Sunday Stills

Blu grazing on a foggy morning

Nemo eating grass while Lighty opted for the tree instead

a closer look at Lighty eating leaves

Gus and Asterik

Chance and Convey

Trigger and Baby

Lotus and Romeo

Two new faces; Sushi and Squirrel . . .

. . . a closer look at the new faces of Sushi and Squirrel

Mick, Paramount, Sam, Light, Johnny, Blu, Taco and Miel emerging from a private meeting in the woods . . .

. . . Mick, Paramount, Sam, Lighty, Happy, Johnny, Taco, Sebastian, Miel and Nemo

Paramount enjoying a dusty roll . . . 

. . . followed by a good shake

new face Magic grooming with Wilson

Ripley, Wilson, Johnny and Gus

Digby and Blu waiting to be fed

Johnny and Happy

Dog and Cat Life

It has been awhile since I've written about Oscar and I've had a few requests lately to hear an Oscar update. For anyone who doesn't know, Oscar is our feral cat that we have been feeding for several years. We're not allowed to touch him. He doesn't want in the house (trust me, we've tried for years). He only wants canned cat food, and it must be in certain flavors or he won't eat it. He likes to hang out on our front porch during the day and look in the windows at us when we're inside. I refer to this as Oscar watching his "zoo TV." We're the zoo animals, along with Jingle and Joy, and Oscar watches us for entertainment, and probably feels sorry for us. At night he switches to our back porch and watches us through our kitchen door.

Oscar has been doing his usual things lately. Lots of eating, lots of hanging out, lots of watching zoo TV. His favorite canned cat food these days is Turkey and Cheese with Gravy, and Chicken and Cheese with Gravy. At some point he'll decide he doesn't like them anymore and we'll turn ourselves inside out trying to determine what flavors of canned cat food will be acceptable for Oscar.

Oscar was worn out from watching zoo TV and fell asleep on our bistro table last week

Oscar was annoyed with us that we had the nerve to sit on our back porch a couple of evenings ago. He sat at the edge of our yard and glared at us.

You might recall our recent addition to the Paradigm Farms Empire, Igor the kitten. Igor has settled in nicely to life at the barn. He goes out "catting" (Jason's phrase) during the day, and at night he gets shut into the office of the front barn. Igor has come a long, long way from the starving, terrified, half dead kitten we found after Christmas. He likes to follow us around in the mornings at feeding time. He stays within the vicinity of the front barn. Since Oscar stays around the back barn and our house, Igor and Oscar have not yet crossed paths. It's unlikely that they will. An interesting note, I've now caught two fleeting glimpses of a black cat at the middle barn, so we may have another cat that has joined the Empire. 

Igor and Timbit routinely play with each other in the mornings. Igor likes to cat flop in front of Timbit, and then Timbit rolls him back and forth with his nose. 

Igor likes to be my feeding assistant in the mornings

Igor keeping an eye on the horses w hile they eat

Igor out "catting" as Jason likes to say 

Igor and Ewen are buddies, Igor is the boss

Like Oscar, Igor has a hard life

Like Igor and Oscar, Ewen is happy and enjoying life. Carter saw this soccer ball dog toy that has a squeaker inside of it and insisted we buy it for Ewen. Clearly Carter has a keen understanding of Ewen't likes because you can see from the pictures below that Ewen likes the soccer ball. I expect Carter knew that Ewen would like the squeaky soccer ball because Ewen loves to grab Carter's soccer ball and run off with it. If you see random soccer balls in our pastures please return them to Carter. Ewen has carted off a few soccer balls at this point.

Ewen having fun with his soccer ball

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Hemi and Thomas

Sebastian

two new faces, Taylor and Alfie

Timbit annoying Norman

Grand and Rip

Revy and Elfin

Asterik and Gibson

Cocomo posing . . . 

. . . Cocomo posing again with Donneur in the background

Maisie

Mick and Sam

Nemo and Lighty

Gus, Lofty and Donneur

Flyer and Faune; Faune's expression says, "no pictures please"

Moving Fence

Last week we spent a day, or more accurately mostly Jason spent a day, moving one of the cross fences between pastures. We have very few things we would do differently if we were finding ourselves building out the farm again. However, there is one thing that would top the list, and that would be to do all of our cross fencing with the Centaur fencing we used in two locations. We have six miles of four board, wood fence which makes a great perimeter fence. But when you use it as cross fencing, you have made your fence fixed and immobile. Farming is not a fixed and immobile endeavor, so our one do-over would be no wood fence for cross fencing.

Thankfully, between the first two pastures we used the Centaur electric fencing for our cross fence. We always found ourselves mowing the first pasture repeatedly in past years because the horses couldn't keep up with the grass. Conversely, we often found ourselves moving the horses off of the second pasture to let it rest because the horses were over grazing it. We had been telling ourselves for a year that we should move the cross fence to balance out the pastures, and we finally did it last week.

As you can see from the pictures and video below, there was much excitement from the horses concerning the change in location from the fence. This group of horses is one of our more elderly groups, and there is a 30 year old, a 29 year old, a couple of 27 year olds, and more horses down through their 20's running around in these pictures and the video. There are a couple of younger horses in their late teens but most of this group is quite old, and given their ages I think they look fantastic.

You can see the line from where the fence used to be, it's the dirt line immediately followed by green.

A short video of some of the initial exploration of the new space

Fabrizzio and Havana headed out to explore

Merlin, Remmy, Hesse and Duesy

R-L Duesy, Cino, Merlin, Burno, Fabrizzio, Remmy, Hesse Baner

R-L Duesy, Cino, Merlin, Bruno

R-L Cino, Merlin, Hesse, Remmy, Baner, Bruno, Walden, Fabrizzio

Duesy and Havana

Fabrizzio and Baner

Hesse, Remmy, Baner and Fabrizzio

Sabrina and Bonnie watched the excitement from across the driveway

Flyer, Silver and Faune watched from the other side of the fence; their group stayed in the pasture as we moved the fence so there wasn't any excitement for them

Cisco and Chance

Homer, Moe and Levendi

Convey and Apollo

Gus, Donneur and Lofty

George and Romeo

some of the mares and ponies were hyper on a rainy morning; Traveller, Dawn and Charlotte

Traveller and Charlotte

Cinnamon and Dawn

MyLight and Charlotte

Dolly saying, "wait for meeeee!"

Lily

Charlotte, Norman and Renatta

I love this picture of Dawn (followed by MyLight with Calimba in the background)

Renatta

Cinnamon and Dawn