{"id":8133,"date":"2020-05-11T16:35:26","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T20:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/?p=8133"},"modified":"2020-05-11T16:35:26","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T20:35:26","slug":"we-spent-mothers-day-repairing-vole-damage-in-our-orchard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/2020\/05\/11\/we-spent-mothers-day-repairing-vole-damage-in-our-orchard\/","title":{"rendered":"We spent Mother’s Day repairing vole damage in our orchard"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had a crappy fall with heavy rain daily, turning to snow that stayed all winter. Unfortunately, the snow stacked up and the nasty voles that tunnel under the snow, also tunneled up and got into the protective wraps on our fruit trees. Especially hit were our apples, some of those trees were nearly 10 years old and bearing. Well, the critters girdled the trunks all the way around, which will kill those beautiful trees. We were sick. Will bought me three apples for Mother’s Day and David and his girlfriend bought two more. So for Mother’s Day, David pulled out the old, dead trees with the tractor, which was no easy feat. Let me tell you those trees had roots<\/em>! Which was a good thing while they lived. But now they’re dead and all those roots really made it a hard job getting them out.<\/p>\n

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The voles tunneled up under the snow and got into the protective tubes and screens.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Now we have five new trees after removing the dead trees.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After digging new holes, David and I planted all five new trees carefully and I watered them in well. (If you’d like to find out more about growing your own apples, check out my article, Apples on your homestead<\/em>, in Issue 143 of BHM<\/em> or in the Twenty-fourth Year Anthology<\/a>.) We still would like to find Prairie Magic and Honeygold trees but so far, we haven’t located them. We planted a Zestar, State Fair, Frostbite, and two Chestnut crabs (our favorite eating apple, although small).<\/p>\n

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This is the rusted out stock tank I’m fixing up to plant my Bliss Triumph potatoes in to avoid scab problems.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Boy, the food situation in this country continues to get worse and worse with commercial farms killing their laying chickens, butcher hogs, and now feedlot cattle due to the packing plants having COVID-19 outbreaks of severe proportions. Same with farmers plowing under their vegetable crops due to COVID-19 closing processing factories. This is really going to hit us smack in the butt on down the pike. So get what you can now and plant, plant, plant those gardens! Will’s friend in Washington just paid over $7 for an 18 pack of eggs! I went out and kissed our chickens right on the beaks. How lucky we homesteaders are! — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a crappy fall with heavy rain daily, turning to snow that stayed all winter. Unfortunately, the snow stacked up and the nasty voles that tunnel under the snow, also tunneled up and got into the protective wraps on our fruit trees. Especially hit were our apples, some of those trees were nearly 10 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,11,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8133"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8133"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8139,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8133\/revisions\/8139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}