After I posted the pictures of the garden club's tour of the Edible Landscaping nursery, I continued thinking about what our host told us about controlling deer and squirrels. Basically, they had to allow someone to hunt them! After all, the nursery raises fruit trees, berry bushes, and nut trees, all of which attract hungry animals. Yes, there are many things you can try to keep animals out of an orchard or grove, and you may even succeed in keeping deer and bears out to some extent but I don't know any way to really keep squirrels away. And so, many people shoot them! Now I happen to think squirrels are cute and it saddens me to think of them being shot, but I can understand a farmer's need to protect his crops. There's irony here because many vegetarians depend on nuts for protein and probably don't realized that animals died in order that nut trees could grow and produce.
Of course, forests were cleared and animals dispossessed in order to grow grains and vegetables as well as fruits and nuts. We have always been in competition with animals for foods and the land needed to grow it. And even if you never eat a tasty morsel of meat, the fact that you must eat means that some animals must die. It's a jungle out there!
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