One month left!

Wow, I noticed that it's been well over a month since I last posted anything. Sorry about that, but I'm not really doing all that much with my horses right now. In fact, the summer has been so hot and uncomfortable that I'm not doing much of anything outside right now.

As of yesterday, I have exactly one month until my due date! So I guess, baby girl could come anytime now! I should post some updated pics, but I haven't taken any lately. I think I need to remedy that. I am definitely getting a big belly, but it's not too out of proportion yet. This picture is from a trip we took to go cherry picking and hiking in Door County, WI last month when I was about 7 months along.

I've seen some pregnant women with hugely protruding bellies. But, this is my first, so my stomach probably holds her in a little tighter. I promise I'll post some pictures of my current belly and of my growing horses soon!

I visited Cody at the trainer after she'd been there for a month. Cody looked great. She was fit and had settled into the training routine nicely. The trainer showed me everything she'd been learning, including how well she was doing with riding in the arena with other horses. She is also neck reining okay. Neck reining good on one side, but having a little difficulty sometimes with turning to the cue on the other side. Even though I didn't really want to keep her there another month, the trainer was very persuasive about wanting to keep her and further her more. Finances were the biggest reason I wouldn't have wanted to keep her there...I really wanted to just get a month on Cody, then possibly send Griffin to her in the fall. But my husband and I discussed it and since Cody is a forever keeper horse, while I am looking to most likely sell Griffin at some point, it is more economical to invest in Cody, since we know we will use her, she's already a great horse. But with Griffin, we are not even likely to get the cost of training back out of him if we do sell him...so, the decision was made to keep Cody there another month. Griffin's training will be delayed another year, since we still have not managed to get the round pen up this year anyway. And when we do, I've decided that I will do all his training, instead of sending him off. That should be do-able, since I won't be pregnant anymore by the time I get back to him! And now, it is almost time to pick Cody back up. She gets to stay an extra 5 days though because the trainer called me last week and said that Cody had caught a cold that was lingering, so she was going to give her 5 days off. This year has been a really bad year for respiratory infections...I've seen several cases of pneumonia in cows when I've gone out with the dairy vet. It's just been so wet and warm this year. Thankfully, Cody doesn't have pneumonia, but she does need her rest.

I feel bad that I haven't spent much time with my horses lately. But I see them everyday. I try to give them all scratches when I fill their water tank, but sometimes they are not all down at the barn. However, lately, I've noticed that they are spending a lot of time in the barn trying to stay away from flies, and the few times I've seen them out the pasture, they've been really irritated by flies. I've been trying to avoid putting fly stuff on them because it always inadvertantly gets on me too, and I don't want to expose my unborn child to pesticides. I have wiped fly stuff on them before the farrier comes though. But they were being driven so crazy that I decided I needed to get out there and get them all wiped/sprayed right away. I decided to try spraying them because it's faster than wiping and easier for me, since I don't have to bend over to get to their legs (hard to do now that I'm so big), However, I always fear that spraying means more exposure to me, especially if the horse dances around a bit while I apply it. I decided to risk it anyway. None of these horses have been sprayed since last summer, and Catlow can sometimes get a little dancy about it anyway, so I was concerned...but they actually all stood perfectly! I know that they knew the spray makes the flies go away. I did Catlow first, and she did jump at the first sound of the sprayer, but then stood perfectly still, and I did every inch of her whole body. By the time I was done, she was standing in complete relaxation with her head low and her eyes half closed and didn't even move an inch after I let her go (I caught them all in the barn and sprayed them in there). One by one, I got every horse. And I swear when I got to Griffin's turn, he was waiting for me to get to him because he approached me, I haltered him no problem and he didn't move a muscle the whole time I sprayed him. Kachina was last, and even she didn't move around at all. Darn smart mustangs. They impressed me today. They didn't forget a single thing about being sprayed with fly spray from last summer. After everyone was thoroughly coated, I was so amused by the look of utter relaxation and bliss on their faces. For the first time in a while, they had no flies biting them! And I don't think I got any spray on me. I made sure to stand upwind, and since they were all standing so still, I didn't have to worry about getting on the wrong side of the wind.

We've been working on quite a few projects around our house this summer.

The garden is giving me tons of tomatoes now.

I've started canning. So far I've canned lots of green beans...

..,some jam (jalapeno-apricot jam is so yummy), and a batch of stewed tomatoes, including cherry tomatoes.

Next I am going to try canning salsa. I've already dug up all my onions because they were finished growing. Most were kinda small because the soil is not the greatest in our garden. Broccoli is giving us lots, carrots are big enough to eat, although I want to let them keep growing till fall. And we have a couple ripe squash already! We ate a delicata and a japanese curry squash just the other night and they were awesome. I need to get some pictures up of my giant hubbard squash. I haven't tried to pic any of them yet, but they sure are huge!

Another project that goes along with the garden is our cold room in the basement. We started that this spring, and with the hot muggy weather, it became fun to work on it in the cool basement again, so we just finished it this week. It will be a great place to store all our squash, potatoes, onions, carrots, and canned goods!


The garden has been a big project, but we also put in a flowerbed with a retaining wall near our deck. It turned out to be a huge project because we got some advice from a professional landscaper friend, but we are finally done with it! The yard was really tore up for a while. All this equipment is part of Todd's irrigation business, but it came in really handy when we were digging out the wall and filling the bed!


Finished product!


Because we put in the flowerbed, we then had to reseed in our yard because it got all tore up, so we are currently in the process of getting some better topsoil in from some of the cow pastures so that the grass will grow a little better than it had. We'll get some good topsoil for the garden too before we plant next year.

Another project that turned out really well was putting a door on the back side of our house to go into the laundry room. We had a local contractor do that and also build a small deck off the back door. This door will be so convenient for entering with dirty/manure-y clothes. Plus, the deck is big enough to put one of those circular clotheslines on so we will try to save energy by line drying a lot of our clothes. And I want to do cloth diapers with the baby, so the line will come in handy with drying those too! And all just out the back door!

The back door will also be convenient for accessing the chicken coop that we are still working on getting finished. The chicks and turkeys are rapidly outgrowing their little pen and are ready for their permanent coop. We just need to get that done now.




And of course, the last big project that we are working on is getting the baby's room ready! My sister's are throwing me a baby shower this weekend, so that should be a big help in getting ready, but we do already have a crib, a changing table, and some dressers.

So, I promise to get some pictures of my 8 months pregnant belly, and some of the horses up soon. Griffin has grown so much, both in size and in his attitude toward me - he's actually become quite trusting of me without me even doing anything with him. I'm really excited to work with him, once I'm no longer pregnant and the weather cools off. I'll also try to remember to get pictures of Cody at the trainer when we go visit her next.

Poppies and "Turkey Walks"

I think my poppies are at their peak now. They are so beautiful, even if they are not quite what I expected out of my wildflower seed mix.



Here, my baby turkey's forage in my garden. When I let them out of their box, I call it going on a "turkey walk", because I walk, and the turkeys follow!


To illustrate, a visiting friend and I took them out. Here, they are all flocked up and walking with my friend!


My cats come along for the walk too. The turkeys used to be afraid of them, but they are getting very used to them and are almost close to ignoring them. The cats are not interested in the birds. They just want to follow me around.

I know my mustang blog has not been about mustangs very much lately. But I think this happens to all of us who get into blogging. We start off because this is a great outlet for one of our passions, horses, but at some point, we make blogging friends, and then want to also share other things going on in our lives. I think it's a natural progression. I'll get back to the mustangs when I get time and the ability to work with them, but for now, my horses are perfectly happy getting the summer off, getting fat, while I am also getting fat (pregnant). Life is good.

My big news this weekend is that Todd and I were married last Friday! We had a very small, intimate, special ceremony. It was wonderful. Because we are busy getting ready for baby, we are postponing our marriage celebration for next year, exactly one year from the date we were married. That will be when we invite our friends and family to celebrate with us. At that time, we will be more settled into our baby life and have time to plan it! We are definitely looking forward to it!

In other news...I finally got my garden weeded. It was terrible before. We'd had lots of rain, and the weeds just shot up, and I hadn't been keeping on top of it, but I made it a priority this week and I'm finally done! I will post new pictures soon, because my garden has really grown so much! I'm so proud of it!

I ended up losing one more baby turkey, so now I'm down to 11 (from 15). The rest are doing great though (cross fingers) so I don't think I'll lose any more. I think that two days of shipping was just a bit too much for them to recover from. Turkeys are different than chickens and I think they just don't handle it as well. I haven't lost a single chicken (yet), and they had even sent two extra (for 32 total!). Both the chicks and the turkeys are growing like my weedy garden. I had the turkeys out following me around the yard a bit today. It was so fun. I love turkeys. I will get pictures of that soon, too. I keep forgetting to take pictures.

Life is really good right now. :)

Flowers and new chicks!

The last catch-up post is about my flower beds and new baby chicks. First off, if you want to see cool growth, check out teh first post I did on my flower bed on May 13th. I had seeded some beds in with wildflower seeds, and then spot planted a few annuals and perennials to add flowers until they would come in thick. On May 13th, there were little green sprouts, but they were still tiny little things then.

Check them out as of last week!


And this week, they are even taller and starting to flower - just a few poppies and the perennials I'd planted right now, but I expect that in a few weeks, the bed will be vividly bright with color! Almost every tall plant now has flower buds on it and they are totally overshadowing the annuals that I had planted. I will have to take another picture of them now...I'm waiting for a sunny day to show them off now.

The bed in the back of the house is even more grown up than the front bed.


I had also put together some planters with various annuals, and now, a couple weeks later, they have just filled in with flowers and really look beautiful.



I have the best time checking on my flowers daily.

And my other project has been the arrival of our baby turkeys and chicks that we'd ordered in the mail!

The turkeys arrived last Thursday.




I ordered 3 each of 5 varieties: Bourbon Red, Royal Palm, Naragansett, Black Spanish, and Broad-breasted White. All 15 of them looked perky and healthy when they arrived, and I made sure that each one had found the water and drank. But the next morning found one turkey dead, a broad-breasted white., I looked them over, and the rest looked okay that morning, but I had to leave to ride with the vet. When I returned home that afternoon, I found two more that looked very weak: one of which was actually losing his balance and falling over onto his back. The other just looked really lethargic. I immediately started feeding them both electolyte solution from an eyedropper. By evening, the royal palm that had been falling over was actually looking better (he wasn't falling over anymore, but he was still looking lethargic). The bourbon red that was very weak, seemed the same. I was able to get a lot of electrolyte into him, but I could tell by the wrinkled skin on his feet that he was just too dehydrated. I couldn't get enough water into him. Then I noticed that one of the black chicks was looking lethargic too, so I immediately started giving him electrolyte. I thought I might be able to save him because it seemed I was catching him early enough before he got to dehydrated and he started out actively taking the solution from the eyedropper. In the end, the bourbon red and the black chick succumbed and died. The royal palm with the balance issue miraculously made a recovery and he is doing much better, although still not quite as active as the other chicks. But he's now eating and drinking on his own. So I lost three and I'm now down to 12. I think the rest are going to make it. The healthy chicks are extremely fiesty and think that I'm their mom. They come running over when they seem my head peer into their box and they voraciously peck at my fingers looking for insect treats (I feed them caterpillars and horseflies that I find).

The chicks arrived a day after the turkeys on Friday. My mom picked them up from the post office, since I was with the vet. All 30 chicks were perky and healthy and as of today (5 days later), they are still going strong and healthy and growing like weeds! We ordered 5 each of 6 breeds: two meat breeds that are the slower growing cornish crosses (5 are white and 5 are red), Welsummer (a dark brown egg layer), Cuckoo Marans (another dark brown egg layer), Gold Campine (an attractive white egg layer), and Blue-laced Red Wyandotte (a beautifully feathered light brown egg layer).





The chicks are not quite as tame as the turkeys, but then, I've never had chickens become as tame as turkeys do. Turkeys really imprint on their handlers, while chickens don't seem to do that. To tame chickens, you have to actively hold them and get them really accustomed to you. Turkeys seem to imprint on you by default. Because of that, they are so fun to play with. They respond to your voice and when you let them out to forage as chicks, they'll follow you everywhere and inspect everything you get your hands on. They are so fun.

The chickens really seem to have more of a fear instinct with strange noises and people...strange, since I think chickens have been domesticated longer than turkeys.

The chickens that we end up keeping from this batch will make a really nice egglaying mix with our current flock of mixed brown and green egg layers. It is so fun to get eggs that are all colors of the rainbow in your egg carton. And there is really nothing like home raised eggs in comparison to store eggs. Once you've actually had farm fresh eggs from chickens that are fed a varied diet (not just strictly formulated chicken feed), you will never go back. Their eggs have such great flavor. In comparison, store eggs have no flavor at all, and store yolks are usually pale yellow, where as our chickens have rich yellow-orange yolks that are not at all artificially enhanced.

We love our chickens and their eggs.