or we would have a good dog or two out there

spk_0:   20:44
or were

spk_1:   20:44
patrolling for us. Dogs are very good at that. If they are. Some dogs are very good at that. Let me put it that way. Some cats are pretty good at that, but dogs tend to be better because they'll make noise. Who, even when it's something they can't stop.

spk_0:   20:59
That is something. Because the way our yard has trees and stuff like that, it becomes very difficult offense. But I'm considering doing a kind of a weird looking Vince for defense on the inside of our tree is not the whole outside of the yard, for many reasons, one of the one of the best parts of which is we could get, let her dog get a dog and let it run or get a couple dogs and let it ride. That would stop a lot of passes right there.

spk_1:   21:26
But of course, then you have to feed the dogs, so you

spk_0:   21:29
have to feed the draft. Yeah, but dogs are, You know, if you don't get huge dogs, that something.

spk_1:   21:34
Terriers, that's a terrier job.

spk_0:   21:37
Rat terriers

spk_1:   21:38
Terriers tend to be good at that sort of thing, so have the ability to defend it ahead of time and put the protections up before the crop actually gets ripe, because they can wipe you out very quickly if you don't. I bought extra letting bird netting, which is also good for keeping out dear, because the deer could rip it up. But it's kind of hard to get ahold of, and they don't really want to mess with it.

spk_0:   22:07
It's not worth the effort.

spk_1:   22:08
I've got a couple of extra packages of that I bought at the end of season sale. It's a very nice time of year. To pick it up is in the fall when people are clearing out all their garden stuff because you can get it for pennies on the dollar. I bought a couple extra packages of that and I stuck him back on the back porch because they don't care about temperature control. And right now I don't fence. I don't put bird netting over the Berries and things until the crop is almost right, because I tried that the second year I was gonna have a berry crop. I put the netting up early and it worked. But I found that all the vines grew up through the netting and it spoiled the netting, so I couldn't reuse the netting very effectively. And I had little chunks of it left sitting on the vines for years that I couldn't really get off effectively. Yeah, that's

spk_0:   23:01
this guy's stupid. We have a stupid driver. He's passing us on an area, the downhill area with oncoming traffic. When we've got a passing zone coming up, we're chess. It's just stupid, anyway. Yeah, this is the kind of guys who die in car wrecks,

spk_1:   23:19
so that's a prop that I've got set aside. And if I actually needed the berry crop, I'd put it out. I haven't been using in recent years because I've got more Berries than I need anyway. And in those situations, I don't mind sharing with the birds. But if I that was gonna be my whole fruits supply for the winner and I had to preserve as much of it, it's possible I would buy Galley, be getting that netting out there so they will strike hard and fast

spk_0:   23:53
when you least expect it. And they know when it's yummy.

spk_1:   23:57
They know when it's ripe, and that's when they'll hit. And it's really totally, completely annoying. So now you know, and at least you have a chance to protect your stuff appropriately.

spk_0:   24:13
All right, we're gonna call it a day on this one, and we'll talk to you next podcast.