At the beginning of the summer I decided to try growing watermelons. I decided to plant one plant in the corner of the raised bed where I had planted potatoes. My theory was, once the potatoes were ready and gone (mid-June), the watermelon plant could spread out in the same area throughout the summer months. The variety was Black Diamond.
This actually worked well. Just about the time I was digging up the potatoes, the watermelon vines were branching out and needing more space. I was delighted to see that there were lots of flowers. Pretty flowers. This meant I should have plenty of melons.
And I did. At one point I had about a dozen melons of varying sizes tucked under the large leaves. My problem was I was never sure when the watermelons were ripe. I kept picking them and cutting them open to find white inside.
I started asking around to find out how to tell when watermelons were ripe. I did searches online. I thought I was doing everything right. And each time it would be white and pink inside. The little bite of red in the middle was tasty.
So my chickens were the happy recipients of about a dozen watermelons throughout the scorching summer. They loved them!
We had three nice surprises lately. Three baby calves were born.
At the time, the cows were intensively grazing the pasture in front of the house, right by the driveway. It was nice because we could see them without having to traipse out into the far pasture.
One morning (9/13) I was out walking and happened to notice the first baby which looked like it had just been born. It was still curled up on the ground and the mama was cleaning it. I was able to take a few photos of its first steps. To my surprise it was a black calf. You might recall that a big black Brangus Bull visited our herd earlier in the year. We had wondered at the time what damage he had done. So now we know.
A similar thing happened with the second of the babies. I was out walking about a week later (9/23) and noticed one cow out by herself. I thought at first it was the same mama and baby but quickly realized it was a new baby. This one was red brown, but with the timing, it has the same daddy.
The third baby was a complete surprise. We had taken our two Belted Galloway cows to be bred back in the spring, and had sort of forgotten about them. On our way home one afternoon (9/27) as we rounded the corner, there it was standing in the field. So cute and such a white belt. I giggled to myself.
What is really cute, is seeing the three of them romping around and playing together.
(Sorry this post is so late. I had written a similar post several weeks ago but somehow inadvertently deleted it. It's taken me this long to muster up the energy to write it again.)
Not sure what has happened, but our beehive is dead. Son was home the other day and decided to check on them and found they had gone. We will admit that we had neglected them, but that shouldn't be the only reason they are gone. We will have to start over with a new hive.
