Happy Farm Friday!
This week, 5th generation grower Hawkins Gebbers is here to share how he manages the mice population in our orchards during the winter. If left unaddressed, even a small population of mice can leave devastating effects on our crops come spring. Our growers are constantly in the orchards doing their best to prevent food waste & take care of their land responsibly. It’s not all sunshine & rainbows, but when you find JOY in the journey, it’s all worth it.
Video Transcript:
Hey it’s Hawk, I got you out here on an awesome day! When winter hits in the Orchards, Wildlife go crazy because they got to get food, and a lot of their natural sources are covered by the snow. So there’s a lot of wildlife that we love, there’s also little suckers that I don’t think anybody in this world like, that would be mice. I want to show you a little bit out here in the field of what mouse damage can do. They’ll get down here under the subnivian zone and not have any food to eat, and all the juice in the tree from the roots flows and this caiman layer on the outside, and so a little tiny mice when you get enough of them and no food, can damage a lot of trees. And if they eat all the way around this trunk it’ll die in the spring. This tree is completely eaten, it’s a sad deal but it’s just another part of farming and there’s not much we could do about it. We’re out here right now with probably a hundred guys, we’re walking around digging around trees finding hot spots and trying to get some control measures in place to stop the damage. This is Hawkins, and another Farm Friday out here in the winter
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