It’s harvest time: the squirrels are in the walnuts and the snakes are in the string beans
Dan Brawner
October 03, 2007
A week or so ago I noticed my walnut trees had produced a bumper crop. Today, the walnuts are all gone. I guess the squirrels know when it’s harvest time. I had been hoping to make a deal with the squirrels, giving them all the native black walnut trees so I could have the easy-cracking English walnuts I planted for myself. But it seems squirrels don’t make deals.
It was the same story with my hazelnuts. One day, the chipmunks decided the crop was ready to pick and the next day, all the hazelnuts had vanished, presumably into little chipmunk storage bins, safe from the elements...and me.
The spirit of harvest is now in the air as combines, large as Sherman tanks, lumber down side streets, awesome in their picking power, gathering respect from mere motorists. Corn wagons, groaning with their contribution to this year’s record harvest, wallow out of dense, dry fields, laden with countless gold kernels, as pristine and indistinguishable as coins.
Experts say the corn harvest could reach 13.3 billion bushels this fall, thanks to a favorable growing season and the nation’s insatiable thirst for government-subsidized ethanol. As much as 27 percent of the total crop will be diverted to fuel production, resulting in somewhat higher costs for animal feed and therefore, human feed.
Corn is in everything including car tires, chewing gum, yarn, soda sweeteners, beer, shoe polish, cardboard, printing ink, crayons, explosives and disposable diapers. Todd Davidson, a plant biologists at the University of California, Berkeley can test a strand of human hair to determine the amount of corn in a person’s diet. Davidson told CNN that around 70 percent of the carbon from the test typically comes from corn. “We’re like walking corn chips,” Davidson said, “because we have a very, very large fraction of corn in our diets.”
Curiously, the corn that is in so much of what people eat apparently is of little interest to mice. A mouse will eat old sneakers, rancid cheese, even other mice. I have a corn-burning stove and if I spill a little of the genetically-modified corn that comprises the bulk of humans’ diet on the ground, it stays there until I clean it up. Mice don’t consider it food.
But mostly, you can’t keep animals out of our food supply. Last year, the Schneider family from Riverside, Iowa opened a can of string beans and was surprised to find the head of a snake, the size of a golf ball. When Amy Schneider brought the matter to the attention of the Iowa City Cub Foods grocery where she bought the can of snake ‘n beans, they offered her some coupons for the same products. She declined. Twenty cents off a can of string beans hardly seems proper compensation, especially if it contains, you know, the rest of the snake.
It was the same story with my hazelnuts. One day, the chipmunks decided the crop was ready to pick and the next day, all the hazelnuts had vanished, presumably into little chipmunk storage bins, safe from the elements...and me.
The spirit of harvest is now in the air as combines, large as Sherman tanks, lumber down side streets, awesome in their picking power, gathering respect from mere motorists. Corn wagons, groaning with their contribution to this year’s record harvest, wallow out of dense, dry fields, laden with countless gold kernels, as pristine and indistinguishable as coins.
Experts say the corn harvest could reach 13.3 billion bushels this fall, thanks to a favorable growing season and the nation’s insatiable thirst for government-subsidized ethanol. As much as 27 percent of the total crop will be diverted to fuel production, resulting in somewhat higher costs for animal feed and therefore, human feed.
Corn is in everything including car tires, chewing gum, yarn, soda sweeteners, beer, shoe polish, cardboard, printing ink, crayons, explosives and disposable diapers. Todd Davidson, a plant biologists at the University of California, Berkeley can test a strand of human hair to determine the amount of corn in a person’s diet. Davidson told CNN that around 70 percent of the carbon from the test typically comes from corn. “We’re like walking corn chips,” Davidson said, “because we have a very, very large fraction of corn in our diets.”
Curiously, the corn that is in so much of what people eat apparently is of little interest to mice. A mouse will eat old sneakers, rancid cheese, even other mice. I have a corn-burning stove and if I spill a little of the genetically-modified corn that comprises the bulk of humans’ diet on the ground, it stays there until I clean it up. Mice don’t consider it food.
But mostly, you can’t keep animals out of our food supply. Last year, the Schneider family from Riverside, Iowa opened a can of string beans and was surprised to find the head of a snake, the size of a golf ball. When Amy Schneider brought the matter to the attention of the Iowa City Cub Foods grocery where she bought the can of snake ‘n beans, they offered her some coupons for the same products. She declined. Twenty cents off a can of string beans hardly seems proper compensation, especially if it contains, you know, the rest of the snake.