When all is lost - To Laugh or Cry

It’s all relative but my issues are nothing compared to Australia’s farming families that go through years of drought, bush fires, floods and insect plagues.  This week I’ve lost my whole vegetable garden, nearly two years of work gone in a couple of hours.  Carrots pulled from the ground and eaten, kale, lemon grass, cabbages, zucchini, even 1 meter high tomato bushes covered in fruit levelled to the ground, rhubarb, parsley, kale, potatoes, pumpkin, just all gone. The only thing the cattle didn’t eat was lavender, rosemary and sage.  The lavender bushes they even seemed to walk around and no damage at all. If I wasn't going to eat these cattle before I am now and have re-named them Rump, fillies, T-bone, Ribs and Dog Food. 

I learned two things:

     (1) You can laugh or cry. It’s no use blaming the cattle they are just hungry in winter for fresh greenery. Everything gone so you can just walk around in circles kicking the dirt or use the opportunity to turn all the garden beds over and replant them all again for the next season.

     (2) If your going to do a job – do it well.  The vegetable garden fence was the first fencing project I undertook. I hadn’t strained the wire tight, didn’t put barb wire around the top thinking people would get pricked looking into the garden and even when the cows started rubbing on the posts and bend them inwards slackening the wires even more I didn’t fix it.  So now I’ve had to go back and do it all again, re-work and time lost. A lesson well learned.  

      After

Before