Loss

 

We’ve known for months that Woogie’s health was on a downward spiral.  He lost a lot of weight and his arthritis was so bad that he could barely walk.   He was going senile , peeing and pooping wherever he was in the house, almost uncontrollably.  We knew it was time, but Glenn wanted to be home for it so we waited.  Woogie was 17.

This year, Brie started getting overly aggressive.  She’d attacked Heidi numerous times for no apparent reason, other than Heidi just walking past her.  She started attacking the cats, almost breaking Jack’s neck once.  All of this I could have lived with and worked out a plan to avoid opportunities for her aggression.   But the final straw was when Anne brought over her daughter and grand daughter.  Emily walked past Brie with the baby in her arms and Brie lunged hard against her line, trying desperately to reach and kill the baby.  Anything smaller than her had become prey, whether it had two legs or four.  Brie would have been 10 in December.

 

Woogie sat on my lap purring as we drove them to the vet yesterday.  Brie licked the tears from my face after she got over the excitement of going for a ride – her favorite thing in the world.

They both went peacefully.  We drove them home and gave them a place on the hill behind the house overlooking the pond.

All I can say, is that filling those two holes was the hardest thing I’ve done in a very long time.

Struttin’ his stuff

 

Major Tom, the Royal Palm turkey, is finally old enough to be interested in the ladies.  Up until now, all the hens had cooties and he spent most of his time pulling on their pony tails or calling them names.  Now he’s much more interested in taking them for a drive down lovers lane in his Chevette and playing twister in the back seat.   Too bad there aren’t any female turkeys on the farm to be impressed with his mad driving skills and collection of Travis Tritt cassettes.

 

 

 

I guess I need to get him a woman.  Soon.

Short and Fat

Something else we did over this past weekend was pick up two new “rescues”.   I hesitate to call them rescues since they are so fat and healthy.  FAT being the operative word here.  Glenn wanted to rename them Roly Poly and Thunderbutt, but I think we’ll keep the names they came with, at least for now.

Meet Patrick (also called Fatrick by his previous owners).   Patrick is a 6 year old pony, broke to ride with some driving training already.  He’s cute, he’s cuddly, and he’s a real sweetheart.  He fell in love with Duchess the minute he stepped off the trailer.

 

This is Patches (or Fatches).  She’s 15ish, very adorable, and has fallen in love with Junior.  He’s not sure what to do with his new little shadow, but seems to appreciate the fact that she can walk under him without touching his belly.  Patches rides and drives, and was saved years ago from having adult rednecks on her back.  Do people really think something this small is OK to ride if you’re over 100 pounds??? 

 

The two girls that saved these two have lost their pasture they were renting and are also headed off to college in the Fall.  They had been trying to find homes for the ponies all Summer with no success. 

 

I doubt these two will be here for long -- they’re way too cute!

Kisses and Synergy Go Home

Kisses went home on Saturday.  She went back to the family that she had come from originally.  They had finally sold their home in TN, dad got promoted, and their financial hardships were finally over.  The two horses that they had kept looked great, so I had no qualms about taking Kisses back to the family that raised her and loved her.  They were ecstatic to have her back and she’ll be moving with them out to Utah next month.  Lucky girl!

 

I finally figured out the mathematical equation to getting Synergy on the trailer:

+ take Kisses away the day before so Synergy runs around all night screaming and is exhausted in the morning

+ 3 cc’s happy juice administered right before trying to load her

+ nice open trailer without divider and with a ramp

+ bucket of feed

+ absolutely NO pressure from the rear and no pressure on the halter when asking her to load

=

Synergy on the trailer voluntarily within 15 minutes.  No fuss, no muss.  No rearing.  No wild eyed thrashing about.

Once she was on and the ramp was up, Glenn and I had to take a few minutes to gawk at her butt eating happily inside the trailer and congratulate ourselves on a job well done.  Even though our “job” was to stand around and shake the feed bucket until she decided to follow her stomach into the trailer.

Things really weren’t that different the first and second time we tried to load her awhile back.  The major difference is that this trailer had a ramp, and the other two did not.  Apparently, Princess does not like stepping up into a trailer.  Much too difficult!

It was a 6.5 hour drive to bring Synergy down to Maggie, but it was so worth it!

Wild Friends

Louey and Dewey the ducks were killed by a critter last Wednesday, leaving Huey all by his lonesome, with only occasional visits from the guineas to keep him going.  We did end up getting him another buddy, but before we did, he found his own new friend:

 

A lone Canadian goose showed up late Thursday and became instant buddies with Huey. 

 

They hang out together constantly, and the goose has managed to get Huey out into the deeper part of the pond for the first time. 

And Huey has taught the goose that when I call “chickie chickie chickie”, you’d better run to the front of the house for scratch grains before the chickens eat it all.

 

Give it a few weeks and the goose will be marching into the house and demanding food along with the rest of the beggars!

Paranoid

 

Ever get the feeling that you’re being watched?

 

 

I do.

Trista & Baby Girl Go Home

The wonderful new volunteer that did the quarantine fence and built my feed bin (which I haven’t shown you yet, so sorry.  But trust me, it’s awesome.)  adopted Trista and Baby Girl today.  I wasn’t going to let either of them go before they had more one-on-one time with people, but Marvin and his wife are pretty knowledgeable horse people, and they have neighbors who are even more so.  Trista’s destiny is to become a cart pony and Baby Girl will become Joyce’s trail horse when she’s old enough.

I wish I had some decent pictures, but sadly, I have failed.  

Again.

You’ll just have to settle for this one of Marvin and Trista together.  I hope Marvin doesn’t stop coming over to build things once he sees this!

Baby Makes Way More than Three!

We had something pretty darned exciting happen here yesterday!  One of my Black Austrolorps had gone broody a few weeks back and the first egg hatched last night!  I went out to collect eggs at dusk and heard a very high-pitched chirping as I got closer to the coop, so I knew we had a little one in there somewhere.  I found the little guy in another nesting box, apart from the hen.  He’s awfully lucky that I found him before the cats did! 

Since “mom” is still sitting on about 15 other eggs, she had no interest in taking baby out into the real world for food, so I brought him/her into the house and put him in the empty brooder under the heat lamp.  The poor thing was so tired, it could barely hold up it’s head.  I wasn’t sure it would make it through the night on it’s own, but this morning he/she seems perky and happy to be alive!

 

Now that I know they’re starting to hatch, I’ll be running out there several times a day looking for new chicks.  Hopefully this cute little guy will have some company before too long.

You know what the really exciting part about all of this is?  I have no idea what they’re going to look like when they grow up!  Rambo the White Rock is likely the proud papa, but Billy Badass sneaks in some nookie now and then too.  We have no idea what Billy is and the hens are so varied that there’s no telling which chicks come from which hens.  The Americauna chicks should have green legs, but other than that, it’s anyone’s guess.  I just hope most the chicks are hens, because seven roosters on the farm is more than enough!

The Fall Garden

I had to break out the sweatshirts today.   And that’s all I’m saying about the incredible unfairness of Summer ending already.

Things are winding down in the garden now, too.  The butterfly weeds are going to seed and I foresee a jungle of pink flowers next year if even one tenth of the seeds germinate.

 

 

The butterfly weeds are also hosts to all sorts of bugs that I don’t want, but I’m happy to see them on the flowers instead of the veggies.

 

  

 

They also host some insects that I do want to encourage in my garden.

 

I would highly recommend planting butterfly weed in your own garden to encourage the beautiful Monarch butterfly to visit.  My plants are covered in these caterpillars, but not one is on the cabbage!

 

 

This is the Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge tomato that I planted for the first time this year.  It will probably also be the last year.  The plant is prolific, covered in standard-sized orange tomatoes, but the flavor isn’t anything to write home about and there’s just nothing exceptional about it.  Oh well, that leaves me more room for trying something new next year!

 

 

I’m sorry baby watermelon, but I really don’t think you have a chance in hell of growing to delicious maturity before frost hits.

 

 

I end this post with a happy Zinnia.

 

And an even happier butterfly.

A Public Service Announcement

 

This is my brain.

This is my brain during allergy season.

 

Any questions?

Productivity

Is not happening here because of me.   But it is happening.  And I even have proof.   Let’s take, for instance, the quarantine pasture fence:

 

 

No more barbed wire, baby!  All that’s left is to string up the top and mid strand of electric, and cut off the tops of the posts.

I had nothing to do with getting the new fence up.  Are you kidding?  330’ foot rolls of woven wire is fence is NOT light.  My back rebelled just looking at the rolls that have been sitting next to my driveway for months.   Two manly volunteers got it done yesterday and I am forever grateful to them.  Needless to say, I can’t wait for them to come out and do the rest!  They did an awesome job, way better than Glenn and I would have done.

 

I did have a little something to do with this:

 

Yup, you guessed it, the round pen is finally up.  On the flattest place we could find, which still isn’t very flat.  I’m hoping once the sand is dumped in and spread, it will be more level.  But it’s completely usable as it is now.

Glenn got the holes dug before he left a couple of weeks ago, I sunk the posts with concrete yesterday, and I had volunteer help today to nail up the boards.   Not bad for two bottle blondes, eh?

I couldn’t get Glenn’s P.O.S. chainsaw to start, so the tops still need to be chopped off and these two boards need to be trimmed so I can hang the gate.

 

Eventually, I’ll put one more board along the ground and get a truckload of sand dumped and spread.  The pen is 40’ in diameter, which is plenty of room for ground work and getting on all these unbroke horses for the first time.  The posts and boards are all pressure treated, but I’d still like to throw some paint on all the wood.  Unlike everyone else and their brother up here I will NOT be using used motor oil as paint.  Nooooooooo thank you!  That’s not my idea of a good recycling choice.

 

I’m on call for work tomorrow (how much does that suck???), so I think I may finally conquer the two million tomatoes still hanging on the vine in the garden and the ones still in the freezer.  Call me crazy, but me and my sinuses are actually looking forward to hanging out inside with the A/C cranked tomorrow!

Sadie Update

As you can see, Sadie is just about healed up from her encounter with a mountain lion.

 

She healed up very well, considering she ripped out most her stitches three days after Doc stitched her up.  What you see there is only holding on to one side of the wound.  Anne keeps telling me she wants to come out and remove the stitches herself, but… ahem.  Anne?  Oh, ANNE!  Where are you, Anne??

Oh, there you are, buried under 16 hour days at work and three hours of sleep for the past two weeks.  I guess we’ll forgive you.

 

Anyways. 

As you can also tell, Sadie’s personality hasn’t changed at all due to the penicillin shots and gooey antibiotic being rubbed onto the wound twice a day.   She’s still an attention whore.

 

And an itchy butt slut.

 

We tried leaving her, but she just kept getting in front of us and herding us back together in order to scratch her butt more. 

 

 

Once you’ve become a Sadie slave, you’re always a Sadie slave.  There’s no escaping her merciless nudging, nuzzling, an pathetic looks with those big brown eyes of hers. 

At least Stride and Lilo haven’t fallen into her trap yet. 

Mater Madness

While most everyone else on the East coast has been hit by late blight, I have had a bumper crop of tomatoes this year.  I’ve been throwing them in ziplocs then into the freezer in hopes that I’ll get around to canning them sometime before 2010.   My basket last night was so heavy with tomatoes I barely managed to carry it into the house and my back thanked me for it most the night.

 

While I’m bragging about my tomato success and the rest of you are ready to beat me senseless, let me tell you about all the failures I’ve also had this year. 

My sweet bell pepper plants are beautiful!  Full, tall, luscious… and not one pepper or flower on the bunch.  Anyone need some nitrogen?  I seem to have more than enough.

My zucchinis and summer squash died shortly after flowering thanks to squash bugs. 

My cucumber plants didn’t make it three days after transplant.

My eggplants were swarmed by flea beetles before I got them covered with Remay and I’ll be lucky to get any fruits this year.

I’ve had three Pony Yellow watermelons so far, but the rest of my watermelon and melon plants are barely even flowering. 

My beautiful and plentiful garlic harvest was peed on by a senile Woogie as it was drying on the kitchen table.  I dare any of you to combine garlic and cat pee and take a nice deep whiff.   Hopefully, the bulbs aren’t ruined and I can plant them all next month without them still smelling like cat pee at harvest time.

I had planted the winter squash in a new garden this year and then never had time to keep it weeded.   Much to my dismay, there will not be any winter squash baked with maple syrup and brown sugar this year.

Glenn’s collards look like yellow lace thanks to all the bugs that the guineas are ignoring.  But hey, the chard and Tyfon Holland greens still look great and have a third crop ready for canning/freezing already.

The sweet corn did really well this year and I have never had such nice looking ears that have also been completely untouched by bugs.   The Litchi tomatoes and Pineapple tomatillos are also doing great, as are all the flowers I planted.  Except the Cosmos, which all decided to grow 7’ tall before flowering.  Again with the nitrogen!  You’d think I’d learn.

Oh well, there’s always next year.

Of course, I said that last year and a lot of good it did me.