We’re going way back to the horses very first Yule with us.
Freezing cold, they’d been here only 39 days, and I wanted holiday pictures.
The surprise and horror on Cookie’s face!
Ruby was having none of these shenanigans…no matter how much Hubby tried to convince her.
And then there’s Sable…who with the very first shoot was a rock star, ready to pose.
How?
How can it be November already?
I feel like this summer, this fall have gone by so fast.
Never enough time to get it all done, still so much left to do before winter sets in for real…
This week alone:
Hubby and I filled my deer tag. (Yay!)
The 3 of us did the cut/wrap on the deer for the freezer.
I put up 10 quarts of chicken soup.
I canned a canner load of cat food from scraps from chicken butchering.
We moved a building…I have pictures of that to come!
We bottled the apple raspberry wine.
Started a concord grape wine.
Discovered yet another place where one of our hens is hiding eggs…she wants to raise chicks sooooo bad! I hope she’s the same way come spring. 🙂
That’s on top of the regular stuff…
Hubby still went to work every day.
Kiddo still did school, plus her extra curriculars.
I still ran around after the animals here and made sure they were all healthy, while taking pictures and doing edits.
So we’re tired.
But it’s a good tired. 😉
And now, we’re coming up fast on 1 year…
And my heart.
Sweet Epona, my heart…
❤
I still miss her so, so much.
And yet, after the fact, I know she was suffering.
Had I known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have let it go on.
I would have given her a grand day of love, with all her favorite meals and treats and said goodbye that way.
It is my 1 regret, that I didn’t know, that I didn’t do better for her.
We did a thing, Hubby, Kid and I…
Most know I kept her skull.
Well, this summer it was in the maceration tub getting cleaned.
It’s not 100% done, but we had to get it out of the water before freeze up. Freezing in the water would have caused irreparable damage.
So, we did a thing…
This was my Hallowe’en image:
Taken under our tree. ❤
I have a few other from the session that I’ll post on the 1 year day.
It was an emotional, Powerful photo shoot.
It’s one I’m proud of.
Once she’s completely cleaned, degreased and whitened, I plan on painting a few decorative images on her (though that might change, we’ll see).
What won’t change is the photo essay I plan with her…
In her life with me, the thought of leaving her pasture scared terrified her…just coming out into the yard to graze was more than she could handle, no matter how hard we worked on it.
It was what it was.
Ah, but now, my dear sweet darling will travel!
And she’ll be photographed in all the places I wanted to take her in life, meeting all the people I wanted her to meet, but couldn’t.
This I look forward to doing.
It’ll be hard at times.
Emotional…powerful.
But so worth doing.
❤
But, that’ll be next year.
I’ll apologize now, if I go missing ’til the 13th.
I’m trying to stay up on things, but this may get to me.
Hopefully once things settle down with Freezer Camp, hunting and winterizing I’ll post more…
Okay, I promise I will!
Sometimes though, it’s just easier to throw myself into the daily grind a little harder when I’m missing her.
And sadly that means y’all get shorted on content.
I’m workin’ on that.
❤
Here’s a couple of pictures of my 3 Stooges for your enjoyment…
Staff meeting…
On the agenda, how to avoid the beepy thing.
Especially now that the Food Lady has turned off the beep.
Can’t have her catching us in those fun, but compromising positions!
The look I get when I ask what they were discussing at their meeting…like I didn’t already know! 😉
Happy Sunday all!
❤
Back on my old old old blog, I used to do this a lot.
The MMR to catch everyone up on the goings on in my world.
Because sometimes, Farm/homesteading life means you fall off the edge of the world for a bit while working your butt off to be ready for winter.
Winter.
Is.
Coming.
But I’ve had a chance to get out with the camera in between all the work, and that’s a darn good thing.
Did a thing for a group that I can’t say anything about yet, but it’s a damn good cause and I was prouder than a peacock to be a part of it…even if my part of the thing isn’t included in the final product, just getting to do the thing was ah-effing-mazing. ❤
Saturday my own Merry Mares gave me some lovely shots.
I have a few to share with y’all today. 🙂
She’s so odd.
That front leg out is something she does a lot when she’s laying down. I don’t know how it’s comfy, but she’s always done it.
And this one…
She was so sick this summer, for so damn long with no real answers…we were all starting to worry about the worst possible outcome.
But, she seems to have rebounded beautifully, with even the large lump on her tmj shrinking to a small hard spot.
So, she’s still retired, but she’s doing very very well!
❤
I love this shot of Astrid dozing with Sable in the background.
We haven’t had enough sun lately, so everyone was just soaking it up like crazy. It was good to see!
🙂
And now, being Monday, I’m back to work on canning…
I took a break this weekend to help Hubby with some winterizing projects (okay, him and The Kid pulled out the a/c while I picked carrots to go with supper 😉 )and clean up the beets to get ready for today.
Pickled beets are the theme for today, with a side of carrot pulling before the next round of rains start.
Have a great day folks!
Sharing with Awww Mondays at Comedy Plus.
“Now Autumn’s fire
burns slowly
along the woods
and day by day
the dead leaves fall
and melt”
~ William Allingham
Hey, hi there!
Can you believe we’re mid-September already?
This summer…just wasn’t long enough, I tell ya!
I’ve started the garden clean out and it just feels wrong. 😦
Saturday we have a chance of frost, so things have to start coming out.
The last 2 days, I spent picking tomatoes and pulling the plants out. And the clean up crew has been having a grand time with tomato plants!
nom nom nom
This good stuff, Food Lady!
Excuse the picture quality…everything is from my phone, because Voldemort doesn’t come outside when I’m working in the garden. 🙂
chicken in the tomato jungle…
She was not impressed that the jungle kept getting smaller and smaller!
😂😂😂
Every year I try to pay attention to what grows well for us and what doesn’t.
This year we planted some Roma tomatoes that we bought through a friend’s sons school fundraiser.
Well, let me tell you, these plants were fucking awesome!!!
Check this out:
look at all the tomatoes on there!
I had to cut branches off to get to the tomatoes inside the growth of plant. Like they were so bushy and dripping with fruit.
Awe. Some.
So, they are a definite for next year’s garden.
Especially when you factor in that I didn’t do any watering, because our hose doesn’t reach. And, we had a drought this summer…
Imagine if they had regular watering!!
Oh, and if the stupid chickens hadn’t eaten so many…
Yeah, Romas are a must.
All told, once my plants were stripped, I have 5 5 gallon pails of tomatoes.
Some I’ll let ripen, some are ripe so we’ll eat those and many of the greenies will become wine.
Yum!
I thought my green beans were done and was leaving them to go to seeds for next year.
Hahahaha!
They’ve had other ideas.
Oh, some have big fat pods that are no good for anything but seed, but there’s a ton of pods that are good for eating right away.
I picked just about 2 pounds last time, and it looks like I’ll get that again.
Fine by me.
🙂
And then, that Daphne had a digging frenzy last week.
Why?
Because she’s a dog, and she can.
But she found this:
how cool is this??
It’s broken and dirty, but with a little elbow grease, I think I can fix it up. I think it’ll be perfect hung over the back door.
And finally, a picture of our Sable…
Whatcha doin’ CinderBella?
This is from way back in July, when she wasn’t feeling so good.
She’s always been a waterbaby, so we didn’t think too much of it…until we talked to her vet about and we all put 2 and 2 together.
Ms Merry Mare was trying to make herself feel better by cooling her hooves.
If it ever happens again, I’ll be sure to pay better attention to her overall demeanor, instead of just shaking my head at her antics.
It’s all we can do right?
When we know better, we work to do better.
Hubby was given a whole lot of apples.
More than 50lbs worth.
Nice apples too.
So, I sorted into “wine,” “eating” and “livestock” piles.
And then, we sent the Merry Mares bobbing for apples…
Astrid thought this was pretty awesome…until she snuffled in a nose full of water.
Then, not so fun!
Pretty Sable…I love her natural black eyeliner…looks so good on her. 🙂
😍😍😍😍
Sable looks disgusted at how deep Ruby was willing to go for an apple. lol
Got it!!
Nom nom nom
She’s rather dedicated when it comes to food.
😉
We still have half a 5 gallon pail for the horses, a crisper full for humans, and I just pulled the bag of apple mush out of the fermenting wine. That made little piggies very, very happy!
Next wine prospect…
Either concord grape or banana.
Or, maybe I’ll mix the 2.
Because that might just be interesting.
😉
So, I fell off the face of the earth for a bit there.
Mostly because I’ve been busy.
Y’see, the garden is producing, and someone has to put it up for the winter…because, yes, winter is coming.
I pulled out the pressure canner.
If you heard an excited, high pitched “Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!” last week, well, that was me.
🙂
It’s been 5 far too long years since I put food in jars for the shelves.
This year, I was determined to get back at it.
And I have!
So far, just green beans, but today I’ve got potatoes going into the canner, and once we butcher the meaties, I’ll be using backs and scraps for home-grown chicken soup.
And, I need to send Hubby to the mushroom farm, because one can never have enough home canned mushrooms!
Then, there’s kidney beans, and chick peas and pork and beans to make…
I’ve missed this.
Back when we were in the city, it was a normal year for me to put up 400 or so jars of food a year.
I want to surpass that out here!
I feel like, I have all this space to grow stuff, I need to be better prepared for life’s little bumps and bruises that slow us down on the way.
That mindset got lost for a little while, but now, I’m back to it…and it feels soooooo good!
The past week, I’ve also been tending to the wines.
I finally got my blueberry/pomegranate kit bottled.
The 2nd round of green tomato (which is likely going to end up a blush wine instead of a white this time) has been stabilized and is now clearing. It is so tasty. Still young, so a bit fiery, but the first one was the same way. With a little age, it turned into a stunningly good wine.
And then, Hubby brought home 50lbs of apples someone gave him at work. Not deadfall, lovely hand-picked eating apples.
So I started a batch of apple wine…because hey, free fruit? Yeah, I’ll ferment that!
And then there’s the planning for next year’s garden. Already.
In the next month or two, it’ll be time to get the fall garlic in.
I’m thinking about what worked this year, what didn’t work, and what we need to grow more of next year.
Plus, there’s that darn fence to get done!
So much to do, so little time to do it.
lol
Now, for those who have been wondering…
Our Sable.
❤
She’s been off the previcox for 2 weeks now.
I keep saying this…we are cautiously and quietly optimistic.
She’s eating very well, she’s gained back the weight she lost during her sickness, and she’s still getting a flax cookie daily…because she loves them and we love her.
❤
That’s all the news for today…
It doesn’t sound like I’ve been all that busy when I write it here, but I’m going from before sunrise until well after sunset, so I’m either spinning my wheels or maybe I might be getting somewhere.
I’ll let you know.
😉
Sharing with Comedy Plus for Awww Mondays.
