The Chickuns Vote: Obama 08!

Here's Dumpling, hanging out in the coop with the American flag. The coop came with the flag and how could I not leave it hanging there? The barn came with an Abraham Lincoln and he's still in there as well. Best not to disturb history.

I took the day off of work to see what sort of chaos happened while I was at Trek World. My garden was awash in tomotoes and peppers, the horses were juggling and Cooper was driving the ATV. Not really, but the garden was quite dry.

So I weeded, mowed, and cleaned the barn today all of which was not good to my back. Then I rode Oscar (awesome!!) and figured I'd help the bone along a bit....stress it a little so it grows, ya know?

btw, the Olympics stinks. As I was watching the dressage competition I figured out the formula for network Olympic coverage:
Combine:
- 500 vicious, sales minded corporate ad pitchmen
- add 2 greedy, stuffed shirt network owners
- mix with several cable or dish networks and bake at 400 for 2 weeks

The recipe yields 2 weeks of terrible coverage of any event you are looking for, if you can find it.

I wonder how many 30 somethings built up their resume torturing the rest of us with this stoopid formula for Olympic coverage?

In other words, I'm disappointed in the treatment the Olympics gets these days. Good thing I have other things to keep me busy.
toodles!

The panels....

Halooo! Here's my panel that Barbara made. How cool is that?

News of the week: the sink is in and works great. Other news:
- I fell off Oscar and fractured my butt
-Trek world started; I don't like Trek world
- Cooper is eating a dead thing
- It's only 60 degrees right now
- the computer is fast again...yipppeee!

Short update today. Hope y'all are having a good weekend.
b

Progress report!

Here's Spidey cat, checking out the new sink, wondering why her watering fountain isn't turning on. Being that she's 13 she only drinks running water, preferably out of the sink.

Isn't it cute? It's a lovely, deep sink with a bronze faucet with a sprayer. And that white thing to the left of the sink is my dishwasher. Ahhhhh.....happy happy.

And here is the opposite wall (to the left of the new sliding door) with my eating area. I have the sweetest table that comes out of the wall if I need it to, and tons of book and storage space.

Right now the shelves are full of books and tools, but soon they will be full of objay darts!

The whole room looks spectacular, even not painted. When it's painted I'll have a party to celebrate Barbara's amazing work. There's no doubt in my mind that it pays to have an NCIDQ designer design your kitchen. There are far too many amateurs out there who will slap cabinets on a wall with no regard to lighting, funtionality, problem solving and how it all relates to the rest of the house.

My favorite part about the kitchen? When you walk in its like looking at a great painting. And it absolutely fits with the rest of the house. In other words, it looks like it's always been here, not some modern soho kitchen in an antique house.

So this morning I was out in the barn and heard the unmistakeable "whoomph" of a hot air balloon getting a shot of hot air. I got my camera but it was well over the back field before I got a photo. The speck in the photo is the balloon. Really.

Finally, I have to show the panels that are in my living room. Barbara did a primitive scene of Sunny Hill in 4 panels. Cooper is chasing a chipmunk up a tree. Gabby is running full tilt across the lawn. I'm riding Oscar and Barbara is on Willow.

Oh darn...blooger won't let me post any more photos. I must have hit my max number of uploads for the day. So stay tuned for a photo of the panels. xoxoxo becx

Weapons of Mass Hay Making

That there is the Big Ole Tractor that hauls the hay baler. So guess what I've been doing this week?? Yaa der making hay! Whilst y'all were watching tv and drinking beer, I was raking hay and drinking beer. I think I win in the "fun" department.

Confidential to MooneyBat: solidarity sister. Hay making is hard work!

Anyhoo, the festivities started on Saturday when the hay (alfafa) got mowed. It needed 2 days to dry so on Monday afternoon I was out on the Kubota raking it.


Here's a photo of the cute lil Kubota. I'd just finished raking and aren't those the nicest rows o hay you ever saw? (Say yes, dammit!)

The rake throws hay out the left side only so I did a whole lot of clockwise, then counterclockwise circles. It wasn't boring at all, not with Cooper in my lap (he insisted on riding along) and the ear protection/radio I had. The one problem with that was the ear phones only picked up Christian stations or *really* old rock stations that I've never knew existed in Madison. So it was either "depend on Jesus, he's the only one who loves you" or some Van Halen tune I've blocked to survive puberty.


Here's another shot of the field and it's tidy rows. Nothing like a tidy row of alfafa.

So last night (Tuesday) was bale like crazy before it rained night. Neighbor Mike was in the BF Tractor and I was in the LF tractor, hauling the hay wagon over to my barn to unload. I pulled into the barn and started throwing hay down, only to quickly realize that these haybales were somewhere in the range of 60# a piece. (um, that's kinda heavy).

After an hour of tossing I looked up and saw that I had about 140 bales to go and called for back up. That would be Joe. We got it done and I hauled the wagon back just in time for the rain to start. The rain felt great seeing as I was a sweaty, disgusting, unladylike mess when it hit.

But, nothing like a barn full of fresh hay. That makes a farmer happy.
toodles.

My slow internet

So it turns out that my house guest for the summer was downloading a lot of music and videos, which caused my internet provide to put an "Abuse Alert" on my account. I've been quarantined!!

I will try to put another post with photos on line tonight, maybe at 9pm because at 8 in the morning it's slowwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

rats. What's a farm blooger to do? Oops. I mean blogger.
r

Around the Farm

I took my camera out on the rounds yesterday just to chronicle a typical day at Sunny Hill.

A day starts with a cup or two of coffee. Here I had just gotten up from the laptop to make another cup and came back to find you-know-who in my chair. You just know he's saying "move your feet lose your seat, sucka!"


Before I go outside I wanted to post a pic of Barbara working on the panel murals. These are going in the cabinets under the tv and the four panels together tell the Sunny Hill story. Here she is working on the right hand panel, and Willow is going over a stone wall with Lady B riding side saddle. Too cool! She's doing them in a primitive style but each animal looks like the real one. Stay tuned for the completed photo.

So after I've had a cup or two of coffee I head over to the barn.

We had more rain last week and since the water table is about 2cm below the surface it doesn't take much for the pond to return. Sigh....just a week ago I was mowing this area then we got 2" of rain last Friday.

alrighty, I was going to post photos of the inside of the barn but my satellite is on a sabbatical and won't let me upload any more pics. Will try again tomorrow.
toodles.
b

My Left (purple) Foot and other Events

Here's a shot of what is just one happening in an eventful week. That's the arena with the first dump truck of sand dropped on it and Coopy digging holes in the sand. It took 5 more truckloads to get it to 2" and an hour with the skid loader to spread it around. All made more difficult because my left foot was out of commission. And why is that, rebecca?

It's Gabby's fault. She conned me into letting her go outside at 11:30 pm (I thought it was about 8:30). I was half asleep going down the stairs and missed the last step, rolled over on my foot and landed ass over teakettle---is that not a great old cliche?--and knew I'd sprained a few things. Now the only reason Gabby has to go out in the middle of the night is to chase some animal walking through the yard. Turns out Gabby had run down a fox. Poor Mr. Fox but he was probably sniffing at the chickens anyway.

So the next day my foot was not looking or working well. In case you ever wondered what role your toes play in human engineering they improve walking balance, A LOT. They look kind of useless but trust me, they are important.

Round up this week: wine rack and upper cabinets built, arena sand in, new wiring in house ($$owch$$), and living room mauve/maroon bad Fung Shui job going away.
Here's a photo of the painting in progress.
First is the photo of the gross mauve going away, replaced with a saddle brown. Yum. Note the essential bottle of wine near the ladder. That helps keep your lines straight.

Time to get some chores done. More kitchen transformation pics soon!

Looky Who I Found This Morning

I got up this morning all excited to go see the arena and I happened to notice something moving around in Jeannine's car. Turns out it was Neen herself!! She heard me come out and was sitting up in the car, waving like she always slept in my driveway.

The obvious question was "wha???" I opened the door and we started laughing, partly because she was trying to explain what happened and partly because Cooper jumped in the car and was wiggling around in her pile of clothes.

Turns out her flight from NY was delayed so she didn't get in until late and was tired of traveling but my door was locked. Being the good camper and not wanting to wake me up she crawled in the car and snoozed until I woke her up.

I made her some coffee and we walked to the arena. Here's a shot of Neener next to the arena. She's not posing--she was madly flapping her arms at mosquitos.



I worked hard this week to finish off the arena. Last night me, Barbara and the neighbors (Joe, Diana, Mike) laid down the weed barrier on the arena. We were about 60' short. Doh. The sand isn't arriving until Monday afternoon so I'll make a run for the last 60' I need.

Here's how it looks with the sun coming up. The thumb in the photo is for size reference. bahaha.
We got chased inside by the mosquitos so Neen showed me her photos from Philadelphia and NY. Here she is on the couch with Cooper and Gabby who immediately sat next to her and starting play fighting.

I'm sooo happy to have the arena so close to being done. If it doesn't pour buckets in the next few days I'll have a finished arena on Monday afternoon. Time to get the flower pots ready for the entrance!

toodles.

Entering week 4 of Kitchen Remodel

Here's the new patio door off the southwest corner of the house. It's got a great view of the side yard and alfalfa fields beyond. The kitchen remodel is moving into a week of installation and prep for some electrical work. We've discovered a whole lot of shady wiring in this place. Quel surprise.

On the weather front it rained hard yesterday but I was ok with it. I've decided to make the pond a permanent feature. I'm researching pond liners and will have a jolly good koy farm.

The arena was just starting to dry out when it rained yesterday. The ground is just so saturated with water than even a "normal" downpour now causes problems.

On the flooding note, I drove to Grafton, a town about 60 miles east of here on Lake Michigan on Saturday for a bike race. The team was here for that race so I suited up. (we won). There were 2 detours because bridges were out or dams had failed. So strange to live in an area that was so devasted by Mother Nature.

Not much else to report. It's officially summer and the mosquitos are plentiful. Where is my bat colony when I need it???
b

Rain Rain Go Away

And don't come back for 100 years. Please. So the news of the week? More rain. On top of the "i-lost-count-total" we got more heavy rain on Thursday. On Friday I discovered my sump pump quit. Wow. It doesn't get any better than having a pond in your yard and one in your basement.

Aaaaakkk, skip that. let's talk about happier things. Like my kitchen remodel which has been going on since about when the monsoon started. Here's a photo of the old (weird) cabinet being removed. That's Anthony, the Russian, playing with Cooper. Normally he works in Florida with Barbara but she hauled him to Wisconsin to preserve my kitchen. He has friends here (also from Russia) so he's happy to be here and he loves dogs. Even thieving, little turds like Mini Cooper.
And here's a shot of the same spot two days later, after the brick chimney came out. The bricks are now ringing burn spot #1. That's where I put miscellaneous wood, weeds and other things that need to be burned. It's nice to have a bit of house history out in the yard serving a purpose.
And here's how the new kitchen alcove looks. It's not done yet, but you get the picture. The alcove is beadboard, with a recessed cabinet and one more coming above it. The best thing is now I have a work triangle. Before, it was 15' to go from the stove to the fridge. Barbara is staying true to the farmhouse theme which is authentic to my antique house.

This week will feature replacing the art deco ceiling fan, installing the sliding door, the built in table and some brackets. It's slow going as every single feature is built for this house. No one works like Barbara does and she's worth the $150/hour fee. She's saved me a ton of money because she knows her construction methods, design and historic preservation.

I know this much from bike racing: once you are at the top, you know where you can adapt situations to get the same results. There are a lot of posers in the bike racing world and even more in the design world. I'm lucky, just plain lucky to have the best brain in the historic preservation world on this project.

And on top of the the rain and kitchen rehab, I've been riding Willow to relieve stress. I love this mare. She's gem and what a fantastic influence on Oscar. They complement each other well: Oscar bosses her around the barn and fields, and she leads him down the trails in the wild woods.This photo is of Amy on Oscar, holding onto Willow. Disregard her skinny neck. Between her regular excericse inflicted by Oscar and me, she'll be looking like a mini hunter in no time.


Stay tune for more....and here's to dry days.
b

Monsoon Season is Here

Don't be fooled...this photo of me and Oz was taken just before the monsoon started. It looks so sunny and warm but that was the first sunny and warm day all year. The pic was taken next to the old chicken coop where the iris is blooming. It's some old variety that smells like grapes.

It's not lost on me that the last post I wrote a mere three weeks ago I was bummed that it was so cold. Since then we've had 10" of rain. To say it's been an eventful couple of weeks is understating the obvious. Here's the list:
- Beep had to go to horsey heaven; she was a pony with chronic founder and I did all I could for her but I had to admit I had lost the battle
- Willow arrived the day Beep left. Willow is the sweetest morgan/arab blend you'll ever meet
- Lady B arrived and is going at the kitchen with Anthony, the Estonian apprentice
- Cooper has reached his terrible twos and it's dicey every day whether he'll get a pass to stay another day.
- The pond has returned to the front yard with a vengance. On Saturday we had massive storms and tornados all around us. By writing this post I am putting off (for a few minutes anyway) wading in to put the pump in and start the bailout process.
- Oscar got a case of gas colic due to the pressure drops, go figure. But he returned to his pesky self after the vet gave him a shot of banamine and since I had to pay an emergency visit fee ($$!) I had the vet give all his spring shots.

Here's a few photos....

Sunday morning I got up after listening to pounding rain all night.
I walked into the kitchen and there was the greenest little froggie in the middle of the kitchen. I was admiring his color when Cooper arrived and started tormenting the frog. In this photo Coop is pouncing on the frog (the small black spot). Note: two yellow rubber duckies brought in from the bathtub by the dog.

Here's a shot of Miss Willow meeting up with Oz. He's saying to her "You can call me Bossy Boots."

Last photo is of all of the siblings at Dad's 70th b-day on Memorial day weekend. We had a surprise party for him and he was surprised, although he suspected something was up. Aside from telling Dad stories my favorite part of the weekend was going for a run with all of my siblings. I don't run much anymore but we had a good time teasing each other for 3 miles.
Time to get to putting the pump in the yard or face a mosquito invasion. toodles for now...

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.
b

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.
b

Life with Dogs

I was celebrating a lovely spring day last night like any red blooded female who'd taken a long bike ride, followed by a horse ride, followed by some barn cleaning. With wine, a newspaper and my camera. I was sitting in my lawn chair waiting for the sun to hit the barn so I could get a photo of the barn in spring when I realized the dogs were putting on a show of their own.
So I snapped a few self portraits. Flattering angle, non? The photo above shows Coop doing the "go for the cheek" move with Gabby countering with the open-mouth move.

Well, I had more photos to post but Mr. Blogger isn't too happy with the size of my images. Well, you get the picture. Me and the pups are doing great. All's well on the farm. How 'bout you?

Team Time at the Farm

Here's some images I took from last weekend when the team was in town for the photo shoot. Some explain themselves, other images require some explanation.

To the right is Leda, who is from London. She was a bit knackered when she got to town so she sat on the couch and became a dog magnet. 5 minutes after i took this photo both dogs were sound asleep and Leda was looking very relaxed.




In case you are wondering, that is Abe, the ape who has taken up with Mini Cooper. Abe is team mascot and he's wearing a snappy new Dairyland jersey. When he's not sleeping with my dog Abe hangs out with Bunny, our rider from West Virginia.

And this is Bunny herself having a chat with Abe. It's hard to resist holding this monkey. One picks him up and for some unexplainable reason one just starts walking around with Abe, asking him if he'd like some food or if he's tired.

The photo below is Missy, she is the Road Manager of the team. That means she wrangles the herd onto the airplane, to the race, then tells them how to win the dang race. And they do. Works great. Missy loves dogs and she became the "voice of Cooper," narrating the pup's thoughts. That had me laughing for days.

I Iput this photo in of Gabby and Mini Coop just for fun. Gabby was very tolerate of the Coop that night. On Friday night, Bunny and Missy helped me clean the barn. I'd missed part of a day and that's not good when there are three horses. The manure piles up fast! Bunny and Missy did a great job; this is Bunny wielding a mean scoop basket in the barn. Note: there is not manure present! She looks happy with her work. I was! I went outside to see how it was going with MIssy, who was breaking up the last of the manure iceberg. Does the photo of Bunny and Missy remind you of anything? I'll post more photos later. This is taking too long and I've got work to do! ciao...b

Horse Powwow

The large, black critter in the photo is Kiddman, the newest addition to the farm. He's a 5 year old percheron/arab cross and just as goofy as Oscar, only bigger. Here is Oz, Kiddo and Beep who made a grand entrance to the horse sniffing party. She walked over and peed a whole bunch. Twice.

Why yes, Oscar is a white horse, thank you very much. He 'd taken a nice dirt bath just before Kiddman arrived.

Here's a shot of Kiddman and his proud owner,
Meaghan.

In other news, I turned off the heat lamp in the chicken coop and shut off the tank heater on the water trough. I guess that means it's spring??

Big day today; the team is arriving and tomorrow is the photo shoot. I'll get a few photos of that as it's always entertaining. Real photographers, real make up artists, and real milk mustache. Yum!

Jack Russell Terrorist

Today was clean and tidy up the house day. Not so easy with a 2 pound puppy helping.

Here's Mini Coop aiding in the sweeping of the floor. With this system, the broom acts like a broom with an added dust pick up feature.
One simply drags the broom around to sweep and dust simultaneously.







Coop didn't like the lint picker upper but instead of attacking that he attacked my arm. Ow.











Laundry was a challenge. Once I got the sheet unhooked from his wee fangs I was able to fold it.

So there you have it. A small glimpse of life with my new little boy.

Oh, and it snowed 7" yesterday and it did not melt. It's barely 25 degrees so this stuff will stick for at least a day or two. I weep.

Mini Cooper

So Meaghan and I went looking at horses on Friday. The first thing I saw come out of the barn? About 10 Jack Russell puppies and this one kept following me around. His name is mini-Cooper, and he's sound asleep after a morning romp around the farm.

And Meaghan got herself a horse. She and I go back about 10 years when I had my Thoroughbred. Rosie here is Meaghan's new ride, a georgeous 8 year old Percheron-Quarter cross mare. She's going to be at Sunny Hill in about two weeks! And she's a big girl--about 16.3 hands.
This is Meaghan on Rosie during the test ride. They look great together.


I should point out that I have a new laptop and can download photos again. I had a bunch of photos sitting on my camera of the silliness that goes with launching the team for a new year.

This photo below on the right is what my kitchen looked like as I was sorting clothing for the team.
The other photo is my living room on wheel build up day. Wheels, tubes and tires everywhere. I've got three more wheel sets to build up and these wheels are sew ups (involves gluing the tires). Argh...

So that's the scoop from Sunny Hill.

It's actually sunny and the despised glaciers are retreating. MiniCoop isin my lap, napping and I'm eating cookies, watching Paris Nice on tv (bike race) and thinking about taking my bike out for a spinny spin. talk to ya'll soon!
b