T-day delayed

So, we didn't have Thanksgiving on Thursday. We spent the day outside getting outside stuff done. You can't pass up a 60-degree, sunny day at the end of November!

Actually, it was planned that way. We are having our Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday, with guests. One of our guests, whom we have over for Thanksgiving every year, had to work Thanksgiving day this year, so, we moved it. No big deal. Thanksgiving is whenever you celebrate it, as long as you celebrate it with friends, right? He doesn't have any family in the area and otherwise wouldn't have a Thanksgiving meal at all.

This is our Thanksgiving dinner. Sans feathers, of course. Gobble gobble! We weighed him a couple of weeks ago and he was up to 43#. That's gonna be a LOT of leftover turkey sandwiches! And soup. And turkey wraps...and...wow.

A dream fulfilled

A cross post from my Green Slobber horse blog:

The girls and I visited my mom and stepdad in their beautiful California cabin this summer...10 days of pure bliss! We spent four of those days in the mountains, camping with the horses and trail riding. It has always been a dream of mine to ride in the mountains and I can now say it was everything I had hoped it would be and more. Kayleigh had a blast and led a few of our trail rides. I was a little concerned about her on some of the steeper trails as we don't really have many places in the Midwest that make the horses sit on their butts on the way down! I shouldn't have worried...she rode 'em like a pro.
My mom and Kayleigh, leading the way. We were camping near Truckee, Calif., which is pretty near where the infamous Donner party engaged in cannibalism.
Kayleigh absolutely loved being our trail boss. See her new chinks? She LOVES them! While we were out and about in the mountains they got a few scratches from the trees. She came up with a great story to tell back at camp about how a mountain lion jumped out and attacked her, the chinks protected her and Cheyenne (her horse) galloped up the mountain to save her life. She's quite the storyteller.
The views were incredible. My mom kept apologizing for the skies being so smoky from all the wildfires, but they looked pretty darn clear and blue to me. Guess I'm so used to the humidity haze around here those California mountains skies were stunning.
At the top. Amazing, isn't it? Not a soul or a bit of civilization in sight. LOVE IT!
The view I woke to every morning on that camping trip. I could live with a view like that for the rest of my life.

Snow Day!

Snow over ice...what better reason to stay home and telecommute? We got the biggest snowflakes I've seen in a LONG time and ended up with well over an inch of the white stuff over an inch of the slick, slippery icy stuff. If you click the pics, you'll get a bigger version and a better look at the HUGE snow flakes. Sorry they are so dark, it's a tad gray out today.


Snow, snow, snow! View from the front door towards the pond and driveway.

Black dog, black Dodge, dusted in big white flakes.

"Wooly Mammoth" comes to mind. Don't worry, they are nice and toasty warm under their fluffy snow coats. The pasture, unfortunately, looks like a war zone. We've had so much rain it hasn't had time to dry and horses aren't kind to wet ground. This is my "sacrifice" paddock. I have 10 more acres of nice, (soon to be)grassy, woodsy pasture they haven't managed to destroy.

"Are you SURE you don't have any more carrots hiding in those pockets? I think you do. Come closer, I wanna check." Calypso wants to go for a gallop in the snow, I can see it in her eyes I just might oblige!

Tallest of 'em all

The World's Tallest Man, Leonid Stadnik, 36, a Ukrainian veterinarian, is 8'5.5" tall.

He needs to meet the World's Tallest Horse, Radar, a Belgian Draft who stands 6'7" tall and weighs 2,400 pounds.

They would certainly be a better match than the poor little Ukrainian horse good ole Leonid is bridling.

They sure do make shorties like myself feel extra small, a tad bit like one of the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz!

A berry huntin' we go

We're going on a berry hunt.


We're going to find some big ones!


Nice, big juicy ones.


We're gonna fill our bucket up.


Not enough to make a cobbler.


Not nearly enough for pie!


Just enough for blackberry pancakes.


I'm glad we went on a berry hunt!

My mom is the COOLEST mom. Ever. Period.

I've written about my mom before.

Have I mentioned I admire her? I do. A lot. She just had a birthday and being the terrible daughter I am, I totally forgot to call. Yup, that's me...forgetful. I think once you have kids you lose a huge part of your brain...at least that's what I'm going to blame it on. My mom is FAR too classy to say "You loser! You forgot my birthday!" Because I didn't forget, not really, I just forgot what day I was living in at the moment.

So, if you read the previous post, you know she's a pretty busy gal. Well, she's become even busier, with Extreme Cowboy competitions. Did you notice the word Extreme? Yeah. What a woman!

Oh, and she's becoming quite the talented photographer. I remember when she took photos when we were kids, people were lucky if they still had their heads in the final product. (Love ya, mom!)

A couple of recent photos from mom:
Extreme Cowboys! YEEHAW!

Horses grazing, in the west somewhere. In the wide open spaces where they have mountains. And tall trees. I'm jealous.

Finally, mom gets artsy with the tall mountain trees against an amazingly beautiful sky. Couldn't you just imagine falling asleep right there, watching the clouds creep on by?

Oh, and mom? HAPPY BIRTHDAY! And thanks for being such a cool mom.

P.S. Wild and Unruly STILL have their bags packed. Just in case you might want them for awhile. Please?

I'm sorry...I can't help myself

During another incredibly droll and completely unintelligent comment from Bush, Cheney wonders: "Could it be? A brain? Did I just spot a hint of gray matter hiding in there somewhere? No, damn, it's just a lump of earwax."

Day: This is Taking Forever

Hubby thought it would take about a week to finish the hen house. That was, of course, before he realized he didn't order enough siding or enough plywood for the roof. The roof was easily solved: The Chateau de Plume will have a skylight. It's MUCH easier to transport a sheet of clear corrugated plastic roofing in a Mazda Protege' than an entire 8'X 4' sheet of plywood. Problem solved and the fowl get a skylight. Sweet, eh? Spoiled butt birds.

The siding, however, is a bigger problem, and one we are trying to figure out.

So, at the moment, this is Chateau de Plume, waiting for more siding, a door and windows. If you look closely, you can see where the skylight is.


Can you believe I had to talk Hubby OUT of putting linoleum down for those birds? Yeah, I did. Spoiled rotten fowl.

But you know, chickens have a bad rap. So many people think they are mean and dirty. They are actually fairly clean, if you don't leave them all cooped up in a tiny cage all day. My chickens love their free-range, organic lives and my yard/woods is a perfect bug-feasting ground for them. An all-day buffet. Some chickens are quite cranky, and roosters CAN be mean, but ours are all fairly tame and friendly. Uruly LOVES her chickens. And I think they love her back, if birds can feel affection for a kid, that is.

They probably just adore her for the food she carts out to them. And she makes a fantastic roost:

The chicken is Buttery. She is a Golden-Laced Wyandotte. The swimsuit has been Unruly's choice of outfit EVERY DAY since school got out. I'm about tired of looking at it.

Day 3

The great henhouse construction project continues:


This is Hubby's very first semi-large framing/building project. Thank goodness he's a stickler for details, because I don't think I've ever seen more precise board cuts on any project! Maybe construction work is his calling, rather than that computer geek stuff he does all day long that he's not allowed to tell me about. When I try to pry details, he says "If I tell ya, I'll have to kill ya." Sometimes, I wonder if he's really kidding.

View from the opposite side:


So, we're trying to come up with names for the henhouse. Our farm is Bramblewood Acres. We've come up with Chateau de Plume, the Cluck Closet, the Chicken Palace, the Paris Hilton (we named one of the chickens Paris, because it was funny) and the Chicken Hut for the new abode for our feathered friends. I kinda like Just Us Chicks. But they aren't just chickens, so it's kind of a lie.

Maybe we'll just call it The Henhouse. That's easiest.

Oh, boy

We started out with a few hens. I hestitated ordering chicks via mail because I would have had to order 30 of the little buggers. I didn't want 30 fowl, that's too many, I thought. Twelve. Twelve is a good number.

Yeah. We now have 25 assorted fowl. Five of them are "rescues" from homes that just didn't want them any more. Three of them are roosters. I dislike roosters, most vehemently. But I can't kill them, damned softie that I am. Hopefully they will all live in peace together, if not, may the best cock win.

We had a little incident last week and lost two hens to a marauding racoon. He also managed to get hold of one rooster and break his wing. He's healing and his new name is Lucky. The nasty murdering beast pulled one chicken through the chicken wire, which was rather messy. The other one was just...gone. We fixed that problem by putting a strand of electric fence up around the bottom of the coop and so far, it's been effective.

However, the henhouse we have now is just not big enough. Here's the new one in progress:

All I have to say is Hubby must like those chickens/fowl a lot more than he will admit to build them such a fancy henhouse.

Did I mention we have all kinds of fowl, not just chickens? Two ducks are in the flock.

And six of these little guys are in the basement in the brooder right now:

They are guinea fowl. They originate in Africa, are commonly seen in zoos and their favorite food EVER are ticks. They are very loud and are considered excellent farmyard "guard dogs." Cute little buggers, aren't they?


Yup, we're swiftly becoming a zoo! You'll be happy to know I turned down an offer of a pot-bellied pig just this past weekend. Yes I did! No pigs for me. I am on the hunt for a couple of Nubian, Alpine or Toggenburg doelings though, so if anyone knows a dairy goat breeder, I'm looking.

The thunder rolls

Sometimes I complain about living in the Midwest. Okay, I complain about it a lot. The flatness, the cornfields, the cows.

But there are some things I love and I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.
One of those are the absolutely amazing storms we brew in this part of the country. They can just come up without warning and create absolute havoc or just give a really good show. Mother Nature, she's amazing.

This storm was incredible and it smelled dangerous. We didn't get much rain out of it, just lots of lightning and thunder and wind. WIND! Like Kansas, but colder.

The air got still, not a single leaf even rippled and before I could say "turn on the weather channel" this storm blew up over the trees in the back pasture and pushed the day away.

Dark. Ominous. Roiling. I just KNEW there was a tornado in there somewhere.

So, of course, Hubby and I grabbed a couple of beers, pulled the lawn chairs onto the deck and watched the storm roll on in. We sat out there for almost an hour, oohing and aahing over the lightning, jumping at the thunder and watching as the clouds above us boiled and roiled, dark gray and an eerie, luminescent dark blue.

It was a much better show than anything I've seen on TV lately! Hey, so what if we're easily entertained?

Curving straight ahead

Sometimes, life feels a whole lot like this:

Not a major bump in the road...just a little out of whack. Enough to make me feel like jumping well off the beaten path for awhile.

Green with envy

I love and admire my mother. She's a pretty amazing woman and is quite inspiring, even though she is on the other side of the country. I hope I grow up to be just like her, which is a far cry from how I felt about her 15 years ago when I was in the midst of snotty teenage-dom and she was trying really hard not to throttle me for my insolence and eye-rolling.

Now, she is the kind of mother who offers wise advice without judgment (at least not to my face!) and we can talk as friends instead of constantly arguing. It's very nice. Everyone should be as lucky as I am to have a fabulous mom. It probably helps that I'm not a smart-ass teenager anymore, either.

My mom is one cool chick. She's a snow bunny. An avid camper. A cowpoke. A barrel racer. A veterinarian. An awesome nana. An adventurer and wanderer. One day she'll call and tell me she's now a surfer, too. See, how cool is that?

Except, I'm terribly jealous. She's like those parents who buy all new furniture and a boat when the last kid moves out and you know they were just counting down the days when their lives could begin again after the kid-rearin' was done. I mean, I'm happy for my mom, I know she's squeezing every single drop you can possibly get out of life, but I'm jealous. Bright green with envy and jealousy.

Because you see, out west, they have mountains and lakes and oceans and big trees:


And she gets to ride her horse and camp in those mountains, every weekend.


I mean, who couldn't feel like they are in heaven every day in these places? And she gets to see them ALL THE TIME.


You'd be jealous too, if the only places YOU had to ride your horse looked more like this:


Yeah, I thought so.

All the Pretty Horses

For as long as I've been living on my own I've wanted my own property so I can look out my windows and see my horses, right there in my yard. It's been that one dream I've been working towards for well over a decade.

I finally achieved it. Hubby and I have a cute little house on 13 secluded acres, woods, creek, pond, long-ass driveway far away from neighbors. It's almost exactly what we had been searching for for the last year or so. I never thought we'd find it and there were times when I just wanted to give up, buy a house in town and board my horses at someone else's barn.

The only thing we don't have yet are horses. My wonderful mare died last Mother's Day and I haven't found another yet. I am looking but I think finding a good equine partner is even harder than finding a good husband. There is more to it than that, though. When we bought this property it was fenced entirely in barbed wire, so all that had to come down. The weeds in the pastures were waist high or higher and those had to be cleared. The previous owners were, ummm, let's just say they were less than stellar stewards of the land, and we've been clearing garbage and junk from every corner of the land since we moved in. Most of the fence was hidden by weeds and overgrown with brambles and trees. I have cleared more brambles from my property than I ever thought possible! Hence the name we've attached to our little piece of heave: Bramblewood Acres. Catchy eh?

Next weekend my land will be graced by the four hooves of the equine kind. This newest addition to our family embedded himself into Unruly's heart shortly after Star, my mare, died. We leased him for a few months so I would have a horse to smell and brush and ride while grieving the loss of my own partner and Unruly quickly adopted him as her own.

I think he adopted her, too.
This is Chief. He is old. He is steady. He is perfect for my daughter the horse freak.


Unruly is completely in love with him. He is all she can talk about. If he was a human boy, I'd be worried.


I can't wait to be able to sit at my kitchen table, or on my deck, and watch him peacefully grazing in my pasture as I sip a hot mug of coffee.

Miss Balloon Head

Never let anyone say Wild doesn't have a colorful and magnetic personality!

Apparently its not only the six year old who has a good time at birthday parties. Static electricity is such a fun play thing!

Something Frozen

I promised a few photos of last week's ice storm and here they are. Some people just got their power back yesterday, a whole week after the storm hit. I can't even begin to imagine how cold it must be in their homes!


Trees frozen at sunset.


Iced berries anyone? I hear they're good in vodka.


It's a limb with ice teeth! Oh, and moss.


I thought these striking red sumac leaves were beautiful with a shimmery, shiny coating of ice encasing them.


A crisp, sparkling morning. This particular little tree, a river willow, lost several branches, you can see some of them broken but still frozen to the tree.


Look up! Look down! The sky is in my pond!