Most people hate the summers here because of the heat. I can live with the heat, but hate it when we have a bumper crop of mesquite beans, which this year is looking like it's going to be a doozie....!!!
This is one tree on 30 acres that is covered with mesquite trees.
Not every tree is covered, but a lot of them have plenty of beans, and they are just now getting ripe. The donkeys are trying to make sure none of them go to waste. We've already talked about closing Burroland and letting the range cattle in there to clean up the area, but once we do that the donkeys are stuck on the 10 acres around the house for the duration.
So far no one has 50% of their poo showing up as mesquite beans, which is our absolute cut-off. Anyone that greedy is going to end up in a pen until fall, which makes for very unhappy donkeys. Yesterday both John and I had to go to Tucson for appointments. The weatherman was predicting rain, and rather than worry while we were gone about Pepper laying down in the wash and getting drowned if the wash ran, we left him in the pens.
Boy you talk about a cranky donkey........!!!! Of course he can get his "panties in a wad", about lots of things, but having to stay in all day when there are beans out there to eat, really put him in a snit. When he's in a snit, he uses his head as a battering ram, and is really good at it, I might add. John opened the gate and he "crippled" out at a snail's pace, headed for the nearest beans. It probably wouldn't have been quite so traumatic, but a bunch of the donkeys were right next to the pens, munching on beans under one of the more prolific tress. So he got to stand there in the pen and watch them scarfing up beans. By the time we got to him, he was really unhappy and made sure we knew it. He is so much fun to watch, you can almost watch the wheels turn in his head. Until the monsoon season is over, we will probably try not to go to Tucson together, or if we do he'll have to stay in the pens. And John can let him out......!!!! LOL
No comments:
Post a Comment