Guest Photographer in Ecuador

 

Just Another Tuesday

The bottle goats have not been doing good with eating grain.  The feed trough I have been using is broken and they just jump up in it and stomp around.  As soon as a hoof touches a piece of grain it is no longer desirable to a goat. So a lot of grain has been going to waste. 

 So this morning I made a new one.  I used thin strips of wood so they can’t stand on it easily.

And left just enough room for theirs heads to fit.  Tonight, they finished all the grain, yay!

We have just a handful of cows left to calve.  One was in labor today.  After checking on her a couple of times Joe didn’t think things were progressing much. So we go her up and checked on things.

Everything was in place but she just wasn’t trying.  So we went ahead and pulled it.

He was really big and was standing when I went back to check after a couple of hours. 

Then, while doing some weeding, I met a black snake.  He is still out there somewhere getting ready to surprise me again.

I also rode Draper, Joe and I worked in the garden, and Joe mowed the lawn at the triplex.  As I said, just another Tuesday.

Repeat Offenders

A broken broom handle, duct tape and a couple of goats. 

What do you think the story will be?
 

With over 200 acres to roam around on, a couple of the goats still want what is on the other side of the fence.

With the shape of their horns, their head will go through but they can’t get it back out.  After pulling them out of the fence for the 4th time, we decided to try something new.

So now they are sporting a learning stick, 

Or is it the stick of shame.  Either way, we are hoping to not have to extract them from the fence again.

Iron Mountain Ride

 Today after church, Joe and I headed to Iron Mountain (across from Horse Heaven) for a quick trail ride.

The weather has been unseasonably cool and wet.  But today we had some sunshine so we thought it might be safe to head out.  Joe was on Hugo.

And I picked Otoelene to ride.  (She is not that short, I am just up hill a bit)

Everything went well, no drama and we managed to not get rained on.  A group the rode the Horse Heaven loop at the same time got soaked.

I saw several different kinds of wild flowers.  These are Indian pipes,

Galax,

And a bit blurry but this one is cancer root.

Otoelene has been staying in the fat lot since early spring.  I think this is the most in shape she has looked since she was three.

Paint Night

Our clinic sold enough flea and tick medicine that the sales rep rewarded us with a paint night.

 

 Eleven of us attended. Along with painting we also got a nice dinner.  But it was a little challenging eating and painting at the same time.

This was the sample that the instructor painted as our guide. 

We started with painting the background.  Then we went on to paint the flowers then the leaves.

 This is my finished product.

And everyone displaying all of our diverse take on the subject.  We had a very enjoyable evening. 

Flower Planters

Watching the British gardening shows has now inspired me to try my hand at flower planters.

I already had a pair of large pots that I had had the dwarf Alberta spruce trees that I transplanted last year.

I bought several different flower four packs at the FFA greenhouse last month and stuffed them all in.

They have really been growing and filling up the pots.  I am hoping they will look nice all season.
 

Happy Father’s Day

Happy Father’s Day to the here dads that I was able to share the day with.

 

Beefing Up

A few weeks ago we had a grapevine encrusted tree fall over our power line. I decided a couple of days ago to go collect the vines and beef up my hay feeder wreath.

It was almost too much for my 4-wheeler cart. 
 

I then had the idea to set the sprinkler out over the vines to make them more pliable.  I worked on weaving for a couple of evenings. 

This is the before version.

And the is is the after.  I think the beefed up version in a definite improvement.  Joe has seen another down tree with a grapevine, so when I run out of things to do, I can always work some more on my wreath.

New Addition

Look what we got today!

 A new puppy!  She is a 3 month old Great Pyrenees.

We got her from a family that had 4 children.  They had named her Princess.  I don’t think we will be keeping that name though.  She was raised with sheep, chickens and turkeys. 

She is now in the pen with our two bottle goats.  We thought with the increase in our goat numbers that another dog would be helpful. Hope this one works out as well as everyone else has.

Last Group

We got our last group of Spring calving cows and calves worked Saturday.  This time we had Mike helping.

But first, Otoelene and I helped Joe round everything up and get them to the barn. 
 

It took a little bit, but we finally got everyone headed in the right direction.

It is nice to have such a wonderful cow horse.

But then it was time for the barn work.  The cows kicked up a lot of dust.

And there is always some bawling to put up with.

We have been finding that things seem to work better if we do the calves first then the cows. Everything went as smooth as possible.

And we got all the cows and calves back to where they started all before lunch. 

Happy Place

Joe and I worked the cows and calves today at our other farm up the road.  Joe has been dreading it because it was just going to be the two of us.  But everything worked fine and we were done by lunch. That left the afternoon free for me to do what I wanted.

(Happy Place)

Which was to ride Otoelene.  I had a wonderful 2 hour ride around the farm.  Apparently, the new ticks aren’t a fan of the cool weather that we have been having, so they didn’t bother us.  And there were hardly any flies, so Otoelene was happy.

Then in the evening, Joe had noticed that a black kid triplet that I had fed some to start with was missing.  He miraculously heard some goats far away from the rest of the herd.  We went walking and found three kids that had been left behind at some point.  The rest of the herd was on top of the farthest hill.

With the nannies bleating and the babies yelling, we were able to walk the kids back up to the rest of the herd.