Grub hunting day 2

Thursday, April 12

Today we dug in the dirt. Got nice and really muddy this time. When I arrived at the farm Cliff was just finishing up canning pinto beans that they’d grown in their garden. Can you believe that I knew nothing about the age-old art of canning? It’s so funny the things certain people grow up with while others haven’t a clue. You basically boil them in a glass canning jar sitting in a layer of water, which boils and steams. (Cliff had like 6 jars going in a pressure-cooker-looking big metal pot). This causes it to seal the metal lid ontop, which stays on from the suction (and is why they pop when you open them). But you have to be careful when canning because the acidity has to be less than 4.6 or else the food may develop botulism, which is very deadly and kills if even tiny amounts are ingested. Isn't that interesting?
But onto my grubby adventures. Today we went out into the garden and continued to dig. We used a pick and a grape hoe to turn up the soil and dig out the grubs. We went down rows paralleling the plants starting at opposite sides of the garden and collecting them in our buckets. I got to wear Cliff’s orange chainsaw chaps to protect my knees, but I still got my red boots covered in dirt shuffling along the ground. Cliff did a much better job at finding the buggies then I did, (I think the grape hoe was a better call than the pick axe thing I was using because it went deeper), but we ended up with a good few hundred bugs by the time it was ready for me to leave. We put them in dirt in some plastic bins and wheelbarrowed them out to my car where we dosed them with milky spore. From there, I took them on into the train station lab and laced the surface with clover seeds. Let the infestation begin!