holy batman! I just bought a farm!!

[uforgot]

I am flying to Beaverton on Tuesday. Is that close? By the way, I live 5 miles from Bland, Mo. Could be a sister city with Boring!

[smilingcat]

I am flying to Beaverton on Tuesday. Is that close? By the way, I live 5 miles from Bland, Mo. Could be a sister city with Boring!

It's about 40 minutes from Beaverton. It went into escrow about 4 days ago. So its not officially mine for another 26 days or so. Yes its a 30 day escrow.

[smilingcat]

OMG!!!

I was talking to the neighbor today. And she informs me that we have elk herd nearby. Well sort of knew that with elk trampling down about an acre of my field about a week ago. She said there are whole lot of bunnies. What are you going to do with them? I don't have a heart to kill'em. But I can string up portable electric fence and few other things to keep them out. Also have my Great Pyrenees, Holly Spirit Bear and an Australian Shepherd named Austin. Austin is still a pup of only 4 month or so. They can keep the bunnies out without killing them.

Then the coyotes and down the line she went. Last one was bit out of order. She said, we have a neighborhood BLACK BEAR!!! AHHH WHAATTTT!!??? You must be joking??

Nope. The big paw prints much bigger than my hand must belong to the bear and not a cougar. Well that's going to put a wrinkle into having an apiary and a redesign of a chicken coop. Also need to bear proof my trash cans.

Honestly, my farm isn't located in middle of nowhere land. It's less than hour from downtown Portland Or. We have municiple water for the house. Natural gas and not LP in the back yard...

But the most devastating thing I found so far have been Brown Marmorated stink bug. Found literally hundreds of them around my farm house!! http://www.stopbmsb.org/

So why did I decided to farm?

[OakLeaf]

Ugh, what a litany of pests! I didn't even realize the stinkbugs had crossed the Mississippi yet, let alone made it that far west. We only really started having a problem with them in Ohio last year (and last year's very cold winter actually cut this year's population).

I'm thinking you'll want permanent electric fence with all those big critters around ... bigger investment and more work to begin with, but a lot less work in the long run. (OTOH, rabbits will go right underneath electric fence ... you'd have to put the bottom strand so low that you wouldn't have time for anything but weedwacking, and then two more strands super close on top of that ... nothing but chicken wire keeps them out of my garden, but your dogs should be enough to keep the rabbits out as long as you can keep the large predators away from your dogs.)

Sorry you're having to deal with all this stuff right off the bat. But then on the other hand, if it's dealt with right off the bat you're less likely to have big crop destruction one after another after another ... Keeping my fingers and toes crossed for you!