Squirrels again II
November 21, 2007
Yesterday I raced before the gathering snow clouds to resolve the issue of the squirrel-depleted seed supply in the new field. As you may recall I had listed four alternatives:
1. ignore the losses and plant more nuts;
2. fence the squirrels away from the seeds;
3. shoot or poison the little demons;
4. find a way to gross them out.
I had intended to report a glorious smear tactic in this space, one using a couple of tons of fresh, green goo. Turned out that wasn’t all that easy to do. First, every farmer I asked offered only well-aged, environmentally friendly compost — excellent fertilizer, but almost completely lacking in that essential “yuck” factor. When I refused one offer, planning to hold out for the gooey stuff, a neighbour pointed out that my spreader couldn’t contain the smelly stuff, unless I wanted to haul it in oil barrels and spread it with a bucket. That grossed me out and I abandoned the plan.
Then yesterday afternoon it warmed up after a heavy rain and the time for the assault had come. In the tradition of Sir Arthur Currie, it came down to choice #1, so I exhorted my basket of nuts to further efforts in the name of The Croskery Woodlot and sent them out in ever greater numbers to face their wiley foes. It was better than doing nothing, and I have lots of nuts. I’ll watch from the safety of the verandah and hope they survive.
Squirrels again!
November 17, 2007
The lead article in this edition of The Nuttery cites an European study http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061222093058.htm which claims that red squirrels have population explosions timed to take advantage of bountiful nut harvests. In other words they predict the boom year and have extra litters to exploit the resource. Scientists are still scratching their heads about how they do this, but there was no mistaking the huge increase in the number of red squirrels underfoot two summers ago. The population had settled down considerably by this fall’s stingy harvest.
Good riddance to them, and to chipmunks, too, if they would ever leave.
Over the last two years, on the other hand, my esteem for grey squirrels has increased steadily. While they may not be psychic like their red cousins, they show amazing adaptibility and a strong work ethic. I’ve already mentioned how they changed their harvesting tactics due to the demise of the old coyote and the presence of Zeke, the local red-tailed hawk. They stayed on the ground this fall until the day after Zeke flew south, and then they took to the trees with a vengeance.
Perhaps the current wolf became the target of a bored deer hunter, because now the greys have discovered my new walnut seeds. They started at the corner near the large trees and have worked their way into the field about forty feet. Another individual is picking the outer row off quite methodically, most likely using the posts and burned patches from Roundup to help him find the nuts. So it’s Elmer Fudd time again. My choices seem to be to:
1. ignore the losses and plant more nuts;
2. fence the squirrels away from the seeds;
3. shoot or poison the little demons;
4. find a way to gross them out.
Years ago I found the easiest way to get rid of fish entrails in the country was to find a convenient woodchuck hole and drop everything down the vertical chute. The chucks didn’t like this. They kept moving away until I ran out of holes within walking distance of my fish-cleaning bench.
When emptying ancient squirrel nests from the soffits of my mother’s house two summers ago I was struck by the cleanliness of the nesting material. Unlike mice, greys seem very fastidious in their personal habits. Maybe I can use this to my advantage.
If I can introduce a substance around the new plantings which the squirrels find repugnant, maybe they’ll leave the seeds alone.
Fresh cow manure would be my first choice as it is in good supply in my area, has benefits as a fertilizer, and is unlikely to attract racoons and coyotes in the manner of fish entrails. Mind you, neither of the above eat walnuts, and they have been known to munch on the occasional squirrel. Hmmm.
The outer two rows of the field seem to be the most vulnerable to predation. That would be seventy forks-full of green, gooey stuff. Will it work? Will it last? Of course it would be a lot quicker just to plant another fifty nuts to fill the gaps, but that didn’t work two years ago or last year, and the other patches still have few trees in the outer rows.
BMW charges $500 for a Recall Clearance Letter!
November 15, 2007
Update, 3 April, 2014
Tony Izatt found the following and cut and pasted it into an email. Without a source I’d recommend further research before that eBay bid.
As of July 9, 2008 the June 2, 2007 and November 26, 2007 costs and requirements of compliance by BMW have been dropped. DRL software changes can be programmed at a cost of about an hour’s worth of labour using the GT1 computer at BMW. It looks like the $3000-$4000 import cash grab has been quietly repealed. How this may effect any warranty claim on an previously unregistered US car in BMW Canada’s system is anybody’s guess. Certainly one can expect at least some level of resistance.
UPDATE: JULY 28, 2009
Check Stizzi’s two comments (at the end of the list) about getting a cheaper recall clearance letter. Unless BMW moves quickly to plug the leak, it seems as though the blockade against BMW imports into Canada may have broken.
May 4, 2008
Peter Coulter has sent a most interesting comment about a Mini Cooper S JCW 2006 currently held up at the Canada/US border, refused entry. You’ll find it at the bottom of the comment list (#11).
May 1, 2008
The following is an excerpt from Mira’s new comment at the bottom of the list:
I’ve contacted the dealership in Canada and the service department manager looked up my vehicle’s model/year and said that two modifications are needed: 1. the daytime running lamp has to be changed and 2. the controler has to be changed because of the instrument cluster. #1would cost me $200. and #2 would cost me $1,310.00. Add $500 for the recall letter and another $300 for labour…
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For a walnut blog this is way off-topic but it’s interesting, so here goes:
On http://hghosted.cn/?cat=5 (DEAD LINK, AS OF AUGUST 22, 2008) I found this excerpt from an open-line discussion between Lindsay Duffield, CEO of BMW Canada, and a number of questioners:
*Ramsay Orr from Burlington, Ont. writes: *BMW has recently introduced a new policy that requires Canadians to go through their Canadian BMW dealer network in order to obtain a ‘Recall Clearance Letter’ for any U.S. cars Canadians are importing to Canada. This letter is required by the Registrar of Imported Vehicles (RIV) in order to allow Canadians to license their vehicles in Canada. BMW Canada’s dealers charge a flat rate of $500 for this letter, and have issued a company mandate to their U.S. dealers telling them not to release these letters (which they do for free) to Canadians under any circumstances in order to force Canadians to pay this fee to the Canadian dealerships. I’d like to hear Lindsay’s comments on why this fee is being imposed by BMW when all of the other car companies provide the recall clearance letter at no charge?
*Lindsay Duffield, BMW Canada: *Thanks for your question. Yes, we do charge a reasonable fee to protect any customer bringing in a U.S. vehicle. Since we are agreeing to honour the warranties on these vehicles, it is very important that we know that they are compliant with all Canadian regulations, have any outstanding recalls completed and thus are completely warrantable in Canada. There are a great number of flood, hurricane, bio-hazard and write-off vehicles in the used market, and our compliance program ensures that the car is clean, safe and warrantable. We’ve already had instances of vehicles imported with forged VINs (Vehicle Identification Numbers).
For $500, which includes a Carfax vehicle history and complete inspection by an authorized Canadian BMW retailer, this is very good value. RIV was accepting U.S. letters of compliance, but we don’t believe that does enough to protect the buyer — it is like the seller of a house providing the home inspection report to the buyer. Hmmm!
So bottom-line, even though a customer will get better overall value and service from their Canadian BMW retailer, if they do import a vehicle from the U.S., we really want to make sure the customer is getting the vehicle they thought they were getting and that it is warrantable by us in Canada.
Uh, Where Do I Put The Front Plate?
November 6, 2007
Everything went fine this afternoon as I completed final stages of the transaction for the Tacoma until I tried to attach the front plate. Uh, where does it go? There are no holes.
To back up a bit, the truck breezed through the etest and safety check at Canadian Tire this morning. This afternoon at the Ontario License Bureau the lady methodically processed my documents, and then charged P.S.T. on the amount on the bill of sale, not an arbitrary figure concocted by their computer, as in the manner of domestic sales. This sounded very good to me.
When she handed the plates across the counter I realized that the thing had actually worked. There was no Lucy van Pelt waiting to yank the football away from me at the last instant.
So I put the sticker on a plate and attached it to the back bumper. No problem so far. But the front was another matter. No place to put it. This called for an expert, so I headed to the shop of Dave Matthews, body shop owner and restoration expert. Dave looked at the situation and shared a laugh with his staff. Stickers apparently go on the front of a commercial vehicle, not the back. That his former English teacher would fail to read a simple set of instructions caused him a good deal of unseemly mirth.
Once he got his breath back, Dave ran his fingers over the front bumper and miraculously produced four little indentations in the plastic cover. Out came a drill, in went the holes, and on went the correct plate. I tried to pay for his time. His reply? “Go hit a deer!”
Here all these years I’d thought he hadn’t paid attention in class, and now he gives me a lesson in irony with a bit of nemesis for homework.
The Registrar of Imported Vehicles and You
November 3, 2007
Note: For the other articles in this series, please click “Importing a Tacoma to Canada” on the column to your right.
Quite a few hits on this site are from people bringing cars from the U.S.A. into Canada, so here’s an update which may be of benefit.
I have hit a snag with the R.I.V. The instructions for preparing the documentation for the submission to R.I.V are readily available on the Net, but nowhere did I read advice on how to get the Recall Status statement from the company, Toyota in this case, to the appropriate file at R.I.V.
The guy at Canadian Customs checked my documents and wrote a couple of others, took my money for the application and G.S.T., and told me that I’d receive the rest from R.I.V. in ten days. No mention was made of the letter from Toyota clearing my truck of recalls. It was in the envelope with everything else, but he didn’t ask and I didn’t give it to him.
After ten days a letter from R.I.V. informed me that the application couldn’t proceed until they have received the recall declaration. I faxed it off, asked for the inspection certificate by return email, and settled in to wait another ten days.
If I had known enough to get that declaration of recall status included with the package sent to R.I.V. from Canadian Customs, I’d have an Ontario plate on my truck by now. Live and learn.
UPDATE: November 5th, 2007
I waited and checked my email faithfully, never giving up hope, and today the inspection form arrived by regular mail. The local CTC service manager completed the inspection in ten minutes at no charge, then faxed the form back to the R.I.V. The lesson here? The R.I.V. personnel mean well, and perhaps don’t pay much attention to what we ask, only to what we need.
Tomorrow CTC will do the safety and emissions checks.
Planting on a Drumlin
October 31, 2007
The new walnut field lies on the southern slope of the drumlin known locally as Young’s Hill. The rows run thirty-five stations down the hill, or 680 feet from first to last. So far I have marked sixteen of these rows and have planted all but the two closest to the woodlot.
I find an interesting variety in soil textures as I plant my way down the slope. The top has the usual sandy loam, relatively soft after a few recent rains, but prone to lumpiness from a high proportion of stone to soil. The bottom third of each row has clay which seems to suck the implements and the seeds down into it. A band about sixty feet wide in the middle of the slope seems very hard. Grass grows less readily on this band than on the till above and the clay below, though it still produces a decent crop. But the soil hasn’t loosened after the rains in the manner of the other two types. It seems closely-grained and largely stone-free, but it is very hard to poke a hole for a walnut, and even more difficult to force the nut down a bit further with the planting stick.
On this countour line sixty feet west the best walnuts on the property begin and continue along this part of the slope all the way to the end of the drumlin. I’ll be very interested to see how the new seeds make out in comparison to those planted in the same rows above and below.
Yesterday I spotted the new rodent control system at the farm. He stood in the middle of a field and watched me drive up to the house. When I stopped he bounded away like a coyote, even turning at the fence to look back, but I think this guy’s part German shepherd. I saw him up close along the road the other day and his tail shows a hint of curl up at the end. He has grown a great deal since the week before the plowing match when he seemed to be underfoot most of the time. Scat around the field shows that he’s eating a lot of squirrels and mice, so I just hope he can find enough food over the winter for that huge frame. He should be a valuable asset to a walnut farm for many years to come if he can survive.
BTW: Apparently my email address is hard to find. Please send comments to rodcros at webruler dot com. Feedback is welcome.
Daytime Running Lights
October 22, 2007
The Internet is full of discussions among car owners about DRLs, as they are known among the acronym set. American truck owners desperately want to disconnect their DRLs for reasons that would boggle the mind. My favourite was the Toyota owner who waits for the train in the early morning with his engine running to keep the truck warm. He doesn’t want to disturb the suburban residents near the station with his lights. Another serious off-roader worries that he will blind the track marshalls if he flashes his lights in their eyes at a critical point on the course. About one in ten fears that the increased use from daylight running will wear his lights out. Two contributors seriously discussed the risk of frying their trucks’ wiring by operating their lights in daytime. Many worry that their V8s will get worse gas mileage from producing all that electricity.
Canadian owners, on the other hand, desperately want to find out how to install the DRLs so that they can register their new vehicles before the temporary plates run out. Most will be happy merely to pass the test, but the owners of Honda S2000 models want the ultimate in DRL-cool, the 60% dimming effect. This seems to require a great deal of experimentation and not a few mishaps involving lost high beams, if one is to believe today’s posts.
The Hamsar module’s instructions called for the green wire to be fastened with cable ties next to a spark plug wire to draw impedence from it and activate the module. My truck has no spark plug wires, just little solid state things sitting where the plugs should be. I asked for help on two Toyota forums. None was forthcoming except for one moderator who stated that any module which tried to take power from a spark plug should definitely not be installed. In desperation I asked the readers of Yesterday’s Tractors — a collection of uncommonly smart and helpful people.
In a few minutes a guy named Vern sent me an e-form for a customer inquiry from Hamsar, the Markham company which produces the DRL control unit. The response came inside fifteen minutes. Caroline, the company rep, suggested that I connect the green wire to any circuit activated by the ignition switch. A careful examination of the instructions revealed that yes, hard-wiring the green wire to the oil pressure sender would also do the job.
A brave dive under the truck turned up the missing oil pressure sender, and I was even able to track it up to the surface of the engine where I exposed the green and yellow wire after knawing through three levels of protection. The downloaded Toyota manual gave me wire colours and locations. Mind you, it took a week of reading.
All that remained was to hook the thing up. The little clips which come from Hamsar are dreadfully dull. I broke the first one without denting the headlight wire. Fortunately I had several of the splicing clips left over from a trailer-repair job, and they went right on.
Bet held the light as I did my usual chaotic wiring job and then held her breath as I touched the green wire to the battery terminal. The lights all came on. I disconnected. They went off four seconds later. It works! I clipped the green wire to the oil pressure sender wire and fired her up. Oil pressure light still works. The lights come on by themselves as soon as the truck starts.
Flushed with success and telling myself it only has to work once for the inspection, I quickly stuffed the DRL unit down behind the battery and started up a couple of more times. High beams work normally. All lights come on at full intensity — had I bought a more sophisticated Hamsar unit they’d only come on at 60%, but this one was on the shelf, and what did I know?
Anyway, it works. The truck is now ready for the next step once the package comes from the Registrar of Imported Vehicles. Cool!
It’s Roundup Time Again.
October 21, 2007
In preparation for the IPM, Bill’s second cut of the 20 acre field below the house left it looking like a golf course. With about 4000 seed walnuts sitting in the gazebo, I decided I’d better get a grid lined out on it while the getting was good.
The question was how to mark out a large field? My earlier efforts had made do with a 240 foot mason’s string with knots tied every ten or twenty feet. This system had some problems, most relating to the elastic properties shared between mason’s string and bungee cord.
I needed something long enough to go across the field in one length, only with zero stretch. Turned out it was waiting coiled in the garage the whole time: my dad’s electric fencer tape. This wire-reinforced plastic tape proved highly visible, easy to handle, strong and resistant to tangling. So I stretched the length from fence to fence. How would I put the markings on it? Remembering my days as a student surveyor, I conscripted my mother as chain-man, equipped her with a ski pole and twenty feet of tape, the other end attached to my aerosol sprayer’s handle. It worked like a charm. Whenever Mom came to a mark sprayed on the ground and the tape, she stuck in the pole. Stopped, I sprayed. Thirty-five stations later and the tape had its distance markings.
The rest of the layout went easily as long as the golf cart and a driver were available to get me from one side of the field up the steep hill to the other. After two mornings of leisurely work we had fifteen rows marked with paint and posts, so it was time for Roundup. That went on this morning, so I’ll wait about two weeks and plant the walnuts.
I read somewhere that a fork-full of fresh cow manure per hill will keep the squirrels away from planted nuts. By then Bet should be on holidays and I’ll conscript her to drive the spreader while I follow along and fork the fertilizer.
Rod and Charlie’s Excellent Adventure II
October 21, 2007
The following day dawned clear and cool, perfect driving weather. I followed Charlie from wherever we were out onto the highway and drove north to a breakfast place. I don’t know if it was Claire or Charlie who suggested the turnoff he chose, but we ended up in a lush college town with wide streets, beautifully landscaped parks, and a worn, if cozy local eatery for breakfast.
The most interesting thing about this town was the land development on the outskirts. It was groomed like a golf course, but had a sign advertising “Lots: 1 – 94 Acres For Sale.”
Then we drove some more until we hit Buffalo. A right turn and we were on to Syracuse, though the scenery was quite delightful on this leg. North to Watertown and I was feeling the drain of a weekend of driving. The truck chugged along very well, though.
At Watertown by prearrangement we left the truck at the local U-Haul franchise just off 81 at Exit #48. The owner rents garage space to store cars for the 72 hour wait period required by Homeland Security before a vehicle may be exported from the U.S.
An obliging U.S. Customs agent let me drop off the bill of sale and title for the Tacoma, so home we went, happy to have gotten this far on the project.
Three days later my mother drove chase car for the last leg of the trip. Just because she hasn’t been across a border in fifty years was no reason not to make the trip, in her opinion. Away we went in her CRV. The freeway and the tall bridges were no problem for Mom. It turned out even stern-faced customs agents showed their human side with her. We breezed through the importation process and the truck arrived safely at its new home.
The most interesting thing about the last leg of the trip was the assortment of golden eagles and hawks perched on steel fence posts along the edge of Hwy 81. You’d think posts that narrow would be uncomfortable for such large birds, but there they sat.
the Walnut Diary 