Time to clean the barn!

Today's entry comes with a BIG WARNING: I am going to talk about POOP. I'm going to show you pictures that have poop in them. We live on a farm...there is just no getting around POOP. So if you have delicate sensibilities, it might be better if you went on to look at pictures of puppies or kitties or something! Don't say I didn't warn you.


First, you have to have your dependable equipment. We bought a wheelbarrow, then our construction guys left one behind and didn't come back to get it, so now we have two. Frankly, I don't know how I would live without two of them. You also need an 'apple picker' which is a good stall fork to pick out everything in the stall you don't want to leave in there. You can also see other important barn implements like a broom, a dust pan, and of course the radio on which to blast Top 40 country songs that you must sing along with (badly of course) at the top of your lungs. It's all part of the experience.


Now I am very lucky that my biggest horse, and the one that generates the most poop by weight, is very neat in his stall. This is a picture of his stall after being in it 13.5 hours. I am not kidding. We brought them in at 4:30pm last night and they went out right at 6am this morning. I count my blessings about this every day I clean his stall. Unfortunately, his neighbors, the donkeys make up for it...


Actually, this is not nearly as bad as the donkeys get. But they do not understand the concept of pooping in one general area. They just poop wherever they want and then walk in it all night. It truly takes me as long to clean the donkey's stall as it does the other four stalls combined. I asked some donkey friends about their donkey's stall habits and every one said their donkeys are as neat as a pin. How come my girls didn't get the memo!?


So I'll spare you all the gory details involving actually picking up the poop and pee spots. Suffice it to say that I love using pelleted bedding. It's like cleaning a giant cat box but with a lot less stinky poop and pee. I make it my goal every day to get all the stall cleanings in ONE wheelbarrow. If I'm stripping a stall it's unavoidable to use two, but with Frank being so willing to man the wheelbarrow out into our dumping spot in the back 40, I want to keep it as minimal as possible. Of course, as in every farm chore, there is ample supervision. Here the mini's Maddie and Yakki are waiting for their chance to escape when he heads through the gate. This brings to mind stories of the Red Flash that I'll tell another time!


Here's Bailey's stall all clean and with a couple of flakes of hay for him to munch on when he comes in for the night. Sorry about the spots on the picture, I guess I must have stirred up quite a bit of dust in the air while flinging things around! Our routine is to bring the horses in at dark (which is 5pm-ish now, but 4pm-ish in the depths of the winter) and give them a little hay and their grain, then come back out between 8 and 9pm to give them hay for the night. Then they're back out at 6am every day, rain or shine.


We had a little tragedy today as you can see in this picture. Luckily, my barn fork lost a tine AFTER I had the barn cleaned (I was getting some loose hay from around a stall door and it snagged I guess). So I have to go get another one today so I'll have it for when I clean tomorrow morning before school. Also in this picture are the mini's halters/leads and the cotton blankie that Maddie likes to have put on her when she comes in wet from the rain. Nah, these guys aren't spoiled!


I mentioned earlier that we take our manure out to the lower pasture where we are using it to add organic material to some pretty poor and sandy areas. We have also used quite a bit of it on our veggie garden (see earlier blog entries for those pics), our flower garden and around our fruit and nut trees. It is not a 'hot' manure and will never burn. We leave it in about 1-2 foot piles and let it decompose over the winter and it turns to 'black gold'. Fortunately, there are other gardeners who value the horse manure as much as we do. Several times during the winter friends of ours will park a trailer like this one by the barn for us to fill for them so they can make some of their own 'black gold'!

So that's the poop story! It's one that gets told every day here on Red Pony Ranch. I truly enjoy working in the barn and find it very therapeutic. Other people might need to golf or see a shrink...not me! I just fling some poop and all is right with the world.

Our annual visitors - barn swallows

I remember when I was just a young girl going to visit my Babi (that's Czech for grandmother) and she had above the door to her bedroom a porcelain nest with two grown swallows perched on the side and three baby swallows inside poking their heads out. I asked Babi about it and she said that Czech's believe that barn swallows bring you luck. Well, we must have quite a bit of luck because in the four summers that we have been here, a pair of swallows has raised 6 clutches of little babies. Here is part of this year's hatch:


Newly hatched swallows are like human babies in that they only do three things: eat, poop and sleep. We always laugh at our baby swallows because whenever we walk by they stick their heads out of the nest and open those baby beaks and beg us to put something in there! I guess they don't care who feeds them, just as long as someone does!


Mom and dad swallow work tirelessly from the first crack of dawn until there is no more daylight, hunting flying insects for their brood. Soon enough, the babies actually start looking like little swallows. We call this the 'thug' stage because their wings are hunched up like the shoulders of bad-attitude teenagers. We're high school teachers so we have some experience with that!


Soon the young swallows are ready to leave the nest. There were five in this years batch and we saw all of them eventually leave the nest. Those first flights are scary but mom and dad are there to guide and encourage. One by one they learn to fly, usually one fledgling each day until the last finally follows in his nest-mate's wingbeats. The family still comes home to sleep for about two weeks after they all leave the nest, but then they're gone...off in search of rich hunting grounds to fatten up for their long flight south for the winter. See you next spring!

That Silly Sophie!

Today I asked Frank to pull some hay down from the hay stack because I had used everything I could easily reach. So he goes outside and quickly comes back to the house saying, "You've GOT to come see this! I'll get a ladder for you." So I climb up the ladder and this is what I see:



What!? That bad little bird has been hiding her eggs for at least two weeks as there were FOURTEEN eggs in three different nests tucked there in the hay! I did the freshness test and all of them stayed in the bottom of the bowl and did not float, so I'm going to put them in the fridge and use them soon. We Americans often forget than many other developed countries don't refrigerate their eggs and even sell them off the regular shelves like bread. But regardless, I'll be careful.


The is the main nest with the majority of the eggs. The funny thing is that one of the eggs obviously isn't hers as it is much bigger and a different color. I have no idea how one of the big hens got all the way up there! Wow!


This is the hay stack and the eggs were right about where that dust spot is in the center one row down from the top. If you look at the next picture, the eggs were on top of the row of bales that are higher than Bailey's head. That tricky little bird!

Just a nice fall day...

Not a real long post today. Just wanted to show a few pictures of the fuzzy ponies and the beautiful fall we're having. Here are "The Boys" Bailey and Little Bit standing by the gate watching me pick the mini's paddock. They are all such good supervisors!


Isn't Yak just the cutest, fuzziest thing ever?! He looks like a hereford/buffalo! I heard once that no matter what size the horse, they all have the same number of hair follicles. If you look at this guy, I'd believe it! I will admit, he IS too tubby, but I swear his winter hair grows straight out like a chia pet! He's such a good little guy too...so sweet and funny. He likes to challenge Bailey across the fence and Bail just looks at him like he's a tiny yappy dog. I guess horses don't know what size they are either!


Here are the four residents of our winter pasture behind our house. This picture is taken out of the sliding glass doors in our office/den. From front to back is Daisy, Lily, Bailey and Little Bit. I love being able to just look out my window and see them there. The downside is that the donkeys know where we live and come yell at us in the same spot if we're late letting them into their cozy stalls!


This is a picture of some of the delicata squash we grew. Last year we ate one of these wonderful squash and liked it so much we experimented by saving some of the seeds and they grew great, as this picture proves! Hopefully they'll last for a while in our unheated shop with our potatoes! We're having some company over for dinner tonight. The menu is: salmon (stuffed with lemons and rosemary) and zuchinni on the grill, and roasted potatoes (mix of reds and sweet and onions and rosemary!). YUM. I'll make an apple-something for dessert; I just haven't decided what yet.

Hope you're having a wonderful fall! It's my favorite season and we've had a particularly nice October with little rain for here in the Seattle area. While I like the rain, too, I'm not complaining about this nice stretch of dry weather!

A couple of 'firsts'!

Yesterday was a big annual event here at Red Pony Ranch. It was the day that the boys moved home from their leased pasture and everyone starting coming into the barn every night for the winter. It's funny, but the timing on this is decided pretty much by me AND the horses. They know the routine and stand at the gate when it's time to come home, rather than by where I give them their grain. Coming into the barn usually coincides with the start of our 'rainy season'. I like them to be able to come in at night and dry off, including their feet, and make sure they each get their hay, grain and vitamins. There is still probably a month or so of grazing in the pasture, so they don't get full hay yet, just enough to keep them busy overnight. Once the winter pasture is eaten down, then I'll start throwing hay out in the morning too.


Bailey loves his stall. I am very fortunate that he is a neat boy in his stall, and since he weighs as much as all the other horses/donkeys combined, his poop is a big portion of my cleaning effort! I weight-taped everyone today and while Bail is too big to hit the weight markers on the tape, he came up at 224 cm around his heart girth. I keep a chart of everyone's weight and make changes as needed.


Yak is almost too small to stick his head out over the door! He's got such a beautiful head, but all that hair makes him look like a little buffalo! Maddie is in the stall just next to him, but I don't think you can see her in the picture. Yak taped at 354 pounds which is way too heavy, so he'll be getting a reduction in his hay. Maddie came in at 318 which is perfect for her size.


Little Bit, also known as Fabio for all that hair and the way he swishes it around, is the least happy camper in the barn. He doesn't necessarily like being inside, and he's not really crazy about hay either. I like to bring him into winter being a little heavy because invariably he drops about 50 pounds over the winter. He's taping at 425 now so that's about right. He will eat some beet pulp and pick on hay, but is pretty much a grass pony. Two years ago I let him get too thin, so now I really keep a close watch and offer him different things to get him to eat until the grass starts growing again in late February and March.


The donkeys LOVE their stall and love being in. They do NOT like rain and when it's raining during the day they hide under one of the big cedar trees with pouty looks on their faces. I would be happy to leave them in more often if they weren't such PIGS in their stall. I hear that most donkeys are neat and go potty in one or two places (which they DO out in the field) but their stall is another matter. It takes me as long to clean their stall as it does the four others combined. Good thing they're so lovable and adorable!


The other first of the day was a little present from one of our new girls. This adorable little egg was the first egg from one of the three young australorp hens we got a few weeks ago. I put a regular sized egg and a school-boy apple in the picture for size comparison. Good girl!! I'm sure the other two are not far behind. Thanks, girls!

Food! I like to make it, I like to eat it!

First off, I truly apologize for not posting again sooner. Sometimes time just gets away from me and it's hard to believe more than a week has passed since my last blog. So please forgive and I promise to be more faithful. Now on to just about my favorite subject: FOOD!!

One of the neat things about living here is all the good stuff there is to eat. Below is a picture of some pies I made with apples from our trees. I forgot how much they cook down and these look a little skimpy to me! I'll make sure to mound them more next time. I have to confess, that while I make most things pretty well, I am NOT good at pie crust, but I am too cheap to buy pre-made crust. The best recipe I have I got from my sister-in-law Lisa but I still think I overwork it or something.


Of course we had to put ice cream on the apple pie. We prefer crumb topping (see previous comment about my poor crust making abilities!) and that crunch goes so nicely with the soft, warm apples and the cold vanilla ice cream. I'll put my two cents here in for Tillamook Vanilla Bean ice cream. It's the best, and pretty expensive in most stores, but my local WinCo has it for about $3.50 which is a miracle. One last thing...notice in the background the blue KitchenAid mixer? This is one of the very few kitchen things I would never want to live without (on this list is also my cast iron skillet and my good knives). I actually named it Julia, for Julia Child, and it gets quite a bit of use as I cook almost everything from scratch and I wouldn't want to be without it!


One thing I make often, both because we love it AND it's cheap, is chicken and dumpling soup. I try to get several meals out of a whole body chicken, so after I cut the good parts off for other things, I boil the carcass then take it out of the water and remove all the meat. You'd be surprised how much you actually get. When the carcass is out of the water, I add celery, onion, carrots, potatoes, some garlic powder, some parsley and of course salt and pepper. When everything is all cooked, I make home-made drop dumplings. YUM!! I have recently found a great recipe for home made egg noodles which are really good too, and while I like to use them in other kinds of soup, I stick with the dumplings for chicken soup. I guess it's a tradition.


Recently I was on the coast and picked up one of our favorite things that, in our opinion, is only best when absolutely fresh from the farmer, and that's OYSTERS. They are something we came to appreciate only recently, but we really love them. They are great left in the shell and put on the grill, then dipped in garlic butter, but in the cooler season we buy them already shucked and pan fry them. I make a mixture of 1/2 flour and 1/2 cornmeal, then season it with some Old Bay Seasoning and some other things then dredge the oysters, making sure to let them sit for at least an hour. This makes the breading stick during cooking. This is a trick the oysterman told us when we were first buying oysters in Oysterville, WA. This is a real place, I promise! So here's a picture of the cooking oysters and the ones that are done resting on the newspaper getting rid of some of the excess fat. We eat these with a squirt of lemon juice and dipped in coctail sauce. YUM!!


I know this picture doesn't have anything to do with this topic, but it just cracks me up. It totally captures Daisy's goofy personality. She is such a good girl and entertaining, too. She's got us laughing all the time. We're coming up on the time when we start bringing everyone into the barn each night, but not quite yet since it's still fairly warm and not raining...but she is certain we are neglecting her and lets us hear about it! Who is in charge here, anyway? Some days I really wonder.

Three new girls!

I wanted to introduce you to three new members of our Red Pony Ranch. Meet Nugget, Patty and Finger, three new Australorp hens. Actually, those names came from their previous owner, and while cute, will not be called that on this farm!


I saw an ad on freecycle.com (a great group to join, by the way) about three very young hens (who haven't even laid yet) who needed a new home. The family lived in Everett and intended to build a coop by winter but just didn't see themselves getting it done, so they offered them up. Well, I jumped right on this opportunity, as my hens are getting to be the age where they start slowing down with the laying. So these great new girls came to live with us. I was a little nervous about them fitting in and maybe that the old girls would pick on them, but they seem to be doing well and have even been out free ranging and gotten back to the coop safely.


Since these girls have no distinguishing characteristics whatsoever, they will henceforth be known collectively as 'the new girls'. They join two other australorps we already have and are a very welcome addition. Colonel Sanders, our rooster, seems particularly smitten with them. The old hens don't even give him the time of day, so he's hoping he can sweet talk the new babes into a little action! It's nice that someone else took the time to raise these hens up and now we get to benefit from their 'cackleberries' as my friend Kari calls them! They just need to get laying! I'll make sure to take a picture or two of their first attempts. Usually they're very small, but still tasty!