Grazing Goats

Weather: Some rain yesterday and today.

Last rain: 2/23. Week’s low: 21 degrees F. Week’s high: 62 degrees F in the shade.

What’s green: Leaves on junipers, yuccas, and other evergreens, grape hyacinths, vinca, coral bell, blue flax, Mexican hat, and cheat grass. Hollyhock seedlings coming up. Pink evening primrose leaves beginning to green.

What’s turned red or purple: Sandbar willow and some rose branches; alfilerillo and coral beards tongue leaves

What’ turned brown or yellow: Weeping willow, arborvitae and some other evergreen leaves

Tasks: I worked outside for the first time last Sunday in an exposed area. I had a block path that had been taken over by a rose bush, and I wanted to reroute the blocks around the canes. The ground was damp and warm enough to be comfortable to handle.

Monday I continued the work, but hit frozen ground as soon as I got near the shadow of the garage. Perhaps coincidentally, I was working in the area where the rose that had dropped its leaves.

When I had problems with frozen ground last spring, I removed dirt to expose the iced area to the sun. The next day, I was able to work that area, and prepare another. This time, I removed dead rose leaves that were mulching the ground on Monday. Saturday, when I went back to work on the path, the surface was thawed enough to work a few feet.

Animal sightings: Three robins, a male and two females were in the drive Saturday morning, but didn’t stay long.

Weekly update: Longfellow wrote of the "forest primeval" in Evangeline. He was speaking of a world bereft of the French who had settled in Acadia.

Today the term refers to woodlands that haven’t been logged, and thus are called "old growth" to distinguish them from the second growth trees that returned after logging.

It carries Edenic connotations of land before the existence of human beings. Like the old-new growth terminology, it assumes a binary classification: self-perpetuating ecosystems that existed before Europeans and the managed forests of today.

What is missing from this view are all the variations in human contacts with trees that have existed for centuries. The problems of forest fires are recent, not part of the historic landscape. The solutions for preventing conflagrations may exist in those historic patterns.

In Portugal, officials recognized part of their problem was that people who maintained remote forests had left isolated villages for more comfortable lives with such amenities as indoor plumbing and electricity.

This summer the nation began reintroducing the goats that had fed on the underbrush, especially on steep slopes.

The problem was finding enough men to tend the animals. Shepherding is tedious work in isolated conditions.

In this country, the Reagan library imports hundreds of goats each year to clear vegetation around the facility. Of course, the other thing that saved the building from flames this summer was the paved parking lot, which acted as a firebreak.

The problems with using animals as tools in fire prevention go beyond the difficulties of finding enough goatherds. Many forest historians blame overgrazing for the destruction of woodlands in places like northern New Mexico. They can’t conceive of grazing as a solution. It’s rather like convincing people the way to prevent smallpox is to give them a small dose of the disease.

More critical is the question of scale. Overgrazing in Rio Arribe county occurred when businessmen turned one part of Spanish agrarian life into an industry, and put more animals on the land than the vegetation could support. A predictable Malthusian catastrophe ensued.

It would be difficult to manage a grazing program in today’s political environment. One assumes, if enough money was involved, entrepreneurs would appear but then would lobby for more access than forest managers were willing to give.

It’s easier to avoid political pressure from wealthy campaign contributors than it is to confront Malthusian constraints, and so the possible becomes the unthinkable. The Reagan library could act because it was on private land.

Notes on photographs: All taken 22 February 2020.
1. Cheat grass (Bromus tectorum) coming up within a clump of buffalo grass (Buchloe dactyloides).

2. New growth on a hollyhock (Alcea rosea).

3. The nearly completed reroute of a path by a rose bush.

End notes:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Evangeline. Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1847.

Audrey McNamara. "New Southern California Blaze Is ‘Encircling’ Reagan Library." Daily Beast website. 30 October 2019.

Raphael Minder. "Scorched Portugal Turns to the Goat as a Low-Cost Firefighter." The New York Times website. 17 August 2019.

Harassing Gophers

Weather: A typical storm cycle this week. On Sunday, the weather bureau said there was a 60% chance of rain or snow in Los Alamo, continuing Tuesday, with remnants through Thursday. The satellite showed moisture moving across the entire length of the Baja peninsula.

Monday, the chance of rain or snow that night was 100%. The Baja moisture was coming up from the south, but only a little was getting this far north. By the afternoon, the forecast had changed: the storm would end on Tuesday, while the satellite showed most of the moisture then was going into Texas.

Tuesday, about 4" of snow accumulated outside the house. It stopped soon after 9 am. The satellite showed the moisture stream had split, with most going to Texas, and a little coming to the Española valley. By mid afternoon, the snow had melted or condensed down to an inch or so on the ground.

Nothing on Wednesday or Thursday except soft ground in places.

Last snow: 2/11. Week’s low: 18 degrees F. Week’s high: 58 degrees F in the shade.

What’s green: The junipers, yuccas, and other evergreens, grape hyacinths, vinca, coral bell, blue flax and Mexican hat leaves

What’s turned red or purple: Sandbar willow and some rose branches; alfilerillo and coral beards tongue leaves

What’ turned brown or yellow: Weeping willow, arborvitae and some other evergreen leaves

Tasks: This afternoon I dumped more stones onto bald spots in the drive. There were places outside the drive path where stones either had been pushed by tires, or were dumped by the man working on my drive several years ago. I used my foot to slide the top stones along the surface until they covered the bare areas. Then, I used my foot to relevel the cannibalized areas. The side of my foot actually works better than a hoe because it stays on the surface. The iron blade tends to dig down a bit.

Animal sightings: I started to reroute a block path after I finished kicking around the gravel. When I first laid it, it was forced to created a bypass around a winterfat stump. A rose mistook the blocks as a personal gift of mulch. I was moving the blocks to the other side of the stump. When I picked up one block, I discovered an active colony of shiny black ants.

Weekly update: The first year I tried tulip bulbs, I planted them along my retaining wall. None came up, and I blamed that generic villain—the gopher.

Before I planted bulbs again I bought some shakers of cheap black pepper and sprinkled the cracked seeds in the holes with the bulbs. At the time, I knew that peppercorns lost their potency when they were ground, but hoped they would still act as a deterrent.

I later heard chili peppers were more lethal. I sprinkled some around what I thought was a snake hole last summer. I hoped that even if the ground spice no longer was any good for cooking, the granules might have retained enough of their chemicals so they would become activated when they got wet—either by contact with the skin or by being licked out of fur.

I had no intention of killing the animal, whatever it was, that made the hole. I hoped to drive it away by harassing it.

Scott Long said one method tried against pocket gophers was pouring "pepper oil extract (capsicum) into the soil." He added: "this irritant is effective in making gophers avoid that area." [1]

Last week I was reading a collection of African-American folklore. Around 1917, a seventy-year old man living on the North Carolina Piedmont said witches stepped out of their skins when they left their homes by the chimneys. One time when they were gone, someone "get two pods of red pepper." When they returned, they couldn’t get back into their skins because "it was hot." They hid in the sheets, but died when daylight hit their denuded bodies. [2]

Elsie Clews Parsons indicated the belief about the skin was found in the Bahamas, the Leeward Islands, and in Guiana. [3] Newell Niles Puckett noted the belief had been reported from Georgia, Missouri, Virginia, Louisiana, North Carolina, the Sea Islands, and West Africa. [4]

The primary difference was the kind of pepper. He said Vais of West Africa sprinkled salt and pepper in the room to "prevent her from getting back into her hide." Parsons said salt and pepper were used on Andros Islands in the Bahamas.

Chili peppers are a New World plant, and anyone who’s gotten near them knows about their affects on the skin. It took no imagination to substitute them into the traditional tales and practices.

I talked to a woman a couple years ago who remembered when she was a child, her mother warned her to wear gloves when she was picking the pods. Being young and invincible, she ignored the advice.

She was a cashier in a local market. When she said she used lotion and cold water to treat her hands, the man bagging the groceries suggested vinegar would help. She agreed, and said "these are the tricks you learn as you grow."

Notes on photographs:
1. Clouds on Monday afternoon, around 4:45 pm.
2. Snow near the house on Tuesday morning, just before noon.
3. The same area today.

End notes:
1. Scott Long. "Thomomys talpoides, Northern Pocket Gopher." University of Michigan website. 15 June 2008.

2. Carter Young. "Out of Her Skin." Collected by Elsie Clews Parsons. "Tales from Guilford County, North Carolina." The Journal of American Folklore 30:168–200:1917. 187–188.

3. Parsons. 187.

4. Newbell Niles Puckett. "Driving off and Capturing Witches." Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1926. 154–155.

Killing Gophers II

Weather: We’ve gone from very cold (6 degrees F) on Wednesday to very warm (60 degrees F) yesterday. A 56 degree swing in four days. There’s still ice in shadows on western sides of fences and buildings, but the driveway gets soft in the afternoon. It’s only safe to drive in and out early in the morning, and never safe to walk in some areas.

Last snow: 1/16. Week’s low: 6 degrees F. Week’s high: 60 degrees F in the shade.

What’s green: The junipers, yuccas, and other evergreens, grape hyacinths, vinca, coral bell, and blue flax leaves

What’s turned red or purple: Sandbar willow and some rose branches; alfilerillo and coral beards tongue leaves

What’ turned brown or yellow: Weeping willow, arborvitae and some other evergreen leaves

Tasks: I called my tree trimmer on Thursday to schedule an estimate. He said he hadn’t been working this week because of the cold. To someone from Michigan, who grew up with tales of Paul Bunyan, that seemed a little odd.

Logging was done in winter when the ground was so hard sleds could be used to move trees from forests to shipping points. While there were professional timbermen, many were local farmers, often young men trying to accumulate the cash to buy land.

Then I looked at the average coldest temperatures in the northern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula. In Manistee, on the Lake Michigan side it’s 30 degrees F; in Saginaw on the Lake Huron side it’s 28.9. The Michigan figures are higher than our average low of 14, [1] though we’re much farther south.

Lakes and altitude make a difference. In New Mexico, no one is used to the kind of winter temperatures we had this past week, and some of the equipment may not have lubricants that are effective when it’s that cold.

When men aren’t used to the cold, they get hurt. And, probably many did in Michigan in the logging era when OSHA didn’t exist and hired men were deemed expendable.

Men living at home today call in sick when they don’t want to work. Men in isolated lumber camps didn’t have that choice if they wanted to eat.

Animal sightings: Everything is staying hidden

Weekly update: I discovered I made a mistake a few weeks ago when I said the gopher killer I bought contained arsenic. I found a picture of the label that showed it was strychnine. Not a lot safer: a lethal does of arsenic for humans is 1 to 3 milligrams; [2] it’s 1.5 to 2 milligrams for the other. [3]

When I was researching ways to get rid of the animal that was burrowing everywhere, I read that ranchers used to drive their trucks into infested fields, connect a hose to the exhaust, and pump carbon monoxide into the burrows. I thought about that but lacked a hose and clamps, and didn’t want to drive my car over the native grasses.

I couldn’t find the original reference this week, but learned online that it was a common practice. So common, that there are companies today that sell portable machines one can use to do the same thing.

But do they work? Gophers are solitary creatures. So while, there may be a number living in a field, each has its own network of tunnels. One can’t stick a hose anywhere and clear an entire field. One has to find the central point in each network.

In the meantime, the gophers have heard the abnormal activity above ground. Roger Baldwin found they could sense the presence of the gas, and immediately blocked off that part of their tunnel. One of the available machines was about 68% effective with gophers, but for some reason was much more useful on ground squirrels.

The cost of the machines is high. One doesn’t buy a tractor or truck to kill a rodent; one uses something at hand. However, machines that served no other purpose ranged from $1,300 to $15,000 in 2016.

Notes on photographs:
1. Cliff rose (Purshia mexicana) has kept green in its leaves this winter; 11 December 2019.

2. Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa) leaves have faded in the cold; they’ll be replaced in the spring; 9 February 2020.

3. Label from a gopher killer product.

End notes:
1. Wikipedia. "Manistee, Michigan," "Saginaw, Michigan," and "Española, New Mexico."

2. "Arsenic Toxicity." Centers for Disease Control. Environmental Health and Medicine Education website.

3. "Strychnine." Centers for Disease Control. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health website.

4. Roger A. Baldwin and Ryan Meinerz. "Assessing the Efficacy of Carbon Monoxide Producing Machines at Controlling Burrowing Rodents." Vertebrate Pest Control Research Advisory Committee. Final report, June 2016.

Draining the Swamp

Weather: Cold is measured two ways. I usually look at the morning temperature, which has been well below freezing since October. That, after all, is what kills plants.

The other way is to look at the afternoon high. Temperatures have only reached 50 or more a few days each week. That makes it hard to work outside.

It’s only after the solstice, that woody plants have begun to show the effects of cold. Many arborvitae have turned brown, and the color in other evergreens has faded. Weeping willow branches are more yellow, and sandbar willows are more red. Also, some rose canes have turned red.

Last snow: 1/16. Week’s low: 15 degrees F. Week’s high: 58 degrees F in the shade.

What’s green: The junipers, yuccas, and other evergreens, grape hyacinths, vinca, and coral bell leaves

What’s turned red or purple: Sandbar willow and some rose branches; alfilerillo and coral beards tongue leaves

What’ turned brown or yellow: Weeping willow and arborvitae leaves

Tasks: Men have been cutting Siberian elms that grew up along a fence line in a field they’re renting for farmer’s market crops. Since they’re cutting the wood to lengths, I assume they are using it or selling it for firewood.

Animal sightings: Small birds

Weekly update: When I first heard the expression "drain the swamp" in Detroit auto factories in the 1980s, it referred to a method for solving problems. It was at the time when Japanese productivity ideas were being adopted.

The assumption was one could not know every reason something wasn’t working. All one knew was what one could see. So, you fixed that, and then looked to see what new problems had been unmasked.

It was compared to draining a swamp. When you looked, all you saw was a few leaves on the surface. When you removed a foot a water, submerged tree roots became visible. When you removed all the water, you found the alligators.

As with anything taken up by Washington, the need to work in stages was lost. Instead of fixing one problem at a time, politicians talk like you can do it all at once. Since Washington was built in a swamp, it became a punning way to refer to removing people who did not bend with the wind.

In my yard, it’s fix one problem at a time. I’ve mentioned the problems caused by my neighbors killing a winterfat that kept soil from migrating from their drive to mine, and making it impossible to open my gate last winter.

I spent the spring building a low retaining wall to stop the movement of dirt, and scraped the ground until the gate would swing freely. I added a layer of pea gravel, making sure the gate would still open.

After the first snow, I discovered I had solved the obvious problem, but not every problem. The gate would open - but only a foot. I never saw the higher area as a problem because I couldn’t get the gate that far before.

I spent time kicking out stones and dirt to get the gate open. Removing enough dirt so I can lay new gravel can’t happen until spring.

Then, I discovered I had created a new problem. The retaining wall created a shadow that nurtured ice. It’s still there at the base of the wall, but I broke the rest up. I’m not sure how to solve that one, since ice formed on top of gravel elsewhere.

There are no instant solutions to problems caused by Nature.

Notes on photographs:
1. Area arborvitae have turned different shades of brown, 2 February 2020.
2. Area ornamental juniper has begun to yellow, 2 February 2020.
3. Wild rose canes have turned red, 27 January 2020.