This week’s top news story has got to be the cougar sighting at our Littlerock field, or site two as we sometimes say. I think it was Thursday last week that we were harvesting there in the morning and then went back for more weeding after lunch. When we returned to the field, there were sheriff’s deputies and dogs and excitement. While we were safe at home eating our delicious lunches, the cougar waltzed across the field and pooped up front near the road. Our first thoughts were something like “wow, Neat-o”, but our second thoughts were more like “eek, what if it wants to eat us.” I know very well that that cougar would prefer to eat a nice fat deer than one of us, but still, eek.

We looked up cougar safety tips on the internet, and here is what the department of fish and wildlife advises.
If you see a cougar, do not turn around and run. (How very counterintuitive.) The thing to do is try to appear larger and aggressive. The object of the game is to make the cougar think that you are NOT prey, but rather a danger to the cougar.
Also recommended was close supervision of children and picking up your child immediately if you see a cougar. We learned that puma, mountain lion, and cougar are all names for the same cat. They don’t like noise, so it might help to play a radio or sing and talk and laugh a lot.
The next day while weeding with Elena and Leticia, Elena kept reaching over into my rows and pulling all my weeds before I could get them. I said, “You have to let me do some work, if you pull all my weeds there’s no work for me to do.” She said, “You watch for the cougar.” We laughed. Loud. And we haven’t seen the cougar. Just some crows and swallows, dragonflies and song sparrows, killdeer and beetles, spiders and ladybug larva.

I wondered if the bobcat scat had anything to do with our cougar visit. A few weeks ago we started setting out droppings of big scary cats around our pea and bean rows in an effort to scare the deer away. I know that it hasn’t worked because there are fresh deer tracks in all the usual places and bites out of all our pea and bean plants just like always. But what I wondered was if the cougar needed to come put his poop on his territory to clear up all this poop confusion. It is a little strange to see a cougar in the middle of the day. Cougars are very sneaky and don’t really like to be seen by us. It could be a girl cougar. I just sense some kind of irony in our attempt to use scary cat crap to scare deer and wound up with a real live scary cat in our field scaring us. And the deer always eat their fill of whatever they want in our field and leave us enough to eat and share with you, so we ought to just leave well enough alone. I’ll bet that if the deer even noticed all that cat poop we set out, they might have thought to themselves or said to each other in deer language, “what on earth are those crazy farmers up to now with all this poop?” And all along there really is this big scary cougar and the deer don’t even care. They just keep eating.

Your rainbow beet bunches showcase our farm’s variety. Your bunch may contain one or more of the following types, Red Ace, Chioggia, or Golden Beets. The latter two are more sweety, less beety. They make a beautiful bunch and a lovely dish for the table as well. We hope that you will give them a try even if you think you don’t like beets. Especially the golden beets, as they are just so sweet.

Be sure to check the website for more recipe ideas for beets and all you produce. Greta Jane’s Cilantro sauce recipe might come in handy this week and it’s posted on the website.

PS. This newsletter was proofread by little Nigel. He found three typos and thought that I should add more details about the poop.