I rebaited the traps under the sink about 30 minutes ago, and just got Mouse #5. I heard the snap and some banging around under the sink, so I got up to take a look. Field mice with their big buggy eyes are not anywhere near as cute as the little white fluffball that was the Princess' pet last year. Just my opinion.
In other news, we had a local man from a nearby farm stop by to see if we'd be interested in renting our back fields to him. He already plants the adjacent neighbors', and the land across the river. Nice thing about him working the neighbor's field is that he can access ours from there, rather than needing a 16' wide road all the way through our property to access our tillable land. We're hoping we can work out a trade, since he has a backhoe and we need some drainage work done. It would be the usual corn, beans, wheat rotation most of the farmers around here are doing. He'd have to clear all those scrub trees the previous owner let come up in the field, since she wasn't planting anything, and didn't lease out the land. Better him than me, I guess. I have enough on my plate with the hoop house, the kitchen garden, and the orchard, etc. Not to mention the chickens. Anyway, I was glad he stopped by.
Keep catching those mice! Will the farmer give you some of his crop for pasture payment? I would love to have some fresh vegetables to can up or freeze. We used to lease our pasture to people with cows. Problem was, cows are hard on fencing the the cow owners don't want to fix the fences properly when their cows ruin them. I think I would like food growing in my pasture vs. cows.
ReplyDeleteNope - It's feed corn, which we don't need (yet), I already have my soybean seed for the garden this year, and we can't eat the wheat on a gluten-free diet. So it's currently a cash arrangement, although we may end up giving the cash right back if he'll bring his backhoe over and do some work near the house and barn. That's assuming he has the time. He farms 2700 acres, of which he owns 270. The rest are in various places around the township. I can't deal with renting out the pasture areas until I fix the fences, and I'm more inclined to just run a steer on it for our own use for now. The barn needs work, too, before I'd let anyone else into it. They might fall through the loft floor the way it is now.
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