Page 35 of Big Island Neighbors
“Hey Cody?”
He looked up from his computer. “Yeah?”
“I’m going to leave these to simmer. They shouldn’t boil over, but would you just keep an eye on them for a minute?”
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks.” Tara went down the hall in search of Paige, but the girls’ room was empty. She walked out the back door and felt some of her tension fall away the moment she was outside. It was an overcast day, cool and breezy, and there was life everywhere she looked.
Bushy tithonia plants grew faster than the goats could eat them, huge masses of green with yellow flowers that bobbed in the breeze. More spots of yellow moved beneath them, a freshbatch of chicks swarming around their mother as she scratched the ground in search of bugs.
She found Piper first, not far from the back door.
“Mom, look!” Piper waved her over to their soldier fly farm that she had built with Cody‘s help. “There are grubs coming through already.”
About a dozen fresh soldier fly larvae wriggled in the collection bin that sat beneath their large tub. As the larvae hatched and grew, they worked their way up a ramp and through small holes in the sides to fall into the collection tub beneath.
“I’m going to give this first batch to Henrietta and her chicks.”
“Brilliant,” Tara said. Farming larvae was not anywhere near the top of the list of farm chores that she would’ve chosen to take on, but she was so endlessly proud of her children. Their creativity and drive amazed her. “Have you seen your sister?”
“She hates my baby flies.” Piper’s tone was halfway between offended and gleeful. She gestured vaguely towards the back of the lot. “Last I saw, she was headed that way.”
“Thanks.”
She found Paige all the way at the back of the lot, standing with the cows and petting the not-so-baby calf. The sheep were clustered towards the back fence, keeping their distance.
“There you are,” Tara said as she let herself through the gate and into the back pasture.
It was silvopasture, more brush and trees than grass. The cows ate it all, along with the feed that was needed to keep them well on a relatively small piece of land.
The past week or so, Cody had been cutting cactus grass next door and carrying it to the cows. It was a win-win for everyone involved. Their family got free, healthy, fresh feed for the animals, and the neighbors got some help tackling their invasiveand viciously sharp grass that could grow ten feet tall almost overnight.
Paige greeted Tara with a wan smile before turning her face back towards the calf.
“You’ve been quiet lately.” She ran a hand up and down her daughter’s back, stroking her in much the same way that Paige was petting the young cow.
“You never gave her a name.”
“What?”
“Gertrude’s baby. You never named her.”
“I don’t usually name the animals that I don’t plan to keep.”
“You’re not going to eat her, are you?”
“No.”
“You ate the last one,” Paige accused.
“The last one was a boy,” Tara reminded her gently, “and he fed all of us for a year.”
“So what’s going to happen to this one?”
“I’ll probably need to sell her.”
“Why?” Her response was so loud and sudden that the unnamed calf brought her head around to regard them with one gentle brown eye.
