Denial, Delusion, and the Neighborhood Woodchuck

I should say, right off the bat, that I am not, in any way, a violent person. Sure, the wasps and bees that invade our home every summer fall into the them versus me category (the dog and I are severely allergic, and we have Epi-pens for both of us), but I make Susan dispatch those lest I get stung. She hates doing it not because it gives her the willies, but she’s got this thing about sentient beings, and that includes angry, flying, stinging, deadly bugs. Not everything can be warm and fuzzy.

Although my mother’s line of work was furrier and I was brought up on visits to the extraordinarily icky and odorous Hudson’s Bay Company in Manhattan where my stepfather would buy skins to fashion into fur coats, there is no way in hell that I could harm a furry being that was just trying to eat.

Or so I thought.

Last year, we were lucky enough to be given some heirloom broad (correction courtesy of Katherine Whiteside, below!) pole bean seeds by our lovely neighbor, Sherry. Sherry’s grandfather (I could be getting that wrong–maybe it was her great-grandfather) carried them over from Italy, and now, they’re grown everywhere from my neighborhood to Katherine Whiteside‘s. I even shipped a batch off to Deborah Madison, so pretty soon they’ll be growing in Galisteo, New Mexico, too.

Anyway, they’re extraordinary beans: mottled green and purple, meaty, earthy, and totally delicious. And they loved my soil. One day, though, I stepped out of the shower and looked out the bathroom window, which faces my garden. I didn’t have my lenses in, so I was sure that I was wasn’t seeing things clearly. Only, I was: in the time that it took me to take a short shower, something had eaten every single last bean in my garden, and most of the bush they were growing on. I was angry, but relatively philosophical. I reached for my glasses, got dressed, and looked back out the window. This time, staring back at me from inside my garden fence was a large—and I mean seriously corpulent—woodchuck.

It did everything but wave and flip me the bird, and when I ran out to the garden, it waddled out through a hole in the fence, and took a swan dive into a hideous, neighboring, overgrown, half-dead juniper bush. I swear, it was in there, saying “yeah, come on, come and get me….there’s a whole nest of wasps in here who would just love to have at you….” So that night, Susan and I decided that the juniper bush, and the woodchuck, had to go. We were very serious and grave.

Naturally, our growing season was over a short time later, and so we stopped thinking about the woodchuck for about six months, and instead planned all of the delicious things we’d grow in the garden this year: Hakurei turnips, French breakfast radishes, Bright Lights chard, Mizuna, and kohlrabi, my new favorite vegetable.

“You’re going to have to do something about the woodchuck,” one of my friends said to me. She used to be a Buddhist monk, so when even she implied that it probably had to meet its maker, I knew I was in deep compost. But with snow on the ground, I still had a few months to happily dream and plan and order my seeds. I was like gardening’s version of The Village Idiot.

When it came time to plant a little while ago, we reinforced the fence (which is eight feet tall, because we have deer, too), stapled down its bottom, and hoped for the best. Weeks later, we had magnificent radishes, gorgeous turnip greens, two kinds of beets, the beginnings of our chard, and—wonder of wonders—my precious, beloved kohlrabi. Needless to say, I was not pleased when Susan came back from the garden one early morning before work and said “you’re not gonna like this.”

No kohlrabi.

I cursed like a longshoreman.

This past Saturday, we spent most of the day weeding in the front yard; I went to check the vegetable garden at around one o’clock, and all was well. I went back at around four, and the chard was nibbled on, the beet greens were missing, and even the carrot tops had been chewed. Over in the herb garden, there were the tell-tale signs of small, fat woodchuck feet. I jumped into the car and sped off for Agway, where I marched in like Rambo. I was given a choice:

1. Gas pellets to drop into their burrows. (No way.)

2. Borrowing the neighbor’s Jack Russell. (Possibly.)

3. A large, plastic, battery-operated hooting owl with a revolving head. (Too reminiscent of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.)

4. A gun. (Forget it. Old Yeller nightmares.)

“Can’t I just reinforce the fence some more?” I asked the Agway guy.

“Of course you can. And then the woodchuck will climb it, like a ladder.”

“How about putting a top on the fence. Like a little room—”

“He’ll burrow underneath it.”

I nearly wept. And I remembered that scene in Caddyshack, when Bill Murray basically blows up the whole golf course just to rid it of his nemesis. Was I going to destroy my garden just to rid it of a (big) pest? If I managed to get the woodchuck to leave, I’d still have to face chipmunks, birds, deer, and, probably, other woodchucks.

There’s a lesson in here, somewhere. And although I’ve received dozens of suggestions ranging from having a few different men relieve themselves on the periphery of the space, to dropping Wrigley’s Spearmint Gum down the woodchuck burrows, I’m pretty much resigned to this being an on-going battle. Because in the northeast, where I live, if you grow it, they will come.

Is it worth the hassle?

You bet. My radishes were the sweetest I’ve ever tasted.

The battle rages on.

Braised French Breakfast Radishes

Everywhere you look in late spring, vegetable lovers extol the virtues of serving these slender, tender morsels with little more than a few spoonfuls of sweet butter, a small bowl of coarse salt, and maybe some dense, black bread. And that’s fine. But where they’re truly miraculous is in a light, short braise. If the leaves are in good condition, chop them up and add them to the braise at the last minute. I eat these with nothing more than a fork and a glass of white wine.

Serves 2-3

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1 shallot, peeled and minced

1 bunch of small French breakfast radishes (about eight) and their greens, separated and cleaned

1/4 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup water

salt and pepper, to taste

1. In a heavyweight saute pan set over medium heat, warm the butter until it just begins to foam, and add the minced shallot. Cook until tender and translucent, about 4 minutes.

2. Add the radishes to the pan and toss well to coat with the butter; pour in the white wine and water, raise heat to medium high, set cover on the pan askew, and simmer for about 10 minutes, shaking the pan every few minutes. If it begins to dry out, dribble a few tablespoons of water over the radishes.

3. If using, add the greens to the braise about 3 minutes before the radishes are done, and cook, covered, until they’re wilted.

4. Spoon the radishes and their greens out onto toasted black bread, and drizzle with sauce.