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  • From: "Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>
  • To: <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Tomatoes
  • Date: Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:11:16 -0800

Oh yes, the goat only people are obsessive! When we used to have goats (will again in the spring), we ran them in with, OMG, horses, cattle, donkeys and sheep! They didn't have their own space, they didn't have their own special feed, they didn't have anything goaty or special. They were just one more animal. The only kid we ever lost was from a doe that was gifted to one of the kidlets and she had obviously been someone's pet. She was neurotic! No, she was just plain nuts! <g>

BUT, the worst of the lot are the horse people. OMG, did they got absolutely hysterical when they found out that our National champion broodmares were out with, OMG, goats and sheep! Although, by then, they were probably just saying something about those crazy people because we won our nationals by pulling horses off pasture and never keeping them locked up in stalls <g> Bad Lynda <<eg>> We broke all the rules. We didn't spend all morning wearing the horses into the ground "tuning" up. I mean, if they don't know it by the time you get to the show then you oughtta stay home! We didn't use professional trainers. No one was sitting on the horse all day long. They came out of the ring, the cinch was loosened and the bridles came OFF! Horses didn't spend all their time locked in stalls. We didn't use special feeds or the most expensive alfalfa or timothy. Our broodmares worked until they were too round to use without adding an addition to the cinch AND we never had foaling problems like all the pampered precious mares did.

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- From: <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com>

Goat keepers are the worst although any animal fruit or vegetable falls prey
to this. If you keep sheep, goats, horses, cows, donkeys,. turkeys, ducks,
rabbits, quail, ducks, honeybees, chickens, on a farmstead, you tend to do
whatever works well and no more. Not time or extra attention available for it.

But if you only keep goats, you tend to see everything as something you ought
to be doing. Rare minerals, specialized feed, remove the horns, trim the
hooves every two weeks, supplement with this or that, prophylacically treat for
all and sundry rare diseases, agonize over whether to milk from the left side
or right, act as goat OB when they are kidding, hallucinate over minute or
non-existent differences between breeds etc. etc.

If the homesteader is also tending eight or ten other animal species, they
tend to do just what works and go on. Oddly their goats do fine with a minimum
of attention.

I think that same sort of thing crept in because many people grow gardens for
tomatoes only, or tomatoes and very few other things. And rightly so. But
then they plant those tomatoes and during hte weeks and weeks that they just
watch them grow, they think to themselves, I ought to be doing something.

There might have been real reasons for pruning tomatoes under some
circumstances and under some methods of cultivation, but I suspect it got proliferated
as something you 'ought' to do without much more thought or experimentation.

The only "pruning" I do is that the suckers that grow at the joint of an
indeterminate tomato can be snapped off and planted and they will grow another
tomato plant. I use this as a hedge against blight. The parent plant is far
more prone to blight with the new rootlings rarely getting it. Those cool wet
spells might take out the older plant but the rootlings survive to make tomatoes
in the fall.

James </HTML>
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