Happy New Year

It is hard to believe that another year is in the history books and a new one awaits us. Where does the time go? Most of the time was spent with the usual things such as morning and afternoon chores, farrier days, dentist days, vet visits and the never ending farm maintenance. A few of the things that happened in the last twelve months:

Last winter was the Winter of the Polar Vortex and we were placed in a State of Emergency by TEMA, and then we were in a State of Emergency again and again. I should point out that in all of these State of Emergencies we had a grand total of maybe a half inch of snow on the ground for less than 24 hours at the farm through the entire winter.

Working around Jason was hazardous to my health.

We saw a vet an awful lot this year, including the week where we saw a vet five times in four days.

We attempted to raise a fish but he didn't make it.

We flew the redneck flag with pride the night opossum came to visit.

Jason backed into our car with our truck in our driveway.

We break lots of things every year and 2014 was no exception.

Our specialty seemed to be breaking gates and gate posts this year.

Carter's pony Timbit learned he could take himself on tours of the farm.

Jason and I both experienced the misery of a moquito born illness.

We had some issues with leaks in our water lines - round one and round two.

As we do every year we always have sad losses, such is the major downside of a retirement farm. We had to say several goodbyes in the last year:

We lost Buster the pet cow

We lost Noble

We lost Miracle

We lost Bergie

We lost Darby

To help lessen the hurt of the losses we also had the opportunity to greet new faces and welcome new residents to the farm. 

Overall 2014 was a great year at the farm for us. I wouldn't complain if we had a few less vet visits and we generally managed to break less things. At times it does feel like we move from one broken something to the next broken something, be it a horse, tractor, downed tree, fence, or any of the endless things that manage to break around a farm. However even with all of the broken things I still wouldn't trade a day of 2014 for any other life. The best decision I ever made was to sell my company and leave corporate life behind. I've never regretted it for one second over the last ten years. Not when we're repairing water lines in a thunderstorm, not when we've seen the vet for the 5th time in four days, not when Timbit is taking himself on self-guided tours around the farm, not even when we have to euthanize one of the horses. 

I want to thank all of you for joining us this past year, and we hope you come along with us for whatever fate has in store for us in 2015. I'm not making any promises, however I am pretty confident we will handle it all with our usual lack of grace or style. 

Happy New Year!

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I have to say my first view of 2015 was pretty fabulous

Rocky says nom nom (that is Largo with his buried in the hay behind him)

the group roll started with River and Rubrico . . . 

 

. . . and continued with Kennedy down and Clayton making preparations

Renny and Mick were playing

Hesse grooming Remmy while waiting for breakfast

Calimba and MyLight

Africa and Lighty

Rubrico and Donovan

Donneur and Lofty

George and Silver

Walon and Oskar went from this . . . 

. . . to this . . . 

. . . to this

Be Careful What You Ask For . . .

Last week I specifically wished for a broken gate and a functioning water line. This somewhat worked out, but just to repeat and clarify I asked for a broken gate, not a broken fence. I suspect the universe wasn't listening reading closely and someone needed to read more thoroughly. 

Things were humming along pretty well the last few days. Nothing was broken, not a water line, not a gate, not anything. Christmas was quiet and we finally made it through a holiday without having to drag the vet out. It was nice. Since this is real life, or maybe I should say our life, of course it didn't last. 

Things were going along as planned for most of the day today. Morning chores were routine and we only had one runner when we were putting halters on the horses that had a date with the farrier today. Everyone was well behaved for the farrier. We ate lunch and headed back outside.  Then we missed seeing the destruction of part of our fence by about a minute. 

Those who have been to our farm know that our perimeter fence is set well off the road. There is also a large shoulder with a big ditch and a treeline between our fence and the road. In other words, something would have to go really, really wrong for someone to hit our perimeter fence. You have the shoulder, the ditch and the treeline before you get to the fence. 

Alas that happened today and we had an extremely smashed up, upside down SUV just inside the fence in our pasture. The driver of a large SUV lost control of the vehicle and went airborne. The SUV flipped over as it went airborne, off the road, through the treeline, over the ditch, took a utility pole out of the ground and snapped it in half, and finally went through our fence and landed upside down. By some miracle the rescue squad found a mostly unharmed driver once they were finally able to extract them from the vehicle. They left on a stretcher in the ambulance as a precaution. Then it took equally as long to extract the mangled remains of the SUV from our pasture. The horses in that pasture were largely uninterested in all of the commotion. They were at the opposite end of the pasture when it happened and aside from a few raised heads they had little interest in all of the activity.

Once the SUV was removed Jason then put up several corral panels to temporarily repair the fence and we thought we were done with unexpected incidents for the day.  That is until Jason realized he had lost his wallet. He told me he had caught his back pocket on the tractor (which he had driven out to the scene loaded up with corral panels) and torn it. He thinks his wallet fell out at some point after that. We walked all over the pasture looking for his wallet. We tried to retrace the paths he had driven in and out of the pasture on the tractor.  We went back to where he had gotten the corral panels. We looked in the truck to make sure it wasn't in there. We looked everywhere. So to add insult to our injured fence Jason is also down one wallet and it is laying around somewhere on our 150 acres. 

Just to clarify what I asked for last week I will repeat that I asked for a broken gate and a functioning water line. A broken gate, nothing more and nothing less. I will acknowledge that I did get the functioning water line. Broken gates are relatively easy to deal with in the grand scheme of things. Broken water lines and smashed up fences not so much.  Also, if anybody wandering around the farm happens to trip over a wallet, that would certainly save us a lot of time and aggravation. 

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Apollo, Hemi and Thomas were in a hurry to get somewhere

Walon says waiting for the farrier is so very tiring

Kennedy and Toledo were also resting up for their turn with the farrier

apparently the thought of having hooves trimmed was exhausting today; Apollo, Rip and Grand

Why would you bother using a shed when it is raining when you could use it on a sunny, pleasant day instead? Tony, Elfin, Thomas and Homer hanging out

Moe and Levendi resting up for their farrier appointments

Stormy and Johnny were being goofy; taking pictures directly into the sun doesn't work out very well.

Chance and Ritchie were also being silly

Maisie

Sunday Stills

Taco and Renny

Toledo and Rubrico didn't let a little rain slow down their playtime

Lily and Traveller

Moe

Kennedy

Asterik

It made me happy that Bruno, Duesy, Fabrizzio, Merlin and Walden were so anxious to use their shed when it was pouring rain (/sarcasm)

Levendi and Tony

Lighty grabbed Africa's tail (with Mick watching) . . . 

. . . so Africa grabbed Lighty's leg

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Holidays - whatever is appropriate for you for the season we wish you a good one! And for any super politically correct people who managed to be offended by the preceding list - we'll go with plain old Have a Nice Day! 

It was a gorgeous, sunny day at Paradigm Farms today!

It Didn't Last

I'm sure you are wondering what didn't last? 

A) peace on earth

B) good will towards men

C) a non-leaking water line

If you guessed option C you would be correct.  The "good" news is this was a new leak, 1,000 feet away from last week's leak. Ok neither of those were good news but they were the only positive things we could come up with. The bad news?  Not only did we have a leak, but it was pouring down rain for much of the day today. So When you are trying to keep water pipes clean and dry in order to cement them together this makes the task almost impossible. 

I always find this "clean and dry" mantra a bit ironic as we are digging up leaking underground pipes. A leaking pipe is surrounded by mud and water. This does not jive well with clean and dry, not even a little bit. As we went through the whole routine of digging down to the pipe to find the leak and repairing said leak we discussed the fact that we had now had two leaks in two weeks. We installed our water lines four years ago and have never had a single problem with them until now. Needless to say we are perplexed and unhappy.

The "best" part of the day occurred when Jason was trying to put the line back together. Not only was it raining, it then started thundering and lightning. How freaking awesome is that? Standing there holding water pipes in a thunderstorm trying to keep them clean and dry. Yes, everybody laugh with me, because I can assure you there was no laughing from either of us at the time. 

We (I should say Jason) got the line put put back together. I managed to find a tarp in one of the barns and we got the area covered. Several hours later Jason turned the water back on and all was well again, at least for now. I think we've moved on from being gate killers to water line killers. I'm 100% sure that I liked being gate killers better and would like to go back to that. At this point all I want for Christmas is a broken gate and no water leaks. Surely that isn't asking for too much?

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another day, another picture of Jason digging a muddy ditch

Our tarp propped up underneath with shovels so it would shed water.

Rubrico and River on the run

Thomas and Apollo having a dueling rolling session; Leo chose not to participate

Murphy, B-Rad and Sam

Lighty, Dutch and Renny

George and Lotus

Baby, Moe and Thomas watching the rain

Elfin and Leo

Grand and Trigger

Duesy and Walden