of course ... if the river has alligators / crocodiles / piranhas / something else predatory you'd have a tough time crossing it towing a dead bleeding animal behind your boat ... so ... that may preclude the possibility of the 1 crossing rope solution ...
*and in any case , consuming and then retching up an entire cabbage would suck badly ... for you , and whoever you served the resulting coleslaw to ...
What's the riddle again? Wolf, cabbage, goat? Shoot wolf in the face, make goat watch. Discipline problem solved.
original riddle - you have a wolf , goat , and cabbage (goat will eat the cabbage and wolf will eat the goat , if left alone with the other) and you've got a small boat that can only fit you + 1 item with you inside the boat , and you want to get all 3 things , the wolf , goat , and cabbage , across a river - how do you do it ?
(i like my first answer best ... goat first across , come back for cabbage , cabbage across , bring goat back across , wolf across , then come back for the goat , then goat across for a total of 7 crossings - gives you an intact alive wolf , intact alive goat , and intact cabbage - but if you get creative and have a river free of predators , you can do some slaughtering , skinning / rope making , tow 1 dead animal behind the boat , and consume and barf up the cabbage to ferry all 3 items in 1 crossing ... at some opportunity cost of slaughtering / rope making / not having a live goat for milk or a live wolf for breeding depending on preference / and making the world's most terrible coleslaw ... this assumes of course that you have a knife/adequately sharp rock from the shoreline in the first place , which isn't specified in the riddle ...)
p.s. you're welcome forum for ruining coleslaw for everyone
Wait, so this alleged farmer, he ferries the goat across just to set goat loose on the other side? The goat's not going to hang out & wait for the farmer, will wonder off unless tied.
(If can be tied, did the farmer consider putting cabbage out of goat's reach?)
Is the wolf also unrestrained? Farmer can't give him a sweet colorful drink with a paper umbrella & a crushed-up roofie?
What sort of an idiot are we dealing with here?