How to blackmail a mulberry tree
July 4, 2013
It was just a little shrub growing at the side of the garden, a bit in the way but not too bad. All summer I had avoided it, then one day the mower reached out and flattened it. Oops. Oh well, there are lots of mulberries, both red and white, growing wild at the farm.
But it popped back up, looking horrid. So I backed over it to put it out of its misery. Further mangled, it doggedly resisted the diesel mower’s three spinning blades and rose tentatively from the sod again. I left it for a forthcoming session with the hand-held brush cutter, but then forgot the thing.
A year later it surprised me with a handful of extremely sweet mulberries which were a pale mauve colour.
I’d never seen mulberries of that mauve colour, ripe or unripe.
There’d been a large white mulberry near the house until I cut it up and burned it as firewood. It blocked my mother’s view of the road and it confused me because there was no way to tell visually if the abundant fruit was green, ripe, or spoiled: all were a pale greenish white. Of course the more common red mulberries are white when formed, progressing to bright red and then to shiny black when ready to eat. Simple. Birds, dogs, raccoons and humans love them.
This year the little tree in the upper garden is loaded with berries ranging from white to black, but the pale mauve fruit are already sweet enough to eat, and actually taste better than the fully ripe deep purple ones. The tree seems to be going all-out to prevent another visit from the mower.
Perhaps stress motivates a fruit tree.
With Emily-the-Wolf absent, this yearling fawn has decided she likes our orchard for twice-daily feeding sessions. She let Bet take a few shots yesterday.
More trouble with Daphne
July 4, 2009
In an email retired MNR guy Brian Anderson suggested I protect my walnut seedlings by putting out a blood-scented bait to scare the deer out of the field. Opening day of bass season produced a supply of fish carcasses, so I placed them around the field, producing immediate results: within a couple of hours the fish-heads were widely dispersed as though a litter of coyote puppies had played with them. From then on I saw no more damage to the seedlings in the back field.
Then came the episode with the spotted fawn E. T.’s visit to our orchard last Sunday. Yesterday morning over my pancakes I watched E.T. and Daphne’s Mom grazing in the neighbour’s soybean field, about six hundred yards away. Fine. No problem.
This morning after a heavy rain I looked over the walnut fields on the way to the woodlot, then settled into a casual mushroom tour on the Ranger. I picked three different types of oysters, one in quantity, so now I need to determine if the things are edible.
On the way back to the house I looked down into the new 5 acre patch of seedlings, and there was Daphne, cheerfully munching on one of the priceless blight-resistant plants the butternut people entrusted to my care. Yelling and waving my Tilley, I gunned the Ranger to the rescue across the 700 feet to the culprit and her victim.
Daphne was not impressed by my wild west routine. She simply retreated into the tall hay about a hundred feet, turned and stared blankly at me. I stopped by tree #WP92-23 and shut the machine off. If you’re interested, #23 is located at
N44.39.720′
W76.13.561
441′
She raised her eyes and ears above the hay, looked at me and my Ranger, and slowly started to walk toward us. Again, she walked up to about forty feet from me, licked her lips, chewed her cud a bit, and looked quite frustrated that I had put myself between her and her breakfast. It doesn’t seem to matter to Daphne that the whole world around her is green with potential food for a deer at this time of year. When she sets her taste buds on one particular tree, that’s the one she intends to eat.
She tried several circles downwind of the Ranger. My one-sided conversation with her seemed more to intrigue than frighten her. Growing a bit tired of the standoff, I tried dismounting from the Ranger to give her a scare. She just did her gallop-into-the-tall-hay bit, then turned around and returned, tail held high, and gleaming in the sunlight from the dew on her flanks.
She’s a beautiful animal, but I couldn’t notice how, while walking in silhouette in the hay, she has moves a lot like a young Michael Jackson in his early dance steps. That jerky, but fluid step?
So we’ve established that Daphne has a very strong will, fixates on a particular plant that she wants to eat at that time, has some decent dance moves, and that she’s also not very afraid of me. The fact remains that she’s poised to damage a priceless bit of the Canadian genetic heritage, and the only way I could get her to give up on her breakfast in time for me to return for mine, was by running after her across a five-acre field until she eventually gave up and ducked into the woodlot to await my departure.
I guess the only solution will be to bait the butternut seedlings with fish heads and hope she develops a taste for Glen Baker’s soybeans. Time to go fishing. Now that’s a plan. Thanks, Brian.
UPDATE: July 11/2009
Another encounter with Daphne went somewhat better for both of us. When I came upon her she was firmly ensconced in the middle of my neighbour’s wheat field. She looked up at my approach, froze, and stared me down until I grew bored and drove away. Hey, she’s not eating my nut trees, so what’s the harm? Hope you enjoy the wheat, Daphne.
The trouble with Daphne
June 21, 2009
Daphne came into our lives when she was abandoned the day her mother gave birth to a new fawn behind the barn. The yearling white-tail was left to wander, and she seems to have fixed upon the walnut field next to the woods as her new home.
This has done no good for the seedlings. For a hundred-foot radius from Daphne’s bed, the taller seedlings have been trimmed back to the bark and the shorter walnuts have had their tops nipped off. For some reason Daphne prefers her meals served in the open, and from knee to shoulder height. The earlier leaves from a hundred young butternut trees kept her happy until the walnuts came on, but now she won’t be separated from her favourite food for long.
Take this morning, for example. In a rage yesterday I had chased her clean out of the field. I drove back this morning to see if this moment of uncharacteristic energy on my part had had any effect. No. Daphne greeted me with wide eyes and perked ears, but she didn’t stop munching on a tender walnut seedling until I drove up close to her. Then she moved away. I expected her to pick up my scent, flip the tail, snort and run away, hopefully to the other side of someone else’s woods. But no. She walked away about a hundred feet, then turned and started to work her way back toward me, bobbing her head from side to side and doing that alert-stupid thing deer are so good at.
O.k. It’s the running engine. I turned off the key, fully expecting this to produce panic and flight. Nope. On she came. About forty feet from the Ranger she suddenly took flight – until she thought better of it after a couple of leaps. Then she threw up her tail and dashed in a semi-circle around me and towards the woods. But she turned and came back to take up station on the other side of me. Obviously my vehicle and I were occupying the very spot on this earth where she most wanted to be, and would we please leave?
She made a couple of more attempts to crowd me out of her territory, jumping, stamping her feet, and letting out these little snorts before setting off on another hell-for-leather rush to the other side of the Ranger where she started up her inquiring looks again. With seven hundred walnut trees in this field, why does she particularly want to eat this one? And it’s almost all gone.
Eventually she gave up her attempt to frighten me off and stepped over the fence and behind a large tree to await my departure.
Daphne’s rapidly growing into a beautiful animal. Her tail’s still not fully-fluffed, but she’s the lovely tan colour of a fully-grown deer in summer coat now. We’d actually love to have her around if it weren’t for the way she Hoovers my walnuts. I have spent three summers planting, mowing, watering and coddling these little trees, and she mows through them at an incredible rate.
Even camping in the field won’t work if she keeps coming back to her spot to put me out. I remember two summers ago a young coyote had his bed in another field near the woods. I nearly ran over him with a riding lawn mower one morning while on my way to trim around a line of spruces. Young fellow was a very sound sleeper. The coyote pup, as well, deeply resented my intrusion into his territory, and when I later mowed the field, he spent the day circling to try and find a safe way back to his bed, his favourite bones, and a rubber chew toy.
But he was a coyote, and defined by society as a destructive varmint, even though he caught and ate mice everywhere he went and did his best to keep the squirrels and chipmunks honest. No fate is too terrible for the local coyote. Poison, traps, grayhounds, even running down with vehicles – all are acceptable. Daphne, on the other hand, is protected by law as a natural resource, even though she is cutely chewing her way through my livelihood. Now which one is the varmint?
the Walnut Diary 