What Heating Vents Are For

In case you were wondering, heating vents are not for heating your house.

This is what they're really for:


All of our heating vents in the downstairs of our house are at floor level.

We have eight cats with very warm bellies. :-)

Don't Say I Didn't Warn You

Whatever you do, don't play this game:

The Impossible Quiz

It will have you laughing, groaning, and tearing out your hair in frustration. You will waste hours (days!) of your life trying to get to the next answer, and the next, and the next. Inane jokes will start to make sense. You'll develop a fondness for dancing elephants and a fear of ticking time bombs!

You will become addicted and your life will not feel complete until you finally manage to complete the last question. (I haven't gotten that far yet, by the way!)

Don't say I didn't warn you!

Big Horse, Little Tiny Stall!

In honor of the fact that Boo and Shane are leaving tomorrow for their new home in Florida, I thought I'd take this opportunity to share a photo of Boo that was taken almost exactly a year ago.

I woke up that morning to the sound of a horse pawing on a wooden stall floor. Which would be less weird if all my horses were not 100% pasture kept.

When I went outside to investigate, this is what I saw:

Boo had pulled the door off our hay feeder and was settling in to have a nice comfy day of it. All the other horses were sulking because there was a HORSE in their breakfast!

Silly me, in my plans for my future someday-barn, I was imagining that with the size of my horses, I'd need 14 x 14 stalls, or 12 x 16 stalls.

Imagine my relief to learn that 6 x 10 will be plenty big enough!

Just Say No

The past two days have been so hectic. Lots of inquiries from sheep and horse shoppers, lots of email to answer, lots of paperwork to do.

And a couple of big decisions to make:

After several days of discussing, pondering, weighing the pros and cons, deciding, re-deciding, and changing our minds, Ken and I have finally decided not to sell either Torchsong or Callisto right now.

I feel bad about disappointing the two buyers who were interested in them, but I just feel like both of those fillies are too good to let slip away. Maybe in the future, we'll reevaluate our situation, but by then we'll have more specific information to base our decisions on, because Callisto will be started under saddle and bred to Senter this year, and Torchsong will probably follow in her footsteps the following year.

Once we see what kind of foals each filly produces with Senter, that will tell us a lot more about how valuable she will be to the farm as a broodmare.

Anyway, I'm just happy that I'll get to keep Callisto long enough to see what she's really like to ride!

Callisto Under Saddle

Even though I'm not advertising either Callisto or Torchsong for sale, I now have prospective buyers interested in each of them. I'm having a really hard time trying to decide which one to sell.

First I'll decide I definitely want to keep one, then I'll decide that it would be stupid to part with the other. Then I start wondering why I don't just keep them both!

Yesterday, the person interested in Callisto asked me to take some pictures so she could see what she looked like wearing a saddle. Callisto has never worn a saddle before, but today I showed her the saddle, she sniffed it, and I put it on. No fuss at all---what a great girl!


In the middle of this, the vet arrived to do Coggins tests and health certificates for some of the sales horses, so we left Callisto tied to a post while we dealt with the vet. She waited patiently until I came back, and then I decided to try sitting on her.

I sat on her only one time before, bareback in the pasture, but this was the first time with a saddle on. She didn't care at all.

The Cross-Dressing Farmer

It all started a few years ago when I stopped into Walmart in search of some cheap workout clothes. Simple sweatpants and sweat jacket, that's all I wanted. I searched the women's clothing section, but there was not a single simple pair of sweat pants anywhere.

I had thought that if any store was going to have plain, cheap clothes, it would be Walmart, but instead there were all these shiny lycra spandex yoga-pants and things with huge stripes and logos.

My husband had just bought himself some simple sweat pants that were as plain and cheap as they could be. Why did they have nothing similar for women? Frustrated, I went and looked at the men's clothing area.

Not only did they have lots and lots of plain, comfy workout sweats with NO ugly stripes or logos, they were all about a third the price of the womens! My solution was obvious---I bought my workout clothes from the men's section.

After we bought this farm and started raising animals, my lifestyle was such that I pretty much wore t-shirts or tank tops every day. And because my work is usually pretty dirty, soon all of my shirts were stained and worn.

When I went to the store to replace them, I learned from my sweat pant discovery, and compared prices of men's and women's basic t-shirts. Once again, the men's shirts were cheaper and sturdier, so I bought those. I see no reason to pay twice as much for shirts that are going to be smeared with dirt, manure, birthing fluid, or whatever, the first time I wear them!

Next came my search for the perfect shorts to wear during our long, hot summers on the farm. I needed them to be loose, sturdy, and come down to my knees so that I could still comfortably carry bales of hay without getting my legs all scratched up. I needed them to have big pockets for those times when I needed to carry half a dozen tubes of horse wormer and still have my hands free for opening gates.

Once more, I searched the women's clothing section with absolutely no luck. Women's shorts were tight, form-fitting, made from flimsy material, and had undersized pockets you could barely put your hand in, much less anything else. These clothes were made for people who wanted to stroll down sidewalks showing off their tans, not for people who actually needed to do physical labor for a living!

So, once again, I looked at the kind of long, loose, sturdy carpenter shorts my husband wears on the farm, and bought myself several similar pairs. They're not exactly shaped for feminine hips, but they're baggy enough that it doesn't matter. They're not particularly attractive, but they're comfortable and stand up to the rigors of doing chores, which is the most important thing.

Last week, frustrated with all of my women's sweaters and long-sleeved t-shirts that are cut to "fashionably" come down only to my waist---paired with the annoying women's jeans that now are all cut to come BELOW the waist, thus leaving a breezy gap that lets in the wintry wind and handfuls of hay chaff every time I do chores---I took one of my husband's long, fleecy shirts and started wearing it around the farm.

It was so cozy and comfortable, I told my husband if he ever wanted to get his favorite shirt back, he'd better take me clothes shopping in the men's section of whatever store he'd bought it in.

So, yesterday I went clothes shopping, and I didn't even bother to look in the women's section. There were sturdy, loose, warm, comfortable men's sweaters and shirts on sale for $4, $5, and $7 each, so I stocked up with enough to keep me warm and comfortable all winter.

It seems a little ridiculous that all the women's clothing I find in the stores nowadays is so inappropriate for my lifestyle. But I guess the truth of the matter is, I have what is often considered a fairly masculine job. My clothes need to be comfortable, sturdy, and able to withstand constant farm dirt. Fashion and beauty really don't enter into it.

I did make one concession to my gender and bought myself a pair of comfy, FEMININE pajamas: a pretty pale green jersey material with lettuce-ruffled edges and soft blue and white stripes.

So, I may dress like a man all day, but at least I can still look like a woman when I sleep.

Everybody's Shopping

Our snow is now almost completely gone, except for a few thin patches in spots that get all-day shade. That's what this native Yankee loves about living in the south: the wintry stuff never lasts very long!

Apparently, now is the season for livestock shopping. I have been getting lots of phone calls and emails from people shopping, both for horses and for sheep. I had Bonnie on the market for a good 6 months, but now that she's sold and gone to her new home, I've had so many inquiries about her, I could probably have sold her three more times!

In addition to all the horses I currently have listed for sale, I'm thinking about POSSIBLY selling Torchsong. I'm not sure whether it would be a good business decision to part with her, because I think she will make fantastic foals with Senter in another year or two.

My current thought is that I will be open to offers on her, but I won't let her go for a "bargain" price. I have had several inquiries about her, even though I'm not advertising her for sale. So today I took her out to the round pen and did a quick video clip of her movement.




With all the melting snow, our pastures are really muddy, so Torchsong is filthy in the photos. But she sure is pretty, just the same.

Snow Mares

When I woke up this morning, it was snowing. Snow had already covered the ground, and it was still coming down. What better time for...

A photo shoot!

Usually when I open the pasture gate and whistle to the mares, they all come galloping. But today, they were suspicious of who that mysterious person was, appearing out of the snowstorm and calling to them. So I had to coax them for a couple of minutes to convince them that it was really just me.


But once Char decides something is okay, it's okay. Everybody follows the lead mare!


You've heard of "raining cats and dogs"? Well, apparently this morning it was "snowing horses." No wonder it's so hard for me to get my herd numbers down, when horses keep falling out of the sky into my pasture like this! :-)


I call this one, "What's that over there?"


And this one, "Ken With the Umbrella." :-)


Everybody got in on the fun.

Torchsong:


Maggie:


Boudicca:


Scylla:

The babies:



And, of course, Callisto put on a whole show of her own:




What a scenic way to start my morning, taking pictures of beautiful horses. I would have stayed out longer and taken more, but by the time I came in, my camera was wet and my fingers were so numb I couldn't even feel them to push the camera button!

I felt better quickly, though, because when I got inside, Ken had a cup of hot tea and some fresh-from-the-oven honey-bran muffins waiting for me.

You know, I think I just may keep that man! :-)

Penny in the Round Pen

A potential buyer asked for more photos of Penny yesterday, so today I took her out to the round pen for a photo shoot. As you can see, I interrupted her afternoon nap to do so!


Because she had just gotten up from her nap, she was not feeling feisty enough to show off her best extended trot, which is very big and floaty. Even so, I got a few nice photos of her trotting and cantering---so long as you don't mind the dirt from napping in the mud!


Partway through the session, our cat Madrigal decided she wanted to join in the fun. She ran almost half way around the round pen in front of Penny before deciding it would be safer to scoot out under the fence.


I also took some video of the session, but YouTube's upload feature doesn't seem to be working right now, so I can't share the video yet. I'll put a link here once I get the file uploaded.

Edited to add: Okay, the video is uploaded now. Here it is.

Counting Sheep

I've been counting sheep today.

My current flock consists of 25 sheep, 21 ewes and 4 rams.

When the trading-horses-for-sheep deal goes through, I will be getting 10 more sheep (8 bred ewes and 2 rams) from David Grote at Whippoorwill Hollow Farm in northern Wisconsin. (Check out his website: he's an artist who does beautiful paintings of the animals on his farm.)

I'm also getting 6 ewes and a Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog from my friend Monica of Small Meadow Farm later in the summer.

There's also a particular ram I've had my eye on that I'd like to buy if he's available for sale in the summer.

But wait, there's more!

Based on my rough estimate of each ewe's expected number of lambs, my current ewes should produce about 30 lambs in the spring.

The ewes I get from David will probably produce about 13 or so lambs.

Add that all up, and you get---GULP!---85 sheep!

I may have 85 sheep here by summer's end!?! Yikes! Time to start building some more efficient feeders and a decent system of handling chutes! Time to stock up on wormers and supplements and ear tags. Time to fence that last field and save up to fertilize and reseed the pastures. Time to get the phone number of that professional shearer those people recommended to me. Time to start planning my marketing campaign!

About half of those sheep will be for sale. At my average prices for breeding stock (usually somewhere in the $500-$700 range), that's a decent chunk of income, and any that don't go for breeding stock can sell as locker lambs. That's when a customer buys a lamb to go straight to the butcher for meat.

As far as hay consumption, I estimate that 8 sheep eat about the same as 1 horse. So, once we sell all the horses I'm trying to sell, we'll still be saving money even with that many sheep. Once half the sheep sell too, our hay costs will be way down, compared to now.

Still, 85 is a big number, even if half of it is all cute little lambs who will be sold by the time they're a few months old.