Someone is Missing and Rollfest 2010

Sunday morning (this morning) I handled morning chores on my own as Jason was a bit under the weather. It was a pleasant morning. We had another weekend of beautiful weather, today it was in the low 60's with bright sunshine. The morning had gone very smoothly, all of the horses had their best manners on display and it was just a beautiful morning to be outside. These are the types of days when everyone wishes they had a farm to work on (when it is cold and raining not so much).

I fed the Big Boys last. As always, I was counting horses as I walked to the pasture with their feedbags. I kept coming up one horse short. I didn't think much of it, assuming maybe the missing horse was blocked from my view by another horse. The feedbags are always put on in the same order every feeding, and I realized Levendi was MIA. Again I still did not think much of it. I kept expecting that he would come charging up at a full gallop once he realized the herd was no longer where he was. Sometimes they are so intent on their grazing they don't realize that everyone else has moved, and they finally put their head up and look around and realize they are alone.

I kept calling Levendi while the boys were eating but he didn't appear. I walked around briefly calling him and did not see him. I still was not worried because there pasture is huge, 40 acres, so you can't exactly see all of it without taking a good hike. When the rest of the boys had finished eating and there was still no Levendi I started to get slightly worried since he had not appeared, but not too much. I started walking through the pasture calling him. I did not see him anywhere and he did not appear. After a few minutes I was starting to get really worried. Of course I was imagining every possible worst case scenario. I kept walking, looking and calling him. After a few more minutes I was starting to go from worried to full on panic.

I pulled my phone out so I could call Jason. Sick or not he was going to have to come help with the search for Levendi, and I assumed help handle the impending emergency once we found Levendi and learned why he hadn't come for breakfast. I was scanning the woods behind the boys' run in shed when I noticed some movement. I looked more closely and saw Levendi just standing there in the woods looking at me, but making no effort to move. I put my phone away, relieved to have found him but very worried as to why he wasn't moving. I ran over to where he was and as I got closer I slowed down and tried to process the scene. There was a huge downed tree branch right in front of him blocking his path. I could tell the branch was not newly fallen and had been there awhile, and I couldn't see anything wrong with Levendi either.

Once I reached Levendi and investigated the scene I realized the dork was perfectly fine. All he needed to do was walk about 15 feet either to his left or his right to go around the branch and exit the woods. Apparently he was unable to figure that out on his own, as he just stood there waiting for someone to appear and solve this problem for him. I walked around the branch, put his feedbag on him, and led him by the strap around the branch and out of the woods. He then took off, feedbag and all, to rejoin the group. I followed him over and waited while he happily ate his breakfast. I understand why parents sometimes want to strangle their kids and hug them at the same time. That was pretty much how I felt about Levendi this morning!

Saturday morning was equally eventful but in a completely different way. Saturday was also a beautiful weather day and the horses were all enjoying the sunshine. The horses were highly entertaining to me as I watched one after another roll. I could hardly keep up with it, as every time one horse finished rolling I would look around and see another horse going down for a roll, it was a big rollfest for horses. I tried to take pictures of all of them but I missed some. Lucky rolled first and I didn't get his picture.

Clay was the next horse to roll; 2 horses and counting

Homer went next; #3

Trigger was #4

Thomas was #5

Elfin and Tony were next, and were numbers 6 and 7. I took a video because I wanted to capture Elfin doing his dogwalk where he rolls, sits up like a dog, and scooches over to the other side to roll again. He shot that plan down because he didn't do it! He stood up and then laid back down to roll on the other side. Thanks for nothing Elfin!



Leo was #8

#9 was Apollo

Buffy was #10

#11 was Missy

And Ivan was #12. I wasn't able to take his picture in the act because he was rolling at the same time as Missy. However I think this picture shows proof of a horse that JUST rolled!

I took all of the above pictures and video in a timespan of less than ten minutes. I felt like I was in the middle of an orgy and I was the only one not participating. I briefly thought about dropping down in the dirt by the gate to roll but I just didn't think I would be happy with the results. Maybe I will participate in the next rollfest.

Just for fun to wrap this post up here is a short clip of Norman the pony trotting through the field yesterday. He is SO cute!

Living the Life

The last few days the theme around the farm has been run, play, roll and nap. The weather has been wonderful, Saturday and Sunday were both sunny and in the mid 60's. By Friday afternoon everyone was naked. I told Jason it felt like we were a nudist beach or something, I've gotten so used to seeing horses wearing rainsheets and blankets. There have been plenty of times when most of the horses have been naked but not a lot where everyone has been naked.

The horses were enjoying the sun and it seemed like every time I looked around I saw another horse down taking a nap. There was a lot of "dead horse" going on around here this weekend. It wore me out running around making sure everyone really was just taking a nap. The last three days were just fun days to be on the farm. All I saw were horses running for the fun of it, playing with each other, rolling like fiends, of course taking naps, and grazing in the sun.

A couple of the horses are in serious shedding mode right now although most are just now starting to shed, and very halfheartedly at that. It always seems like the gray horses are the ones that really start to shed ahead of everyone else. Cuffie lost a mountain of hair today while I went over him with the shedding blade. I watched Lily roll this morning, and there was a pile of white hair on the grass after she stood up. When she did the requisite after roll shake white hair when flying everywhere.

Thanks to our wonderful (not) winter we had this year we are having a very late spring. Our daffodils should be in full bloom by now and they are just barely starting to come up out of the ground. At least it feels like spring really is going to come, and hopefully soon!

The skunk smell in the barn has improved tremendously, we are on day eight today. It is mostly gone, with the office being the only part with an odor lingering consistently. Since the windows have been able to be open in the office the last few days hopefully that will help with the odor.

Lightening and Lucky running just for the fun of it . The zoom on my camera was temporarily stuck so a lot of this looks far away. At about 1:20 that is Lightening and Clay both rolling, it is hard to tell since the stupid zoom decided not to zoom for a few minutes. I think my poor camera is so overloaded with dirt it is getting time for a replacement.

Continuing on with more happy horses. How anyone could think these horses would rather be standing in a stall most of the time being "pampered" is beyond me. We start with Lucky and O'Reilly playing. Then Trigger and Thomas run along behind the fence, and then Thomas stops to roll. We then see more playing O'Reilly and Levendi playing over the fence.

Homer and Ivan napping with Chance grazing in the background

Missy and Lily
Mares just hanging out; MyLight, Harmony, Missy and Buffy

Winston was napping hard in dead horse position
O'Reilly, Chili and Snappy grazing in the sun
Homer, Apollo, Levendi, Baby and Trigger were all very happy to not be wearing a sheet or a blanket
Dustin, Ivan and Tony
Jo the fainting goat was a very active participant on farrier day. Here she decided it was time to say hello to Gwen the farrier while she was trimming Missy.

I missed the prefect picture. Tony was hanging out in a stall awaiting his turn with the farrier when Jo came marching up to introduce herself. They touched noses, it was very cute. Here Jo is walking away while Tony says "don't leave yet!"

Elfin turning around to see what that silly goat was up to now. Elfin and Jo also touched noses.

Jo wore herself out playing with the farrier and the horses so she had to take a nap. Jo in dead goat position.

Harmony napping in the sun

Another horse in dead horse position

I walked out to check and make sure they were just napping and Chili popped his head up and looked at me

Faune snoozed in the hay while Winston ate hay on Friday morning

Hanging out in the sun; Slinky in the front with Baby, Ivan and Apollo in the back

Two nappers, one standing (Lucky) and one down (Snappy)

Cloudy climbed up on the hay bales in the Kubota to take a cat nap

Norman always looks so cute no matter what he is doing

Cinnamon grazing in the sun

Am I In A Movie . . . ??

And did someone forget to tell me??? This weekend it seemed that we had starring roles in the movie Groundhog Day, where the same day keeps happening over and over. In the last couple of weeks we have:

1. replaced a leaking water hydrant
2. dealt with a skunk in one of the pastures that seemed determined to be with me and the horses
3. dealt with snow

Our list of activities this weekend included:

1. replacing a leaking water hydrant
2. dealing with a skunk IN THE BARN this time!!
3. watching snow fall again

Our first snow this winter was the first week of January. We had about a half inch of snow accumulation the first time around. It may not seem like much but it did close the schools for two days!

Our 2nd snow of the winter came two weeks ago. This one brought us about four inches of snow. This shut down schools and businesses for almost a week. (this is the south, we don't "do" snow!).

Maybe our third snow of the year doesn't really count. By this afternoon the dusting we had in places was completely melted. Here is Snappy grazing with a few visiting geese late this afternoon. As you can see there isn't any white stuff hanging around. This is much more typical of how snow usually happens here.

In regards to the weather, I am tempted to cram Punxsutawney Phil back down in his hole and tell the rodent to try again! Thankfully the snow that came down throughout the morning and put a dusting on the ground quickly melted by early afternoon. However it looks like it could snow again tonight. The one thing that goes through my mind as I look at our weather forecast is WTF?? The good news is that it isn't really overly cold, barely cold enough to snow. We shall see what tonight brings.


Jason and I also had the pleasure of replacing another water hydrant this weekend. You might recall when we we trying to determine where the leak in one of our water lines was, I tried to participate in the conversation between my Dad and Jason. I told them that I thought the leak would be at either "X" or "Y." Like I said, they patted me on the head and dismissed me. Of course the leak turned out to be at X. ('nuff said!).


It turned out that location Y was also a problem. (Darn, at this point I would have been happy to be wrong!!!) The handle never seemed to work quite right, it was really hard to deal with. Then one day the water just wouldn't shut off completely at that hydrant. Jason tried to repair the hydrant but it turned out the set screw was bent. Great.

Jason digging out the old hydrant

Jason never vocalized what was going through his head when I took this picture. However I am pretty sure it was something along the lines of "get that camera out of my face before I take these pipe cutters and . . . (you can fill in the blanks from here)."

Apparently Jason and I learned a lot replacing the first hydrant because this job went much faster. We "got 'r done" in a little over an hour. I was pretty impressed by that. I made important contributions like spreading joint compound on the parts, hauling gravel and taking pictures. Jason did all of the digging, refilling of the hole, and pounding the hydrant connection into the pipe (i.e. 99% of the work). I have to say actually connecting the hydrant to t he pipe is the hardest part of the job, even harder than all of the shoveling. Jason always looks like he is about to keel over after he's gotten the hydrant connected to the pipe.

One newly installed hydrant

Our other exciting event this weekend was the skunk in the barn. Yes IN THE BARN. I go in the barn Sunday morning and I notice something scurrying away and into one of the stalls out of the corner of my eye. I just assumed it was one of the cats. It turns out it was a skunk. And it went in a corner of a stall and refused to emerge. Jason and I had no idea what to do. We kept streeeeetching ourselves around the doorway to look at the skunk and see what it was doing. It was always just sitting there.

After much discussion and deliberation we made the decision to leave the stall door open, turn the horses back out, and hope the skunk would decide to leave on its own. We went on with our day and forgot about the skunk for awhile. Apparently something startled the skunk because when I went in the barn to see if the skunk had left I was pretty much knocked down by the smell. Awesome. I streeeeeetch around the stall entrance again to see if he had at least left. Nope, still there, in the exact same spot.

At this point I made the executive decision (yes, *I* made the call!) that the skunk would have to be dispatched. He had already sprayed once in the barn, it was only a matter of time before the dogs or cats caused another incident, and he showed no inclination to leave. The skunk crossed the rainbow bridge to skunk heaven. I washed our clothes three times, I think the smell is mostly out now. It is anyone's guess as to when the overwhelming skunk smell will be out of the barn. I think my clothes will have to be bleached every day after being in the barn. Sigh.

That pretty much sums up our exciting weekend. Leaking water hydrants, snow and skunks - good times!!

MyLight, Lily and Buffy were being playful on Saturday:

Cloudy and Olivia watching the snow from the barn entrance this morning

Another picture of Olivia and Cloudy

Elfin grazing in the snow flurries

Chance and Thomas. This is as much snow as we had on the ground before it melted by early afternoon, some areas had a good dusting, others nothing.

Asterik was falling asleep with his head on the fence. His head kept inching down and pulling up his lower lip.

Sebastian and Asterik

Faune and Sebastian

Buffy, Harmony and MyLight

Buffy with Missy behind her

Winston

Sparky the donkey; I liked how the snow flurries were settling on his spikey mane and outlining his ears

Sky, Cinnamon and Lexi

Bonnie

Norman

More Snow and I Post Way Too Many Pictures

Hopefully I did not fry anyone's computer when they opened this post. I got carried away and ended up posting all of the pictures I took over the last three days, which as you can see was quite a few. Anyone with a dial-up connection would be cursing my name right now!

Our snow accumulation doubled on Friday and Saturday. When I last posted Thursday evening we had received a quarter of an inch of snow. Of course that closed schools for two days, and I don't know yet if schools are closed tomorrow (Monday) or not. For those of you who found it humorous that a quarter of an inch closed schools, I have something to really make you laugh! They closed all of the middle Tennessee schools Wednesday evening on the possibility of snow, long before a flake ever even hit the ground! Then our quarter inch of snow closed the schools for two days! A friend of mine told me she made the mistake of going to the grocery store Wednesday evening on her way home from work (her usual day to get groceries) and that she couldn't even find a parking spot, everyone was in a panic over the mere possibility of snow on Thursday.

It continued to lightly flurry off and on on Friday and Saturday and doubled our snowfall accumulation for the last few days (and our entire winter to date) to a half inch of snow. I am so ready for this cold streak to end. I can say in all seriousness that I have never seen a week and half of such cold weather in middle Tennessee in my lifetime, because according to the record books it has never happened in my lifetime. When we get back to our normal daytime high for this time of the year of around 50 by the end of this week I told Jason not to be surprised when he saw me walking around the farm in my flip flops - it will feel positively tropical after this past week! Now I understand why we see all of the Canadian kids swimming in their swimming pools when it is only 60 degrees outside (and of course the water temp would be much lower than that!). If you have months on end of this weather, and as Jason pointed out MUCH COLDER weather, 60 degrees would feel like swimming weather!

Since I've already complained a zillion times about the weather I'll stop now. At least it has been strangely comforting to know that even in Florida they've been cold and had snow. Misery does love company! The horses have seemed comfortable under their blankies and have carried on about their daily routines with business as usual. As I mentioned in a previous post the World's Cutest Fainting Goats seem to really like this weather, I've seen lots of playing, bucking and butting heads out of those two.

Enough rambling, on to the 101 pictures . . .

I saw this gorgeous red fox trotting across one of the pastures. This was the only picture I was able to get. By the time I turned my camera on, zoomed in (this was taken on full 24x zoom, he was nowhere close to me) and the camera focused I could only get one shot. I love foxes, I think they are beautiful and they are so intelligent.

Cuff Links and Homer were playing over the fence. Go Homer!

Go Cuffie!

Clay and Lucky

Silky (aka Slinky aka 'Slink in Pink!) and Teddy

Buffy and Lily

Faune and Sebastian

Sebastian, Faune and Ogie waiting impatiently for breakfast

Bugle

Lexi and Cinnamon

Cinnamon's expression was so sweet I had to take this picture

Bonnie and Norman

Norman with Sky behind him. Norman is so stinking cute it is unreal, I smile every time I see him.

Sparky and Sky

Traveller

Asterik and Sebastian

Winston

Jason giving Bear a pet

Lily

Buffy and Cuff Links eating together

O'Reilly and Snappy sharing a meal

Gathered 'round the hay; Lily, Buffy, Missy, MyLight, Harmony (Cuffie is hidden on the other side)

Chili

Lightening

Dustin and Levendi

Dustin surrounded by snow flurries

Levendi walking through the flurries

O'Reilly; the sheds remained empty from what I saw throughout the weekend. They seem to find their blankets to be more than enough shelter.

Apollo and Homer were looking intently at something

Leo and Trigger

Elfin and Chili were grooming each other over the fence, Thomas is next to Elfin. In the background at the hay are Silky, Lightening, and Teddy. O'Reilly is grazing.

Tony; I love his face

Ivan, Apollo, Tony and Homer

Chance

Chance and Chili

Trigger and Baby

Lucky and Lightening

Missy with a mouthful of hay

Harmony was scratching her neck and head on the tree

MyLight grazing in the flurries

Buffy in the flurries

Lucky and Chili

Cinnamon

Sebastian

B-Rad and Ogie

Jason and Thomas hanging out