Oh, Those Kids!

It was the perfect storm, really. We combined, mowing around the grapes and weeding their boxes (thereby exposing their existence to curious goats) with moving the foot-tall, flowering tomato and pepper plants all to the front porch (congregating them into a nice buffet), with a yard that is home to two kids with no sense of property rights or boundaries. Ironically, I had just spent hours researching what kind of netting I was going to use around the grape stalks to protect its bounty from the birds- probably around the same time the goat kids had wandered into the front lawn and discovered that grape leaves deliciousity was only surpassed by their complete and utter unguardedness. (I feel justified in authoring new word creations. You should have heard the stream on incomprehensible syllables Sean was making, attempting to illicit my help upon discovering the attack on his veggie plants. You know something is bad when it leaves your man literally speechless!) Sean fails to see any humor in this. He was so angry that he immediately stalked outside and began cobbling together some old chain link fencing into a secure pen area for the kids, determined to stop the invasion into his would-be garden once and for all.

Asher has Ninja skills!


It didn't take more than a couple of hours for him to wire up the holes and lock the 4 panels together, which I originally intended to use as the coming turkey's first yard. I kept that observation to myself and instead, empathized with his plight and tried to be helpful. (I suggested that he could screw three solid pallets together at their corners and place some scrap plywood across the top and make the kids a movable, suitable shelter from the sun.)

Finally, caught!


Once the new enclosure was complete, Sean felt a little better and it was time to lure those bad kids into their new day time home. We will move it as we need to, so they will have fresh green grass to munch on. At night, they will live in the barn with Momma Ellie and the herd. (Which means that we are going to need to switch milk time to late evening before we lead the kids to the barn each night.) Abigail was easily lured with a scoop of grain. Asher was not as easily fooled, as you can see in the video. He does have some awesome ninja wall-kicking ability, though!

Asher and Abigail sulking in their new shelter


This is a very temporary arrangement. As soon as the kids cooperate in filling out so that they cannot walk through 4"x4" fencing, they will be moved permanently back to the appropriate pasturage.

I checked Sean's grapes. Thankfully, most of the damage was done to the leaves. There are still over 20 clusters of grapes growing. I am thinking that I better come up with a safe way to protect them from the birds, though. I think THAT would be more than even good-tempered Sean could bear.

Thanks for visiting!
Sonja ♥