Black and White Brethren

When one thinks of four-legged, black and white, bamboo eating animals, one would most often think of the panda bear.  After today, however, I will think a little closer to home.  (And you may, too!)  Why?  Well, we happen to have a small bamboo forest by our pond.  We call it a forest, it's more like a patch.  I happened to glance out there today and saw cows in our bamboo forest, munching away on what leaves they could reach.  I tried to get a picture, but the guilty little things came out before I could snap one off, choosing instead to pose in front of the bamboo.

I attempted to get them back into the pasture, but they just kept running from me, either around the pond at top speed or into the water.  As angry at them as I was, they were beautiful standing by the pond.

Free cows ended up being a battle all day.  They tore down quite a bit of bamboo and ate almost everything in our vegetable garden, including my rare heirloom Festivity corn (corn that looks like indian corn but is really sweet corn) that I was really excited about.  Luckily I have a handful of seeds that didn't fit in the garden I can try planting next year.  They chose to stay out of the garden full of blue Hopi corn, winter squash, and pole beans we planted for the livestock.  They came back into the pasture, by jumping the fence, during evening chores.  Guess they wanted to see if what I was serving for supper was any better than what they could find on their own.  I went ahead and put them into an extra stall in the barn.  We can't have them keep escaping, and it will cost a fortune to provide all their feed without pasture, so it looks like they may be getting butchered sooner rather than later.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

How does your garden grow?  Not very well, I'm afraid.  (But then, my name's not Mary, so maybe that's the secret.)  I planted.  And planted.  And planted.  All last week.  Then we went on vacation for 3 days.  We didn't plan this vacation, it was actually planned by Matt's family.  We (mostly I) had some doubts about going.  But the pigs were born before we left (one of my biggest worries) as well as a litter of rabbits (with no more due) and most of the flats of vegetable plants were transplanted, so we decided 3 days away from the farm would be a good break for us.  Our farmhand agreed to come in the mornings as well as evenings, so Sunday morning we took off for Kentucky Lake.  Unfortunately, while I was soaking in the pool my garden was drying away to an early demise.  We came back on Tuesday, AFTER ONLY 3 DAYS (I even watered them Sunday morning, so it was more like 2) and EVERYTHING was dead.  Maybe not everything.  While I was looking for any sign of life today, I think I found a Luffa and a squash.  Maybe a pumpkin.  Or maybe it was just wishful thinking, turning weeds into more than they are.  I am really upset about my Luffas.  They sounded like the greatest thing ever and I am definitely planting them again next year.  (We will also hopefully be making soap next year, so that should go together well in our future farm store!)  I am also upset about the zucchini.  I love me some zucchini cooked in butter, not to mention chocolate zucchini bread.  Mmmm.  So I spent today planting lots of seeds: summer squash, winter squash, corn, pole beans, cow peas, carrots. 

I always try to find the bright side to everything and the bright side today was this: the plants took up more space than we had planned so, since everything that needed transplanted died, Matt won't have to create a fourth garden plot.  I think.  We do still have a lot of seeds!