Big summer

So much has happened this summer.

Fjords and Friends in June was so much fun. Every year it ends up being the highlight of our year. We travelled to the mountains with Shari and her family again. The big difference this year was that we had a new truck and trailer. Steve bought "the Beast", a huge, bright red, 4-wheel drive, diesel, Ford truck with full towing package. And we also found an excellent bargain for a two-horse, slant-load, Sundowner fifth wheel with a large dressing room and brought it home. It's such a dream-come-true I forget to breathe when I step inside it! So we hauled our own horse for the first time to North Carolina. Solly was the only horse we took. She did me so proud ... have I told you I love that horse before? We had lots of fun group activities. Two big Robbie clinics and one morning we played games on horseback. Solly and I were the first out in most games because we haven't learned to neck-rein yet. We rode trails almost every day. We rode to the tower: Shari/Dancer, Kimberly/Pride, Audrey ponying two horses and her crew, Margo, and me on Solly. Great ride/great friends/great views. Another time we went to the lake and back: Lee/Ivar, Libby/Chester, Cherie/Tyra, and me/Solly. That was a fun, fun, fun ride. We deliberately went as a small group so we could do a lot of galloping. I hadn't galloped Solly very much at all, she is so forward that I was really kinda leery of getting her fast and excited. Well, that was silly of me because she did fabulous! Her gallop is so strong and fun to ride without gaining speed, just a steady, long-strided, breezy rhythm. One day I rode Solly behind Curt's marathon wagon and his team, Ulend and Solvar, and a horse and cart. Steve rode behind Curt on his wagon. We went to the mansion and back. That was a wonderful experience. I had never ridden out with wagons and carts before. Steve enjoyed it too! It felt so timeless, riding my horse along behind a wagon and cart, both full of people ... so "Gone With the Wind" or something. And I went out once on Solly with Robbie on Hoover. That was an interesting ride. It was a lesson ride and as usual, we rode out without a clue what we would work on until we figured out some things for him to teach me. This time, I thought to have him work with me on getting Solly to trust me on rough patches and steep hills. He taught me how to sit to encourage the horse to dig in and use her haunches instead of rushing through the obstacle. And we love our Renegade Horse Boots! Blowing Rock is as lovely as ever, and Kilwin's Ice Cream is still heaven-on-earth.

Arlo has grown into quite the handsome fellow. He looks taller than Solly, but looks could be deceiving, he is so young and rangy.

My new chickens are so dear. They are a delight. Chaucer crowed for me for the first time today! He must have been practising behind my back because he is already well past the raspy croaking stage young cockerels go through when they first start crowing.

My new chickens are half grown already

My young chickens

Tennyson and Chaucer.

Pretty as doves.

Drusus, Tennyson and Chaucer with the girls.

Pepper pic

Milkweed

Chicken run, Milkweed and guacamole

Steve finished our chicken run! It is wonderful. We put them all out in it the other day and kept them up long enough for them to get settled. I have also been putting Sparrow in there with them for a few hours at a time. Phoebe, our beautiful, little, bunny-tailed cat struts around on the beams supporting the wire on the roof thinkin' she is 'all that'! I felt they had been cooped up long enough, so I carried them out one-by-one to let them run in our yard for the day despite the rain, so once again, I have chickie-poo on my front porch!

I think I need to get some climbing roses, scarlet runner beans, and clematis to plant all around the coop to climb up the wire. How lovely would that be?

My veggie garden is growing nicely. We have a new squash and several tomatoes we have never grown before from Tasteful Garden, an internet garden shop. We got peppers, watermelon, strawberries, carrots, and cucumbers from the local co-op. I have flowers in my favorite colors growing all around it. I have lots of geraniums on my porch this year. And in the blueberry garden I have coreopsis, catnip and liatris. I have been trying to move the established peonies out from under the pecan trees, it has gotten way too shady for them over the years.

I puppy-sat Milkweed, a tiny Chihuahua, for a week while his folks travelled to Colorado and back. He is so dear. Although I am a big dog person by nature, I can see how people get hooked on the tiny ones. I was practically in tears when Miguel came over to take him home.

Miguel stayed to have dinner with us. We had Burritos. Steve fixed a steak and onion filling. Steve and Miguel made a very delicious (but very hot) salsa verde. We chopped tomatoes, lettuce and jalapeño peppers to put on them and set out sour cream to add to them. I made guacamole. It was quite the complement when Miguel loved my guacamole because he is an excellent cook and is from Mexico!

Here is my guacamole recipe:

3 ripe avocados (black skin, firm texture)
1/2 lemon (squeeze for juice)
1/2 lime (squeeze for juice)
1/2 cup of your favorite chunky salsa (my favorite is Pace, mild)
1/2 a tomatilla (chopped)
Miguel says that if you put an avocado seed into the guacamole once it is make it will keep it from discoloring. I have never done this, but I am anxious to try it next time. I am also going to scrape the inside of the lemon and the lime next time for little bits of tart 'bite' - I love tart.
Mix it all together, chill.
Enjoy!

Pepper

Yesterday, we sold sweet Pepper, our black Morgan/Quarter Horse mare. We needed to sell her since Steve wouldn't ride her. She went to a therapy riding, summer camp program out in Somerville near Shari's place. I am very glad for her. I believe, with her personality, she will enjoy it there, she will love the attention.

Her dark color compimented the lighter colored Fjords perfectly agaisnt the verdant pasture. I will miss her terribly, she was always a joy. /em wipes a tear away.

Spring chickens

My chicks are big enough to be called cockerels and pullets now. They are growing fast and they are beautiful. I still have all eleven chicks. Right now, the girls are at that age where they are much like little doves. They are perching on my hand like a pet cage bird and listening to my every word. So sweet. If you look down into the little pullets tail feathers you can see big rounded, black marked adult feathers coming out already. The boys are running about looking for someone to bump chests with and boss around.

I had a worrisome couple of days when I witnessed a long thread going down the gullet of one of my prettiest little pullets I saw her wrestling with it, trying to get it out with her claws. I picked her up and tried to pull it out, it came out a few inches then it tightened up and I dared not pull any further. I let go of the string and carried her around to try to find my garden scissors, and when I found them and moved to snip and shorten the length of thread, the tippy end of the thread was disappearing into her mouth! She moped around for a couple of days, I felt I would loose her for sure, then one morning she was all well. She lucked out there because I saw around 15 inches of thread go down, it could have done horrible damage.

Sparrow, my once lone little EE hen, is enjoying their company immensely. She spends her days lounging with them under the forsythia and digging through the leaves and old daffodil plants along the fence in the front yard with them. They are still a little wary of her and they don't follow her. They are starting to warm up to her though. I saw one running to her for comfort once after all her buddies had slipped around the corner of the house while the little chick was busy scratching for bugs in the garden.

Their run is finished! It is gorgeous. As soon as the nights warm up a bit, we are going to move their hutch into the pen to give them a nice familiar place to sleep at night in the new run until they get a little bigger. Now I have to figure out a way to get them from the run back to the yard during the day. Maybe we can work out a routine where I feed them in the run at night and in the yard in the morning.

One of little 'girls' is most definitely a little boy. He didn't start to color out until after we had him a few days. He is colored much more subtly than his brother who was well colored when we brought them home.

Two of my girls have yellow legs. That is just as well, because hopefully I can sell them with one of the boys which might make it easier to find him a home. I will be loath to give up any of them, even the ones who loose breed type.

I am very happy with my chicks. They are going to be lovely eye candy when they get grown up. They are so sweet and tame. They are flying up onto my shoulder, sometimes so many at once that they jostle for position. The most flighty ones are very tame in comparison to most chickens I have had. One day, when a little pullet was startled by a barking dog, she literally jumped right up into my arms! They are so dear.

Two things have the power to transport me into happiness ... the sound of horses peacefully munching hay and the sweet chip-chip song chickens make as they scratch in the garden for bugs.

New baby chicks!

I found some nice well-bred Ameraucana chicks! I called a gentleman, who had the same lovely bloodlines I had before and lost in the drought, whose name is listed in the Ameraucana breeders list. He and his brother breed wheaten, blue wheaten, splash, black, and blue Ameraucanas. They have French Marans also. I didn't know if I would have the heart to try again with such beautiful birds, but once I got the ball rolling with some phone calls and emails I was thrilled! We drove to Chickamauga GA, through Chattanooga, and the battlefield, and the town both Steve's and my parents got married in (because it was like the Gretna Green of the Southern US after WWII), and through some of the loveliest countryside in the nation to pick them up.

Here is the breed's website: http://www.ameraucana.org/

We drove home with eleven little chicks peeping in a box. One is definately a wheaten cockerel, one other may be. One is a blue wheaten and I think it's a pullet. All the rest are beautiful wheaten pullets. Since I have one shot at a nice roo, maybe two shots, I am hoping he will be a nice one with clear golden, red and black colors, full beard and muffs, a nice shape and size and a nice typey comb.

I have them set up in a raised pen on my front porch where I spend a lot of time anyways reading, drinking coffee, cleaning saddles, and potting plants in nice weather. So today I planted ivy-leaved geraniums, lobelia and euphorbia in hanging baskets while little chicks peeped and pecked and explored the porch near me.

I was so excited to have brought home some buddies for lonely Sparrow, my one hen. Maybe with the new chicks she will stop trying to get into the house! I had all the little chicks loose under the forsythia bush They were having a blast peeping, pecking, flitting and bumping breasts. They learned how to dust their wings and hop up onto low branches. It was, perhaps, the first time they had ever run loose like that. Sparrow noticed them and started walking towards them seemingly fascinated. She stopped under the forsythia and talked a sweet chicken song. The little chicks gathered a few feet away from her, equally interested but a little unsure. Then one little chick responded to Sparrows coos and clucks and bravely walked up to her. They touched beaks ... awww. Then Sparrows beak darted out like a snake, pecking the tiny baby and making her squawk in fright and pain, and she ran back behind her little buddies. That will be a lesson remembered, I am sure! Maybe someday soon Sparrow will accept them and run with them.

Natchez Trace and Shiloh

Shiloh

Shiloh

Steve and Crickett

Steve, Topper and Kyffin

Kyffin and Topper

Riding, car trips and art

So much has happened since I last blogged. Winter is finally winding down, the days are getting longer. The daffodils are up in full bloom even though there is still a nip in the air. Spring is just around the corner. The horses are loosing their fuzzy jammies. I groom them while they are eating with a slicker brush like one buys to groom a thickly coated dog. I haven't found a horse brush that will get down into the horses thick winter coats quite like a slicker brush will. I have to be real careful not to scratch or poke their skin with the slicker needles though. The birds will have lots of slicker shaped horse hair clumps to build their nests with. I am going to have to get after Solly with the clipper blades as soon as it dries up a little, I hope it isn't so late that I will mess up her incoming Summer coat.

Our group of friends, Steve's work buddies and family and friends, had three Christmastime gatherings. As usual, the food and the company was unrivalled!

A few weeks ago Steve and I piled the Labbies in the truck and drove a little ways up the Natchez Trace to Shiloh. The Trace is always a lovely drive and Shiloh always takes my breath away, between its beauty and the history it is truly an awesome place every Southerner should visit. If trees could talk ...

A couple weeks ago Shari called me up and said, "Grab your saddle and catch your horse if you want to go riding with us, we'll be there to pick you and Solly up in 45 minutes!" We went back to the Brushy Loop, but since it was late in the day we didn't ride the whole loop. I think we went to a parking spot in the middle of the loop and turned north this time.
http://www.fs.fed.us/r8/alabama/maps/documents/OwlCreekMap_letter_size.pdf
We - Shari on Dancer, Kimberly on Raven, and me on Solly - rode well past the swamp and the deer meadow and turned around. In the deer meadow Shari got on Solly, while I held her Dancer, and gave me a lesson on controlling her forwardness without hanging on her mouth every second. I don't call her my go-go bunny for nothing. Solly likes to run down hills. In the woods on leaf strewn trails that will often have slick mud hidden under the leaves, hurtling downhill at twenty miles an hour on a horse is not pleasant. She is also a horse who really thinks she ought to be the leader and she sometimes gets hard to handle when she isn't first horse on the trail. She almost ran over young Raven, when I had a lax moment and Solly took control and tried to get in front. It's a good thing Raven is a good natured little gal. Shari taught me to not be afraid to use the bit quite sharp if she is really ignoring me, the annoying bug on her back, and how to get her to listen to me better. Earlier she reminded me to use my legs to move her hind end when I use the one rein stop, that only turning her head is not a proper one rein stop. The lesson helped quite a bit. The sky got darker and darker until we were riding back to the truck and trailer past dusk. It's been many years since I rode horses in the forest at night and it was glorious. Shari told us stories of riding in endurance rides that started before the sun came up. The stars were out as bright as they would be in the mountains, we could see them clearly through the bare winter trees. Orion. The Seven Sisters. A beautiful, bright planet - Mars maybe? We found the road and Arnold the truck and marveled at how fun a ride we had as we unsaddled and groomed our good horses. Steve had delicious hot chili ready for us when we got to the house so we turned Dancer and Raven out in the barn paddock and tossed them some Bermuda hay for their visit, and went into the house for dinner. Does a day get any better than that?

Last Thursday, Shari and I, her family, and some other folks from our local Parelli club piled into our vehicles and went and spent three days at the Parelli Celebration in Franklin, Tennessee. Making new friends, watching beautiful and outstanding horses, learning new ways to connect with your horse so you can control them better and enjoy them more, and just being inspired is what I got out of the time I spent there. I also got their Patterns series, I think they will help me, the way my brain works, better than any horse instruction I have ever found other than my irl teachers. I cried buckets watching Lauren Barwick and Maile and hearing her tell her story.
http://www.daylife.com/photo/0cIv1uy1b9gil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1Td1eBSKkI
I laughed till I cried when the two little boys and their tiny ponies did their shtick. Linda gave me lots of pointers about how to handle my silly left-brained introverted and left-brained extroverted ponies. Watching Pats demonstrations always leaves one knowing how you can improve upon your horsemanship. I enjoyed everything all weekend long, even swearing about the hotel clerk who gave us a horrible time. The high spots were too numerous to list them all. Except I missed my husband and doggies. Steve came up for a few hours on Saturday and came all day Sunday and brought the dogs, but, unfortunately he had a wicked bad headache and didn't enjoy himself. And after the Level 1 photo shoot, Pat touched my shoulder as I helped him come down off a barrel ... I may never wash my green, corduroy shirt again ! Fingers crossed for my Level 2 this year!

Apparently, my drawings on the name tags Steve made for the NFHR annual meet were a big hit! I have been getting lots of requests for nametags and designs for NFHR and other Fjord clubs and groups. That is quite complimentary ... thanks everyone for the kind praise. I have been busy on designs and will get in touch soon.

January

We are well into January and it is supposed to get very, very cold tonight. After dusk I am going to make sure Sparrow-hen is snuggled deep into the hay nest I made for her under the dog ramp to the front porch. She has been sleeping in the pear tree again now that the pears have stopped bombing her during the night. She should be ok under there. She is the sweetest little pet. When I sit on the front porch reading she practically crawls in my lap. She sits beside me and coos and bok boks and makes the sweetest little sounds. She isn't one of those chickens that loves to be held or anything, but it doesn't make her any less nice to have around. She comes when called any time of the day.

I have been feeding her on the front porch. I made her a mix of chicken feed and wild bird food. I am going to mix some flax seed in her food tonight. And she helps the wild birds eat the suet blocks I set out. She also helps clean up the horses spilled pellet feed. There are lots of good feedstuffs and vitamins in those for her. So she should have enough warming food in her gizzard.

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(Bah, I lost a lot of this post while trying to edit a mistake ... I have no clue what all got lost =( A whole bunch of nice things have happened since I last posted to my blog. My computer friends from Yorkshire, England sent me a link to their PhotoBucket pages of a walking tour of Herriot's country. It was wonderful seeing the fabulous scenery and listening to the sheep bleating, the dogs barking, and seeing my good friends having a great time. I enjoyed it so much. Torvy, Rad and E!

Steve has been working lots and lots of hours working on some project at work.

Another trail ride ... Shari on Dancer her lovely Quarab Palomino, Kimberly on Little Raven, and me on Solly rode the whole Brushy Creek, 6 miles, in Bankhead. I was nervous because I was afraid the trail would be too slick under the leaves, but it wasn't. And the trail was up and down and through little hollows and it followed a creek for a while and went beside an enchanting little waterfall. The horses also enjoyed the trail because there were no long, long uphill bits. That loop is my favorite in the area, at the top of my list with the Piney Torch Trail.

Steve bought two boxes of blank bisque tiles for me to glaze from Dick Blicks. Man oh man, I am enjoying painting them, but I am extremely apprehensive about how they will look once they are fired. I have done two Fjordhorse tiles and am working on an Australian Terrier tile. Hopefully, the Aussie one will raise some money for Shari's little Aussie's eye operations. He has cataracts and is rapidly going blind. Gimli, Shari's Aussie is the darlingest thing, a BIG personality in a small package! I am not a Terrier person, but he sure put that breed tops on my small breed wish list, should I ever need something smaller than a Labby.

We went to a dinner party at the friend of our friends. We had a grand time. There were folks from all walks of life and from many countries and ethnicities. And the food, wow ... Fun for all!

Then we had a party at our house, we cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill and baked beans. I think my South African computer friend calls it a Braai (pronounced 'bry' rhyming with dry). (I didn't know how to pronounce it until I saw the clip "South African Braai Etiquette" on YouTube)

I will post some photos of my pup, Kyffin, and some of the people and horses I mention tonight.

Laters all