Monday pictures

Ivan and Tony sharing a meal

Dustin was using a tree as a scratching post

Apollo

Leo

Missy

Slinky had a date with the clippers

B-Rad and Alex grazing in the shade

Elfin, Ivan, Levendi and Trigger

Asterik, Sebastian and Faune

Ogie and B-Rad

Lily

Cuffie enjoying a nap

Harmony and MyLight

Routine

The last few days have been pretty routine. Over the last couple of weeks everyone had a bath and I have now crossed every horse off the list. I tend to be a bit obsessive-compulsive about things, and once I start a project I tend to just want to keep going at it until it is done. It was driving me crazy to not be able to cross every horse off the bathing list within a couple of days. And I probably could have done that if I had given in to my OCD tendencies. I'm trying to rein them in however so I don't burn myself out on things. So instead of bathing horses 24/7 for a couple of days until they were all done I made myself take some time. My latest obsession now is with clipping legs. The feathers that accumulated over the winter have to go!

Next week we'll be doing vaccinations, it looks like Wednesday afternoon is the day. The other project I need to start thinking about is gathering up all of the blankets from their various storage locations and getting them cleaned and repaired. This is a pretty big project since we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 sheets and blankets floating around the farm when I include all of the spares.

I got a very late start on this post as my Mom and I went to see the bluegrass group Cherryholmes at the Nashville Symphony tonight. They were fantastic but I am tired! I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Levendi, Oldenburg gelding and retired show hunter

Tony was half asleep when I took his picture but picked his head up when I approached, note the drooping lower lip. Tony is a Dutch Warmblood and retired show hunter.

Snappy and Slinky. Snappy evented through the 4 star level with famous New Zealand eventer Mark Todd. He was sold to a U.S. rider who crashed him at a cross country fence (rider error). Tendon surgery was required on both front legs and his eventing career was over at that point. He then became a winning show hunter before retiring. Slinky is a large pony who specialized in the pony equitation classes.

Lucky and Chili, both are Quarter Horses. Lucky is retired from the trails and Chili worked cattle and also hit the trails.

Lightening, Teddy, and O'Reilly. Lightening is an Arabian and retired trail partner. Teddy is a Quarter Horse retired from dressage. O'Reilly is an Irish bred gelding retired from the jumper ring.

Slinky

Cinnamon is a large pony and retired from the pony jumpers (in fact she was a national champion)

Norman is a medium pony and retired from the pony hunters; he was also broke to drive. He could get by in life just on his looks though.

Bella keeping an eye on things while taking a break in the shade

Cuff Links is a medium pony and retired from the pony hunters

Adventures With Cloudy

I had some errands to run this afternoon and got a late start on evening chores. It was well past dark by the time I finished. I was out in one of the back pastures in the shed where I keep feed, feedbags, halters and blankets for three of the fields. Cloudy the barn cat had followed me down to the shed from the barn. I realized I had left something down there and had to walk back down to retrieve it and Cloudy followed me. Cloudy pretty much never follows me around during the day but he loves to follow at night. By the time it is dark I am usually just doing things in the barn so this usually isn't a problem.

Of course tonight it was a problem since it was late, it was dark and I was hungry. My first problem was getting Cloudy out of the shed. I don't think he had ever been down there before and he was fascinated checking everything out in the shed. On the other hand I'm in there multiple times a day, was not fascinated with the shed, and as previously mentioned it was late, it was dark, and I was hungry. I finally got Cloudy out of the shed and we headed back up the hill.

Cloudy doesn't always stay right with me, he runs ahead or lags behind as he investigates things. He was lagging behind me as I made my way up the hill. We hadn't made it too far when I heard him howling, hissing and sounding very distressed. I think I might have heard another cat as well, but maybe not. It was very sudden and unexpected so I wasn't exactly taking close notes. I was carrying several feedbags full of feed up the hill. The feedbags were the reason I had to return to the shed, I had forgotten them. We store feed in the barn and the shed and I was low on feed in the barn (feed delivery coming tomorrow!) so I simply filled some of the "barn" feedbags from the feed in the shed. I flung the feedbags down and started trying to find Cloudy.

Finding Cloudy was not that easy. It was dark, I didn't have a flashlight, nor did I know exactly where he was when I heard him, and thought he might have run off in another direction anyway. I wandered around in the dark looking for the cat and finally spotted him high up in a tree, really high in a tree. He was still growling softly which was how I located him. I didn't see anything else in or around the tree. Of course I didn't want to leave him there, we were still quite far away from the barn and he was clearly out of his league. But he wouldn't come down from the tree. I briefly thought about attempting to climb the tree but was smart enough to drop that idea quickly (oh my gosh can you imagine what I would be typing right now if I had attempted to climb the tree and retrieve the cat?? I would probably be typing from my hospital bed). So I just stood there begging Cloudy to come down. "Come on Cloudy, come down and be a good kitty. I'll save you Cloudy but you have to help me save you" etc. All said in a soft, cooing, pleading voice.

Finally he climbed down to where he was about even with my head. I was able to reach up and pry him out of the tree. Then I had to one hand the cat and pick up all of my feedbags, and I carried the full feedbags and the cat all the way up the hill in the dark. Never a dull moment around here.

Jason took about a million pictures of the wild redbud trees around the farm; as I said in my last post he really likes redbuds and the fact that they grow wild here.

Lily and MyLight grazing with Ivan in the background

Clay

Teddy, O'Reilly and Chili

Cuff Links

Teddy

Some of the big boys hanging out; Apollo, Homer, Levendi, Elfin, Trigger, Ivan (napping) and Baby

Alex and B-Rad

Ogie

Faune and Sebastian

More Farm Chores

(blog post written by Jason tonight; as always picture captions by Melissa)

Melissa and I are in the rare spring-time position of actually being relatively caught up with our farm chores this weekend. But all was not sloth around here as we took advantage of the excellent weather to move the horses around to take advantage of grass in other areas and do a little very timely area spraying in some of the pastures. The way horses move and graze are incredibly hard on pastures, and while I tend to think herbicides are over-used I haven’t yet figured out how to eliminate their use entirely and still maintain reasonably productive pastures. Hand hoeing or even spot spraying 290 acres (Jason is including the total acreage of both farms in this number!) of pasture ground just isn’t realistic.

In addition to spraying, we also did some serious tidying up around one of the outbuildings. This particular spot tends toward being the junk camp of the farm; not any more! We loaded old wire, tires, twine, etc into the 24 foot stock trailer and hauled the whole mess off to the dump!

Next on the list is servicing the hay equipment and the bush hog, none of which should see actual work for another couple of weeks. Melissa has now bathed every horse on the farm with the exception of four - and they are on the list for tomorrow! I’m interested in hearing what ya’ll did this weekend ?

One of my favorite pictures that I have taken recently around the farm; Alex and Ogie grazing early one morning. Of course I love the sun breaking through the lifting fog, I love the canopy of the trees in the background, I like how the fence provides a border for the picture, but most of all I love the silhouettes of Alex and Ogie and how they were grazing so closely together in quiet companionship. It was a perfect scene on a perfect morning and I am glad to have it captured in a picture.

Thomas has now had a bath and spring clean-up with the clippers; he obligingly fell asleep on the cross ties while his legs were trimmed. Wish he would have done that while I was bathing him!

I had to take Cuff Links' picture in the middle of his bath. He was not happy and it shows in his expression. Forgiveness will be slow in coming for this and it will be weeks before he will let me walk up and catch him in the pasture without using stealth measures!

He did come out of the wash nicely though - like a freshly laundered set of sheets!

Mina and Jo, World's Cutest Fainting Goats, grazing along with Billy and Bubba, World's Luckiest Stray Goats

Alex

Teddy, Lightening, Lucky, Chili and Clay (O'Reilly is mostly obscured in the background). See the redbud in the background? Jason loves the fact that they grow wild here.

Bella and Sebastian

Lily and Buffy

Winston and Sebastian

Close Encounter

The bathing marathon continued the last couple of days (big shocker there). As I was walking back towards the barn after freeing my latest bath victims, er - participants, I heard squawking and flapping that seemed to be coming from right around the barn. I assumed it must be The Don although I wondered why he sounded so loud. I didn't see The Don as I walked closer, so I went to have a look behind the barn.

As I rounded the corner of the barn I found myself face to face with a wild turkey. I'm not sure which party was more surprised by the other, me or the turkey. We both had a moment of stunned silence as we stared at each other, and then it ran past me and awkwardly flapped its way over the fence and off behind the tree line into the neighboring property. I have seen flocks of wild turkeys from a distance but I've never encountered one at the up close and personal distance of one foot away. I'm not sure if I was more surprised by A) how big it was or B) how UGLY it was!! I also have to say that the way it moved was far from graceful! I am confident that I would not want an angry wild turkey coming after me, that thing was big and was so ugly that it appeared ferocious.

Yesterday Cinnamon, Harmony and Cuff Links had baths. Two more grays down and only one (Lightening) left to go at this point. Actually I guess two left to go if I include my horse Sky. Nine of the eleven gray horses on the farm have had a bath and all have been scrubbed white. The white may have been extremely short lived (thanks Ivan!) but it was satisfying to achieve at least for a short while. Cinnamon is a lovely liver chestnut which is a perfect color for hiding dirt but she really didn't have much dirt hidden on her.

Cuffie was deceptively dirty. I stupidly thought he would be an easy scrub since he didn't look that dirty and he's a little medium pony so it isn't like he has a lot of surface area. WRONG. I always scrub with a curry comb after I soap them up with the sponge and the layers of ground in dirt I removed from that pony were unreal. The more I curried and rinsed with soapy water the more dirt that just kept coming up to the surface. I finally ran out of dirt to scrub and made him wait to go out until he was dry. I must say that he is just blindingly white right now, and he has humored me by only rolling in the grass and not the dirt.

We did get a little bit of rain last night but not nearly as much as I thought we would get. Isn't it ironic that after a soaking wet winter now that I actually want it to rain it isn't. Mother Nature is a cruel mistress. On the bright side of the weather the next week will be lovely with our forecast calling for sunshine and highs in the low 70's. I won't complain about that. Off to make my farrier list for tomorrow!

Harmony sporting the wind blown look in her mane; the last couple of days have been breezy

Teddy still soaking wet after his bath and giving us his best impersonation of a drowned rat. He was so cooperative when I bathed him I decided not to push my luck and let him go back out while still dripping wet.

Snappy and Clay grazing on a beautiful afternoon

Some of the Big Boys having a lazy day; Homer, Tony, Levendi, Thomas, Apollo and Ivan

O'Reilly doing his best to grind himself into the ground after his bath

Slinky

Faune and B-Rad

MyLight having a scrubbie; she doesn't look to happy but nonetheless she was a very good girl

Lucky and Clay

Snappy and Lucky

Cuff Links, MyLight, Missy, Harmony, Buffy, Lily