Bobbing For Apples

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.
😉

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Monday Morning Roundup~Aug. 27th

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.

Gone Fishin’

We were up long before the butt crack of dawn yesterday…
Okay, we got up like it was a normal day.
🙂

Let the animals out, checked on the Girls, hopped in the truck and went for a drive…

It was a lovely morning to be out with fishing poles and cameras.
Of course, we didn’t catch much…
A friend caught a wee, itty bitty pickerel (like minnow sized)…

The Kid caught a pickerel rig (complete with bait still on it!) and then there was the rock…

Remember how I got the Cookie Stone?
Well, thanks to a friend who was willing to go into the water and get wet squidgey shoes (and considering I’d just made fun of his catch 😂😂, it was an awesome thing for him to do…), I now have a 2nd stone to go with it…

Now we have the BellaRock (the rectangular-ish one from yesterday) and Cookie’s heart stone.
All I gotta do is paint the mares on them.
And get 2 more big rocks for Astrid and Ruby.
But that will be on other fishing trips.
🙂

Thankful Thursday

Things I am thankful for this week:

Sable eating her cookie…with previcox hidden inside. 😉

a. Flax/apple cookies.
They make giving her a pill soooooo much easier.

Eating a bouquet of alfalfa flowers…

2. Fancy molasses. And oats.
Since she’s been on antibiotic pills instead of shots, we’ve had to be creative with getting them into her.
Without a fight, that is.
Molasses and oats in her beet pulp, with her ground up pills and it all gets slurped up in record time.

Trying to steal Ruby’s alfalfa bouquet…

c. She’s feeling better.
A whole lot better.
But, she’s also coming onto the last couple of days of antibiotics and I’m nervous about whether or not she’s going to stay better or relapse…

Garden tomatoes…

d. Fresh tomatoes from the garden.
This is the biggest haul of red tomatoes we’ve had since we moved to the Farm. It’s been challenging (to say the least) the get the garden off the ground. Especially since I had the whole technique down pat in the city…
It’s getting better every year, and that’s something to be thankful for.

Astrid enjoying her flowers while Ruby looks on…

5. Finally, these 2 jokers.
Because as hard as last Friday was, Astrid was right there to comfort Sable and make sure she was okay.
Thankfully, our vet was understanding about herd bound fools and as long as she was out of the way, she could stay.
And Ruby has been *my* rock while Sable was sick.
When your normal leaning rock of a horse needs to lean on you for a while and you need to lean somewhere too, well it was nice Ol’ Painty Face stepped up and let me use her to brush out some stress and anxiety on…

Sharing with Brian’s Home for Thankful Thursday.

An Update on the CinderBella Saga

When I last left y’all an update, we were waiting to hear back from the vet on our next steps in Sable’s care.
We were at the end of an 8 day course of Excenel shots, the swelling in her TMJ was still there, and she still needed her teeth done.

Friday morning, I heard from the vet.
I explained where we were at with Sable, and with a little bit of discussion, it was decided to go ahead with floating her teeth.
That’s done under sedation, so he cold try to take x-rays of her big head at the same time, and, if need be scope her to see if there was anything to see that way.

So, at 9:00 Friday morning, it was decided he would come for 1:30 to do her teeth…

And from there I was anxious as all effing get out, because my biggest baby was sick and needed her doctor…
After some coffee, breakfast and some much-needed meditation, I went out to the pasture with The Kid, and we coated the Palomino Princess in bug juice. Gave her a bit of a back rub, cleaned between her teats, rubbed her ears…all stuff to level my anxiety out without making her anxious.

First thing he did when he arrived was poke and prod at the lump on her jaw. And decide that he was for sure doing x-rays…
So, after a shot of sedation, which left our poor big baby swaying on her feet, he and his tech worked on getting an angle where hopefully he could see something that might help us understand what was going on.

Next few pics are from my phone, so not the greatest shots.
Unfortunately, there was far too much going on for me to bring out Voldemort, so these had to do…

Drugged for x-rays…

After the x-rays, he decided he wanted to stick a needle into the lump and see if there was any fluid in it. He asked me for some clean water, to wash the spot on Sable face, and I dashed up to the house for some…
As I got back, he said “She’s developed a bit of a nose bleed…” as I looked at the blood running out of her nostrils.
My response?
“Oh fuck!”
For which I immediately and automatically apologized…
I don’t know why.
I swear like a sailor, really. And it was an automatic response to yet another unknown thing happening that I had no control over.
But, we all had a good laugh about it, so it was fine.

The nosebleed did mean he was going to scope her though, because it was wholly and completely unexpected, and we kinda needed to know if there was more going on in there that caused it.

Yay!!
CinderBella was getting a camera shoved up her nose!!
Okay, not shoved…guided.
But still, good thing that mare was drugged.
😂😂

So, needle in the lump produced a teeny bit of fluid (which was likely joint fluid) and some blood.
Scoping showed inflammation in her lymph nodes and nothing more nefarious than that. Thank Epona!

And then it was time for teeth…because those *still* needed doing…
Speculum halter went on so he could have a good look, and then he took it off her, because a. she was a bit panicky that she couldn’t move her mouth and b. it probably put a hella lot of pressure on her TMJ which was already hurting…
So, he teeth were done like this:

The Kid held her halter the whole time…

She was not a happy mare about this whole thing. Not even a little bit. But, he got her done without extra sedation and without too much of a struggle. Once more, thank you Epona!!

After all was said and done, and our Big Girl was dozing in happy happy land, he gave me antibiotic pills for her and anti-inflammatories as well.
8 days on both and we’ll reassess from there.
And, when he called my Saturday morning with x-ray results, it turns out she has extra bone growth on the TMJ, which is most likely what the lump is.
Uh, did I mention it’s really hard to get a good x-ray of a TMJ in the best conditions, let alone on a drugged and wobbly horse in a pasture??
But, it was worth doing for the small amount of extra knowledge we got from it.

drugged and snoring softly in my face… ❤

So, now it’s Sunday, and the big question is, how’s my biggest baby doing after a couple of days of previcox and more antibiotics?
Check her out…

She’d just gotten up from a lying down nap…first one I’ve seen her have in a while.
Hubby says he’s seen her laying down when he leaves in the morning though, so that’s good!

She heard me coming and decided to get up…

“Hey Mama…got an apple snax for me??”

Those ears…
That posture…
You’d never know she was sick!!
❤ ❤ ❤

“So? Treats?”

Yup, treats.
Because the easiest way to get the Palomino Princess to take her anti-inflammatory is in a flax/apple cookie.
I’m still working on a reliable way to get the antibiotic pills in…without an argument.
LOL!
That’s the key. 😉

And now, my friends, you know what I know about how our Sable is doing.

Grooming

I caught these 2 having a girl’s spa moment last night…

While Sable had her own “scratch my back” moment in the background…

This went on until I tried to open the back door for pictures…I was hoping for better shots than these, which I took through the bathroom window…but, as soon as I opened the door, all 3 went in different directions.

Somehow, I’m not surprised.
Brats.

Back on Meds

Oh this horse…

❤ Sable

Back on the 17th I told y’all she was doing much better, and that she was pretty much 100%
Yeah, well…
I spoke too soon.
Her tmj (temporomandibular joint) swelled up over night to the size of a grapefruit, and she was having trouble eating again.
So, I put a call in to the vet…we discussed how the antibiotics had previously made a huge difference, how she had been doing much better, and how it had come back.
And so, back on the meds Sable went.

Today is the last day of an 8 day course, and I’ve been playing telephone tag with her vet to figure out what our next step is.
Whether she’s going to get more antibiotics (the swelling has gone from grapefruit to small mandarin orange size) or have her teeth floated and then more antibiotics…
I don’t know.

What I do know is my poor sweet mare is just so over getting needled every day.
Even with rotating injection sites, she’s had enough…
So as frustrated as I am with this whole thing, I have to remember that she’s the one getting poked and prodded and needled, and that it’s wearing on her.
And she still needs her teeth done.

Remember how I said waaaaay back, earlier this year, that I planned on buying a new (to me) camera? That I was setting a little money aside here and there from projects I was doing?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

All that money has gone into the Palomino Princess.
Once the emergency fund took the hit, the next amount of money had to come from somewhere.
lol
Dang horses.
I swear, one day, I’ll have a new (to me) camera.
😂😂

But for now, we’ll just work on getting Cinder-Bella healthy.