Post by macmex on Sept 9, 2022 12:57:37 GMT
Yesterday afternoon my chore routine was out of whack. I was running behind and not doing things in their usual order. My wife came home and asked me to get her some greens to fix with supper. I had two possibilities, as our green bean harvest is meager this year and I had just picked them the other day. Either we were going to have okra or sweet potato greens. She chose sweet potato greens. So I grabbed a pail and headed for the main garden. That garden is located in a pasture and is fenced to keep the animals out...
Someone had forgotten to latch the gate on the garden...
As I walked up on the garden I looked and spotted our cow and calf standing chest high in okra plants, with mouths full of leaves! Yikes!
I quickly turned and ran back to the milking shed where I retrieved a can of feed and returned to extract the cattle. I've learned that neither cattle, goats nor sheep understand about forbidden areas in which to feed and that anger (on my part) or reprisals are only counterproductive when dealing with this kind of situation. The thing to do is to maintain calm and give them a positive distraction to lead them away from the forbidden area. As I approached the garden with the feed can I called the cattle and they happily came running to me (outside the garden) where I served them dessert.
I then went to the garden to assess the damage. I couldn't get a picture which captured the devastation of the entire garden. Let me just say that it looked as if I had stayed home from work and, instead, spent the day clearing vegetation from the garden with a machete. Interestingly, the okra was barely touched. That's probably because my main garden crop this year was SWEET POTATOES which are gourmet food for ruminants!
All three rows of sweet potatoes had been mowed. There were very few leaves to be seen. The day before, these plants had been so bushy that it was nearly impossible to see where to step, when moving among them.
The garden didn't look like a moonscape but it did look like a "mooscape." The cattle finished their feed/dessert and happily ambled away. I could of swore I heard them belch.
This is a picture of them having "dessert."
This is a closeup of what most of the sweet potato plants looked like.
I did find that the cattle had left some beds which I'd used for slip production, and hadn't dismantled. These beds were squeezed in between the greenhouse and the garden fence. Probably, they didn't care to squeeze into that space when there was so much easy eating out in the openrange garden.
So, I picked sweet potato greens from those beds, closed up the garden and went to finish chores.
You might think, "I wonder why George seemed to take this catastrophe so well?" Well, there are a number of reasons.
1) Getting upset won't change a thing.
2) It wasn't the cattle's fault. It was mine.
3) I'm just having to learn to live with forgetfulness and cognitive glitches. Getting all worked up about it only makes things worse.
4) I have an understanding wife who was already on the same page.
5) Sweet potatoes can take a HUGE amount of abuse and still produce.
Let me explain a bit more about #5.
I've known folk to have their sweet potatoes mowed to the ground several times in a summer, and still got a decent crop. One year, while living in Central Mexico, we had a monstrous hail storm completely defoliate and mostly bury the stems of our entire sweet potato crop, in June. Those plants re-sprouted and by harvest time one would never have known they'd been hit like that.
My sweets have only been defoliated once, and the main stems are mainly intact. In two weeks, I'm betting it'll be hard to tell that they had been defoliated.
And finally...
I eat beef
------------------------------
Most people who grow sweet potatoes face depredation issues. This is a good thread for you to tell others about your challenges.
Someone had forgotten to latch the gate on the garden...
As I walked up on the garden I looked and spotted our cow and calf standing chest high in okra plants, with mouths full of leaves! Yikes!
I quickly turned and ran back to the milking shed where I retrieved a can of feed and returned to extract the cattle. I've learned that neither cattle, goats nor sheep understand about forbidden areas in which to feed and that anger (on my part) or reprisals are only counterproductive when dealing with this kind of situation. The thing to do is to maintain calm and give them a positive distraction to lead them away from the forbidden area. As I approached the garden with the feed can I called the cattle and they happily came running to me (outside the garden) where I served them dessert.
I then went to the garden to assess the damage. I couldn't get a picture which captured the devastation of the entire garden. Let me just say that it looked as if I had stayed home from work and, instead, spent the day clearing vegetation from the garden with a machete. Interestingly, the okra was barely touched. That's probably because my main garden crop this year was SWEET POTATOES which are gourmet food for ruminants!
All three rows of sweet potatoes had been mowed. There were very few leaves to be seen. The day before, these plants had been so bushy that it was nearly impossible to see where to step, when moving among them.
The garden didn't look like a moonscape but it did look like a "mooscape." The cattle finished their feed/dessert and happily ambled away. I could of swore I heard them belch.
This is a picture of them having "dessert."
This is a closeup of what most of the sweet potato plants looked like.
I did find that the cattle had left some beds which I'd used for slip production, and hadn't dismantled. These beds were squeezed in between the greenhouse and the garden fence. Probably, they didn't care to squeeze into that space when there was so much easy eating out in the open
So, I picked sweet potato greens from those beds, closed up the garden and went to finish chores.
You might think, "I wonder why George seemed to take this catastrophe so well?" Well, there are a number of reasons.
1) Getting upset won't change a thing.
2) It wasn't the cattle's fault. It was mine.
3) I'm just having to learn to live with forgetfulness and cognitive glitches. Getting all worked up about it only makes things worse.
4) I have an understanding wife who was already on the same page.
5) Sweet potatoes can take a HUGE amount of abuse and still produce.
Let me explain a bit more about #5.
I've known folk to have their sweet potatoes mowed to the ground several times in a summer, and still got a decent crop. One year, while living in Central Mexico, we had a monstrous hail storm completely defoliate and mostly bury the stems of our entire sweet potato crop, in June. Those plants re-sprouted and by harvest time one would never have known they'd been hit like that.
My sweets have only been defoliated once, and the main stems are mainly intact. In two weeks, I'm betting it'll be hard to tell that they had been defoliated.
And finally...
I eat beef
------------------------------
Most people who grow sweet potatoes face depredation issues. This is a good thread for you to tell others about your challenges.
