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If you have a squirrel problem I'll lend you my barn cat. He routinely comes home with chipmunks and squirrels (among like 20 other things), and of course wants me to share in the spoils of the hunt.

That thing is the laziest animal in the world during the day and an utter killing machine at night.

Oh yeah, forgot my Apple orchard, peach, and cherries. All apples but a Macintosh and Northern Spy are the "Free" varieties, and those are awesome for yields without spray. I have problems with the trees becoming too laden with fruit and have to thin them around mid July or the trees will self-destruct. Last year we ran out of time and a whole bunch of apples went to waste. The year before, we canned more than a hundred quarts of sauce that didn't even need sugar added the apples were so sweet. Lots of other apple products made, to the point of being sick of apples.

I was worried about the fruit trees this year as a very warm mid-winter spell coaxed the native mason bees out in January, and it killed them all. I barely had any native pollinators in the fruit trees this year, and I quit European bee-keeping two years ago in frustration. We did wind up with good apple pollination on the later bloomers like the Free varieties, but the early old-fashion Macintosh has maybe 2 apples. The crab-apples look particularly sad as they over-did themselves on flowers in the spring, and no fertilization on the flowers which lead to hardly any leaves and a handful of crab-apples. One tree looks dead.

We also harvest maple sap in the spring and make syrup, this year we made 2 gallons in the old fashioned way... over a fire. Propane is too expensive so I went back to wood. It was a LOT of work. I could tap almost 4x as much, but that would be more than I could boil off with the equipment I have.

SuperSpy wrote:

If you have a squirrel problem I'll lend you my barn cat. He routinely comes home with chipmunks and squirrels (among like 20 other things), and of course wants me to share in the spoils of the hunt.

That thing is the laziest animal in the world during the day and an utter killing machine at night.

We just bury them in the garden...

The squash and tomato plants love it.

SuperSpy wrote:

He routinely comes home with chipmunks and squirrels (among like 20 other things), and of course wants me to share in the spoils of the hunt.

At least one theory of feline psychology holds that this behavior is typically seen in cat colonies when some members are failing to meet their own needs. IOW, your cat thinks you're a lousy hunter, but appreciates you enough not to let you starve to death.

I think the key lime knows that it's been talked about here - I just saw three small limes peaking through the (spiny) foliage, its first fruit ever. They will be used for cocktails, or possibly guacamole.

ludi wrote:

SuperSpy wrote:

He routinely comes home with chipmunks and squirrels (among like 20 other things), and of course wants me to share in the spoils of the hunt.

At least one theory of feline psychology holds that this behavior is typically seen in cat colonies when some members are failing to meet their own needs. IOW, your cat thinks you're a lousy hunter, but appreciates you enough not to let you starve to death.

This has always been my working theory. We had a cat growing up who was a rapacious hunter. Pretty much every day of the year, you could come home in the afternoon to find > 0 dead rodents on the driveway, with either a pristine whole one or a neatly removed organ thereof placed right on the steps to the door. She seemed to feel it was very important that we see and acknowledge the ones on the door, and I swear she was worried that we weren't eating them.