Mountain Lane Homesteaders

Cherries

A friend invited us over last night to pick cherries and we now have a bunch of the tart pie cherries to use.  Does anyone have any special recipes they love?  Also, I don't have one of the cherry pitters so is there any "trick" to pitting these guys without one? 

Aren't they pretty?

DON'T BLAME THE COWS

Oh boy.  The mystery just keeps going!  The loss over my tomatoes has been traumatic but now it's just confusing.  We are certain that a cow has at one time walked through the garden due to the big deep prints and cow pies we found.  However, last night in a desperate attempt to save the few plants that we had left we put out tarps draped over some poles to cover all the still leafy plants.  This morning when I went up to check things out the tarps were still in tact and yet THIS is what I found:

Well......there is suppose to be a picture added here but I don't really know if it worked or not.  Guess I'll find out when this posts. 

Anyway, EVERY single plant is now eaten down to the stalk and I have no hope for a harvest.  I feel a little like Ma and Pa must have felt the time they lost their wheat harvest except that my livelyhood doesn't depend on it.  Remember their faces when the big storm was coming down and they were thinking about that wheat?  That was me last night!

WHAT IS EATING MY TOMATOES??????  Sam and I are thinking of staging a Friday night hunting session for whatever it is that is obviously small enough to crawl underneath the tarps and dine on our salsa!

Caleb says, "Awesome!"

Help! My tomatos are under attack!

Any tomato experts out there?  My heart is breaking over my tomato garden that I have been nurturing from seed for WEEKS!  They are my BABIES. I have (had) 4 varieties making up about 35 plants.  This is the first time I have been successful growing from seed and they are wonderful varieties I couldn't wait to try.  We live in deer country and knew that we were taking a risk putting them out before getting a fence up but haven't had time to get one built since moving here.  Well, it seemed as though the deer were going to leave them alone (someone told me the leaves are poisonous) so I let down my guard.  Fast forward to a few days ago when we saw signs of something BIG having walked through and enjoyed a snack.  A neighbors horse? A moose?  Heaven for bid....a BEAR?  Hmmm a mystery on the homestead.  Well, at least they left several of each variety.  That is, until last night.

I just went up to see how everything looked and two of the varieties are completely eaten down (Brandywine and Black Pearl) to the stalk with only a few tiny leaves left.  One variety is nearly gone (Cherokee Purple), and the last variety (Yellow Pear) still looks pretty good and has the first little blossom.  I believe the big animal mystery is solved though.  Signs of COWS are about!  Yes indeed.  It was not a wild animal that got my garden as I had feared........it was someones FREE RANGE CATTLE!  Don't know whose they are and it doesn't even matter.  We know that people do free range cattle up here but didn't even think about it regarding our garden since we hadn't ever seen any about. 

Anyway, my poor tomatos look awful and my question is this...........does anyone think there is any chance they can recover without leaves at this point?  Is it worth me going to some extreme measure to try and protect them from future harm or do I need to complete the grieving process and give them up for lost?  I fear the answer is that they are done for but am hoping someone out there has a tomato recovery story!