Farm News

It's a whopping 46 degrees. Every morning when the sun comes up I get to see the light hitting my pole shed (aka garage). I really like looking at the shadow of the tree on the side of the building. I'm not sure why, but I like it.

It's a been another silly week but thank goodness for the Agri-View. That's the farm paper that comes out on Thursday. In this week's edition I learned:

"Rectal Live-Animal Scrapie Test Approved by USDA"

Sara, did you get that?? Now you can test your sheep for scrapie w/o using third eyelid biopsy.

On top of the new Scrapie tests, the retail demand for cattle is steady. Good to know.

Oh, and I mowed the lawn.

I'll leave you a photo of Mr. Oscar with Amy aboard. He's going great.



Toodles for now.
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Cooper and the Spark Plug....a children's story

Once upon a time there was a small, white dog who liked to steal things. His name was Mini Cooper and he had a big friend named Oscar.

Here they are, best buddies.

The little white dog lived on a farm. He loved to run around the farm and find things to chew on.

One day, when his human was working on her ATV, Mini-Cooper found a little white box. His human wasn't looking at him. She was looking at her ATV.

Since she was busy, Mini Cooper picked up the little white box and showed it to his human. She said "You little bas(&*&^*^Td)! Oh boy. It was Mini Cooper's favorite game so he ran for the door and across the yard with the human running after him. They ran up the hill and through the garden. Then across the yard and back through the garden. He played and played with the little white box and made sure the human couldn't catch him.

Finally Mini Cooper got tired and dropped the box. Only the spark plug had fallen out so his human started up the game again. Oh boy!! So Mini Cooper and the human ran all over the yard again looking for the thing in the box. The human finally found it and installed the spark plug in the ATV and could take the stinking manure down to the pit.

The end.

Tulip Time

You might not see the tulips in this photo taken about two weeks ago...but they are popping up-signaling and end to the endless winter. Here's the scene today...happy tulips blooming like mad along the driveway.

I planted the tulips last fall. If I remember right, I planted them on a Sunday night in November knowing that it was going to freeze soon. Freeze it did...four days later and we had snow for the next 5 months.

These are well-earned tulips. (earned through suffering through the past winter).

More soon.

The Big Dork

I mean me, not the horse. In my over taxed state of mind of late, I managed to leave the gate unlatched Friday night. The big guy and his little red sidekick helped themselves to a whole lot of grain sometime during the night/morning.

I discovered my error Saturday morning when I opened the barn door and there was the feed bin on its side, empty. The good news is there wasn't a lot of grain in the bin but the bad news it was enough to get the vet out. Good news: no colic. We're now watching for signs of laminitis. Beep seems fine, but Oz is a little shifty on his feet. Probably his feet aren't feeling too good after that meal he had.

On top of that, when I was in the barn cleaning, assessing whether or not to call the vet I shook out a bag of fresh bedding and that spooked Spooky McOscar. He ran for the door, turned a hard right and whammo. Crashed just like me going down the basement stairs that same morning. I think that was his first crash of the year, my 7th or 8th. I have to start my OSHA sign over again: today it will read: .5 days w/o a crash.

"This is not going to be our day" I thought. So after the vet came and went and the horses were tubed and lubed, I did some garden chores and checked on the two of them every half hour.

Today will be more of the same. It's at least nice out which helps.

Hope the sun is out wherever you are.
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