Mouse Wars, (Or Are They Birds?) of 2010

You labor over these guys for months and months, all the while trusting that they will, someday, bear fruit -- in the truest sense of the phrase.

But, then something, you're not sure what, decides to make them an early snack instead.

About a week ago, I noticed the heads of some of our tomato plants had gone, well, missing.



Mice! I thought. So, I surrounded the fortress with mouse traps. See how much good that did. Here we are a few days later:



At least 100 tomato plants, quite a few peppers and some of my precious basil are gone and no evidence of what did it.

Then, a few days later, the squash got it:



I've now started covering all the plants at night, thinking, maybe it's a bird? My newly transplanted snapdragons outside met the same fate and out there, there were no signs of mice or deer or any land-walking creature. But, in the greenhouse, there was one little clue:



And, would a mouse pull up a tomato plant and drop it some 10 feet away, like so?:



Whatever it is, it is really screwing with my chi. At first, I tried acceptance: "There's nothing we can do. This is nature. We work with it, and we work against it."

Then, after a few more plants lost their heads, I turned to pure rage. I even had a fantasy at one point of punching a little mouse in the face. Oooh. That would feel soooo good.

But, now comes the tough stage, the "universe-doesn't-want-us-to-farm" stage. The headless plants are only part of it. The weeds, the mice, the dying turkeys (it's been a rough spring for our young flock) -- I see them all now as signs telling us that this whole thing is ridiculous and futile.

This is what a cold spring can do to a farmer. The cold air and lack of much growth in your field breeds self-doubt. For months, you labor and get nothing in return. You don't eat from that field, you don't see your customer's face when she picks up a bright green head of lettuce. You're alone in the greenhouse for days, without anyone reminding you that you're doing something important. It's just so easy to forget why you do what you do after a cold, dreary spring.

But, hope is on its way. The sun is coming out more often and this weekend is our first farmers' market in Great Falls. While we won't have much -- tomato plants, pepper plants, spinach and a few herbs -- it will be great to see familiar faces and remind ourselves that people care about what we're doing, even if the mice, the birds and the weeds don't.