Happy Leap Day!

Cursed? Or Just Cursing? Quirky Thoughts About Finding Hope During Times of Trial

The way my life has been going lately, it's easy to see how people in ancient times could believe in things like curses and evil spirits tormenting them and causing their bad luck.

What do I mean by that?

Well, let's put it this way: There are many, many things in my daily life that work perfectly, day after day, and never give a moment's problem. The 13-year-old television still works. The toaster oven always toasts. The microwave, despite being 12 years old, always microwaves. So it's not as if EVERYTHING in the world breaks down all the time.

But what is the most important focus of my life right now? My farm. And what are the most important, absolutely crucial tools I need to use on a daily basis to keep this place running and try to earn enough money to not go bankrupt? (1) A digital camera, (2) a pickup truck, (3) a cell phone, (4)a computer, (5) a home phone and internet connection, and (6) email.

EVERY SINGLE ONE of these items that I own is currently broken, malfunctioning, or has done so in the past few months. It's enough to make me tear out my hair!

(1) I already complained about my digital camera yesterday, so I won't go into that again.

(2) My pickup truck has a mysterious ailment that we've tried to have repaired a dozen times, but nothing ever works in the long run. So now it sits, unable to start, leaving us unable to haul hay or building supplies for farm improvements. When we get a little more cash on hand, we'll try again to have it repaired, but I've lost confidence that anything will ever truly fix the problem.

(3) My cell phone has been almost worthless for 6 months now. That one is partly my fault. I accidentally dropped it in the horse water trough, and then forgot it in my jeans pocket and ran it through the washing machine. Of course it died! We spent $130 to buy a new one. A week later, I was out training a horse, it started to rain, and before I could get back to the house, the brand new cell phone in my pocket again got wet and again died. Only the power button and the speed dial buttons still work, so I can't receive calls or check messages, and the only calls I can make are to people who were already programmed into my speed dial (Ken and my sister). We haven't been able to afford another $130 for a new phone, much less one of the more expensive waterproof ones that I clearly need! So we're waiting another couple of months until our phone plan qualifies me to get a new phone for the cheaper "sign up" rates.

(4) My computer died a few months ago. My husband fixed it, but it broke again shortly thereafter. After weeks of it being out of service, Ken finally got it fixed again. By that time, I'd gotten all my work transferred to Ken's computer, which I'm still using, while Ken uses his laptop in the living room. Someday I'm going to have to do the complicated task of organizing all my files and transferring them all BACK to my computer, but my office is FREEZING in the winter, so for now I'm using Ken's office for as long as he lets me, even though it's inconvenient.

(5) Our home phone and internet connection has been okay lately, but several months ago, it got broken three times in a row. Why? Because out of the whole 26 acre farm that the sheep could be roaming around on, one of them decided that the very best place to stand every day was in the 3 feet of space right up next to the house near where the phone and DSL wires attach. Although these wires are stapled to the side of the building with very little slack, three times, the sheep managed to insert his horns under the wires and rip them down. Try explaining that to the phone company repair person! We've since put up a barrier to keep the sheep away from the spot, and Ken has figured out how to fix the wires himself if it becomes necessary again.

(6) Lately, I've been having sporadic, but serious, email problems. Everything looks fine on my end, but as time goes on, I find out from more and more people that some of my messages are never getting through to them. Many are getting shunted to the people's spam folders (even though I am on that person's "accepted" list), and many are just never showing up at all in ANY folder.

So I send long, detailed answers to people inquiring about horses for sale, only to find out a week later that they never received them. I have people inquiring about fleeces and other sheep products that complain I never answered their emails, when in fact I had never received any messages from them.

It's very frustrating and makes me really paranoid. If I answer a horse buyer inquiry and they don't respond, have they changed their mind and decided they're no longer interested? Or did they never get my answer? Or did they send me a reply that I never got? The wondering is driving me nuts!!!

So anyway, back to what I was saying about ancient cultures believing in curses and evil spirits:

Clearly, we all have hardships in our lives. And for some reason, those hardships and difficulties always seem to hit the aspects of our lives that are the most important to us, the things we focus the majority of our attention on.

To an ancient mind, uneducated by modern scientific thought, and unsullied by modern cynicism, would that not suggest some kind of malevolent intelligence, seeking the most effective way to cause harm?

And, in some roundabout way, might that not actually be a comforting thing to believe?

What I mean is, if all these difficulties are simply "The Way Things Are," then our only choice is to accept that life is hard and bad things happen when you can least afford trouble. There is no hope for relief from the troubles because that's just "The Way Things Are." It's depressing!

On the other hand, if instead you believe that malevolent pixies have infested your home and are tormenting you on purpose, then at least you have the entertainment of wondering what invisible pixies might look like, what their motivations might be, and how you might appease them.

In Ireland, farm wives used to leave out saucers of milk, honey, or whiskey on their doorsteps to feed the Fairy Folk, to keep on their good side and avoid being cursed or having mischievous tricks played on them.

Regardless of whether the pixies are real, just by wondering about them, you've engaged your imagination and had a brief respite from the drudgery of trying to overcome your latest batch of problems! Not only that, you can also indulge in the hope that if only you find the right way to appease the mischievous sprites, life could be easy and good again.

And that's the crux of the matter: When times are at their very hardest, sometimes the ONLY thing that you need to help you survive is the hope that things will eventually get better.

Here's another example:

A couple of weeks ago, when I was feeling very stricken and depressed about parting with my favorite horse, my sister sent me some homeopathic medicine intended to help cure grief and emotional upset. She said it had helped her, and she should know, since she's had plenty of cause for grief and upset in her life.

My husband, on the other hand, thinks that homeopathic medicine is a load of hooey. At the levels of dilution they claim, he says, there are not enough molecules in the bottle for even ONE molecule of the original medicine to still be in there. So how can it possibly work?

Me, I tend to stay open to both sides of the debate, and be willing to experiment to find what works for me, regardless of WHY or HOW it works. So I decided to try the homeopathic pills.

The directions said to take 4 tiny pills, 4 times a day until I felt better. My symptoms might intensify for a few days before they improved. I could take the pills for up to two weeks, if necessary.

Sure enough, for two days after I started taking the pills, I felt so sad that I would start crying at a moment's notice. I lost my appetite. I didn't want to do anything but lie down and sleep. But after another two days, I felt better. I was able to get on with my life.

Was it the pills? In a way, I think it was. But maybe not in the way you might think.

You see, regardless of what is IN those pills, they have another potent effect: They distract your mind briefly from your pain, and they give you hope that things will get better. Like I said before, sometimes that's all you need.

Four times a day, when I took those pills, my mind was able to stop dwelling on my sorrow long enough to think, "I wonder if these will work?" By the very act of wondering, my mind was admitting to the possibility that I would soon feel better. Which generates hope. Which, in itself, makes you feel better!

The directions warned that the feelings might intensify before improving. Letting my mind absorb that information gave me permission to mourn as much as I needed to, right away, rather than trying to hold it in. How better to heal from grief than to actually go through the mourning process?

Did the actual ingredients of the pills have any effect on my mood? I don't know. Do I feel better now than I did before I started taking them? Absolutely.

I'm a firm believer that there are many layers to how we interact with the world, both seen and unseen. Sometimes when things get really hard, if we're going to make it through, we have to find whatever methods we can that allow us tap into that undercurrent of hope that runs beneath it all.

I Hate My Camera!

When people look at my sheep website, horse website, and this farm blog, they often admire the photos and ask me what kind of camera I use.

So I'll tell you: I use a Canon Powershot G3. And I HATE it! The majority of nice photographs I get are IN SPITE OF the darn thing, not thanks to it.

The response time when you push the button to take a photo is just laughable. I have missed thousands of great shots because of this. It literally takes 3-4 seconds, sometimes before the stupid thing will actually take the shot. Which means that by the time it takes the photo, that beautiful horse I'm trying to photograph prancing towards me is already passed and gone to the other end of the field, and the only image I've captured is her distant rear end as she gallops away. It's so frustrating!

The other thing I hate about this camera is its complete inability to deal with anything other than super high light conditions. Even a moderately overcast day will cause all the photographs to come out blurry, even the still shots!

That's what happened to me today. I went out and took a whole bunch of photos of the horses playing in the field. Despite the slow camera response time, I managed to luck into catching quite a few really nice action shots. But today is overcast, so when I came back inside, fully 90% of the photos were completely blurry.

GRRRRR! What a waste of time and effort. I had also taken several shots of the sheep standing still in the yard, and more than half of them were blurry too. They were just standing there---it's not as if they were fast-moving targets. And it's not that dark out, just a high, bright overcast cloud cover. It's ridiculous that the camera can't focus properly in these conditions.

I'm not a technically advanced photographer. My needs are pretty basic: I don't want to mess around with special camera settings, I just want to be able to "point and shoot" and be able to trust the camera to get a decent basic shot. To me, the whole point of having an "Automatic" setting on the camera is that it is supposed to automatically adjust to the current conditions and still take a decent photo.

The vast majority of my farm income is derived from business that comes in over the internet. Which means that good photos are crucial to my business. I've managed to make do with this camera, because it's what we've had, but I would never buy one again.

When we bought this camera several years ago, we didn't really know what specific qualities we were looking for. But someday, when I can afford to buy a new one, I'm going to have a much more exacting list of what I need.

And Then There Were Eight

We have one fewer horse today. Callisto left for her new home today.

She had only ever been on a trailer once before, coming to Virginia from Canada as a weanling 2.5 years ago. So we didn't know for sure how she would load. I was pretty confident, because I know how incredibly mellow she is. But you never know for sure until you try.

I led her to the trailer and she looked inside. I had a bucket of grain in my hand to coax her. She put one foot in, and it made a big stomping echoing sound on the trailer floor, so she took her foot back out.

I talked to her and showed her the grain again, and let her think about it. I never even tugged on the lead rope at all. She thought it over for a couple of minutes, and then one foot at a time, stomped up into the trailer, just as sweet as could be.

Once she was closed in to the little box stall area in the front of the trailer, she munched hay and looked around while we talked with her new owner for a few minutes more. She knew something was happening, but she was more interested than upset.

Pretty soon, they pulled down the driveway and she was gone. They even phoned when they arrived home to let us know they had gotten there safely and all was well.

Another one of my favorites, gone off to a nice new home without me.

I'll miss you, Callisto!

Rampage

The new sheep's two-week quarantine was over today, so we decided to mix them in with the other sheep. Meaning: Separating the new ewes from the new rams, letting the new ewes out into the yard with the other ewes, and then bringing our old rams back into the paddock where the new rams were.

Icelandic sheep are not docile, meek animals. And the new sheep have not yet learned to come when I call. So it was something of an ordeal to get all the sheep sorted to where they were supposed to go. But we finally managed it.

The new ewes greeted the old ewes briefly, then took off in a very deliberate circumnavigation of the yard, to see where the borders were. Pausing only to gaze eagerly out through the fences at the vistas of our sloping pastures, they worked their way around the whole yard, examining everything. Only when they'd familiarized themselves with every nook and cranny did they come back and start really interacting with the other sheep.

By that time the sun was starting to set, and it sloped in across the yard, gilding every sheep with a halo of light.


Meanwhile, in the ram paddock, the rams were contesting to decide who was the biggest, toughest, manliest ram of all.

There's no question that Preston is the biggest. Before I got him, my friend Monica at Small Meadow Farm told me that she had seen him before, and he was the biggest Icelandic sheep she had ever seen. Then, when he arrived, I could tell that he was big. Now, seeing him at last, side-by-side with my other rams, I agree that he is HUGE.

He instantly fell in love with Taj, and chased him all over the paddock, trying to mount him (and crushing Taj to the ground beneath his weight at least once). The other young rams Preston butted out of his way like tumbling bowling pins, as he passed by pursuing Taj.

Taj is a normal-sized one-winter ram. He'll still grow quite a bit in the next year or two, but he's not a particularly small sheep. See how huge Preston is next to him?


Nicholai decided he'd had enough of this strange giant barging onto his turf and pushing around all of his young friends. He decided to make it his mission to let Preston know who was King of the Flock, right here, right now.


There was a lot of pushing and shoving. Mainly Preston was trying to ignore Nicholai and keep pursuing Taj. But after Nicholai repeatedly butted him in the rear, Preston finally had to stop and pay attention.

Preston might far outweigh Nicholai, but Nicholai has the advantage of being armed with a heavy crown of horns and a calm confidence that he is indeed King. Plus Preston was already out of breath from chasing Taj all over the place.

Before long, Preston had been shown the error of his ways, and acknowledged Nicholai as boss. A few minutes later, peace returned to the paddock, and all the boys fell to eating hay together as if they had known each other all their lives.

Buyers (and Not-So-Much Buyers)

It's official: Callisto is sold. I just got the deposit for her this afternoon, and she will be going to her new home on Monday. Now I'll never be the one to ride her over those 4 1/2 foot jumps when she's old enough.

When I was a teenager, there was nothing in the world I wanted so much as a horse that could take me over the really big jumps! Now I guess I'll have to wait for Grace to grow up and see if she has the talent.

On the bright side, I think Callisto is going to a nice home that is very well suited for her. She's going to be less than 3 hours away from here, and her new owner has said that I'm invited to come and visit her any time I like. Isn't that sweet?

So, with the money from her, we'll be able to:

1. Pay our $800 propane bill so that the propane company will come fill our tank again before we run out of heat.

2. Pay our stallion Senter's annual $800 insurance bill so that if he gets sick or hurt we won't lose out on all the $14,000 we invested to buy him.

3. Buy 2 1/2 weeks' worth of hay.

That doesn't seem like much to get for such a magnificent horse, but at least it's something, and I'm grateful for it! I think Callisto is going to fit in perfectly at her new home.

On the other side of the selling process:

Most of you know that I have my beautiful tobiano Oldenburg/Spotted Draft cross filly Libby for sale. She's got it all: conformation, color, refinement, temperament, brains. She's absolutely spectacular.

Because I'm doing such a major herd reduction, I'm only asking $3,000 for her, which barely covers what it cost to feed her mother while she was pregnant with her.

A few months ago, I had a buyer asking about the filly. We exchanged emails for weeks as she asked about all the details about her. She decided that Libby was "the one." I arranged a very flexible payment plan, we discussed what shots she'd like Libby to have before she was shipped, even what color halter she'd prefer. We worked out every detail. The buyer said, "I'm putting the check in the mail today." AND DISAPPEARED OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH FOREVER!

Time went on, and now I've been exchanging emails with another person who was interested in Libby. I've spent the past month answering email questions from her. She even called me on the phone (from Canada!) to ask a huge list of detailed questions. She started looking into finding a shipper and getting the documents needed to import the filly across the border.

Then, this afternoon, for the first time, she made me her official offer:

Would I take $600 for Libby?

$600????? For this flawless yearling filly with bloodlines that include Spectrum, Rainbow, Peron, and Lungau? You make me spend a MONTH answering your questions, knowing all along you're planning to offer me a paltry 20% of my asking price??? You'd pay more than that to ship the horse there, but the horse herself isn't worth as much? I don't think so!

What on earth are people thinking?

I mean, okay, fine. I'm doing a drastic herd reduction, and my ads all say that my asking prices are negotiable. "Negotiable" means I might be willing to take $500 off the price, if you pay immediately, pick the horse up promptly, and I don't already have 3 other people inquiring about the horse that day.

It does not mean that as a reward for the pleasure of answering countless questions spread out over the course of weeks, I'd be delighted to give away a flawless horse with Olympic medalist bloodlines for what isn't much more than slaughter prices!

I understand that horse buyers have budgets. If someone started right out asking me just how flexible my prices were, and did I have anything that might be in the "Under $1,000" price range, I would not have been insulted. I wouldn't have offered that person Libby, but I wouldn't have been insulted.

And if after asking many questions over the course of weeks, a buyer had come out and offered me at least 50%-75% of my asking price, I would not have been insulted either. Depending on how many inquiries I'd received on that horse, I would probably have at least considered the offer.

But this---Sheesh!

My emotions about it are kind of mixed between 50% insulted and 50% amused at how ridiculous the whole situation is.

On to the next buyer!

Selling Like Hotcakes

I think I'm making progress on the horse sales at last!

Selebrity, Callisto, and Torchsong are almost definitely sold---we're just ironing out the final details and waiting for payment. Maggie and Libby each have more than one person who seems seriously interested in them, so it seems like they will probably sell before too long. If all those go through, that's nearly $15,000 worth of sales, AND it's about $1,000 per month less in feed bills!

You have no idea how much of a relief that would be! We could pay our bills on time, buy all the hay we need for a while, repay some loans from family members, get our pickup truck fixed, fill the propane tank that heats the house, and maybe even think of making a few of the farm improvements we want to make, like reseeding the pastures and building sheep shelters. We could even build a chicken house and get that flock of chickens we've been wanting.

That does still leave Penny, Callista, and Andromeda to sell, but with all the other sale horses gone, that would take much of the pressure off. I could spend time working with Penny, and I could start Andromeda and Callista under saddle to increase their value. And heck, at that point I'd probably have a little extra cash so I could pay to advertise them, instead of having to count on the free ads.

It would be so wonderful if all the horse sales were complete before lambing season starts, so I could just be done with them and move on. Lambing season takes up a lot of my time and effort, but at least it's a happy, hopeful time. I'm looking forward to giving it my full attention.

Imbolc

I've been thinking about Imbolc, which is the ancient Celtic festival celebrating the fertility of the sheep flock and the very earliest signs of returning spring.

Wikipedia says:

In Irish, Imbolc (pronounced im'olk) from the Old Irish, meaning "in the belly" (imbolg), referring to the pregnancy of ewes, and is also a Celtic term for spring. Another name is Oimelc, meaning "ewe's milk".

How cool is it, for a shepherd, that there is a specific holiday in honor of sheep? It's celebrated on February 2nd---nearly 3 weeks ago now---but I've been so stressed and swamped this year, I sort of let the day slide by without much notice.

It wasn't until today that I remembered I had neglected to do my annual Imbolc ritual: The year's first Groping of the Ewes.

Each November, I put the rams and ewes into the breeding pens and hope they do their jobs properly. Then I wait, full of hope and faith, for the lambs to come. Imbolc---the festival of "ewe's milk"---is when the ewes' udders begin to fill up in preparation for lambing. It is the time of year when I can first get confirmation that my faith has been justified.

When the ewes are busy eating, and too distracted by food to pay me much mind, I walk along behind the row of them and feel between their legs to see if their udders are starting to develop: a sure sign that lambs are on the way in another couple of months!

It's such a simple thing, but after I've been so down and out all winter long, you have no idea how uplifting it is to get that small sign of hope and renewal for the farm: ewe after ewe, each with a small udder starting to form, each getting ready to give back to the farm, in the form of lambs, my year's payment for all the work, love, and money I've invested in the flock for the other 11 months of the year.

We're a partnership, the sheep and I. Going down the row of pregnant ewes, I am filled with gratitude for all they give back to the farm.

Imbolc can also be seen as a metaphor for the other aspects of my life right now. Just as Imbolc is a holiday celebrating the return of spring during a time that is still deep in winter, our farm is still deep in hard times, but with a glimmer of hope beginning to shine through.

On the one hand, we are still broke and worried about money, but on the other hand, I got 4 new inquiries about horses for sale today, and now have 4 "almost definite" sales plus a few other "possible" ones. If we can just get these horse sales completed, everything will be fine. We'll still be in debt, but without the horrendous hay bills, we'll be able to manage it.

What will that be like? We've been struggling so long, I can barely remember what it was like to be able to pay every bill as soon as it came in and still occasionally have something left over to put into savings or to spend on something fun.

After two days of not feeling well, my health seems to be looking up, too. Maybe it was the vitamins I took before bed the last two nights, but I feel almost better today. I'm going to take another batch of vitamins tonight and, after another good night's sleep, I hope to be back to normal by tomorrow.

Coming Down With Something

All yesterday I wasn't feeling well. I rested all day, took some vitamins, and got a good night's sleep. This morning I felt a lot better, so I thought I'd shaken it off. But this evening I started feeling ill again.

I'm not sure what I have, or where I might have caught it, since I haven't been anywhere to be exposed to any germs. I'm unreasonably tired, and a little woozy. The gland in the right side of my throat is sore, and it's going into my ear now as well. My skin is starting to feel that hypersensitive feeling you get right before you get a fever, but I'm not feverish.

Ugh! As if I don't have enough to do, without being sick too. I try to always be careful to rest and recover as soon as I start showing symptoms, because if I don't, I'm very prone to having every cold or flu turn into a 3-week session of bronchitis. Let's hope that doesn't happen!

We got a small load of hay yesterday. Prices have gone up again, to $7.50 per small square bale. Our supplier says it'll go up to $8 soon, and may go up to $10 before this year's first cutting comes in.

On the bright side, I got birthday cards from family today, with money inside. Every little bit helps, so I'm very grateful.

There have also been a few new horse inquiries. So I hope a few of those turn into sales soon.

Our Old Country Store

In response to Kris's comment yesterday, saying she'd like to see photos of our store: Here you go! :-)

The only photos I have of it are from the day we came to look at the farm to see if we wanted to buy it, so a lot of things have changed on the property since then. But the store is still pretty much the same.

I'm not sure when the store was built, but I do know it was built by Charles Agee who, as far as I can tell from the records I have, bought the farm sometime around 1890. From the shape of the store, I guess that it was built in several stages: small first, then expanded several times as business grew.

The building also served as the local post office for the area known as Alcoma. I've been told by neighbors who have lived in this area all their lives that the store sold shoes, cloth, tools, seeds, and all manner of other things---a true old fashioned country store.

After Charles Agee died, his unmarried daughters continued to run the store. Miss Nora Agee continued to live here and run the store for the rest of her very long life. Every now and then, neighbors will still refer to this as "Miss Nora's place," which I think is sweet.

After Miss Nora died, the farm changed hands a couple more times. We bought it from an elderly gentleman who had been using the store as an antique shop. When he moved out, he left a lot of junk behind in the store. Unfortunately nothing really nice or valuable, though!

Here's the store as seen from the road. The tree has been cleared out from in front of it now, and---because the sheep are often loose in the yard, mowing our lawn for us---we now have a gate across our driveway, which runs right up past the right edge of the store.


Here's the store as seen from the house. All that green field you can see between the house and the store is now fenced horse pasture. That would be the area we're going to eventually reseed and add sheep paddocks to.


A few pictures of the interior of the store, complete with the junk the former owner left behind.




As you can see, the place will need a lot of fixing up. It'll need rewiring, repainting inside and out, floor repair, windows replaced, heat and air conditioning added, etc., etc. There is a little room in the back that is the perfect size and location to turn into a bathroom, but the store currently has no plumbing or septic system, so that would be another big expense.

Clearly, if we ever do decide to open the store again, we would have to plan for the long term and make the improvements gradually as we can afford them. Maybe it'll be my "retirement" job! Not that I ever plan to retire from farming until I'm too infirm to get around any more. But it's nice to have options.