January Update

It is 2:45 now on a lazy Saturday afternoon and it looks like it may snow soon. Lauren and I just came back from the Transfer Station where we actually came back with nothing extra this time. Earlier today we took down our Christmas Trees, yes trees, we had two of them. Why, because….well why not? We certainly have enough decorations for two. Lauren deserves the credit for decorating them. My job was installation, keeping them watered, and then removal. I did enjoy them because they added a nice festive light and feeling to the home.

In other news, we had seen a raccoon at the side of barn the other day so I set the Hav-a-Hart trap inside the barn and on Thursday thought I had caught it when I saw the trap closed. But instead I had caught the neighbor’s cat that was very happy to be released. We haven’t heard the ruckus lately that we had been hearing under our kitchen floor which is a crawlspace that allows access and shelter for the raccoons, porcupines, and woodchucks. When these guys get going it can sound somewhere between a party and soccer match. They chatter loudly, run back and forth, bang into the floor, and chew the bottom of the floor joists. Because “we” don’t have access to this space our only solution currently is to take a block of wood, place it on the kitchen floor directly over where we hear the noise and then proceed to bang the daylights out of the wood with a hammer to try and scare them off. It seems to work but sometimes only temporarily. Recently someone told us to put a rag soaked with ammonia down there. I remembered this worked well when we were having raccoons get into our garbage barrels in Massachusetts years ago. The problem with this is our limited access to get the rag under there and then do we really want the aroma of ammonia wafting up through the kitchen floor? I don’t think so.

Thanks to this last snowstorm on Wednesday all the bare spots which were on the ground are now covered. Hopefully it will stay like this until spring so we can do more cross country skiing. We did our first cross country ski of the season a couple of weeks ago after the first big snow. It felt great to ski, yes and fall, along the trails at the Bethel Inn and at the end of a good workout I was able to take my skis off and walk 100 yards to my house. On Thursday I walked up to Suds Pub for Hoot Night and met up with our long time good neighbor from Magnolia, John O’Hara. We caught up in conversation while the local musicians played. I Love Hoot Nite at Suds. Tomorrow we’re going to watch the Patriots game with Matt and Sari Rochford who are other long time Magnolia neighbors of ours. They apparently come up with their kids most weekends now to go skiing at Sunday River. It’s uncanny just how many people from Gloucester and Cape Ann we keep bumping into here and how many have bought homes up here. Enjoy the cold…it was zero here last night. Hey, it’s snowing now.

How much Garden could a Woodchuck eat if a Woodchuck could eat my Garden

I’ve been thinking about planting a garden in the side yard ever since we bought this house in December. The main concern about having a garden for me was… would there be enough sun? About two weeks ago Lauren and I were eating lunch and I noticed this… movement next to the house by the barn. It started to head in our direction, so I grabbed the camera and told Lauren I thought was a beaver… but it didn’t have that beaver-type tail? We took these pictures of the critter, Lauren did some research and eventually identified it correctly as a Woodchuck, also known as a Groundhog,…. that’s right our own Punxsutawney Phil type character.
As I began to read about woodchucks I found out rather quickly that they are not a gardener’s best friend. They love vegetables and they can do a number on a garden in short order. This started to concern me about the success of any garden I might plant. One website showed me how to build something resembling Fort Knox under and around a garden. First you bury the wire fencing in the ground about 6 inches directly under the garden then come up all sides of it at least four feet high on posts where you then leave an additional two feet of fencing hanging loose so that if they do climb up the fence they cannot hang on to the floppy part and fall back to the ground. Hey, I just wanted to have a garden not a border patrol.
As we talk to people around here we instantly find there is a clear disdain for Woodchucks. We met a local guy just the other night who clearly loves life and has to be one of the seemingly happiest people I have met in a while. He was telling us how much he loved his ex-wife even though he just couldn’t get along with her. But once we mentioned the Woodchuck in our yard his reaction was quick and pointed as he raised his fist and said “Death to the Woodchuck." Earlier we had mentioned our woodchuck dilemma to someone who you may consider your grandmother, and she told us her solution was getting out her 22 and shooting it. She was not kidding.
It seems everyone here has a woodchuck story. When we attended a class last week on Organic Gardening (which was wonderful by the way) the speaker told us she uses the Hav-a-Hart trap and caught nine then relocated them before it seemed they were all gone. I don’t know…Wood it be easier to buy my veggies from the local farmer OR must I battle the Woodchuck?