The Deer Have Eaten All The Tomatoes!

We have been watching about a dozen tomatoes getting bigger and bigger and bigger.  I couldn’t wait to pick them and have our first home-grown tomatoes of the season, but they were still very green so hadn’t yet picked any.

Now I wish I would have picked them to ripen indoors, because when I checked them again after the rain, they were gone.  Every one of them!  No evidence of the thief.  No juicy tomato trail leading away from bent-over vines.  No bear scat lying about.  No mole or ground hog holes.  No turtles sequestered under the vines, waiting for the cover of darkness to come out and get on with their life of tomato-eating crime.

I was left to believe it was the big green caterpillars I keep seeing on the vines.  You know, those tomato-hornworm things that get covered with white parasitic wasp pupae, rendering them living zombies with not enough strength to eat their way out of a tomatoe blossom? 

Never saw one eat an entire tomato before.  They usually just take bites here and there and spoil the whole crop.  Not even the biggest of them are capable of walking out of the garden carrying an 8oz tomato on their backs. 

So it remained a mystery until CG came home later than normal a few nights ago and discovered a full-grown deer standing under the peach tree, calmly eating her fill of un-ripe peaches. 

The peach tree is only a few feet from the garden. 

So we’re pretty sure we’ve finally been able to figure out the mystery of the disappearing tomatoes….only thing is, other than building a 10 foot tall deer fence around the garden, there isn’t much we can do about it. 

I’m not about to sit outside all night on an overturned bucket, cap-gun in hand, waiting to scare that deer away next time she comes round.  I guess I really don’t want a home-grown tomato as bad as I thougt I did.

This Fickle Thing We Call Spring

Yesterday, wow, what a warm, bright and beautiful day!

Today, we’re back to winter temps…I realized that when I stepped outside in my bathrobe, thinking I’d hurry and put the horses blankets away for a while.  The temperature was so cold I had to don real clothes, coat, hat and even some gloves.

I’m waiting on babies.  My daughter was due yesterday, and so was our Miley.  Miley doesn’t even have any sort of udder yet, although she’s loose and goosey in all the right places.

I’ve got enough milk now to make cream, but I sheared the moisture guard off the separator and had to order a new one.  They promised it would be here early this week.  Had planned to make ice cream to celebrate all this warm weather!

At least we’ve got eggs, but I doubt that egg cream would be very tasty.  So, I won’t try it.

I planted some grass in the yard yesterday and need to get the rest of the rye grass over-seeded on the pasture.  I got a little bag of crimson clover too I’m hoping will come up and make good goat grazing.  I didn’t buy a lot of it.  I hate planting clover in horse pastures because it makes them slobber so much.

I also have strawberries waiting to go in the ground, jewel weed seeds, marion berries and about 1000 more seeds and plants that would just love to get their roots in some warm ground.  Luckily, we’ve got all the manure any garden could handle, and lately we’ve had enough rain to float an Ark.

Now, if the ground would just dry up a little and the rain would stop for about a week, we’d be all set!

Back Home Again…to regular old wordpress!

Good morning!  As many of you know, I recently moved my blog over to a private hosting company so that I could do more cool and fancy things with it.  It’s been about 2 months now, and even though I transferred my entire blog, it never would work exactly  right.  I found out that when people tried to go to the new blog, another blog, that wasn’t mine came up.

Having a wordpress blog hosted with a private hosting company has a lot of benefits, but they are negated if you are not pretty darn computer savvy.  I lack computer savvy big time.  There is very little help available either from wordpress or from my private host when issues come up.   Neither wants to get involved with the problems that arise and so that leaves a person pretty much on their own.

So….long story short, I’m reviving the old blog.  I was still getting lots of visitors every day….the new blog got very, very few.  I’m glad you all stuck around!

My next post will be all about what’s been going on around this place!

See you then!

2010 Weblog Awards

I didn’t even know these existed until last night.

I was reading my favorite blog, The Pioneer Woman, and she included a link her post yesterday to the 2010 weblog awards.  She’d been nominated, (and deservedly so) for a couple of awards in a couple of categories.

The bloggies is a neat site to visit. It contains the top blogs of 2009.  There are categories for humor, best writing, italian blogs, asian blogs, sports and alternative lifestyle blogs, etc.

I didn’t see a category for farm blogs.  But, Ree got nominated, so I guess people are reading farm blogs.

Or maybe it’s just ranch blogs.  She does have a lot of heavy equipment.  And then there is the food.  Lots of food on her site.

If you make it over to the bloggies site, be forwarned that not all of the blogs listed, although they are considered the best of the best, are necessarily something all of us would want to read.

Many contain curse words.  My blog will never purposely contain curse words.  Of course I say them accidently, but fortunately here I have an edit button, I can unwrite it.  I can’t unsay a word, but maybe that’s why I’ve always liked writing.  I get the opportunity to look at what I just wrote and trash it if necessary.

Anyway, check out the 2010 weblog awards site.