Just random things....

This is a wonderful picture of Frank's terrific mom, Dolores or Dee. She was visiting us and her daughter Jean (Frank's sister) took this shot which I just love. She is so happy here!! We'll be driving to Wisconsin this July to go visit her as she isn't doing any big traveling anymore. Who could blame her at 90 years old! I just love my mother-in-law and am so blessed to have her in my life.


We are about a week from putting the boys out on their other pasture. Once that happens, the chores will get much easier around here! No more coming into the barn every night to poop it up!! There is a nice pasture shelter in their field for those rainy days. It also means that they will be totally sustained by this pasture and no longer need hay. I will take them a little grain with their vitamins every evening and check them over, but they will be happy to be out 24/7. The donkeys stay home on our pasture as they would not be able to keep their girlish figures on that kind of grass. The minis, as usual, stay on their dry lot...those poor things!


I always get such a chuckle out of goofy answers kids give on tests, and this one is no exception. However, by this time of the year the jokes start wearing a little thin, so Spring Break hits just at the right time. We got smart and realized that we could use some sunny and hot weather, so we got a condo near Palm Springs for a few days...so we're OFF!! Kacey will be staying here taking care of everybody, and we'll be floating along the lazy river and eating some real mexican food. Can't wait! We're leaving tomorrow, so hasta la vista baby!!

Spring is really here!!

First, my apologies again to my faithful readers, a few of whom were kindly chiding me to bring the blog up to date. I was complaining that I didn't feel like I had anything new to say, but was reminded that even an update of the simple things is enough. So here are some simple things!

Now I used to think that Fall was always my favorite season, but living on a little farmette is making me appreciate spring very much as well.


We do not have any tulips or daffodils on our property, but we do have one other plant that often is the first to show some life in spring. Here is our rhubarb coming up for the second year now. This poor rhubarb has had a rough life. The first year we planted it, Frank kept running over it with the mower. I finally drove a stake by it so he could see where it was and that solved the problem for that year. The next year I noticed the rhubarb really struggling to get strong and the leaves looked really tattered and I couldn't figure it out. Then one day I noticed that chickens like rhubarb too!! (When the chickens are bad, we refer to them as The Peckers. Bad Peckers!) So this spring I have it protected so hopefully it'll be the near-weed that it's supposed to be!


I know this is not a good picture, but it is showing another sign of spring here at Red Pony Ranch: the blueberry bushes are budding. We planted these lovely bushes just last year, so seeing that they made it through a fairly harsh winter for these parts is a relief. We planted 5 and 6 year old plants, so we should have a decent crop this year. That is if we can keep the peckers out of there! Darn Peckers!


Last year we also planted two hazelnut/filbert trees. These trees need two to polinate each other. These little hangy things are made in late fall and hang on the trees all winter and these are what spread the pollen back and forth. We haven't gone a full season with them, so I am interested in which part actually becomes the nut. Hopefully this crop will be pecker-proof!


One thing I love to see growing and Frank isn't too crazy about is the GRASS!! That means that my leased pasture is getting ready to for the boys to move over for the rest of spring, all of summer and fall until about mid-October. It feeds them completely, except for their vitamins/supplements during that time. That is a relief to the feed bill, let me tell you! The winter pasture here at home will be fertilized then left to rest and will recuperate in a month or so while the donkeys are sequestered up by the barn. We are very blessed to be able to grow good grass here. The downside is that we have to mow our lawns very frequently, but to me it's worth it.


The other day I was cleaning the barn and my hair kept falling in my face, so I did what most farm girls do and reached for the baling twine and tied it back out of my way. Then I forgot about it. When Frank came in he noticed and got a kick out of my ingenuity and resourcefulness, so he snapped a couple of pictures.


There are many things on our farm that are held together with baling twine, and I'm sure if you have some, you're using it in creative and useful ways as well! We use it quite a bit in our garden to string things that climb and to mark rows while we're planting seeds and waiting for them to germinate. I heard you can even jury-rig a fan belt in an emergency! Hopefully I won't have to test that one!

Spring?

I noticed that there is a theme to these pictures today: I took them all from inside the house! Now I am outside a LOT, obviously, but sometimes it's fun to stay in my jammies and do what I can without having to get dressed to go outside. Well, today would have needed even more dressing as it SNOWED...AGAIN!! It's been in the mid 50's every day, so who expected this!!??


The good news is that this is one of those good snows that looks so pretty, but you are happy because it's barely 32 degrees and you can be sure it will be gone by noon. My kind of snow!! The horses didn't mind, but Daisy the donkey tried to come back in the barn to her stall for her morning hay! Apparently she's had enough. Sandy had fun running through it, although she brought in a lot of snow balls on her legs to melt on our new carpet! Oh well, I have to remind myself...this is a FARM and it can't stay pristine forever!


Now while I stayed inside keeping warm and drinking coffee, Frank was not too thrilled to be shoveling snow once again. Hopefully this will be IT for the year.


I took this picture of our chickens a few days ago when the weather, obviously, was much nicer. I have no idea why they were so intrigued by what was going on inside the house! Like Frank said, "Uh oh! Now they know where we live!" Those darn donkeys do too, and if we're late for feeding they come and yell into the back door. Who is in charge here, anyway?


I realized that there was yet one pet who had not been featured on our blog: Pete the lovebird. Pete's parakeet friend, Niles, went to bird heaven last week after a nice long life, so we brought Pete out to live in our main living area so he wouldn't be lonely. He's a funny little guy who likes it when there is a lot of activity and noise, especially when we play music fairly loudly and he squawks and whistles along. We thought maybe he needed a new friend, but for now he seems perfectly happy with just us. He has no fear of the cats and tries to run up to them and bite them if they are close to his cage. Luckily, they don't seem to be interested in him at all. Pete loves apples and lettuce and spinach leaves in addition to his regular food. He also loves to take baths, flinging water in about a 4 foot radius from his cage. We love Pete and he brings a lot of enjoyment to our family.

Happy Spring! And to think, I was going to plant some lettuce and peas today!

New Carpet: Doing our part to stimulate the economy!

Just a little over three years ago we moved into this new mobile home. We were thrilled to be able to have such a nice new house, as this property had a really old one on it when we bought it. However, our budget was really tight so we couldn't upgrade a couple of things like we wanted. So after three years, the standard carpet it came with was really falling apart, even in places where there wasn't any traffic! See just one example below:


So we were in Lowe's one day and wandered by the carpet department and decided, what the heck, and picked out something we liked and the rest is history. I do, however, wish they would have told us about the enormity of practically having to MOVE as all the carpeted areas of the house needed to be totally empty. Good thing we have a big shop that Frank was able to move most of the stuff into. The kitchen, as you can see below, got some of the last minute stuff. It was a total disaster area.


Katie said, "Hey, if we're moving...don't forget to take me!" Actually, she and Jake got locked in the shop for the day too. Pete the lovebird got stuck in the mudroom with his little heater, and Frank stayed home from school (I subbed for him...gotta love double dipping!) and helped some and also took Sandy for a long walk.


We were really blessed to have a nice day for this project. There was some stuff that we used until the last minute that, because of the good weather, we were able to just chuck outside. Here the couch is being guarded by Sandy. The back deck was crowded with office furniture, Frank's recliner and our coffee table.


Needless to say, we are thrilled with our new carpet. The quality is amazing, and it feels so nice to walk on...very squishy! Frank rolled up two equal sized remnants and you can really see the difference between the new and the old. That old piece had never been walked on either, he found it in the back of a closet. Yikes, that was some poor quality stuff!


Here they are side by side for comparison. You can see that even the quality of the backing is different. Those are my toes, by the way.


Luckily, moving back in doesn't seem as difficult as moving everything out. We are doing it stages at a time, with the office (can't live without the computers!), living room and bedroom being a priority today. Of course we're seeing how everything is dusty so each piece gets a good going-over as it comes back in. (Gotta love Swiffer Dusters!) Here Frank is putting our bedstead back together. We bought this set with our summer school money from last summer. It's our first and pretty much only really good furniture. Sandy, as you can see, is providing casual supervision.


OK, here is the new stuff, but let me tell you...IT IS NOT PINK!! These two pictures make it look pink or rosy but it is not. In fact, the wall behind our bed is a very true chocolate brown and it looks pinkish too! If anything, the carpet has an olive-y/gold hue to it. The name was Walnut and it is just what we wanted: a nice warm brown. I have to rethink a few things, like my couch cover which is fairly tan and now seems to be a little too much brown in the living room. I need to add more color! Sure wish I had good decorating sense. Guess I need to watch more HGTV and DIY networks!


So suffice it to say that we are really happy with our new carpet. We also got really good service from Lowe's and their contracted installer. I would definitely recommend them. Now you need to come visit and see it for yourself!

Farmer Jayne

A long stretch of unusually bright and rain-free days is supposedly coming to an end tomorrow, so it was time to tackle fertilizing my leased pasture. Last year Frank, bless his heart, fertlized it by using a walk-behind spreader over all 4 acres! So this year I opened my big mouth and asked if I could borrow the neighbors pull-behind spreader and they graciously consented. Wow, what a blessing that was to be able to just ride along and get the job done in about 2 hours.


This is the field looking to the south. The horses like to rest in the shade of the treeline at the southern edge of the property.


This is from the same spot in about the middle of the long pasture looking north toward our house. There is a driveway between this leased field and our own property that you can't see except for a little on the left. The red shed is our pumphouse and garden shed. The gray thing is our mobile home. To the left just out of the frame is this pasture owner's large shop onto which he had previously built a nice pasture shelter that the boys (Bailey and Little Bit) share nicely. We are very thankful to have found a pasture so close to our house. We will be able to pasture the boys and the donkeys there for a couple of months this spring to let our winter pasture at our place get fertilized and rested. This will happen in early April.


The actual task of fertilizing went fairly well except for one thing pictured above. Molehills!! Molehills from gigantic, mutant moles that push dirt up into big mounds that are tough to drive over, let alone pull the spreader over with its narrow wheel base. I am happy to report that not once did I dump the contents of the spreader, but I came very close. I liked that from the seat of the lawn tractor I could actually reach the spreader bucket and stabilize it if I needed. But the darn mole hills slowed me down and made my spreading uneven, which drives a person like me nuts.


This is a happy picture showing an EMPTY spreader. I can't count how many times I made the long trip back to my van to open another bag and refill it, but my math actually worked out pretty well and I had only about 3 inches left in the bucket when I completed the field. I went back over some of the more grazed down spots to use it all up. I purchased the fertilizer from our local farmer's co-op. They recommended 21-7-14, so that's what I got. It worked well last year so why mess with a proven system!


Here is a close up of the finished job. I sure hope I applied it in the right quantity! This is actually about as thick as the application got; some spots don't have as much. Maybe one of my farmer friends from Draft Horse Village can tell me next time we chat (Hi Ange and Kari especially!), although there is not too much I can do about it now! I am looking forward to seeing the grass get healthy and long and ready to feed my crew until the end of summer. I love being Farmer Jayne once in a while. Maybe someday I'll get to drive a real tractor!

Starting to feel like spring!

Yesterday and today were the kind of days that make you start thinking it's getting pretty darn close to spring! The kind of day where you feel like digging in the dirt and cutting back all the ugly dead stuff on your plants from last year. It was sunny and crisp and in the mid 40's. Wonderful!


So Frank and I decided to tackle the two raised beds we have. We filled them with manure (thanks horses!) and it turned into wonderful 'black gold', but it also cooked down to where they are not full enough any more. Here is the herb garden, with supervisor Katie of course, with the herbs removed so that Frank can move more dirt from our vegetable garden.


Of course our veggie garden is still in its winter phase. You can see where we have dumped some manure (and will continue to dump more) to add more organic material to the soil. Right in front of Frank you can also see the few leeks that are left from last year's crop; and they're still good too! I've been using them all along. Anyway, Frank is mining some good soil to move over to the herb garden. Our neighbor and friend, Eric, will come over with his BIG rototiller (works off the PTO on his tractor) and work it over really well for us in early May.


Of course there is no project on this farm that goes unsupervised. We have discovered that the donkeys are much more adventurous eaters than the horses, so when I trimmed the lavender, I threw it out to them and Lily just munched it down, woody stalk and everything. They also have done an amazing job keeping the blackberries down in their fields. Good donkeys!


We also had digging help as you can see by the dirt on Sandy's nose. Actually, she was digging and sticking her nose into the mole hills. It'd be nice if she'd actually catch one or several, as they are really making a mess of our lawn and pasture. Someone said to try dropping cat turds down their holes. Now that doesn't sound like a fun time to me on many levels, but I'm desperate and just about to try it!


So here's the herb garden put back together. Across the back of the bed we have two kinds of rosemary (my favorite) on each end, and then oregano and thyme between them. We use the front of the bed for early crops like lettuce and peas because they can be planted quite early here, and well before the big garden is even tilled for this season.


These last two pictures show another sign of spring: horse feed and supply quantities that have shrunk over the winter! You might remember (or look back) to my blog entry that shows the hay packed to the rafters. There were 264 bales to be exact, but now there are about 60 of the regular horse hay near the back, and the lighter stuff toward the front is Maddie's teff hay. Those bales are 125 pounds a piece, so I'm not that excited about moving them back even though there is room for them now!

The picture below shows the corner of the barn that holds the pelleted bedding and my extra beet pulp. I bought 8 bags of beet pulp and I'm halfway through the 5th one, so I think I might have over bought as it worked out to using just over one bag a month. Better to have too much than too little! I will not need it past about April 1st when the grass is in. As far as the pelleted bedding goes, I am really happy how my supply has lasted. I started with 120 bags and have 41 left, meaning I've used 2/3's of my supply with only about 6 weeks left before the 4 biggies go outside full time. I should have plenty to get me through the summer with only the mini's coming in at night (so they don't get eaten by cougars!).


One thing I wanted to point out was my new leaf blower! Boy am I having fun with that. Beats the heck out of sweeping the barn and does a much better job! I just start at one end and blow down the aisle to the other end in a corner where I can pick it up! I want to tackle the cobwebs soon, but am afraid of sending big honkin' spiders flying around, so maybe I'll use the vacuum feature instead!

I know that many of my blog readers don't live in as temperate a climate as ours and will be waiting for spring for a couple of months yet. You poor things! Maybe you should come visit! Regardless, I hope you are enjoying your pre-spring weather and dreaming of green things to come.

A Weekend Get-Away

It is amazing to me how quickly time passes, and how soon this blog gets out of date. Again, my apologies. This past week has been consumed with work and the usual chores on the farm. It is lovely to see the days getting longer, finally. Soon the grass will start growing and I can be thinking about starting things for the garden.


We did, however, manage to squeeze a little winter get-away into our busy schedule just last weekend. I was in charge of finding accommodations with the following three criteria: will let us bring our old dog, has a fireplace, and on the beach. We were also focusing on the Long Beach, Washington, area as it was familiar to us and about as short of a drive as we could get to get us to the ocean. It's always a crap-shoot regarding the weather on the coast in the winter, but we totally lucked out and got a beautiful weekend, right up until we had to drive home, which was totally OK.


After much searching on line, I found The Breakers. It is a great place with units that are owned by people who then rent them out when they're not using them. Ours felt homey as soon as we walked in the door! It was a wonderful find. There was also a pool house and a hot tub that I didn't use, but Frank made sure to take a daily soak!


Frank and Sandy also put in lots of beach time. It's the one thing they miss from living in Oregon so they really probably overdid it! Lewis and Clark, while they were wintering in Fort Clatsop, Oregon, made a foray up to this area and there are many historical markers. This is one identifying the location of a giant sturgeon that Clark encountered. Sandy is checking out to see if it's real or not!


On Saturday we ventured up to Oysterville, which used to be the county seat until 'the raiders' from South Bend descended on the town in the dark of night and over the water to steal all the records away. This plaque bears testimony of the bad blood that still exists! Now, Oysterville has about 10 historic homes, a church, and an oyster farmer, who sells to the public as well as restaurants and such.
Going to Oysterville is truly like stepping back in time.


At night Frank would work on some school work and Sandy would do what tired, old dogs do. Mostly she was on her big dog bed that we brought, but occasionally she'd venture up on the couch for a few minutes but it wasn't as good as stretching out on her own bed. We loved having the fireplace (I miss that from our old house) and we ate bad things that tasted really good from the joint across the street. It was then time to go back home and start back up on eating more healthy!

Not much else going on here. We did do our part to stimulate the economy by ordering new carpet for the house. It should be here in the next couple of weeks. We are NOT looking forward to practically emptying the house but it will be so nice to get this crappy old carpet out of here.


I also had a nice surprise when I went out to clean the barn on Thursday and found a large bale of the most beautiful hay just inside the door. Come to find out our neighbor, who works for the state roads department, found it and thought to bring it home for me. What a great guy! Only a horse person could think this was such a wonderful gift! It's too rich to feed to the donkeys or the fat mini, and LB didn't like it (who ever heard of a picky pony?) but Bailey is sure loving this good treat!


Spring sure feels like it's here in the Northwest and I am excited to see how our blueberries and raspberries do this 2nd year after they were transplanted. I am also more than ready to start seedlings for our garden, but it's still way too early. I also need to get Larry's field fertilized soon so I can move the horses and donkeys over there in late March, then fertilize this field and let it rest. There is always something to do on Red Pony Ranch!