First of all, I am sorry there was no newsletter last week. Our weekly schedule got a little out of whack and the newsletter got left in the weeds. I will try to be extra witty and insightful this week to make up for it!
Last week we had some visitors. One evening, while I was on the tractor prepping some beds for your tasty fall vegetables I looked up to see a small herd of cows standing in the garden looking at me with their big eyes. Flustered, I unhooked the disk harrow, throttled up the tractor and drove at them shouting “shoo! Shoo!” and off they lumbered, right through the pepper and eggplant, right through the corn! Once they were out of the garden I ran to Mrs. Wilson’s house. Maybe they belong to Mr. Tate, so Mrs. Wilson set about calling around to the neighbors. No, they did not belong to Mr. Tate, maybe they are the cows from down the road, but nobody seemed to know who owned those cows.
I excused myself while Mrs. Wilson continued her phone calls and went back out to the field to find the cows back in the garden, this time over in the delicate baby cabbages and broccoli I had just transplanted. Twenty-acres of wide-open field and they insist on trampling our four little acres of vegetables! I chased them into the cover crop with its succulent new growth – surely they will be more than happy to graze on the sorghum sudangrass that I have heard farmers call “cow candy”.
It was getting dark, so I did not see those crafty cows sneak around behind me and back into the garden. So I chased them out a third time, through the peppers and eggplant again! Through the melons! Once the cows had settled down to graze, I went to trade the tractor for the truck, with its headlights and mosquito protection. Randy had been on the phone, too – first to the sheriff and then to the county supervisor. He had managed to find out that the cows belonged to an elderly woman who lives on the road back behind us and there wasn’t anybody who could come get them that night.
Long story short, I had to chase the cows out of the garden twice more before I was satisfied that they had settled down for the night in the woods. It was nearly 11:00pm – I had spent the last four hours watching cows. The next morning someone came and chased them off towards home. Apparently the loggers taking timber off our neighbor’s property had knocked down the fence and let the cows out. We were lucky that I was out in the garden when the cows showed up. About 15 pepper plants got stomped out, 20 or so corn plants, a handful of broccoli and cabbage. One young melon plant was killed by a well placed cow patty. Considering the size of their mouths and their hooves, they did surprisingly little damage. I asked Randy if he has any summary thoughts for this story and he said, “well, we got to meet some new neighbors!”