Ammi Midstokke: Maintaining biodiversity on a socialist homestead

It’s that time of the year when I start perusing seed catalogues and planning how I’ll nourish the ground squirrel population in my neighborhood.

Because I care for the health and wellness of the whole community, it’s important to me that I select a variety of culinary delights for the local wildlife.

I don’t just want them to be healthy, after all. I want them to be happy, free from student loan debt and confident in their own ability to contribute to the productivity of the homestead.

So far, they seem to be limited to tunneling through rows and trimming the chard down to nubs. My children, not being fans of chard, are satisfied with this arrangement, but I have hopes of one day actually making a meal from a garden harvest. The only thing I’ve been able to consistently bring inside from my garden has been deer ticks.

Every year, despite the challenges, I make some kind of gardening progress with small successes here and there. I can tell because the ground squirrel population is growing and continuing to look well-fed.

Last year, my beau installed an irrigation system and, by September, the weeds were absolutely lush with growth and blossoms. This produced the perfect amount of shade for the squirrels, who were then safe to lounge in the afternoon sun and through owl hunting hours without risk of becoming prey.

While we went to sleep with bellies full of store-bought lettuce, at least we knew the squirrels were safe. I imagined them down in the garden like little furry Bacchuses, eating fermented apples with their swollen guts jiggling as they laugh and wiped tomato seeds off their lips.

I don’t want them getting fat, though (what with rising costs of squirrel health care). In the interest of keeping them physically active, I adopted two feral cats last year. We may all get toxoplasmosis, but the neighborhood rodents ought to stay pretty fit.

Unfortunately, those “feral” cats sleep on my bed most nights, demand organic grain-free food from a dish and maintain a live catch-outside-and-release-inside mousing program. I’m pretty sure I even saw one carrying a “Feel the Bern” sign last week after I came home from the vet with a pet insurance flier.

In the interest of learning how to balance my home ecosystem more effectively, I bought myself a copy of “Five Acres and Independence” to go with my copy of “The Ultimate Guide to Homesteading.” The latter is where I learned that most of the trees I’d paint-marked for spring firewood felling were larch, not dead.

It is also where I learned everything about wood stove heating that does not seem to apply to my wood stove (which regularly defies laws of combustion and physics). Also, that book suggests that if one sets traps, the squirrels will go in them, but I have never, not once, despite creative efforts and a Costco supply of walnuts, caught one.

I am thus holding onto the belief that we can all live in harmony on the granite hilltop, though I have absolutely no evidence to support this. What I have is naive optimism and the kind of emotional resilience that only years of therapy can produce. And faith in squirrel humanity.

Also, I’ve been reading just enough Buddhist literature to muster compassion for all living creatures. This will probably last me through my first round of seedling transplants. By June, I’ll be looking up recipes for barbecued ground squirrel.