Tag: Farm Update

Good Grief, Where’d July Go?!

Posted on by Farmers Blogger

Hello friends!

Oh my goodness, what a whirlwind few weeks! I haven’t been home on the farm a whole lot, so now I’m more than a little behind. Lots to do, lots to do!

Well, to start, we had the Fiddle Fest and Parade. It was a hoot, my friend was visiting and we were at the park almost every night listening to music. There were some really great acts! We also went to this lemonade stand that had watermelon lemonade and I’m still thinking about it. It was so tasty we went back almost every night. It was a smaller fest again this year, but bigger than the last couple years, so I’m hopeful we are headed back in the right direction. The parade was pretty fantastic, you could tell that’s where a lot of the effort went, they had lots of different organizations and community groups, as well as some bigger corporations involved. It was a lot of fun! I helped with the float this year, but mostly kept out of the planning, letting my cousin take the reins. She absolutely nailed it, it was so adorable. The theme was “coming home” so, being the float for a Christian organization, she chose to make a stairway to heaven showing the “pathway home”. It was a pretty big hit. Of course, the candy throwing always helps too.

Here is an “In Progress” shot, most of my finished shots have little ones in them, so they aren’t really shareable

While my friend was here, we did a bunch of other things too. We found an army/navy surplus store in Boise that was really cool. My friend got an incredible deal on a backpack, and I found this cute little Belgium surplus shoulder bag…  or, at least, I’m using it as a shoulder bag. It’s technically a claymore satchel, or so I’m told. It’s kinda a black hole inside, I need to make or buy a little bag organizer, but it was a great little garage sale-ing bag, and for $12 I can’t complain at all.

We did a ton of garage sale-ing too! I got some neat stamps, a couple books, a few video games for Christopher, and a monitor for $3. I have to buy a power cord for it, and it may be junk, but I thought the gamble was worth it. I’ll keep you posted when I find the right cord.

I got totally lucky, the Fourth of July, or Independence Day, fell on a Tuesday this year, and my company let us have it off. I had a little pto squirreled away to dip into, so I took Monday as well, combined with the fact that I currently work 4 10s and usually get Friday off as well, yours truly finagled herself a 5 day weekend using only one pto day. I’ve honestly never been so proud, and it was much needed, because between visiting friends, helping family, the festival, and one very injury heavy day helping to pull a buddy’s landscaping company out of an oops (it’s a long story), I was jonesing for some time off. Of course, my boss found it hilarious that I managed a 5 day weekend approximately 2 weeks before my actual preplanned week long vacation. It’s been a pretty fantastic July for yours truly.

The Fourth itself was pretty low key, we don’t launch fireworks because of the animals and the high fire risk being butted up against rangeland. Being up on the hill though means I have a great view of just about every legal fireworks show in 20 miles, and several of the not so legal ones too. So, I mostly eat picnic foods, dress in red white and blue, and watch the valley paint itself in colors when the sun sets. We did make toaster oven smores which made my mom exceedingly happy and still respected the burn ban.

I’ve also had that vacation from work, which was much needed. Funnily enough, it meant falling way behind on blog admin-y type stuff because I had no desire whatsoever to be at my desk, and I completely forgot the concept of filming things. Honestly, it was a nice little break even if it means some of the posts upcoming might be a little lean. 

I’ve loved my little week off of work, I like my job a lot but like anything, after about 50 hours of it every week, one tends to want a break. It doesn’t help that I am currently heading a particularly nebulous project and its driving me a little mad. But hey, that’s life.
I spent most of my vacation just relaxing. I worked on some projects here and there but I am learning about the idea of rest as productivity and am treating myself to actual breaks instead of “I’m off work so lets shove as many catch up projects as possible into the space” when I can because I don’t really want to be worn out and over whatever breaks I get by the time I get back to work. The repairs, renovations, and improvements were all still there when I got back to it, and to be honest, some are still rolling over on the to-do list each day. It’ll all get done eventually. Or it won’t and then clearly it wasn’t that important anyway, ya know?
Anyways, I know this ones a little shorter, but since I am kinda buried in work catchup and blog catchup and life catchup, there’s not been much to write about, unless you’d like a detailed list of all the laundry that has personally offended me as of late. But I am so grateful I can occasionally take some “drop everything” days that the every growing todo list is 100% worth it.
Until we chat again my friends!

Skill Buildin’

Posted on by Farmers Blogger

Hello Friends!

(A Quick Disclaimer: This was written about a week in advance because I have company coming and didn’t want to miss a post, I’ll touch on festival stuff for this year (and, of course, any other shenanigans, in our next catchup)
Are you finally getting all the lovely warmth of summer time? We are having a bit of a weird one, but I am not complaining. Since moving here, usually by this time it’s been in the mid nineties, sometimes ranging up into the triple digits already, and it gets to where all the outdoor chores need to happen in the morning. But this year we’ve had mostly eighties at the time of writing this, and I have been absolutely loving it. It’s been quite pleasant because while I still do my chores in the morning, it’s not wholly unpleasant if something needs my attention outside in the afternoon. It’s only strayed into the nineties a few times and they feel more like the exception than the rule. The less fortunate component to that though is that it’s been a weirdly wet season for us, which I have mentioned, but it continues, lots of rainy days, lots of humidity, lots of storms. The storms aren’t out of the norm necessarily, but the moisture content sure is. 

As I am sure you noticed in the video snippets, Nellie is starting to wear her fly mask! It’s slow going, and we’ve had some setbacks, including a couple injuries to yours truly, but she’s slowly understanding that this is a part of life. She doesn’t seem to mind the mask, but the putting on and taking off is potential meltdown territory. But I am proud of her for trying, and she does try her little heart out for me. Just a recap, in case this is your first post here (hi!) Nellie needs to start wearing a mask (and probably a fly sheet eventually) as a way to block out the sun because she has a really sensitive patch of skin on her eye that is at risk of melanoma. I want to sunscreen her little pink nose too, but that’s still full on panicking, melting down, losing faith in the human race territory for that little mare, so baby steps. Oh the joys of taking on an abused pony, excuse me whilst I go rant at a family member about all the things I would do to Nellie’s previous owners if I ever got my hands on them.
Unfortunately, we’ve already chalked up a couple fun injuries for our mask project, the most annoying one being a very inconsiderately placed set of deep rope burns on my right hand. It wasn’t Nellie’s fault at all, for the record, she just got spooked and I wasn’t going to let her gallop off trailing a lead rope and potentially breaking her neck, so I skied across the arena and incurred some lovely burns on my index, middle, and ring fingers, and across my palm. Luckily, because I am mostly mixed handed, I was able to work around it, but I write predominantly with my right hand out of cultural norm, and I obviously use both hands to type, so that was rough. Even today, we’re about two and a half weeks from the inciting incident, and I managed to re-open part of my index finger again. Word of warning, learn from me, wear the bandages longer than you think you need to, they’ll help if you’re a fool who keeps re-injuring themselves.
(also, if you use the fingerprint scanner on any of your devices, add both index fingers, trust me, one day you’ll temporarily and accidentally alter your fingerprints too).
Ro’s settling into her work patterns slowly, seems like the anti-inflammatories are working because most days she’s pretty keen to start working, which is super sweet. She doesn’t like how close the research tents are this year (they lease my neighbors land and rotate where they pitch the tents each year, so next year they should be super far on the other side again, I think) and has been pretty spooky about it, because she can hear machines and workers and tools and things she’s used to, but she can’t find them so she gets antsy. We are working on being brave and our stamina at the same time. Both of those things mean I am gonna have some killer leg muscles this summer (too bad I’m wholly unfashionable and frugal or I’d be rocking some super cute short sets).

Angry staring at the neighbors…. through the fog

The farrier came out recently too, and has been working on making Nellie’s hoof a better angle for her special leg. He wants to ensure she doesn’t wear through her heel and I really appreciate his taking extra care to work on her. We won’t be able to correct the limp and stomp obviously, but if it’s more comfy and safe for her I am all for it.
I got to meet some other ponies recently too, and some doggos, a cat, and a couple cows, as well as some baby chicks! I didn’t get pictures because I didn’t have the owner’s permission to do so, and I would want to have some say in where my animals were posted, but it was fun helping out a little with their care and keeping and seeing how others maintain their critters. Christopher was house sitting out on the flats for a friend so I went out a few times to help and keep him company. Funnily enough, every time I went out, it started storming. It was a bit of a wild weekend for that, and the thunder was all sorts of rumbly. It’s funny, and a little sad, because my mom is allergic to literally every animal that lives on the farm, so it’s very much second nature to keep the community spaces of our house allergen free. We try to really manage animal allergens so that the house is pretty safe. We also make a point to keep hay and grass and dust out of the house as much as we can too. But, not everyone keeps a potentially unsustainable level of allergen management in their homes, not everyone needs to, and poor Christopher was quickly reminded that weekend that he is actually quite allergic to most dogs, cats, and horses. He is for sure allergic to hay, maybe to cows, and definitely to chickens. I think we spent just as much time working out his allergy meds as he did housesitting. I may have enjoyed the weekend way more than he did, although he was getting paid haha.

Oh gosh, what other things of note happened recently? As you probably saw in the video, we got most of the irrigation working now! Pasture sprinklers are still plugging up some, but that’s to be expected pretty much all summer long. The boys melted a pipe over the winter because they didn’t realize they had buried it in the pile, and that launched water all over. To their credit, I didn’t know that pipe was there either, and who knew there was no shut off valve between the garden and the pasture? The schematics show one, but we’ve been slowly debunking those plans with each passing year. I appreciate the previous owners setting that up for us though, even if they are a little different in practice, they are invaluable. The house sprinklers are a whole other story, the valves need replacing, the computer is confused, and I truly don’t understand the zones sometimes. The house sprinklers are a mystery all their own.I am super excited, because by the time this goes up, a dear friend of mine is coming to town to visit and work remotely with me. We are going to have fun at the festival, help my cousin with the parade float, and hopefully do a lot of garage sale-ing. We also might try some low key crafting while she’s here, it’s going to be such a fun stay-cation for me and vacation for her, even if we are vacationing around work schedules.
Until we chat again my friends!

Highly suggest tres leches cake as a yummy reward for going to work when it’s clearly too pretty to by inside

Training and Raining

Posted on by Farmers Blogger

Hello Friends!

Much has happened since we last caught up!

We had the vet out for our yearly checks. Nellie actually did pretty good all things considered. She didn’t let us vaccinate (I did that later) but she also didn’t really kill anyone, so ya know, we count our blessings. The other critters acted like the vet professionals they are and handled it with grace. Ro is on some anti-inflammatories now for some arthritis aches, and so we mitigate any unnecessary damage. Nellie is supposed to be wearing a mask now, as her little pink skin around her eye is just primo skin cancer material and the vet is worried. We are working on it.

Unfortunately, this vet visit caused a bit of a spiral in Nellie’s behavior and I’ve had to employ some tougher love lately. She started getting pretty aggressive about haltering and the barging and kicking officially put us into dangerous territory. So as much as I hate giving the girl any sort of uncomfy consequences, I had to take off the mama hat and put on my trainers cap, remind her and myself that allowing bad behaviors like that is a huge disservice to this horse and her cleverness. I’m happy to report that while it’s still a massive work in progress, she seems to have a lot of pride in the new, tougher consequences style work. Unsurprisingly I don’t have to dole out consequences often when the right answer is easy.

We’ve had some interesting storms rolling through. I’ve been trying to capture what I can, I’m still not great with the GoPro and lately, these storms have come with so much dust I’ve worried about leaving it outside alone anyway. I know they are tough, but I don’t have any sorta tough weather case, just a little tripod and I usually tie it to the porch post.

We’ve had some dry lightning, and lots of rainstorms. Although, we’ve had a lot more drizzly days than usual too, normally it’s a downpour and done, but the gray drizzle has persisted this year. We’ve also had our usual share of windstorms, which always stress me out. At least with the roof replaced I don’t worry so much about another waterfall from my kitchen light. My favorite thing about the storms around here is that often they come in the evenings, after you’ve already put in a good day’s work, almost like a little reward. But they are also usually gone by the time bedtime rolls around, so you aren’t often sitting up late worrying over the weather. 

The rainy day cuddles are adorable

I was out at the ranch the other day when a little cell went through. In theory I was out there to help my aunt with her scanner, it wasn’t scanning again, but it kinda sorted itself out. I’m not exactly sure what changed but it was scanning by the time I left. I’m a little afraid to ask if it’s still scanning to be honest, I don’t think I really want to know the answer. Anyways, while I was there I got to see the latest batch of babies. Love me some little cows. We met Little Boy, Sue, and Esuni. Little Boy got his name exactly how you’d imagine, but Sue and Esuni have cute stories. Sue is named after my great great grandma, because they share a birthday (how my great great grandma would feel about sharing a name and birthday with a cow is a question for another time) and Esuni was supposed to be Sunny, but they realized she was out of Eve’s line, and they try to keep with the same leading letters to make lineage a little easier. Luckily Sue is out of Sissy, who is out of Sadie. Remind me to tell you all about Sadie cow one day. It’s a cute story (have I told it before? Maybe, doesn’t matter, it’s worth a retelling). Little Esuni was born so small, she literally weighed less than one of my grain bags. They were worried about her, but she prevailed. Those little guys can be hardy when they wanna be. I helped my aunt count the herd, and, of course, we did it in a rainstorm, while that random cell went over. Didn’t rain a stitch before or after. But it was fun riding around with my aunt goofing off.

We’ve had lots of fun things happening around here lately. We’ve had a new baby born to the family, my uncle has a new little girl named Sadee (yes, I know, I don’t think anyone else put it together, but Sadie the cow spells hers different, and has since gone on this year after a long and happy life anyway, so I am not saying anything). Another of my cousins is graduating high school this week. We’re prepping for the Fiddle Fest and I’m very excited, because a dear friend of mine is coming down to visit while it’s going on. 

Lots to look forward to, can’t wait to share it all with you soon!

Until we chat again my friends!

Hippity Hoppity

Posted on by Farmers Blogger

Hello Friends!
Well, Easter was here and gone quick as a flash! I had such a busy day, a fun day, but such a busy day that I completely forgot my camera and phone on my dresser and don’t have a single picture from the day. But I have the memories and that’s the important part.
We potlucked it again, which is just so necessary at this point, because we were 30+ people again this year. I made my usual honey glazed ham, and the ever weird family-tradition-in-dessert-form “Gork”, and I … bought pies. I will remind you that I am cursed in baking. But, you see, Marie Calendar is not, and I am a big fan of not serving people bad food so freezer section pies are my new favorite potluck thing. Anything where I don’t have to make a crust, anything.
I had put up a Tuesday Post showing some of the eggs we had stuffed a little while before Easter, but because I believe the magic shouldn’t be just for kids, I also snuck a couple cool new eggs in the collection before the adults came out to help hide them, and there were lots of “oohs” and “aaahs” and laughter about the new eggs joining the fun. I’ve taken a pic of a few of my favorites from the last few years, the bunnies, the dinos, the sports ones are pretty classic. The camo and clamshells cracked everyone up when they saw them. I will admit though, the candy fits less great in the seashells. Although, big news, and I don’t know if it’s good or bad. The Twix fun-size bars now fit in a dollar store egg! They didn’t the last couple years, so either the candy shrunk or my eggs spontaneously grew, and I know where I am betting my money. I’m not complaining really though, it means I don’t lose about a fourth of the candy I bought for eggs, so in the long run it saves my money (and my waist line, those Twix had to go somewhere right? Certainly can’t waste them).

Before
After


One of the sweet ladies in town has been a good friend and mentor to my cousin, and she has long spoken highly of the amount of work I put into Easter for the little ones. She very sweetly surprised us this year by giving us her collection of Easter eggs to use, as she has passed the torch on to her kiddos. We had a lot of fun looking at her eggs as we stuffed them and there was one egg in there that was HUGE by egg standards. We referred to it as the motherlode. I attempted to use Watson as a source of scale, he was not terribly enthused. We loaded that egg up with candy and some change and it was quite the find for the lucky little one.

“Moooom what if I just knocked over all the eggs for atteeeeennnntttiiooooon?”
He knows he’s cute


I have always loved Easter, I have really fond memories of church and eggs, family and friends and bunnies as a kid, and I think I love Easter even more now as an adult. Seeing my dad and uncle play with the wee ones, watching all my cousins, now grown, with babies of their own and sitting on the porch with my Grandma while we swap recipes and tips and solve all the world’s problems while debating a piece of pie, those moments are so special. Watching the kids squeal over candy and hearing Dad’s Easter prayer, yelling back and forth directions to a cousin who knows where the spices should be in my cabinet but can’t see it while I pull someone’s hot dish from the oven, that feeling of community and easy comfort is so perfect and such a reward after months of planning and organizing to pull it all off. There’s always a new reason this is one of my most favorite holidays.
I also would be remiss if I didn’t briefly mention how amazing the weather was! It was cold, rainy and windy all week leading up to it, and it’s been pretty stormy since, but our Easter Sunday was warm and sunny, very bright and all the flowers started to bloom that morning, it was a blessing in the most sincere way to wake up to that sunshine, especially when I had dreamed of a snowstorm the night before. The kiddos even played in the hose water (admittedly, it wasn’t quite warm enough for me to join them haha, but they were really happy).
I wish you all could come join our joyful Easter celebration, you are all so special to me and I hope your holidays, whichever ones you celebrated, were joyful, wonderful, and filled with love! Share with me your traditions, memories, and favorite things, I can’t wait to hear about them! Happy belated Passover, Easter, Ramadan, and Spring (and any others I might be missing)!
Until we chat again, my friends!

Please ignore the fact that my bed is half made in the background, I was mid pulling off sheets for the wash when an opportunity presented itself