Well they are back, just when you thought the coast was clear and everything was working just fine, a nasty surprise this evening upon entering the top field of the giornaledibarganews vegetable garden – many of the freshly sprouting and a heavily pampered potato plants were no longer there. In fact, they are still there but they were shrivelled, lying on their sides and absolutely no use to man or beast. Intruders during the night have dug up many of the potatoes, sunk their teeth into them, gnawed round the edges and then moved on to the next one and repeated the process.
For some reason the electric fence had not done its job and they have managed to browse quite happily in and then out of the field. Judging by the size of the holes they had dug and the tooth marks in the potatoes these were not the usual culprits – the porcupines ( Intruders in 2009 and again here) but instead something a little smaller.
This means that they have been able to to pass under the bottom wire of the electric fence without touching it. It looks as though I will have too put in a third wire around the potato field in an attempt to shock these new hungry beasts back to where they came from.
It’s very disheartening as the plants were growing well and looking good for this season. Let the battle commence. Now if I could just find out what animals they actually are…. rats, stotes, weasels, small badgers, dwarf wildebeest ?
The other main problem this week has been the lack of water to irrigate the fields. An unseasonably dry spell over the past few weeks has meant that the small stream which runs along the side of the two fields has gradually been drying up – not entirely, but definitely far less water has been running down the valley.
The problem became more serious as other people further upstream started irrigating their vegetable gardens leaving precious little water for the last place at the bottom of the valley.
Luckily, friends in Tiglio, lent me a couple of 1000 Litre water containers, which using a very crafty siphoning system, I have been managing to fill from the stream during the night when the water seems to run a bit more freely.
