Christmas decorations at the ranch!

Franks says HI on this stunningly beautiful fall day. It was in the upper 50's, sunny with nary a breeze. We were both in shirtsleeves as we cheerfully went about our outside chores. He spent quite a bit of time putting up 14 strings of lights not including inside the barn and our horse/carriage winter scene. We still want to put lights on three smaller trees out in the yard, and maybe get another lighted thing for the yard too!


The day was so lovely the chickens were leisurely sunning themselves, getting up only once in a while to scratch for bugs or eat some vegetation. Egg laying has slowed WAY down as they are mostly in molt. Good thing those new girls are producing or we'd have to go somewhere else to meet our needs. No more store eggs for us!


While the chickens were out, I tackled cleaning their coop. It is actually a room just off our shop/garage that the previous owner had converted to a bedroom with insulation, sheetrock and electrical outlets. It makes an excellent, warm and safe coop for the girls. But it does get stinky! So I took everything out and stripped it and put in new pellets under their roosts (where they poop the most) and shavings over the rest. They'll spread them out for me!


While Frank was still working on lights, I cleaned the barn and then put up a few decorations. I think I might have to rethink the placement of some of the decorations as you can see below. Leave it to Miss Daisy to check everything out!


The donkeys got two stockings on their stall this year. While Daisy was a baby, I let her share with her mom, but she's a big girl at two and a half now so she gets her own! (Side note: you have no idea how many shots it took for me to get a picture with all four ears forward! Sheesh!) Momma Lily is on the left and Daisy is on the right. I know I will always be able to tell them apart, but it's getting harder for everyone else!


Bailey gets a giant stocking, of course. Those are 2x6's on the front of his stall, so you can figure out how big it really is! He was giving me a hint what he wanted me to put in it. MORE HAY MOM!! Bailey eats with his head hanging outside the stall quite a bit of the time, so I'm constantly forking hay back into his stall. He's such a good boy I can't really complain about a little thing like this.


I was at a store the other day and found this stocking that I just couldn't resist for Yak's stall. In case you can't read it in the picture, it says, "Dear Santa, SUPERSIZE me! You'd have to know him to see how well this fits, because in his heart, he IS as big as Bailey! He always charges Bailey at the fence line (which Bailey ignores) and when we take Yak on a walk in the neighborhood, he gets all puffed up and prancy when we walk by actual full-sized horses! He's such an wonderful little guy; maybe in pony heaven he'll be as big as his heart desires!


Well, as much as we didn't want it to, the bright, sunny day came to an end. We came in and ate turkey leftovers and pie. I paid bills and Frank got caught up on some school work. As the sun went down on our wonderful day, we caught this amazing sunset over the Olympic Mountains. We are so blessed to have been given this property and thank God every day for the riches He has given us.


Once it got dark, I went out to see if I could get a picture of Frank's hard work. I tried not to move during the slow shutter speed, but I think you get the idea. On the chicken run you can see where he wrote NOEL. (The neighbors behind us want to know why we put LEON up!) Also note the long grass. It has been a warm fall and our grass is still green and quite long. It probably does need to be mowed, but, come on! Who mows the grass in December? Not us!!

Not much going on....

I came home from a quick run to the feed store and found the namesakes of Red Pony Ranch and their honorary not-red giant pony all taking a nap together in the weak fall sun. There is a fence separating the two littlest ones from the big ones...not for their protection, but to keep them off of grass that would make them fatter than they already are. You can also see framed in by Bailey's legs and belly that Little Bit has laid down right next to the big guy. I'm sure the others will be laying down soon too as the sun warms their fuzzy bodies. I love how peaceful it is here.

After this picture, I went looking for the donkeys and found them in the lower pasture taking their own naps. You would not believe the bottom lips that hang down on sleeping donkeys. Oh! And those giant ears get lower and lower as they get sleepier and are eventually out sideways like helicopter rotors. I found this picture from two summers ago when Daisy was a baby. It shows the helicopter ear thing going on:


Now some of you know that Frank has taken on a part time job teaching math on-line for an internet-based high school in Idaho. I think he's having a good time and learning lots of new technology. I took this picture the other night while he was doing a classroom session. I call this one "Mission Control"! If you look you can see he has a laptop to his right as well as the one he's using for the session. I won't tell you more because he has promised to guest-blog and tell us all about it, so consider this a preview of coming attractions!


Once again, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update the blog. Not really that much exciting going on around here. We are very thankful for good health and steady jobs and wonderful family and friends. Our pantry, freezer and barn are full. Our lives are simple and peaceful, just the way we like it. Frank has his college football on Saturdays. I have my book club that I think is really a wine club in disguise. We have Thanksgiving coming up with our friends the Dutys in Tacoma. I still think I'll cook a small turkey just to have something to pick on. We wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, filled with warmth and family and friends and of course, thankfulness. God Bless.

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!