Geldings playing

Last night I stood on the deck and watched the boys, Chico and Griffin, play for a while. Kachina joined in with them a couple of times when they involved her in it, but for the most part stayed out of it. I took a few pictures, but they turned out pretty poorly because the sun was setting. The low light and the need to use zoom made the pictures a little blurry. But I'm posting them anyway because they are entertaining. :)

Getting close

I'm 38 weeks along today! Only 2 more weeks until my due date!

Cody came home from the trainer last week

We brought Cody home from the trainer last Friday. I just haven't gotten around to posting about it, but I actually did take my camera along this time and took some pictures of the trainer riding her. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any cantering pictures because the dust created by it prevented my camera from focusing on the horses.

There were many other horses in the arena when Patti rode Cody for me. Patti has a very busy barn. She rides and trains quarter horses for showing for both herself and clients. And she trains trail horses as well. She also offers 2 lessons per month on your horse as part of the training fee to make sure you know how to ride your horse. I didn't ride her, but Patti invited me to come back later in the fall to ride with her, especially if I have any questions. She also has a small number of young women that ride horses for her, since Patti couldn't possibly do it all herself. So, in the arena, there were a couple of people there riding their own horses that Patti had trained. One it seemed was just a trail horse, but a fairly green one. The other rider seemed like she had her horse there for Patti to train for showing. In addition, there were a couple other horses there being ridden by Patti's help. One I know for sure is a show horse. The other, I wasn't sure. So, it was a pretty full arena including Cody. But, Cody did very well. She seemed to have really gotten over being afraid of other horses coming too close to her or coming up behind her.

In this picture, Cody is the horse directly behind the red dun.

Cody stood very patiently everytime Patti stopped to focus on another rider and give instructions.


Then it was time to load her up and take her home! My mom accompanied me on this trip. My husband was busy but didn't want me to drive an hour and a half away from home alone. He said he had visions of a state trooper delivering our baby on the side of a road with a horse standing in the trailer. Didn't happen, but would have made for a good story! (I'm still pregnant...8.5 months now!).


At home, we had an eager line-up of greeters, but Cody was only interested in the grass. She was stalled most of the time with only a couple hours a day on turnout. The turnouts were very green, but on closer inspection, the green was primarily all weeds and very little grass.


My mom took this picture of the wild ones. It kind of makes me smile. Kachina, the untrusting little mare that she is turns away from my mom who is holding that crazy black thing, while Griffin just looks on calmly. If I was holding the camera, Kachina wouldn't have turned away. She trusts me more :)


Cody is in fabulous condition after being in training for 2 months. She lost her pudge and gained a lot of muscle. Plus she is just sleek and fit. She is darker than when I took her there because she has already started to grow in her darker winter hair with the shortening of days. So has Chico.



The only thing I was unhappy about with Cody in training is that they trimmed her face up like a show horse. I probably wouldn't have minded them just trimming her whiskers, but they also trimmed all her whiskers (around muzzle and eyes) PLUS they trimmed her eyelashes! I never knew anyone does that and it seems like it would be so detrimental to the protection of their eyes! Cody is not a show horse. She lives in a very rugged pasture with a lot of brush, trees, and other things. She has to deal with flies and crazy weather. I was not happy about the trimmed eyelashes at all and I think one of Patti's help heard me tell my mom about it. I didn't think it was a big enough deal to address it with Patti. If I ever took her back there, I would for sure ask them not to trim her face up.

Chico was so happy that Cody was back, but she wasn't really interested in meeting her old buddies again. She was much more concerned about grass. Chico, stood at the gate hoping I'd let him out to greet her.


Here are some pictures of Griffin and Kachina, although they don't really show how much they've grown.


See, if I hold the camera, Kachina will still come right up to me!


Again, Chico really wants Cody to greet him, but Cody is too "busy".


Finally, she obliges him with a sniff.


I kept Cody in off the pasture and introduced her to it slowly this past week to make sure she didn't get sick on it. It was a non-event when I first turned her back out with the others. Well, actually, they all filed into her pen to eat her hay, while she went out and explored the pasture on her own, having not been home in a while. She kept coming back to check on them and whinny to them, but they had absolutely no interest in following her around. They just wanted to stand in the barn and eat hay. Finally, she settled and started grazing grass just outside the pen so that she could still see her buddies.

And now that she's been home for almost a week, it is interesting to see how things in the herd have changed since before she left. I think she is still the "boss", but I rarely see her pushing the other horses around at all. I think she's just happy to be back with them. Catlow is definitely lead mare. She leads, and they all follow. Cody is the first one to follow Catlow, practically right on her heels. And I think that Chico is not as attached to Cody as he used to be. I see Cody and Catlow together the most right now.

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.

Update on Cody at the trainer

Cody has been with the trainer for 2 weeks now. I called yesterday to see how she is doing and got a return call today. Patti said that the first day they worked with her, Cody acted like she'd just been ridden last week (when in reality it was last fall!). I was pleased to hear that. She's never had a break this long before, so it's good to know she is a horse than I don't have to consistently work with to be able to trust. She said Cody is doing great, but she feels like she lopes like a young horse (uncoordinated and uncollected). I've loped her a lot in the past in arena and on trails, but she was very overweight and pretty out of shape when I took her to the trainer this summer, so that could have something to do with it. She also said that she was dropping her shoulder out on circles, but that's typical when a horse hasn't been ridden in a while. Cody's biggest problem, the trainer said, is that she is afraid of the other horses when ridden in the arena with them! I was surprised, since I've ridden her a ton with other horses, but I guess I've never ridden her in huge groups with horses coming up behind her and passing her. She said she is better when they ride toward her, but horses coming up behind her really scares her. So, she's working her through those issues and now she'll introduce her to a bit with a shank and start teaching her to really respond to neck reining cues. The trainer would really like to keep her for two months, but I really just want to do one month. I know she'd benefit, but we have a lot of expenses coming up soon with a baby, plus I'd maybe like to send Griffin to her this fall (if I ever get the round pen in and start working with him). So, I need to keep that in mind. I think she'll benefit from just one month too. But, overall, I was pleased her hear about how she was doing. I was unsure, since she's been a pasture ornament since last fall. Good to hear there were no attitude issues or laziness.

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.

training

A beautiful summer is full in swing here! We are getting tons of rain (too much for right now - can't get any hay cut and the dairy folk are losing good hay because it is too mature for dairy cattle now). Even though we've had a lot of rain, the temps have been nice (in the 70's), and we actually had a sunny weekend.

I had some friends come up to visit and we went strawberry picking. It was a lot of fun, but waiting a day to process my strawberries was not a good choice because they mold very quickly when they've ripened in such wet conditions! I think I probably salvaged only 2/3 of the box of berries. I may try to pick more today. I'm going to freeze them so we have a nice stockpile of berries for the winter months when we'll really want fruit.

I took Cody to a horse trainer for a month to get someone riding her and to have someone more experienced with me advance her training a bit. The trainer works with show horses and also trains trail horses. She has a really nice facility and a number of younger people working with her that ride with her as well. Our goal with Cody is to get to neck reining consistently and just get her more exposure and time with a person other than me. The trainer is going to help me graduate her to a more advanced bit that will work well with neck reining - a snaffle with a shank. I'm just not very experienced with the advanced world of horsemanship...I like to primarily trail ride, so what I've been able to do with my horses so far is perfectly good for me. But I think that it will be good for Cody to advance, especially since she is the horse that I put most visitors on when they ride with me. And I'd like her to become Todd's riding horse when I can finally get back in the saddle later this fall. I think he'd enjoy riding her regardless, but would be much more likely to come along more often if Cody was more responsive. The trainer offers lessons on the horse that she's training to teach the rider what the horse knows as well, and Todd plans to take those lessons, so it will be a good experience for all involved.

Poor Chico is so lonely without Cody. He is pining for her. It's been almost a week now, but I'll still look out in the pasture, see Griffin, Kachina and Catlow grazing, but not Chico. I get worries, so I go out to find him, and he's standing by the gate or in the barn all by himself. He isn't whinnying for her anymore, but he still goes off searching for her. When the 5 were together, they NEVER went off by themselves (with the exception of Catlow, who would graze away from the others, but never completely be in another part of the pasture).

And my flower beds really are starting to explode with color now! Right now it is mostly poppies and bachelor's buttons blooming, but soon, the blazing star, black-eyed susans, and coreopsis should start!

Latest ultrasound pics

Our baby is almost 28 weeks along in gestation now! I just had my latest doctor appointment and ultrasound this week. She's growing well and all seems normal thus far! The 3-D ultrasound pictures we go are absolutely precious. The detail and shape is amazing! I think I can see that she may even have my nose! I'm getting excited to be able to see her in person (in less than 3 months already!). But I have so much to prepare for that! We will be painting her room soon (brown is my color of choice, so that I can fill it with many brightly colored objects like yellow curtains and wall hangings).

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.