Tag Archives: Sable

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Fragrance

There is no denying the effect that the fragrance of horses has on people…

You either love it, or hate it.
We, ’round here, are quite firmly in the “Love It” camp.
😉

Make no mistake, there are days when I say to the Girls “Could ya stop lying on, and rolling in, the manure pile? Damn, you stink!!”
For the most part though, the Eau De Equine soothes the Spirit, eases the aches and pains of the daily grind, heals the open wounds in our souls.

I say it a lot…only the horses are allowed to eat money around here.
It’s true, horses are a money pit.
So, why do we keep them?

“oh, hi Mama…you got treats for me?”
~ Ruby

“The Hell, Mama!!
Stop calling me, I ain’t dead! I *was* having a great nap though!”
~ Astrid

LOL!! We had another passerby stop in to tell me about the “dead horse” in the pasture. Astrid was not impressed. 😉

“I hear your beepy thing…I know you’re there…I’m too sleepy…”
~ Cookie

“I be rollin’
My back is itchy…oooooh, feels soooo good!!”
~ Sable

We keep them because horses change lives.
Our lives are so much richer in ways other than money.
Yeah, they eat money, but what they give back to us is worth so much more.
Those days I have to leave the Farm, I’m always thinking about coming home. About standing in the midst of my little herd, breathing their unique scents, feeling their breath, touching coats, leaning on bodies that love to support us…

Many times I’ve been told that they’re lucky to be with us.
And while I sorta agree, because of what could have been when they were in the auction ring, I tend to lean farther towards I’m lucky to have them. We’ve given them a soft place to land, a Home ’til the end of their days, with good food, health care, and a whole lotta love.

❤

What they’ve given me, all of us here at the Farm, is so much more.

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A Few Random Pictures

It is full on haying season, and I’m cutting every day that weather looks clear for a few days. That means I’m sometimes too busy to take pictures…cutting hay by hand really is a labour of love. 🙂 ❤
Or insanity. 😛
Probably insanity.

In the meantime, I have a few random images to share with y’all…

TroubleCat

Little brat is sticking his tongue out at me. lol
Every where I go there is a cat near by. This time I was, once again, taking early morning pictures of the horses, and Trouble felt he should be my feline chaperone.

The Cookie ❤

This sight is what drew me out of the house on a chilly, gloomy morning, camera in hand.
At first I wanted to be sure she was far enough away from the fence to be able to get up safely…she has a terrible habit of standing right next to the fence, and then just plopping her butt down. She’s gotten herself cast up against it a few times now, so every time I see the fool out by the fence, I check on her. Just in case.
As you can see from the photo, she was far enough away to be fine, and yet close enough to make a lovely picture.

And then, there’s our Sable…

So not graceful…

Horses getting up is the least graceful sight ever.
LOL!

Those grumpy ears are because I was laughing at her…
She can move so beautifully, like she’s floating over the ground…and when she bucks and kicks? The power is incredible to see…
This is just funny.
We love her anyways. 😉

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Catching up on the Friday’s Hunt

All right, so I missed last week.
It’s been gray and gloomy and rainy here.
Not much for pictures, and even less energy…but this week, I’m catching up with prompts from last week as well.

First set of images are for the prompts Starts with X, Week’s Favorite and Insect.

Starts with X

When you have no idea how to approach a prompt, you hit the google and type in “words that start with x” and read the Scrabble websites for ideas.
That’s how I hit upon “xenobiotics”…though, now that I think of it, I coulda just used Xena, my warrior princess barn cat. LOL! Mighta been too easy…

Anyways…xenobiotics are something we use on the Girls. In fact, we spend quite a bit of money on them and a ton of time trying to apply them…a xenobiotic is a “chemical foreign to or not produced by an organism” such as a pesticide…’round here we call it “bug juice” and we slather it on the horses as much as possible.

After a healthy (or maybe not so healthy) application bug juice, we see this sight a lot!

Bug juice makes for happy horses, because sleeping is so much easier. ❤

Week’s Favorite

Ruby ❤

Do I really need to explain why this is a favorite? I’m sure I don’t. 🙂

Insect

With the rains, come the mosquitoes…and that’s our insects. Many, many, many insects.
Which is why we spend so much money on xenobiotics (I’m loving using that! lol!) so that instead of running and stomping, we see this:

Nice face, Roo 😉

Much better than dropping weight running from bugs, or messing up hooves and legs from stomping. I’ll give ’em toxic skin coatings to save the other parts of them. 😉

Now, for this week’s prompts. They are Starts with Y, Week’s Favorite and Splash.

Starts with Y

Ruby does some morning yoga stretches, while eyeing me. Just in case there’s some sort of horse treat coming to the fence…

(there were no treats to be had this day…because Round Ruby does not need treats. 😉 )

Week’s Favorite

This:

The Cookie having fun.

After her bout of achy, painful joints keeping her down, this was wonderful to see. Her playing, leaping, bucking, kicking and cantering.
Does this woman’s ❤ good to see.
The near daily application of the ointment is helping her.
I’m loving that.

Splash

Splashing and playing in the rains…

Oy! Dirty girl!

Taken out the livingroom window while the rains were coming down…they were just having a grand time running and playing.

Sharing for Friday’s Hunt hosted by Teresa at Eden Hills.

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Garden 2017

Y’all remember how last year my garden, due to circumstances beyond our control, became a giant plot of weeds?
Not that we wasted anything, those weeds fed pigs for the summer, but still, it was hard on the ol’ FarmHer spirit to not have a garden going.
In the fall, with the last cutting of pig feed, we started covering the area with old plywood. Stuff we had lying around, but wasn’t good enough for building with…well we discovered that the soil underneath the wood was lovely. Still a bit of grass and weeds, but nowhere near as bad as last year.
Problem was, we didn’t have enough to cover the whole garden…takes a lot of wood to cover a 24×40 foot garden!

Ahhh…but we are nothing if not adaptable to the situation. 😉

The yellow/brown grass is where the wood was…

You can see though, that there is some really good grass growth on the side…*sigh*

So, the space that was covered by wood is about 12 feet wide, and the full 40 foot length of the garden. Even our powerful little tiller was having a rough time with the full grassy area…and so, what we’re going to do is this…

I’m going to plant everything I can in the 12×40 foot space, mulch it heavily with straw, and be happy with a space that is 3 time the size of any garden I had in the city…

Then, while the one side grows, we’re going to use our ever renewing composting manure pile to cover the other side, and then, we have a huge hay tarp we bought…back when I had visions of actually tarping our hay…but that never happened because, seriously, more trouble than it’s worth. You want hard on a marriage?!? Try tarping hay together…I wish I was kidding about that. :/

We’ve had this tarp sitting, and we figured now we’ll put it to good use. It can cover the side that’s too weedy right now, and then, once the growing season is done in the fall, it’s big enough to cover the entire garden.
We’ll start fresh for the entire space next spring. 🙂

See?
Adapt, overcome, move forward.

Tilling my soon to be garden space…

Sable looks on with interest…

As he was tilling, Hubby had to stop periodically to untangle roots from the tines of the tiller…he’d toss them off to the side, and our (definitely not) starving Sable had to try to reach them so she could eat them…

“I am wasting away here, Dad….
I am but a shell of my former gloriousness as a beautiful horse…
Soooooo hungry…
Can I has those roots please??”
~ Sable

While Hubby used the tiller, I put the scythe back to work, and cut the entirety of the rest of the garden, in prep for adding compost and covering.
Like last year, those greens did not go to waste…

The Kid forking green food to piglets…

As usual, when yard work is happening, Daphne ran around like a maniac…nothing this dog does is at low speed. She just runs until she flops down, dog tired.

Having a rest in the long grass…

When we were finally done, and I walked into the house, this is what I found:

Daisy Mae and Odhinn

He’s always complaining about Daisy bothering him…she’s not even 2, he’s an old man at 15. But that doesn’t stop the snuggles when cats need naps. 😉

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Friday’s Hunt June 4th

So, we’re well on our way to having the garden in…
Yesterday, The Kid and I got our last few small beds planted. She put in 300 kidney beans. Sounds like a lot, but you pretty much plant them, and then ignore them until the pods are finished and dried. The joy of a dry bean. However, that also means they don’t produce continuously, like most other beans. Bush bean, pole beans, they’ll produce more flowers and pods the more you pick them. Which is why we’ll also plant 2 types of pole beans, and a purple bush bean…for fresh eating and putting up for the winter.

Today, the plan is to work on the main garden bed…I did say, I will have a garden this year. It’s just going to take a whole lotta heavy lifting. 😉
Good thing we’re not afraid to get out hands dirty.

This week’s prompts for Friday’s Hunt hosted by Teresa at Eden Hills are Starts with V, Week’s Favorite and Inch.

Starts with V

Now that we’re in June, summer vacation is coming up for The Kid. Already. The school year has flown past, I tell ya…
We won’t however, be taking any sort of family vacation. That’s just not something we can do…not with these guys:

My toddlers.

Truth be told, I’m not much of a vacation person anyways…I like to stay close to home, and I do love my Farm. 🙂
(And yes, Sable is doing exactly what you think she is…)

Week’s Favorite

3 horse down…flat babies in the sunshine.

Life rarely presents fully finished photographs.
An image evolves, often from a single strand of visual interest – a distant horizon, a moment of light, a held expression.

~ Sam Abell

Inch

My helper cat, Sir Maximillion…helping me do what I do best…take pictures of the horses at sunrise:

Thankfully, he helped without his usual stance of having his butt an inch from my face. It’s really hard to take pictures like that.
LOL!