The garden

*UPDATE ON THE PREVIOUS ENTRY*  Grace found her way into the clover field unassisted.  I still had to lead Penny in, but she hardly fought it at all.  There is hope!  

In the most distant row, you can see carrots that hardly did anything, thanks to the drought.  One row closer, there's a spotty row of Top Crop green beans that I would have pulled up, but I think maybe I'll get a mess or two of green beans out of it; those things produce amazingly well.  Closer yet is the late row of carrots I planted in August.  Most of them came up, and I am hoping for some homegrown carrots in the next few weeks.  
On the left side of the picture, that's where the late cabbages were.  The plants did well, but the worms invaded big time.  I still managed to salvage about six heads.  They were planted from seed, so they didn't cost much.  

You are looking at a sea of sweet potato vines, Beauregard variety (with Virginia Creeper and honeysuckle mixed in).  You can't tell by the picture, but one row of these sweet potatoes takes up eighteen feet of space altogether.  I know this because I took my tape measure out and checked.  I love sweet potatoes, but imagine how many rows of something else I could have planted in that space.  Probably about six.  Maybe I won't plant sweet potatoes next year.  Of course, we do have over forty acres.  Maybe I'll just have Cliff plow up more garden space.

Stupid cows

We've had the cows in the alfalfa/grass field for some time, but they were trimming it a little shorter than we liked.  We have both hayfields electric-fenced.  The way we keep the horses out is to string an electric wire up high enough for the cows to get under, but low enough that the horses would get shocked if they tried to go in.  This has always worked great, with the exception of one of Bonnie's calves, who refused to ever go under the electric fence.  While his mother feasted on the good stuff, he picked at bluegrass on the outside.  

This was the opening to the alfalfa/grass field.  Cliff closed it off yesterday with a piece of cattle paneling.  No cow has ever hesitated to enter that field.  

This is the opening to the clover field.  

Crystal, Bonnie's daughter, will not go through that opening.  Neither will George, seen at the right of the picture.  The other four are in the field, but two of them were dragged in by me.  

Four cows in the clover (Bonnie, Jody, Grace, and Penny), three cows outside (Crystal, Jenny, and George).  

Penny in mid-chew, knee-deep in clover.  She's wearing a halter because I had to drag her into the clover with a rope.  No easy task for an old woman.

Four cows enjoying the clover, three cows just wishing they had some clover.

I asked Cliff if he had any idea why they will enter the other pasture but not this one and he had an excellent answer:  The opening to the alfalfa (now closed) has fence or panels on either side, so it doesn't feel to the cows as though they are walking right through an electric fence.