A weekend in Florida

At the end of May, Todd and I flew to Florida to attend the wedding of a very good friend of mine. We flew down on Saturday, and flew back on Monday. It was a short trip, but we went to the beach and did some sight-seeing. We had a great time. It was our first official vacation together outside of WI. I'll post a few pictures from our trip.

We went to the beach between Jacksonville and St. Augustine. It was just littered with seashells, and very fun to stroll down.


The beach was very empty, so we felt quite at home and were able to explore in a world of our own.


Todd carried my sandals for me. What a great guy. :)


My pregnant belly on the beach.


Some really cool clouds against the backdrop of the beach.


Todd checks out a really cool tree we saw on a walk through the coastal dunes and forest.


The wedding was held at the TPC Sawgrass golf course clubhouse. It's a course where they host the PGA tour. Now, I don't know much about golf, but I know that it was a pretty fancy place.


The bride and groom were very happy and I am so pleased that they found eachother. The wedding was very interesting to me, having never before experienced a traditional Jewish wedding.



Our last day there, we went to a different beach and had a very different experience. The beach was PACKED with people!


But we did see a cool jellyfish washed up on shore. I felt bad for it. It was still alive. I could see his edges quivering and trying to undulate and push himself back out into the water.


It makes me so sad to think about how this oil spill will impact the animals in the sea and these gorgeous beaches. Even though the oil hasn't yet reached this area, it undoubtedly will impact it for many years to come, if not permanently change it.

Garden is growing!

I have been terrible about posting lately. I would post more often, but the internet connection at our house is very weak and lately I haven't been able to get internet there at all. We share with my sister who lives next door, but I think the distance is just a little too great sometimes, especially when it's rainy outside it seems.

It is summer, and there are so many things going on that I'd like to post about, but I feel very behind, so I might do a few posts to break it up by topic and make catching up not so overwhelming!

First of all, my garden is growing! I don't have any super recent pictures, and the ones from even a week ago seem so outdated already!

These pictures are from a couple of weeks ago now.



The last couple of nights, we've had fresh lettuce, radishes and young onions from our garden, along with hamburgers from beef that Todd raised. A real home grown meal!

My horses are so fat and happy. I wish I had more time (and wasn't pregnant so I could ride and really work them). They don't mind that they only have to be pasture pets for now. You can tell that Griffin and Kachina are both still growing a bit. They are the only horses of mine that are not overweight on the lush spring grass!






I'm really pleased with both Griffin and Kachina's progress. I recieved their BLM title applications in the mail. The vet that I'm riding with will stop out next week to sign off on the forms, so then I will officially own them! Even though I hardly do anything with them, except go out to visit them in the pasture, they have both calmed down so much. Being with a stable herd of tame horses has especially done wonders for Kachina. She would always follow me around, but her hyperreactivity to things is slowly fading. She used to get snorty when she would try to follow me, but I was carrying something through the pasture (like a big bowl full of scraps for the chickens). Now, she is still leary about sniffing the bowl, but she will at least let me scratch her when I'm carrying it! And this is all without doing anything with her expect showing up and petting her whenever I happen through the pasture. I know it is not ideal. I wish I could work with them more often, but I also think that this calm slow approach is working with both of them. Even skeptical Griffin really lets me approach him and will even approach me out in the pasture to get a good chest rub. Griffin is quite full of himself usually. He's very polite with me, but he will try to chase and stomp my dogs (they know, and they stick super close to me, or stand outside the fence to watch when I am with the horses). And he's always roughhousing with Chico and Kachina. It cracks me up that Kachina likes to roughhouse with the boys. For such a petite little mare, she has some spunk and sass!

Had a farrier out to do my horses...

It's been busy around here since school got out!

Today, I just finished with the farrier. He came out to trim all 5 of my horses. I was recommended this farrier from a friend. He does her horses and she said he's very quiet and got her little handled difficult mare to stand like a pro while he does her feet. And I went out to look at her horses feet to see if I liked what he did. Well, it took him 3 hours total to do all 5, and more than half of that time was spend on the wild ones. My "tame" horses all stood tied for him like old pros (and they have had other people work on their hooves before). The wild ones were definitely leary about this new stranger, but they settled down and did alright, although both of them gave him some trouble with the right hind (which was also the last hoof he did). Interestingly, that is the same hoof both of them gave me trouble on the time before and it was also the last hoof I did that time. I think they sort of get fed up with standing by that time (at least when I did it because it takes me so long), and when they start taking their hoof away and I have to start asking for it back, they start to get worked up and it takes even longer. We had to do the rope trick on both of them. It worked. Hopefully they are a little better on that hoof next time. And I think I will mention to the farrier to maybe not let that foot be the last one next time.

All in all, I was proud of them with a complete stranger working on their feet, and now I have a herd full of horses with nice trimmed feet! That feels good!

Last weekend was my middle sister's wedding. It turned out so beautiful and very elegant. She's been planning it for a year and half and every detail was perfect. I don't have pictures of her to post, but I do have one picture of me getting ready for the rehearsal dinner. Here I am showing off my baby belly. I am exactly 24 weeks in this picture.



I've also been out with the local dairy veterinarian once so far and I will go with her again tomorrow. That was interesting...we did herd health checks (mostly pregnancy checks and one surgery on a displaced abomasum) and also some health and tuberculosis checks on some Amish cattle that were relocating to South Dakota. Tomorrow, we go to a local 4,000 cow dairy. Wow. I think tomorrow will be very interesting. I've never seen anything that big before! I don't really plan to work with dairy that much. I'd like to focus on horses (and other farm animals), but I think it is inevitable that I may also need to work on dairy too...especially if I'd like to make any kind of money around here. Most people around here don't spend too much on their horses.

Exams are DONE!

AhhhhhHHHHHH! Finally! I'm done with school for the semester!!!! I just took my last final today! I think I did well in all my classes but we'll see when I get my final grades. So, now begins a summer of pregnancy, gardening, horses, and volunteering with a local vet. I'm also planning to take next year off school to be with baby and return the following year.

A lot has happened at our place in the last couple of weeks. Some good. Some bad. We had to put one of our dogs down because she attached our neighbor's dog. That was very hard, and it is still hard to believe that she's gone. Thankfully (for me) Jasper and Sage were not involved at all and so are still with me! I don't think I'd have dealt very well with having to put one of them down, even if they'd done something horrible.

We also picked up our little pony mule. She's doing great. She is so cute and very friendly. I don't have any pictures of her yet, but don't worry, there will be some soon. Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to really like living with the cows. I mean, she's doing fine and hangs out with them just fine, but I can always hear her braying/neighing to my horses across the valley. She'd like some horse companions. Anytime anyone goes up to the barnyard, she comes running down for some attention.

We got our garden prepped and some of it planted, but I need to finish planting now that school is done. We got the cold weather stuff in two weeks ago.

I took the following pictures last week but I haven't had the time to post them.

Here is my herd hanging out with the neighbor's herd. They are conversing across the fence. They have a 12 foot space between them so they cannot actually interact, but they like to pretend.


Here is my front flower bed. It looks a little sparse now, but all those little green things sprouting are a wildflower seed mix I planted, so by mid-summer this bed should be absolutely exploding with color (at least that's my hope).



Here is our side yard that we recently planted in grass seed. The grass is finally starting to sprout. We had our doubts for a while, but I think it just needed to get warmer. Behind the hay mulch is our garden, and further back you can see the horses in the pasture.


This is the only part we got planted - these are onions, lettuce, sugar snap peas, beets, and radishes.



My herd has plenty of pasture now, but we still have a lot of hay left, so to reduce their pressure on the pasture, we keep the feeder full. They come in to eat out of it periodically throughout the day. They've become quite the close knit herd. Kachina and Griffin crack me up all the time - they both have so much energy and are always playing with eachother, rearing, running, just messing with eachother. Chico often gets implicated in these episodes too. But never Cody or Catlow.


They are almost all shed out now. Chico has dapples again this year. He had them last summer too, but I never saw dapples on him in Idaho (I never saw dapples on any of my horses in ID).


Kachina has shed out her dull faded winter coat into a bright peachy red summer coat. She looks very pretty.


But Cody's spring dapples beat every one elses! They are so vivid! Cody is a dark dark sooty buckskin and she now gets these dapples every spring as she sheds out of her dark winter coat into her lighter summer coat.


So, Griffin, Kachina, and Catlow do not get dapples, but they are beautiful none-the-less. Here Catlow shows off her lovely flaxen locks.

Spring rains

It finally rained here this weekend! We needed it badly. The pasture had halted growing and my flowers and our new grass seed were just not coming up! But now, everthing should get moving again!

While it rained softly, the horses hung out under some budding maples. They won't leave their green pasture for anything. In fact, when I call them in to their main little pasture to give a taste of grain and check on them, they come in willingly, but as soon as they are finished, they gallop back out to the pasture. They have hay in their feeder, and that main pasture has actually longer grass now than the big new pasture, but they think that the new pasture is the place to be!


I have had major spring fever this year. I think it had to do with the depression I was feeling in March (seasonal depression mixed with morning sickness and major hormone changes!). As soon as the local garden stores started carrying seeds, I bought my whole garden worth and made a schedule for when I could plant each one indoors to get them started.

These are my current seed flats. The biggest guys here are all tomatoes (heirloom varieties, a red bigboy type tomato, and a cherry tomato mix. I'm going to have so many tomatoes! But that's what I want! I LOVE fresh garden tomatoes and I can hardly bring myself to purchase the icky store tomatoes. I want to do a lot of canning this summer and make a lot of salsa. These seed flats also contain peppers (sweet, pepperocini, mixed hot peppers), broccoli and a few sunflowers I wanted to start early. In a few weeks, I'll get my squash and others started. I can't plant the started seedlings in my garden here until the end of May - the danger of last frost is mid-May.


I visit the garden store every week to browse. Just this last week, they got a bunch of vegetables in. I was disheartened to see how big their veggies are, while mine are just tiny tiny little sprouts still. But, I don't have to plant mine for a while, and the big plants would also have to wait till end of May, so it's silly to buy those now. I have plenty started from seed anyway. However, I DID buy a few flowers! I'm still going to wait to plant them out till later, but I couldn't help myself.


And here is my mean rooster, Rusty. Here he shows off his spurs to me. I think I might trim those spurs soon. I don't want him poking my dogs eyes out as he's trying to protect me from the wicked rooster. His eyes are fine - that's just his third eyelid showing because of the flash.

On Sunday morning I caught the horses napping out in the pasture. Chico stood watch over the herd.



I love watching horses laid flat out. They look so awkward!


Later, Cody took over watch so that Chico could lay down and sleep. A herd works like well-oiled machinery.

baby news

I had my BIG ultrasound today. This is the one they take about mid-way through your pregnancy and measure all sorts of things on baby to make sure they are growing within the proper parameters and that everything else looks normal. Yep, my baby is just fine. All measurements showed the baby to be within normal ranges and the placenta looks to be in a good position. And we were able to find out the baby's sex. We are having a GIRL!

spring grass

We got a lot done this weekend around our place. We planted a bunch of little pine trees, raspberries, blueberries, and a couple flower beds. We plowed and dragged the side yard in preparation for reseeding. We dumped a NICE big pile of well decayed cow manure on our garden spot...and we went to look at a mule! Todd wants to try a guard animal with his cattle in one particular pasture where they've had a problem with coyotes in the past. This last calving season, they didn't lose any calves to coyotes, but one calf did lose his tail. We're not absolutely sure it was a coyote that chewed his tail off, but it's likely. I guess it could have been a hungry fox too. It happened when he was still small enough where he didn't get up and run in response to the tail chewing. But, regardless, they have had a few calves lost to coyotes in the past. I did a bunch of reading up on guard animals and decided of all the species, a donkey would be best for us. I searched rescues (via petfinder), and we found a little mule. These pictures are from petfinder. She's shed out more since these were taken and a cute color for a mule.




She looks promising. She's a pony mule, so just a hair smaller than a standard sized donkey. She's only 3 years old. She chases dogs out of their pasture, and she's super confident and very friendly. She was rescued out of the slaughter pen at an auction. We went to look at her on Saturday and we like her. We are going to give her a try. The other nice thing about her is that she might make a nice kids "pony" by the time our kid is ready to ride. We'll just start working with her now. And we might even look into getting her trained for a cart. So, the pony mule is going to come home to us in a few weeks, most likely. I wanted them to get her feet trimmed first (they were very long and I don't want to mess with trimming an animal I'm not familiar with being pregnant).

The other excited thing that we did this weekend was get our horse fence finished and turned them all loose into it!

While I was working on the fence, the horses watched me with interest...almost as though they knew.


But we were taking to long, so they retreated to nap at one point.


When it was time, I went to get Cody to lead her out. Chico and Catlow saw the open gate and immediately went through ahead of us. The wild ones were a little leary about going through the gate, so I had to lead Cody back to encourage them a few times. The finally went through, everyone was loose, then it was time to RUN!


After the initial burst of energy, the tame guys settled down to graze, but the wild ones had to check out every corner of the pasture before they set to grazing.


Look at this handsome mustang enjoying his first real day of grassy pasture freedom since he was captured in November of '08.


I attempted to approach Kachina at one point, but she wasn't interested in letting me touch her. I figured that would be the case since they'd be all excited and interested in the new stuff, so I didn't push it.


In this shot, you can see our house in the background. I'm excited about having them in this pasture because I'll be able to see them more easily from our house.


They would eat for a while, then "spook" themselves and set off running in a big herd, then slow down to eat again before setting off running a little later.



The red buds on the maples, the warm sunlight backlighting the horses, and the new grass really show that spring has come to WI.


And off again! These next two pictures I took from the deck of our house.



And then, a rainbow to end such a beautiful day.


I only let the piggies graze for a couple of hours before luring them back into their boring pasture. They were quite disgruntled when they realized they couldn't go back out, but soon, they'll be out 24/7.

Spring preparation!

Over this weekend, Todd and I spent a lot of time working on getting our place ready for spring. We weaned calves (their cows calve in the fall), put up a new fence to set up the lower pasture for our horses, staked out where the round pen and garden will go, started turning sod in a new flowerbed, and planted some seeds in pots to get the growing season started! It was a very therapeutic weekend. I also, of course, had time to love on every one of my horses. They are still shedding, so welcome the itching, brushing and scratching. Kachina follows me everywhere in the pasture. I'm not sure exactly what she wants because she doesn't always want me to brush on her (she'll sometimes move away after I've pet her head and then move to scratch her neck, other times she'll stand forever and let me scratch her). She just has so much spark in her. She's playful, inquisitive, flighty (sometimes), and definitely outgoing (with horses and with people). Griffin tagged along behind her a few times when she was following me, so I'd stop to scratch on him too. I think the scratching was definitely what he wanted. He's not so obvious about asking though...he'll just watch me scratch other horses wait while I approach to scratch on him too. He's a little more reserved with people, but still gets along with the horses well. Oh, and he really hates dogs and does try to stomp them whenever he can. The dogs know, and stay out of his way.

The following pictures were taken by my mom as she was walking down to visit Todd and I while we were fencing. I rarely take pictures that have me in them, so here ya go.

These first couple pictures are the horses in their pasture. They stood up on the hill and watched us across the field as we fenced. My mom calls the two dark ones (Cody and Chico) the twins, since they are always hanging out together and she can't tell them apart (she's not a very horsey person) :) Notice that Kachina and Griffin hang out together quite a bit too, but they are just very social and fit right in with the herd. Notice that Catlow is missing from the picture...



She is still a loner and has not really bonded with any other horse. I feel sort of sorry for her, but she seems perfectly happy that way. She's still in the mix with the others, but she prefers to be off on her own a lot, and had not really bonded strongly with any other, but still needs them to be in her herd.



Todd and I are measuring off our fence. We put a spacer fence alongside our neighbors so that our horses can't contact eachother and potentially get in trouble through the fence. Jasper, my dog, is always there to help me out.



And here I am measuring the auger to figure out how far down Todd needs to go to set the corner posts the correct depth. I look a little poochy in the belly here...it's mostly fluff from my vest, but I am definitely starting to show a little. I'm just over 3.5 months along now! At my next appointment, mid-April, we get to find out the baby's sex!