Cattle, apples, traps, garden

My earlier post about the cattle and the fence by the road... tonight as I rode home I could see several 2x4 boards cock-eyed. Either the cattle messed with boards I hadn't fixed earlier else my repair job wasn't that good. I'll see tomorrow in the daylight which instance it is.

The cattle really associate me with apples. When they are in the south pasture, and I in the middle pasture checking pocket gopher traps, some of the cattle will come to the fence if I am near the fence to beg for apples. I don't even have to actually feed them apples, if the herd sees a few cattle near me the rest will run over as fast as they can. Even with a fence between us it can be a little disconcerting to see a herd of cattle running towards you. I try to feed them apples near the house each evening to get them into a routine of coming by. They usually graze in the hayfield in the evening.

Today the cattle weren't in their usual routine. It was a breezy day. Nothing unusual for Minnesota or North Dakota, but out here, out-of-the-ordinary. I find on these types of days the cattle act differently. Where are they?

When checking the pocket gopher traps this afternoon I took a side trip to search for the cattle. I found them on the peninsula across the river. Well, it is out of the wind among the thick brush. This is where the double-jointed Holstein earlier had slipped through the loose section of the neighbor's fence. As I had blocked that loose section, no jail breaks today. By evening all the cattle were back into the hayfield. Apples, that what they wanted! They saw me watering my garden and came to a nearby fence. I gave them apples and some loafs of old dry bread I got from the Food Bank today.

The cattle hung around the fence after I finished giving them treats. The neighbor's dog had come over when I fed the cattle. Both the dog and the cattle are curious of one another but each wants to be the one to do the approach. So the dog will not cross the fence. Instead it paced back and forth. When it started to bark at the cattle I had to tell it to stop.

The other evening we had a short but intense rain shower. I noticed half the herd in the NE corner of the hayfield staring at something to the NE. It was my NE neighbor. He and another man were along the creek near the small earthen bridge over the creek. I saw the neighbor holding a good sized conibear trap. Ah... his beavers are back. I did notice the creek near his trailer house looked to be higher than usual for this time of year.

I removed the rest of my regular gopher traps. No activity for a few weeks now. They have gone underground (hibernation?) for the year. There is still activity with my pocket gopher traps. I haven't caught any for a few days now. Either the tunnel is abandoned, or was merely an exploratory tunnel, or the gopher fills my trap with dirt. I have three pocket gophers that refuse to go into my traps. I have the traps placement down to a science so maybe it is something to do with the time of the year. I had similar problems last August but wrote that off as bad trap placement. This morning I finally caught two of the three - after many tries.

My garden is doing well now that I am keeping up with its watering. All four zucchini plants survived this year so I have much more zucchini than I need. I have picked the peas and green beans. I thought all my watermelon plants had died. I found two survived. The plants are doing great now, but no melons. Too late to get any now. I don't have the heart to pull the plants. The pumpkin plants are growing pumpkins.

Even though I haven't gotten to watering my strawberry plants yet, they were so happy at being weeded they produced some strawberries for me. Oh yeah... and the robins that steal my strawberries have left. I only have the yellowjackets that go after some of the strawberries when they are tired of eating the fallen apples. Enough apples drop each day from my two trees that I fill a five gallon pail each day.

I have dug over 60 feet along the fence of my NE pasture. I plan to plant some Emerald Arborvitae shrubs I had gotten some weeks ago. I decided to dig the whole area before planting any. The NE pasture is dry and once I plant them I need to keep up with their watering. Once the shrubs grow up they should hide the traffic as it comes around the road bend from the north. I hope so.

A skunk must have been nearby tonight. I smelled it along the road when I rode home and with the windows and doors open to cool the house down even now I still smell it. The skunk must be Pepe Le Pew as the smell has a little sweet smell to it.