Area residents are quick to notice when drought conditions affect a family entertainment activity like tubing down the Otter Tail River and how a lack of rainfall can shut those businesses down quickly. However, drought has many other consequences for people and one of those is playing out in the land between Vergas and Frazee, somewhere near the Candor and Hobart township lines.

The man who reported this story wanted to remain anonymous, as well as, keeping the identity of everyone else involved hidden. For, it is not a story of blame. It is a tale where drought has created multiple victims of circumstance and made for some temporarily happy cows.

The man has a sizable apple orchard and several other fields home to multiple varieties of cranberries, elderberries, blackberries, choke berries and cherries, gooseberries.

Between the orchard and shrubberies are groomed trails. He’s spent decades grooming this land.

“I’ve put a lot, a lot of time in this acreage,” the man said.

While the area is private, the man has been made aware that some people have checked it out as in conversations those who find out he is the owner will compliment him on his efforts.

“They say it’s really nice out there,” the man laughed. “Oh, you’ve been back there. I’m okay with that.”

The man checks his apple trees and fruitful shrubberies regularly and on his last visit found evidence of a new visitor, one with perhaps a little less tact and more of a self-indulging purpose.

The evidence: cow pies.

“I don’t own cattle,” the man said. “So I started looking around and oh, look at there, my honeyberries are eaten down to nothing. A few apple trees, look at those branches pulled down. Well, it’s the cattle.”

The man finally caught up with the herd of 15 bovine.

“They’re looking at me, munching away, so I track down who’s got cattle and I find out and whatnot,” the man said. 

Wanting to defend 20 years of work put into the orchards he asked the cattle owners to get the cows out and back home and he did so in a less than necessary polite manner.

“I’m trying to be neighborly,” said the man.

The neighbor walked his cattle back to where they were supposed to be.

“I go out the next day and they’re back,” said the man.

Both men were somewhat baffled as to how the cows were getting loose and it was no surprise they had noses for the tastier fruits of the man’s orchards over the common pasture offerings.

Turns out, the issue was an anomaly exacerbated by drought in the cow’s original field.

“It turns out this pasture they have has a bog in it,” said the man.

There was no fence around the perimeter of the bog as the bog has always been a natural barrier to the cows escaping. 

“Now it’s so dry they get out that way,” said the man.

Once loose, the cows pass up munching on the land of three other owners to get to the man’s tasty good stuff.

The farmer is frustrated as he now has to build a fence in a hurry and to make that situation worse -the cows are not actually his- he is renting land to the actual owners of the animals. The man is frustrated because the cows are eating 20 pounds of his produce per day. 

“Somebody is responsible here, ya know?” said the man. “I’m taking a hit.”

Sounds like the party most responsible for the situation is ol’ Mother Nature.

“It’s drought-related trauma in the neighborhood,” said the man.

Mother Nature could certainly chip in with a week of steady rain, make a few tubers happy and bring that bog barrier back to life.

It’s hard to blame the cows for finding a path to an oasis of tasty berries, or as the man puts it, “entire shrubberies they just pull right out of the ground.”

However, the cows, their owner and the landowner are not innocent in this sudden chaos.

Maybe there should be some payback for the man’s losses—a lump of flesh, if you will.

Perhaps a side of beef is in order.