The Bucky Files… His First Year

Normally I post photos and stories of our newest babies on the farm. Those babies typically are horses of course. This morning I went back through to see about Bucky’s post and… I guess I screwed up and didn’t post his. Shame on me. I posted the colt we sold earlier this year and I posted Little Brother 2 Spot‘s post, but not Bucky’s. Shame on me! He was born April 7, 2016. Just a couple days after Little Brother 2 Spot. If you’ll remember, I was swamped with trying to finish up my Master’s, graduating, and leaving for Cozumel. Maybe that’s how I brushed over this post?

Bucky is out of our mare we call Blondie, for obvious reasons… she’s a Palomino… aka Blonde. In the beginning, we thought we might have had him sold so I didn’t mess with him too much. I didn’t want to fall in love with him and then be heartbroken when he went bye bye. It happens. A lot!

Like I said, since I thought we had him sold, I really didn’t mess with him much. One night though I decided I was going to go play with the colts. We had three that year. I opened up the pen where they were and though, I’ll see which one comes out first. Lo and behold, it was Bucky.

Up to this point, none of the colts had really been messed with. It was only less than 5 minutes and he was loving on me and nuzzling me for attention. I decided to go to the barn and get a halter and see if I could get it on him. Now, remember, at this point, I hadn’t had a halter on any of them. The only messing with they really had was when we did chores and fed them. By this time it was early fall, just for a frame of reference in timing. (more…)

Meet Thumper and Ginger

Yup, we’re going to try our hand at rabbits. Wish us luck!

Backstory

Last week (yeah, this hasn’t been going on for very long) was Tbug’s Spring Break. She got to spend most of it with us. On Thursday, for whatever reason, Abug started in on wanting a bunny. So Friday afternoon we went and got a few things to start working on rabbit cages. I used to have bunnies when I was younger and thought I still had the cage, but couldn’t find it. Must have been hauled off as scrap a while back, I don’t know. (more…)

Born in a Barn

Born in a Barn

Last night I was standing in the kitchen. The way our house was designed, you can see the back door from the kitchen. Everyone uses the back door. to enter and exit the house unless it’s pouring down rain or slicker than snot. Then usually we use the basement route. Otherwise, EVERYONE uses the back door.

So I was standing in the kitchen and Abug walked in the back door. She left the back door standing wide open. Bad thing to do at our house because the dogs will come in or right now it’s cool out so we let all the bought heat out, etc. (bought air = Sweet Home Alabama line.) I started to smart off, Close the door, were you born in a barn, but I stopped myself. Why would I stop myself… Well… because farm kids are a different breed.

I’ve truly said it before that farm kids are a different breed and they are. They get exposed to some interesting things early on in life. Between watching animals being born, maybe having to help pull a baby to save its life, to doing chores on a multiple time daily bases… whatever. (more…)

Horses are related to Skunks and other musings

Horse on one side of the fence from a group of horses

Horses are related to skunks. If that title doesn’t make you giggle or seriously question my sanity, I’m not sure what does or will.

Why on earth would I compare a horse to a skunk? Well if you haven’t been around horses much, you’re in for quite a surprise. My mornings consist of the same things… wake up, answer emails/read blogs, go outside and turn horses out, start the rest of my day. Not always in the same order and sometimes not for very long on any of the above, but one thing is always certain… I’m going to turn the horses out.

Why not? I mean, they enjoy the great outdoors, right? So… I still haven’t answered that question… why am I comparing the horses to skunks? My horses are trained. I walk in the barn, open the back door, open each individual stall door, and they walk themselves out the back of the barn. Then I close the back gate, get the stud and throw a rope around his neck (because most days I’m too lazy to put the halter on him), and walk him out to his pen.

(more…)

This one time I tried gardening….

Do you ever just wake up one morning and realize your day isn’t going as planned? When I woke up this morning I wanted to do something, I just wasn’t sure what. Today though was not what I planned.

My dad and husband planned on going and renting a bobcat. They planned on scraping the colts (horses) pen as well as the runs off the barn. Once that was done they were going to scrape out the back and put it more in a mound.

The more I thought about it that day the more I thought I wanted a garden so I started plotting and scheming where to put it and what to do. That’s when I decided to do a raised bed garden. I figured I needed landscaping timbers but my dad told me he already had some Cedar boards in the barn I could have so I decided that’s what I was going to use. While dad and hubby worked on scraping pens I went to working on finding boards, measuring boards, cutting boards, etc. Every so often I got help from them.

(more…)

Moving Cows

Well it’s spring time in the Ozarks. Time to start thinking about moving the cows home and off our hay field so the hay can grow.

The cows were real excited about being hauled too…. ha! Really they weren’t to bad. Dad got a little upset at us and said his cows wouldn’t work like we thought they would. sigh. Seems like we can’t work stupid cows without people having fits and everything else. Our friends came over to help both physical bodies as well as bringing the trailer to help haul since our trailer is only a 16′ and holds very few at once.

(more…)

Hauling Hay… Mud Style

It’s the time of year when grass really hasn’t started growing yet and we’re still having to feed hay but the hay supply is starting to run low. It tends to be a little stressful, not going to lie. This year we were given some hay. It was a long ways from home and we had to bring our own tractor to haul it home with, but you never complain there! We have hay to feed the cows and that’s what matters.

We spent 2 days hauling hay and one days experience was different than the next days experience. The first day we wound up in the wrong field. Still their field but the hay was older hay. Luckily we were directed to the correct field for the newer hay.

Driving in to the other field though we were beginning to wonder if there was hay in the field or not. It was kind of crazy. Seemed like we drove and drove and drove before we found the hay.

(more…)