Farm Fresh Blog

Look at this girl.  I love this little chunky monkey!  (Girlfriend has got some junk in her trunk!)

Sunday morning we're going to check her out to see if she can fill the position as Resident Bumming Around The Back Yard Horse. She's an 8 year old Haflinger who used to be a Marathon Driving Horse and has been ridden bareback by kids.  I'm told that she's a calm and easy-going girl so hopefully she'll work as a Drink Frappuccino While I Sit On Her Back And Watch The Birds Horse. (Yes, I quit drinking the Starbucks frappuccinos.  Yeah!  Kicked the habit! No, not completely . . .  I'm making my own homemade frapps now. . . . I know. I'm weak. Sue me.)

We have friends with Percherons who are going to teach me to drive with her.  Other Half has already been on the internet looking at buckboards.  Please! Good grief! Those suckers are expensive!  While I was interested in a horse that could double as a 4-wheeler for hauling feed, hay, and heavy tree limbs, he's looking at wagons.  Wagons are NOT cheap! 

If we like her, we'll take her on a two week trial. Keep your fingers crossed! If I'm really, REALLY lucky, she may actually become as cherished as my Velveteen Rabbit.   (The Velveteen Rabbit)

This morning I tried to send Other Half on a scouting mission to look at a horse for me.  He would have none of it.

"I can't pick out a horse for you!" he said.

"Why not?"

"Because you always want those Fairy Tale horses!"

This confused me.  Then I realized that he was used to looking at this:

and this:

Admittedly, they ARE Fairy Tale horses. But before Other Half, there was another horse - my Velveteen Rabbit.

Her name was Sonora. I called her Sonny. She was a swaybacked old brood mare who had fallen on hard times.  I rescued her at an auction as she was one step away from the meat packer, and she paid me back ten-fold.   She was never "fairy tale" horse pretty, but I broke her to ride, and I trusted her.  I used to climb up on her broad back and slide down into the sway.  While she grazed in the back yard, I surveyed my little kingdom, drinking coffee, safe in the curve of that old mare's back. Perhaps she was just a different kind of Fairy Tale horse.  Sonny has always reminded me of The Skin Horse in the tale of The Velveteen Rabbit.

The Velveteen Rabbit

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.

But the Skin Horse only smiled.

Sonny might not have been the picture of a fairy tale horse, but she was certainly REAL and I miss my little fairy tale old mare.

NEWS FLASH!

Napolean's little buddy, Ruffy, is staying! (Her husband vetoed adding another horse, even a pint-sized one! We made the deal that any time she wants to borrow the little fellows for a parade, she can just pick them up!)

Things are returning to normal.  The boys are bookends and Montoya has returned home from the trainer's place.

               Little Buddy

      Big Buddy!

The Porch Ponies are blowing their shaggy winter coats. Great gobs of pony hair are floating everywhere. I try to brush them but it's hard to keep ahead of the spring blow. Sometimes you just need a little help from a friend.

  "Yeah!  A little to the right!"

This brings me to our news for the day.  Today we are taking Ruffy, my red-headed demon, back to his previous owner.  She spoke to me over the weekend and the family misses the little devil.  They regularly used him in parades and he is a mainstay with the cheerleaders.  When the town sees those cheerleaders, they expect to see Ruffy and Napolean.  So I agreed to sell Ruffy back to her.  I want to keep Napolean and she has agreed to help me find a companion for him to replace Ruffy.  

Other Half has informed me that Napolean doesn't NEED a companion, that a goat would work just fine.  But I say, NAY! (neigh!!!)  A goat can't do this:

"Ohhhhh yeahhhhhh! That's the spot!"

Do you know what farming people do with their tax checks? 

...

       ....

             .....

They take the dogs to Petsmart!  (Yep! We're big spenders!)

This week we packed up Thing 1 and Thing 2 and took them to the big city!  Now I don't know about Thing 2, since he's a rescue, but Thing 1 has NEVER been inside a Petsmart.  (she shops at the feedstore) Needless to say, she was ga-ga over Petsmart. Imagine a teenage girl's first trip to the mall.

Thing 1 took an olfactory tour of everything!  She had never SEEN so much cool stuff!

 Toys!

 Bones!

 "Clothes????  Dogs wear clothes??"

 This stopped her in her tracks. "A rat?"

  "This place has RATS???!!!"

Thing 2 came over to see for himself.   They decided that this giant barn must not have any cats.

(disclaimer: no rats were terrorize while these pictures were taken!)

Border Collie REALLY enjoyed her trip to the big city! She loved Petsmart except for one thing:

  "They gots rats, but they don't gots GOATS!"

Spring brings flowers and baby goats!

I never get tired of watching these little dudes!

  They are sooo cute!

But occasionally they do something to remind me that even at this age, they are goats!

 Classic example!

In Search Of . . .

     I knew it was coming. I knew it the moment I saw his eyes light up. Other Half sat across the table and listened to another agent describe the gi-normous rattlesnake he'd seen in a federal preserve as he flew over it in a helicopter. I saw that gleam and I knew. I knew that sometime in the near future we would find ourselves in that preserve. 

     Flash forward to Sunday morning.  We had plenty of chores we could have been doing, but after a hard week of work that actually earns a paycheck, we were ready for a break. I suggested going to the Sporting Goods store for some new running shoes.  (That's normally as far down the Getting Healthy path I tend to travel.) Other Half suggested that we take the Border collies (Thing 1 & Thing 2) out in the jeep. He and the dogs could wait outside while I bought shoes. Sounded good. Like tripping over a barbed wire fence, I fell right into it.

     "Ok!  Let's take the Border collies out in the jeep!"

     But once we got rolling, the plan changed. In his defense, I changed it first.  While slow-rolling down the road, I changed the game plan because  I really loathe the idea of going into the city on my day off.

     "Hey, instead of going into the city, let's just drive around out here for a while," I said.

     Oh that sounded good to him! (I bet it did.)

     As soon as he suggested heading to the preserve, I remembered the gi-normous rattlesnake. He didn't even mention the snake. Okie Dokie, Smokie. The Border Collies were NOT getting out of the jeep. I was NOT getting out of the jeep either.  But that lasted until I saw the wildflowers.

     I had to get out and photograph this.

This made me get back in the jeep.

We saw lots of alligators . . . lots and lots and lots of alligators.  (The Border Collies were NOT getting out of the jeep!)

Cowdog had a blast.  He loves riding in the jeep. 

Because he is a Border Collie, he has to have a least one bizarre quirky behavior.  Cowdog snaps at passing cars as he goes down the road. Lily finds this habit most annoying. So while he bounced and snapped his way down the highway, Lily glared at him, angry that she was strapped into the back seat with an idiot.

After a while she just gave up and went to sleep. 

Despite lots of looking, we never saw a gi-normous rattlesnake.  Trust me, I did LOTS and LOTS of looking for snakes. Finding snakes was VERY important to me! I think Other Half was a little disappointed that he didn't find a giant rattlesnake. I was okay with it though.

And that's why I didn't get field fencing put up in the big pasture this weekend!

This is why a certain Miniature Horse is worth his weight in gold:

and this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

and this too:

I wanted to take this child home with me!

I wonder if her mother would notice if I just loaded her in the horse trailer and took her home with the pony. Hmmmm. . . probably so. What a pity.  This one even comes with cute overalls too!

All this pony riding was because it was The Supervisor's first birthday!!!

 Look at those cakes!!!!  Farm animals!!!   (a cow, a pig, a sheep, a chick, and a bunny!) The Supervisor has a real cake baker for a grandma!  What a lucky kid!

But unfortunately The Supervisor was so excited about the Birthday Happenings that she refused to take her nap.  Thus . . .

 While in the past, this child has had to be forcibly extracted from the back of this pony, today she was having none of it! (I will blackmail her with this photo later!)

Now let's take another look at those cakes!

Late again . . .

This is why I was late for work yesterday:

I was headed for work on time. (I really was!)  I stepped out the back gate and found this little guy. Brand spankin' new baby goat. Screech! Took one look at him and knew I was gonna be late for work . . . again.

We checked him out.  He seemed healthy. Found the afterbirth.  It looked okay . . . but it wouldn't go in the bag. That afterbirth had a life of its own.  It oozed across the shovel and like an octopus, wriggling away and escaping before I could stuff it in the bag. Why me?  No one else is late for work because they can't get their afterbirth in the trash bag!  I'm cursed! 

This post is courtesy of my work buddy, Fergus Fernandez, who, upon hearing my excuse, said "You have GOT to put THAT on the blog."  Here it is, Fergus!

Dog & Water Hoses

Some of us get it . . .

 . . . some of us don't.

 ???