2007-Jun-25
Too Much Excitement!
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This past Monday we brought home two pure bred Quarter Horses. A very generous retired couple gave our family and a neighbor friend our pick of their ten Quarter Horses. At first we were going to bring home Nancy, who is an eleven year old registered Quarter Horse. She is a gorgeous horse and has been trained but it has been six years since she has been worked with on a regular basis. She was the lead mare of the horses and she was too powerful and headstrong to be our first horse. We decided to bring home Sassy, which is a two year old and the neighbor boy chose Poco, who is a yearling. We are allowing our neighbor to keep his horse in the barn and he will care for her needs and help around with the upkeep of the barn. Sassy and Poco are full blooded sisters and they are good companions for one another. We will need to send Sassy to a professional trainer before she can be saddled. We may try to halter train her if she continues to make progress in letting us work with her. Shaiya is feeding her sweet feed as a treat everyday and she is really warming up to her. Michael loves her and she was his first pick of the horses but for some reason Sassy nips at him sometimes and lays her ears back whenever he pets her for too long. Hopefully this is something that will be worked out during the training period. I consider these horses a blessing from the Lord and I am very thankful the Lord provided this gift for our daughter. Many years now she has dreamed about owning a horse and she has been preparing for this time when she could have one. It is such a blessing that the couple decided to offer her one. I am excited about this and I love going outside each day to visit with them. Even though this makes me very happy, I do worry about gathering the provision we need for the horse. We will need to buy and store hay for the winter and we will need to send the horse to a professional trainer which is around $500. Hay prices have been astronomical with the drought conditions since May but last week it began to rain and so this may allow for the hay prices to drop a bit. I would like to find hay at $3 per bale and Shaiya has been calling around and hay has ranged from $5 to $7 a bale. Friday afternoon we experienced too much excitement around here on the farm. It all began when I decided that the oldest rooster needed some fresh air and sunshine and that I would chase him out of the barn. I did not really have a good reason other than I can hear the rooster cock-a-doodle-doodling from the barn each morning and that I thought it would be nice to have the rooster outside so that we could hear him more clearly. After a half an hour of chasing the rooster around the barn, I decided to see if Shaiya would help me out. Much to her chagrin of my wonderful idea, she decided to help me out by cornering the other hens while I ran after the big rooster. The hens were having a tizzy at us running all over the barn trying to chase the rooster out the door. Finally we decided to give up but not before one of my Rhode Island Red hens decided to run frantically out the door and into my garage where it hid the rest of the afternoon. Thankfully Konecko, our very lazy cat, decided to leave the poor bird alone while it hid in a corner of the garage, until Michael could come home and return the hen back to its quarters. After the rooster chasing expedition, my friend stopped by that lives a mile up the road. She was visiting with us out by the pasture while we gave Sassy and Poco some sweet feed in buckets. The wind was gently blowing and we began to hear some creaking sounds coming from the dog yard. We all began looking at the large tree (it is a big tree but I am not sure what kind it is) standing in the middle of the dog yard and then all of a sudden a scary cracking sound thundered through the air and Shaiya yelled out “run girls, run!” My friend took off running up the hill and our little one Briyah followed behind her. I ran after Briyah and all I could think about was if the tree was going to fall down that I had to protect her so I slammed Briyah down on the ground and covered her up. I was scared silly. We looked up and the tree did not fall but an enormous branch cracked off the tree and thankfully it did not hurt our dogs at all. The branch fell inside of the fenced dog yard and did not fall anywhere near us and so we were not hurt either. Briyah’s wrist was sore since I pulled her to the ground but other than this we were all just fine. My poor friend was so scared too that she thought we were going to have a tree fall on us. I hope she will come to visit me again! Yesterday our neighbor who owns this property came over with a chainsaw to cut the large tree branch and carry it off with his tractor. It took about 3 tractor loads to remove the tree branches and now a significant portion of that old beautiful tree is missing. Heirloom Garden Update: -the pole beans are really flourishing -little bell peppers and banana peppers are starting to appear on the plants -the heirloom tomatoes are producing quite a bit of fruit -some sneaky little creature is digging up my watermelon plants -the sweet corn is looking weak and yellowing... I did not realize that you need to add nitrogen to sweet corn and so we may not have a successful corn crop this year Things I am learning: -weeds can be difficult to manage but mulching seems to work the best -you have to go outside and pick Japanese Beetles everyday so they will not eat the plants -I strongly dislike Japanese Beetles -feeding manure tea to the plants every two weeks really makes the plants more productive -I am supposed to pick the leaf lettuce before it grows into an enormous plant -I am supposed to harvest the cilantro before it starts flowering Blessings to you, Sharra |
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2007-Jul-9 - WOW!!
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