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Pack it up, pack it in. Let me begin!

It’s been a busy month. As usual I am stretched too thin. I am trying to launch a new web site that involves a staggering amount of data entry. I am trying to redo our 4th bedroom so it is no longer the “Room of Shame” and I’m trying to get some stuff done for work. Throw in the usual  farm things like filling the trough (the cattle knocked out the cord to the tank heater),  the hot tub (its leaking somewhere), and the wood furnace (its cold out), and fetching beef from the butcher (tasty meat!) and I am seriously jumping around. And yes, I know that filling the hot tub is not a traditional farm chore, but you’ve never had to keep the hose reel in the mud room so it won’t freeze because you need to add water to the hot tub (and/or the wood furnace) every two days.

I got more task than cops at a dunkin doughnuts! (as the song says)

The thing is, January is when they tell you – they being the folks who write books on living on farms – that January is for maintaining equipment and getting ready for cutting timber or collecting maple syrup or something. I added diesel to the tractor the other day, but that’s been about it.  At least, it smelled like diesel. Oh well. The tractor is still running, so it’s probably fine. In any case, people always assume that country life is at a slower pace than city life. No. That’s just the lack of a rush hour fooling you. We’re busy out here, too. Maybe busier. We’ve got PTA meetings  and soccer and most everything else, with the possible exception of avant garde art gallery openings, AND we’ve got livestock on top of that.

Think about that the next time you fantasize about moving to the country. Your hectic life could get MORE hectic. On the other hand, you could just decide to pay someone to rehab the 4th bedroom and save yourself a big hassle, but where’s the fun in that? Its so….city.

It was a beautiful fall weekend. The temperature was over 65 on Sunday. A perfect day to sit in the backyard and yak with friends while kids run around and play in the leaves. Sadly, one glance at the iPhone Weather Channel app told me what I knew in my heart: it was an all too short Indian Summer, lasting about 3 days from Saturday to Monday. I sighed a lot as I drove the tractor into the back to pick up a couple loads of cut wood.

That might be because as the sun was fading as I was finishing the wood, and I realized that it was the last warm, sunny Sunday for awhile, which in turn meant that I better step up my efforts to get some firewood laid in before the winter really starts to bite. Still, I like to think I was actually waxing sentimental about the fleeting moments of respite we have in a crazy world.

I have a confession to make. I couldn’t eat another pot roast leftover for dinner tonight. I chose Ramen Noodles instead. Creamy Chicken flavor. I think the words chicken and flavor were even in quotes. You know, as if to indicate that neither word was entirely truthful. I just couldn’t eat another tasty bite of Roast Thor. Three nights in a row is my limit. I promise I’ll make delicious Pot Roast Hash tomorrow morning for breakfast. And I’ll make Cath eat some, too, instead of her usual oatmeal with blueberries. I don’t want to get in trouble with the Beef Police, but dear Jesus there is only so many times I can have it. In a row.

Make no mistake, Thor has been one tasty dude. A little chewy, but definitely pleasing to the palate. Burgers. Steaks. Roasts. Stews. Sirloin tips. I gave the liver to my Mom, but I’ll bet it was tasty as well. To her. I think liver is too sweet. Oh, and I gave the tongue away as a birthday present. Or maybe it was an anniversary. Odd couple, really, but I digress. What I’m getting at is that as the Junior Cattleman of 34th Street, I sort of have an obligation to tout beef to everyone, all the time and even though I raise chickens, they’re egg layers for the most part whereas the cattle are beef cattle. BEEF! Do you understand? Ever seen them serve  chicken a la king at a luncheon for Cattlemen? I’ll bet there isn’t a Lee’s or  a KFC within 20 miles of Omaha.

Frankly, given that I have a steer, a bull and possibly a heifer about to take their first (and last) road trip I am not that concerned about “cheating”. I’m going to be up to my eyeballs in beef. We’re going to be serving beef f*ing pancakes for breakfast around here until I can close the freezer without sitting on it so maybe a little Ramen, or the Shrimp and Sausage Jambalaya I’m making tomorrow night won’t diminish me in the eyes of the beef community too much.

Well, it must be Raccoon season again. I’m getting lots of hits and emails on the “Pepsi of Death” pages. I’m also missing a lot of cat food in the mornings, which means I need to set out the live trap to catch the raccoon(s) or opossums that are eating it over night.

Live Trap

For those of you dealing with raccoons, I recommend a live trap. Don’t get the small squirrel sized ones. You’ll need the larger kind. They cost a few dollars more (about $50 if I recall), but they’re more likely to actually trap an adult raccoon or possum. I just leave a trail of cat food running into the cage and it usually lures them right in. When I trap them, its usually right next to a box of old stereo equipment that’s on their path from the barn to the cat food in the stable. Raccoons will grab ANYTHING that they can reach while in the cage, so I’ll need new cables if I ever want to use my old record player. Keep that in mind when you place your cage.

Once you’ve trapped a raccoon, you need to either kill it or let it go. If the former, there are a variety of methods I won’t go into here. Besides, it’s a LIVE trap. You don’t need to kill it. I recommend letting them go in the Allegan State Forest, but anywhere that’s more than 3 miles (some say 7 miles) away from your house should do.

Fly Bait and Cola

That said, the thing that everyone wants to know is: How to Make the Pepsi of Death(tm). Please keep in mind that, while effective, the fly bait in the Pepsi trick may be illegal in your neck of the woods. Or it may only be legal on your home property. Or maybe no one will care. Suffice to say that you need to be aware of these things before walking into the state fish and wildlife office  asking about fly bait to kill raccoons.

The Secret Recipe

Actually, there is no “recipe”. Just get some fly bait (it usually comes in a cardboard tube like Parmesan cheese only the contents are blue and granular) and some cola (it doesn’t have to be Pepsi). Get a cereal bowl that you never ever want to eat out of again. Cover the bottom of the bowl with fly bait. Really spoon it in there. Then, fill bowl with cola. Stir up with spoon you never ever want to eat with again. Set it out for raccoons. Find dead raccoon(s) about 3 feet from bowl in morning.

That said, there are refinements. One, I use a disposable plastic bowl. Two, I use a disposable plastic spoon. That’s not very refined, but this whole method is a glorious improvisation. This is the Git R Done school of problem solving here. You won’t find this in kit form.

Will your pets get into it? I don’t know. My barn cats don’t. My chickens don’t. For some reason, opossums don’t seem to either. Just raccoons. Maybe that’s the beauty of the Pepsi of Death solution.  Maybe I’m just really lucky. I don’t have any dogs, so I don’t know if they’ll go after this stuff or not. Please use caution in case your neighbor’s dog likes to wander over and drink Pepsi out of bowls you’ve left out. While it would be interesting to find out in a scientific, controlled experiment sort of way, you don’t want to be the one conducting that research!

The End

An old farmer taught me this method. It really does work. The raccoon will completely finish the whole thing. Then, they will expire less than 10 feet away. Some folks will be upset with you for killing a poor raccoon, but your kids will find a whole, dead raccoon less traumatic than finding gory chicken parts scattered all over the barn, so tell them you did it for the children.

By the way, dispose of the raccoon properly. I recommend burying the thing if you can. No sense in poisoning a turkey buzzard, too. At the very least, bag it up and throw it in the trash can. Make sure to warn your wife if she happens to be away on vacation so that she doesn’t come home a few days later and go to throw things out of her car when she gets home and opens the trash can to a couple of dead raccoons that have been ripening in the 90 degree sun for 3 days. Trust me. You don’t want this to happen. I just know that’s all.

When all is said and done, I prefer my live trap. It gets opossums and raccoons and is more humane. Unless you let them go in the parking lot at work and they run out into the street and get run over by a car. Trust me. You don’t want this to happen. I just know that’s all.

Ok. Much has happened since my last post. I became unemployed, briefly self-employed, then hired, then sent to New York, then busy as heck trying to make things happen at my new job. Long story short: I’m not sure what passes for normal anymore, but would like to get back to it.

In the meantime, I was finally talked into signing up for Facebook by several old friends from high school. Wow.  What an incredible time sink! It’s fun to catch up with everyone, but if I thought boardgamegeek.com was a time sink, Facebook takes the cake.  If you could ever figure out how to make money doing it, you could have a full time job just keeping up with your friends on Facebook. (Oh, and hello to all my friends on Facebook who got updates because I’m now replicating this blog on my Facebook Notes)

It’s also an amazing example of a Community of Choice. I’ve talked about that previously, but let me explain. Communities used to be largely a geographical thing. You lived in a neighborhood, went to a church, hung out with people from work, etc. All of these associations are defined by geographic proximity for the most part. Sure, you could be a part of a larger community – the Chicago “theater” community or the “Northside Advanced Squad Leader players”, but again, these communities are defined by their geography.

In the digital age, we aren’t bound by geography anymore. We can form Communities of Choice digitally. I don’t have to hang out with a boring neighbor, or discuss books with an idiot at Church. I can go online and email Holly Jones about books and get an interesting discussion of Wuthering Heights (as an example only! If Holly’s read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, then we can talk books) that I enjoy more than the physical discussion locally. That’s really cool. In my opinion, the Internet saved pen and pencil gaming because it gave a geographically distributed sub-community (gamer geeks) a way to connect and reinforce that community.

However, there is a down side. The more time we spend online, the more we disassociate from our geographical community. How many of us know when the township officers meet? Or if there even IS a book club at the local library? Communities of Geography atrophy as we spend more time participating in virtual Communities of Choice.

No big deal. Or is it? Next time you go vote (the ultimate expression of  a Geographic Community, really), check out the average age of the poll workers. Chances are that they’re all about 70. What happens when they die? Will Boomers and Gen X get out of the house and volunteer to spend a day working the polls to insure fair elections? I hope so. I haven’t volunteered to work the polls yet, but I have spent a lot of  time doing local politics. At most meetings, I was the only one who still had kids at home. My generational cohort was elsewhere. And don’t even get me started on the future of lodges like the Moose and the Elks. They’re doomed.

Our cities and suburbs didn’t get to be ugly on purpsose. We were just all busy elsewhere and didn’t pay attention. What do you mean there’s no sidewalks here? What do you mean there’s no mass transit? Why didn’t someone think of that before? Truth, we and (let’s be fair here) our parents were busy elsewhere. Next time you’re at DisneyWorld on Main Street USA, ask yourself what’s so special about that street. Is it the lack of cars? The architecture? The (pretend, in this case) multi-use building with shops down below and apartments up top? Our communities don’t look like that because it’s easier not to worry about it and cheaper to build a prefab Walgreen’s box.

Alright, rant off. In any case, think about your geographic community the next time you post on a friend’s Facebook Wall. Your physical world will appreciate it! Next week: back to goofy ass farm stuff.