I’ve never really noticed rabbits before, but as I would like to raise them alongside chickens (or on top like Polyface Farms does) I figured I’d check out the rabbit judging at the local 4-H fair.

I haven’t dove into my psyche to determine why I find this animal so beautiful. If I figure it out, I’ll let you know but for now I can’t get over how gorgeous I find this Belgian Hare.

Like when carefully measuring the site for a fence post then finding a rock 8″ deep. Then continuing to widen the hole looking for the end of the underground ledge before finally admitting defeat and setting the post in 160 pounds of dry concrete.

Irrigating the blueberry beds and spraying some neem oil on the aphid infested grapes was the perfect activity to listen to an audio book through one earbud. A note on the aphids before I proceed: I just ordered a few thousand lady bugs from amazon of all places.

As I finished spraying the grape vines, a movement caught the periphery of my vision. A ground hog had stood on its hind legs not more than 20 feet away and proceeded to rip a hop cone from the vine climbing the trellis in front of the barn. Strangely enough, the audiobook playing into my ear was at one of the most infamously morbid scenes in modern literature and more recently, one of the most shocking scenes of television (book 3 of A song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones on TV). My exit from the garden to retrieve my rifle alerted the large rodent to my presence.

When I returned, I set up near where the pest was last sighted. A sharp whistle from my mouth appealed to the natural alarm signal used by groundhogs to alert their neighbors causing it to stand on its hind legs momentarily. Had I taken a shot, the barn wall was the backdrop with equipment and fuel tanks on the other side of the wall. Maneuvering uphill and backtracking into a position where earth, and admittedly a large pumpkin, served as the backdrop, I whistled again. This time with the rifle ready, I was able to deliver a shot that instantly killed the woodchuck when she stood up above the pumpkin foliage.

This is definitely more graphic than my typical content. The main goal of this blog is to give an unfiltered view of what the efforts of starting a farmstead entail. Thus all my mistakes, shortcomings, failures and addressing pest issues are to be documented to serve as a learning experience for others and to provide reflection on my end to improve my approach. Regardless, this is my least favorite aspect of the whole project.

Ground hogs are beautiful creatures and help cycle the soil when they dig their burrows deep into the ground. Unfortunately for this whistle pig, she foraged the single off limits acre out of 30 requiring action on my part.

Hopefully this is the last one I will have to eliminate.

A bunch of ears of corn where ripped down and eaten by some four legged fur bearer.

But a new pest arrived and is devastating the hops:

More in this tomorrow!

I took a trip out of the country for the last week and I am glad to see that the auto-publish feature worked without a hitch. I will be getting back to all the comments now.

Obviously was also away from the farm for a week and part of me expects to return to disaster. We will see tomorrow!

My dad was in the area and did me the great favor of dousing my mulberry seedlings with the foul smelling fish/garlic/clove/pepper oil mixture to ward off the deer whom have found the young leaves and branches to be quite tasty.