Beginnings

Yesterday we were able to finish the chicken run so today was the first day the chickens were able to go outside. They don't seem very impressed. In fact they aren't really going outside much, hopefully that will change.



Gideon, our wolf mix, thinks we are raising dinner for him. Every time he sees a chicken he whines and licks his chops!



We brought the new horse home (she doesn't have a name yet), got her in the pen, and prepared ourselves for a long drawn out process before we could really touch her.

Here is a picture about 15 minutes after unloading her.



She's real wild and fierce.



She loves to be scratched on the side of her muzzle and stood still while we groomed her.




I guess since she was born in a BLM facility she's used to people and has become quite friendly. I know we have a long way to go teaching her to lead and such but her friendliness is not what we expected.

Crazy Week

We have an enormously busy week planned. I don't think we've ever been this busy and I'm just not sure whether to look forward to everything or not.

We start off the crazy week with a Sweet Adeline's performance tomorrow afternoon. This should be fun since there is no pressure.

Our Monday plans will just confirm my insanity since we are picking up this little cutie.



For once gaining a horse wasn't my idea. Paul picked this little filly out last weekend and we spent the week preparing for her arrival. She is a 7 month old mustang that we are adopting from the BLM. This will bring our horse total up to 4, but one is only a foster for the moment. Our foster horse, Hot Stuff (formerly known as Cricket), is doing really well. She's become very friendly and affectionate. We're still working on getting her "de-spooked" which is going to be a long process.

Tuesday's activity is no fun, our propane tank is getting switched out and refilled. We are switching companies because I'm very unhappy with the service we were receiving. The new company is bringing a much smaller tank which will at least keep the cost of filling down.

Wednesday is the one day with absolutely nothing planned! I may just have to stay in bed all day.

Thursday holds the most exciting event since my mom, step-father, and grandmother will be arriving for a visit. They will get here in time to hear Lorna and I sing that night. We have a regional competition for Sweet Adeline's at the end of the month and Thursday is our dress rehearsal where we invite the community to come hear us sing.

Friday we get to drive Sierra down to the vet to have her knees x-rayed. There isn't anything wrong with her, this will tell us how long until Lorna can start working her a bit harder. Right now she is being ridden at a walk for about 20 minutes 3 times a week. We really want to make sure not to push her beyond her physical abilities and the x-rays will make sure we keep her sound.

Saturday is a gymkhana show. Since we are running 9 events it's going to be a long day. The exciting thing is that this is the first show my family has been able to attend! The kids are very excited to show off what they can do.

Somewhere in there I need to get the chicken run finished. The chickens have started pecking at each other so I really think getting them outside will help. They will be 6 weeks old this week and have gotten really big.



Since the weather has been so nice I think they will be okay to get out from under the brooder lights.

March Gymkhana

Yesterday was the first gymkhana we've attended since last September. In fact it was only Malachi's second one. It wasn't held in our valley so it was a really long day, we were gone over 12 hours.

This was also Lorna's first show on Sierra, they did great! We've only had Sierra for 8 weeks and when we got her she hadn't been ridden before. I think all total Lorna only has about 15 rides on her, with those rides being 15-30 minutes. There was only 1 event where they got a no time. Even though Sierra backed through the timing poles just as they started their run, Lorna made her go through the entire pattern anyway. The biggest problem Lorna had with her was when she decided to bolt once she was finished with the pattern and was on the way back to the gate. Overall though she did better than we ever could have hoped for. Since this was Lorna's first gymkhana since Ginger passed away there were lots of tears. I think it really helped that there weren't any memories at this particular arena. Hopefully with this show under her belt, Lorna will enjoy the local show in two weeks.







Malachi did extremely well. He beat all his previous times and seemed to enjoy himself. Amigo has gotten so used to being around other horses and doing the events that he didn't give Malachi any problems.

Excitement

Paul was greeted with this when he came home today.



Sierra loves everyone!

We picked up our foster horse today and had lots of excitement. This is Cricket, she is about a year older than Sierra. She is a mustang from the Black Mountain herd here in CA. She has been handled and walked into our trailer without any problem, but she is very spooky.



The other horses were very excited to see her.



Sierra was a little too excited to see her. Sierra broke the chain that holds the gate closed, ran between Lorna and Cricket, and spooked her. Since she ran between the two of them Lorna no longer had the lead rope. Paul went after Cricket in the truck while the kids and I caught Sierra who thought it was great fun to run in circles around us. Sierra decided to finally stop for a bite to eat so Lorna was able to get a halter on her and put her in our bottom pasture. Cricket was a little more difficult to catch. We finally found her a couple of blocks away eating weeds on someone's property. Paul walked her home and we decided that was enough excitement for one day!

High Sierra Wild Horse Sanctuary

I've been thinking about getting a horse for me. The kids are very limited on where they can ride when I'm not with them so it would be nice to have a horse I can go out on. I love horses, I always have and riding is just another way I can get exercise (I'm not the kind of person who can exercise just for the sake or exercising, it has to have a purpose).

We get lots of horse magazines, the kids get subscriptions as gifts and pay for the rest themselves. One thing that is always talked about is the number of unwanted horses out there for adoption. So I decided that if I was going to get a horse I wanted to adopt.

You'd think it would be easy right? The first problem I ran into was organizations that have high adoption fees, like $1,000-2,000. Wow, we've never paid that much for a horse! We always go for the cheap models. The second problem I ran into was the lack of response when I called or emailed the organizations. They just never call back.

I hit upon a great organization yesterday, High Sierra Wild Horse Sanctuary and Gentling Center. The head of the center not only emailed me back but invited us out to take a look at the facilities. The great thing is, they are located in our valley! It broke my heart to see how many horses were there. They specialize in mustangs and work with the BLM. Right now they are pretty much full so there were lots of horses to look at. They are always looking for volunteers to groom and love the horses so I think we will be doing that a few times a month. Another thing we are going to be doing is fostering a horse, if she works out we will adopt her. I'm really excited about this opportunity.

As with all rescue organizations they are always in need of financial assistance. If you or anyone you know is looking for to donate to a non-profit please consider this organization!

The coop is done!

We finally had nice enough weather that I was able to finish painting the chicken coop.





The chickens will be moving out there sometime in the next few days. It will be so nice to get them out of the living room! They will still have to have the brooder lamps on for a few more weeks but at least I won't have to listen to them cheeping all night long. Our next project will be finishing the attached run.

Need a laugh?

I've been looking through ads of horses and came across this one.

Someone has a great sense of humor.

Ginger

We've had a really terrible day.

We got up early this morning to get the horses loaded for gymkhana only to find Ginger, Lorna's older horse, was ill. We took her down to the vet in the big city but she didn't make the drive. The vet tried to resuscitate her but it didn't work. Lorna chose to watch the necropsy that was done to determine what was wrong with Ginger. We found out that she had had some major trauma to her neck when she was young, probably running into a fence, which caused her esophagus to become enlarged. Her food was no longer moving into her stomach as it should and everything was making it difficult for her to breathe. It was good to hear that nothing we did caused her death but that still hasn't made it any easier to accept. We spent the afternoon at the gymkhana show just helping out and watching, it was a balm to be around people who understand what we are going through. I'm sure that we will all shed tears frequently over the next few days, Ginger was a very large part of our life.

Church Matters

I have found that it's easier to ignore things when I'm busy. The last few months have been filled with preparations for the chickens, Sweet Adeline stuff, and shuttling Lorna all over the place for horse related stuff. Even though all of our attempts to attend gymkhana shows over the past 4 months have failed we've filled our time with lots of stuff.

The rain and snow over the past 2+ weeks has made everything slow down tremendously. We had planned on having the kids ride in a parade last Saturday but we got 5 inches of snow on Friday making it impossible to get the horse trailer out of the driveway. This is just the way things have been working out.

Due to the slow down Paul and I have had more time to discuss our plans for the future. We have moved around a lot, the longest we have ever lived in one place has been 2.5 years. I think we have been searching for the allusive perfect place. One where Paul has a steady job, we have a great church home, and where we can afford enough land to do what we want. We know we aren't going to ever find such a place so we've been discussing staying here. Paul has the best job he has ever had, the company is wonderful and the opportunity for growth is good. Because this area is sort of rural there is the opportunity to purchase land, not as much as we want but still enough to do something with. The biggest problem we have come up against is the lack of a solid church. It has been easy to ignore the problem because we've filled our time with other things. But as we discuss the probability of actually settling here for a long while I become nervous about the lack of spiritual care. We've tried all the Lutheran churches in an 1.5 hour radius, I even called further out and have found nothing. In fact I've been told there isn't anything like what I'm looking for.

I finally convinced Paul to try the one here in town, after all it's only 15 minutes from our door. The only thing the experience did was make me even more depressed about our options. We knew the church had some quirks but we didn't realize how many. Women leading parts of the service, campfire type songs complete with guitar, open communion, and the children's sermon which was on how we need to try to do what the Bible says because it's all about obedience (no Gospel all Law). All of this really brought home how spoiled we've been in the other places we've lived. I still don't have any idea what we are supposed to do here. I'm not looking for an easy answer but at the same time I don't feel comfortable just ignoring the problem.

Not one of the churches we've visited has had a sermon that contains both Law and Gospel. All but one have women participating in the service and that one has a pastor who doesn't believe communion is important (his own words). When you are faced with driving 1.5 hours the last thing you want to do is settle for a church that has practices that you disagree with. At the same time how do you just give up going to church? Maybe we just aren't looking at things right, but all of our attempts to just go to a church and ignore the stuff we don't agree with have failed. It may be time to try again but I don't know that I can convince myself and the rest of the family to actually do it.

More Chick Pics

The weather here has been so bad that we can't do anything so the only thing we've been doing is watching the chicks. The are growing really quickly so we will be setting up a bigger box for them today.

They love to pile up together when they are sleeping.

Chicks!

We got a call at 6:30 this morning asking us to come pick up our chicks. They arrived in less than 24 hours from when they shipped and all the ones I ordered survived.

Along with the 10 chicks I ordered I also received 12 "packing peanuts". One didn't survive, it looks like it got squished by the others.



We ordered 2 Rhode Island Red, 2 New Hampshire Red, 2 Black Australorp, 2 Buff Orpington, and 2 Delaware. We received Ameraucanas as packing peanuts. I'm kinda hoping that at least one of the peanuts is a pullet since that breed lays green and blue eggs.



The chicks are settled in their temporary home. They are all eating, drinking and making lots of noise. It doesn't look like they will be able to stay in their current tub for more than a few days because of space. Paul brought home some really huge boxes for which I'm really thankful because we received more packing peanuts than I anticipated.

Catching Up

The last few weeks have been filled with horses, horses, and more horses!

Last week we attended a horse expo in Pomona. It was incredible but very tiring. We looked at most of the 300 vendors that were there, attended a few presentations, and just enjoyed the beautiful weather. It was a very long day since it was 3.5 hours from home but well worth the drive.

The training with Sierra is continuing to progress. She is loading in the trailer better and better each time. She is walking and trotting without too many problems but she doesn't want to lope. She's still very young so she has great days and lots of stubborn days. But overall Lorna is very pleased with her progress.

Saturday we took all 3 horses down to the trainer's facilities. While there Lorna exercised 2 other horses since her trainer is recovering from surgery. One of the horses is a new halflinger pony. He's really cute and has been named Malachi in honor of our son.




Training with the pony Lorna's been helping out with has come to a standstill for now. There is some question about whether it will continue or not since he's just not taking to things well. He is really spooky and is not calming down at all. One way or another Lorna will continue working with her trainer helping out with the horses. It's amazing the differences I can see in her over the last month. She has become much more assertive and self-assured. She's thoroughly enjoying the challenges these horses are presenting and actively working towards learning more in order to become a better rider. Watching her interact with her trainer, listening and learning, has been a real joy. And of course my mommy heart just soars when the trainer tells me how great she's doing and how much she enjoys her company!

Besides horse stuff we've been working on the chicken coop. The only thing left on the coop itself is the roof. It will need to be painted soon but since we are expecting a storm to come in tomorrow it will have to wait till next week. The chicks are shipping today and should be arriving sometimes over the next 2 days. I'm really excited. I plan on keeping them in the house for the first few weeks and then they will be moved into the coop.

Training continues

The last 2 days with the horses have been very stressful. Sunday we tried to trim Sierra's hooves, what a nightmare. After 2.5 hours of fighting I was able to get them rasped down a bit but I still want to round the edges off a bit so we can great rid of a few flares. Yesterday she decided she didn't want to load in the trailer. She trailered great last week but yesterday she acted like she had never seen the trailer before. Once we got her to the trainer's facility she did great under saddle so we are really pleased with that aspect of her training. Sierra now goes forward when asked to and stops pretty well. Since she is so young it's like dealing with a toddler, she has good days and not so good days. The amount of time Lorna spends on her back is really short because of her age. She spends most of her training time tied to a hitching post since she still doesn't like standing still. We had another fight getting Sierra back in the trailer to go home.

The pony Lorna is working with fell over on her yesterday after getting spooked. She would have been fine if he hadn't smashed her nose in the process of getting up. Lorna is alright but her nose is swollen and will probably be bruised in a few days. We are taking today off because everyone needs a break!

We upgraded the fencing in Sierra's pen over the weekend. We originally had barbless wire but I didn't like the way she was pushing at it so we upgraded to poly strapping made for equine fencing. It's not working, she pushes against it and tries to walk through it when she's mad so today we are adding wood in-between the strapping. I've even considered adding electric poly tape to the top of the fence but that will be a very last resort. Someday we will be able to afford pipe corrals and I won't have to worry about fencing quite so much.

Definitely Not Bored

Remember when I wrote about being bored?

Well now that the holidays are over I'm completely pressed for time. This has been an unusual week so we've been out everyday since Saturday and will continue to go out everyday until Sunday. Lorna is spending every morning riding 2 horses at her instructor's facilities and then she comes home and rides Ginger. We are trading in our 2 horse trailer for a 3 horse trailer so this morning was spent at the bank signing paperwork. We are upgrading our horse fence in Sierra's pen while she is staying at the trainer's facilities so that has required lots of physical labor and some shopping at the feed store. Our Sweet Adeline's chorus has a retreat and coaching this weekend but we are only going on Friday because Saturday is taken up with a gymkhana show where Lorna will be riding 2 horses. Paul's car key is stuck in the iginition and won't come out. And I really need to finish the chicken coop. Somewhere in there I'm finding time to cook and do school although I haven't had enough time to make bread or clean. I no longer have time to be bored!

Training

All work on the chicken coop has stopped until we get settled in our new routine. Lorna has worked the last 2 mornings with her riding instructor and we will be there at least the next 2 mornings. She was able to ride the pony she's helping with on a trail ride yesterday.



It amazes me how quickly this horse picking things up.

Today we took Sierra down with us. Since Lorna is helping out, her instructor has offered to help Lorna with the training on her new horse. I couldn't ask for a better person help Lorna, she really is wonderful. Today Lorna worked on a few things with Sierra and even got up on her for a few minutes.

Sierra

We had a very surprising day, Lorna found the perfect horse. She has always dreamed of owning a mustang and now that dream has come true. Sierra is just over 2 years old and came from an awesome home. Her previous owners have given her a really great start and we look forward to seeing what she will do in the years to come.

More Coop Pictures

The coop has been coming along quickly since the weather has been so nice. The trim is on so the remaining projects are the roof, people door, windows, and the pop door for the chickens. I haven't been able to get any mis-tint paints from the hardware store so we will probably end up using some left overs from previous projects.

Here is what it look like right now.






We have taken some time out from building to get the kids a riding lesson. Since the weather has been cooperating Lorna has been able to continue working with her instructor on gentling that pony. She was able to work with him on Thursday and Friday and will be going back on Monday. At this point she has started riding without being on a line attached to the instructor's horse. They went around the neighborhood on Friday and both the pony and Lorna did great.



We have decided that it's time to start looking for a more challenging mount for Lorna. Her skill has progressed to the point that her older mare just isn't challenging her anymore. Even though we have been told that now is a great time to buy a horse our initial search hasn't turned anything up. In fact a horse we were supposed to go look at today was sold last night. I guess it will be another lesson in patience!

Coop

We finally decided to take the plunge and get chickens this year. I ordered day old chicks which should arrive the first week of February. For the first time ever we've started animal housing before we actually needed it.

This is how far we had gotten by the end of today.







I'm really pleased with how quickly this is going together. If we can get it finished by next week the weather is supposed to be warm enough that I can paint.

We are using the left over plywood we scavenged a few months ago. Unfortunately we had to buy 2x4s and a bunch of hardware. Since we are using scavenged wood I tried to make the walls and door fit the cuts that were already lying around. On the whole we are going to have a well built coop for less than half the cost it would have been without scavenging. I've had lots of fun searching through my new favorite site for coop ideas. Of course this project hasn't been without a few mistakes, the biggest one being a framing mistake. I accidentally made the walls 3.5 inches taller than the plywood. To fix it I'm going to have to install a trim piece along the bottom of each wall to cover the gap. Not the end of the world but still a little frustrating.

New Project

I have a new project in the works. I'm an impatient sort of person so this one is difficult because the end result is dependent on a company. Even they are dependent on nature so I'm just having to learn to be patient. Here are a few pictures of the start we made this weekend. Can you guess what it's going to be?

Movies

We watch a lot of movies. Mostly at night either while I'm cooking or while we are eating dinner. We definitely make good use of Netflix usually watching whatever came in the mail that day. Here is a list of some of the movies we've enjoyed recently.

Mama Mia!
We watched it twice this weekend. I absolutely love the music.

Hancock
This one was just a lot of fun, Malachi laughed through the whole thing.

Definitely, Maybe
This one is cute and the ending was a great surprise.

Penelope
I know this has some bad reviews but we absolutely loved it.

Waitress
This one has a lot of sexual references but it was a very good story.

Bella
This is a great independent film.

If you are looking for things to watch with the family make sure you check out the ratings before ordering. We are very lax about what we let our kids watch so what we think is appropriate may not be for your family. If you have Netflix there is a great feature on each movie's page that tells you specifically why a movie was given the rating it has.