The Zeiger Family Homestead Blog

They say a man’s home is his castle. In that case, mine’s under siege.

As I predicted, we grew tired of beating pots as we moved about the homestead to ward off moose. We stopped doing it, but we continued to move cautiously when outside, and with good reason. A couple days after the first sighting of the cow and her calf, we awoke to find the dooryard pocked with deep tracks. Worse, every remaining green in the garden had been browsed to nubbins.

Luckily, Michelle had taken advantage of the thaw to harvest the last of our leeks and onions, sometimes freezing them from the frozen soil with a mattock, so we didn’t lose much food, just the last of our kale and parsley. However, they browsed down an unprotected cherry sapling, and wiped out the hollyhocks Michelle had grown from seed her mother had given her. It could have been worse, but we weren’t happy.

The calf tried to look innocent when caught dead to rights in the garden (Photo: Mark Zeiger).

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