Homegrown Food, 2023

 This summer, I started listing everything we ate that came from this little place here.  From earliest in the year, till now, this is the comprehensive list of all the edibles that have been produced (planted, raised, or grown wild) in 2023:

Maple syrup

Eggs

Asparagus (feral, as I had replanted my asparagus bed Fall 2022 and didn't harvest any this year so the crowns could be well fed).

Strawberries (although chickens and wild critters got most of them GRRR)

Lettuce

Chives

Peas

Mulberries (oh my, the crop just seemed to go for months!)

Cherries

Raspberries (a handful)

Black raspberries (the wild ones)

Garlic

Dill

Cilantro

Basil

Oregano

Lemon balm

Spearmint

Peppermint

Cucumbers (not many, abysmal year for squash types)

Chickens (raised two batches of broilers this summer)

Green beans (both bush and pole)

Sweet corn (good year, even managed to can and freeze some)

Potatoes

Blackberries (wild)

Green peppers (not great yield)

Jalapeno peppers (enormous ones; should have made poppers)

Paprika peppers (a mild kind and a spicy kind which I dried and ground into powder)

Tomatoes

Broccoli

Onions

Eggplant

Apples (a bumper crop)

Pears

Grapes (the grapes!  Grapes beyond my wildest dreams!)

Beets

Butternut squash

Venison (not grown by me, but produced by God)

Turnips (from the deer feed plot, LOL)

A Big Milestone

 How many miles will one engine and transmission drive if taken care of?  

I'm not sure.  But I'm on a mission to find out!

It started innocently enough, with our trusty rusty Suburban, which was not rusty at all back in 2005 when we bought it.  We needed a spacious vehicle we could fit our four growing children in (one of whom was all ready over 6 foot tall).  Something that also had four wheel drive, and the capability of towing a heavy trailer or big camper.  So we bought the Suburban, with about 5,000 miles on it, company used (a term that meant it was a vehicle driven for several months by an employee that had reached a certain level, but was never officially owned by anyone other than the company that had manufactured it).  And we drove it.  And drove it.  And drove it.

By the time the second child was in his senior year of high school (2010/2011), we had accumulated 150,000 miles on it.  And DH said that engine and transmission combo should be able to go 250,000 miles no problem (we had already owned 3 other GM vehicles--all of which were bought at 40,000+ miles--and driven each of them over 200,000 miles before a major repair forced the decision to sell them).  

So my goal became to drive my Suburban for 250,000 miles.  Through those miles, and years, it did get a few new parts, such as a water pump, a U-joint, an idler arm, new shocks, a couple rear wiper motors and door latches. . . but it ran.  Boy did it run.  Started up every single time I turned the key, without fail.  It went to Canada and back.  It went to Oregon and back.  It went to Florida and South Carolina and Arkansas (all separate trips, not one consecutive one).  It went to Pennsylvania.  It dropped one kid at the Marine Corps recruiting station to ship out to boot camp in California, and it took three other kids to their freshman college dorms.

It went through FOUR teenage drivers, and it looks like it!  It has rather a few dents and scuffs.  

At 245,000 miles, the tires on it were getting bald and one sprang a leak on the way to the tailor where DD1 was having her final dress fitting before her wedding.  So close to that 250,000 mile goal! We couldn't give up on it just because the tires needed replacing.   We'd averaged 70,000-80,000 miles per set of tires with that vehicle (always using the exact same brand and model of tire), so we knew by putting brand new tires on it we were going to have to extend our mileage goal out past 250,000.

My new goal (set in 2018): 300,000 miles.  Unless the engine blew or the transmission went out, there was no way I was not driving the trusty rusty Suburban an entire 300,000 miles.  A rusted through gas tank support bracket didn't stop us.  A blown brake line didn't stop us (the suburban is on it's third set of brake lines).  A leaky fuel line didn't stop us (possibly the third fuel line, I don't remember for sure but I think we replaced one a decade ago too??)  The check engine light that's been on since about mile 150k didn't stop us.  DD2 sliding off the road and into a bunch of trees during a snow storm in early 2022 didn't stop us.

Even needing yet another set of tires near the end of this past May didn't stop us.  Although we did go with a different brand of tires, lightly used, that DH picked up at an auction for $20 each.

Guess what finally happened earlier this month?!?

Trusty Rusty Suburban and I hit the big 300,000!

I knew we could do it.  We've been a good pair for the past nearly 19 years.

So is she off to the scrap yard now?

Oh heck no!  I've jokingly referred to her as my rolling science experiment for at least five years now.  Now that our mileage goal has been met, and she still starts the first time, every time, we are on a mission to see just how far she'll go.  Long distance driving has been off the table for several years all ready, but a short hop daily driver is still a good job for her.  

Although she is semi-retired. Due to the Swiss-cheese like state of her undercarriage (a lifetime of Michigan winters, you know), towing anything is out of the question, so no more hauling any type of trailer. This summer, she officially became my 'winter beater', parked during the good weather months and only called into duty late Fall through Spring when road conditions might be dicey and I could be in need of her four wheel drive.

But we're going to see how many more miles I can drive her.  Can I still be in her driver's seat in March of 2025, 20 years after we bought her?  That would be kind of a cool accomplishment.

Meanwhile, circumstances with DH's job have led us to obtaining a new vehicle for me to drive in the summer months.  Back in the summer of 2022 he got a promotion.  As part of the promotion, he gets a company car to drive.  But, as a condition of having that company car, we must purchase a brand new GM vehicle every four years or less.  The blue truck we own is a 2017 model, so that meant we needed to buy something within the time limit given after he was issued a company car.

Since we knew the Suburban was getting way into unknown mileage territory, the obvious answer to this requirement was to purchase a vehicle to be my daily driver once the Suburban was retired.  Now, looking at the financial side of things (car loan) and how much I hate having loans and paying interest, it made sense to me to look at the cheaper vehicle models.  We didn't need two pickup trucks (and the cost of a new one that would meet our needs--mainly half-ton minimum with crew cab and 4wd--would be over $800 a month in payments).  I honestly hate all the current SUVs (sorry if you love them, I would rather walk than  have one as my personal vehicle.  Have driven a few and don't like the feel or the utility aspect; it's not truck enough, but yet not a car either, LOL).  I don't need to haul a bunch of kids anymore on a daily basis, also a reason not to get an SUV, so a car seemed to be the logical choice.

Except that I've never been a car person.  In high school, I drove an early '80s Jeep Wagoneer (much more truck than today's Wagoneers).  The first vehicle I bought (at 18) was a half-ton pickup.  When DH was in college, we bought another '80s Jeep (a Cherokee that time, also very much a truck), and then from 1997 when we found out I was pregnant with our fourth child until 2005 when we bought the Suburban I drove a couple of Chevy Astro vans (built on truck platforms).  The only car we owned in the past 32 years that I actually liked, was our 1989 Bonneville (purchased in late 1993).  That puppy screamed!  I like a responsive car with a tight suspension.

So looking at the piddly Chevy car offerings in late 2022: Malibu, (which I know I don't like driving), and Impala, (which I like only slightly more), or Corvette (too expensive and too low slung for our long dirt farm driveway) or Camaro (hubba hubba!) the only one that even seemed like a viable option was the Camaro. I mean, it has some get up and go, it has a back seat I could put grandkids in if needed, and it has enough ground clearance for our driveway.

But only if I could get it as cheaply as possible, without a bunch of bells and whistles I don't care about, and in a color I liked (I'm super picky about vehicle colors on something I know I'll be owning/driving for a decade or more), and it had to be a manual transmission (because they're way more fun to drive)!

DH and I looked at dealer websites for over a month.  Of course this was prime chip shortage time and nobody had hardly anything anywhere in the entire United States.  We were running out of time before we had to buy that new vehicle.  So we decided maybe the way to do it was to order one custom built--I could pick the colors, choose if it was a base model or the next level up, decide whether it was an automatic or manual transmission.  DH called many dealers inquiring about ordering one.  Orders were being done in allotments (thanks Covid, then chip shortage), you couldn't just order one whenever you wanted.  You had to pick a dealer and wait until they were given a Camaro allotment by GM.  We actually got on the waitlist at two dealers, one of which said they had two people ahead of us waiting for Camaros and the other said we would be top of the list.

Two months went by with no word from either dealer.  When DH called to ask as to our status on the wait list, the one dealer said "you're still number three" and the other dealer said "I don't have any record of you being on a list, and we have no idea when we're getting a Camaro allotment."  Uh-oh.  We were running out of time.

Another month went by.  DH started calling dealers again.  Found one that 'should be' getting an allotment in a few weeks and had no one waiting for a Camaro.  DH jumped on it.  In fact, he and I 'built' my car online, he sent a link for that exact vehicle to the dealer and he went in and put down a deposit for the first Camaro allotment they were given.

Three weeks later, we had an order confirmation.  Two weeks after that, we had a build date.  The time period for us to purchase that required new vehicle was almost expired, but because we actually had an order number, we were given an extension.  About three months after putting down that deposit and sending the link to the exact vehicle I wanted built (exterior color, interior color, engine, transmission, trim package, wheels, and Camaro badges for the sides--can't forget the Camaro badges!) we got a call from the dealership that my Camaro had arrived and was ready for us to come sign the paperwork on.

I can't lie, I haven't been so excited about a vehicle since the day we picked up the Suburban in 2005.  I was walking on air.  And only slightly anxious about adding a car payment to our budget.  But you know, this Camaro was cheaper than a second truck.  Cheaper than a SUV.  Even cheaper than an Impala or a Malibu.  Because she is pretty much base with no frills--except the black stripes up her hood and her Camaro badges!  She's a 4-cylinder six-speed manual.  She's tight, and she's quick.  Everything I like in a car. 

Sweet Madame Blue (yes, that's a play on a Styx song) and I are hopefully going to be a pair for a long, long time.  If it took over 18 years to get 300k miles on the Suburban--of which the first 6 years included driving over 400 miles every week taking kids to and from their parochial K-8 school and to sports practices and games,4 years after that being trips to high school practices and games and long drives to drop off kids at college, plus being our designated long haul trip vehicle for about 14 years, it's going to take forever to hit 300k with Sweet Madame Blue. Now that I'm employed at home (yay horse business!) and only driving Sweet Madame Blue short distances once or twice a week during the good weather months and maybe a road trip every few years, she is probably the car that I'll be driving until I get too old to be behind a steering wheel.

I do have to confess that I've noticed some drawbacks to my sporty little car.  

1.  I can no longer straddle dead things in the road like I'm used to doing in the Suburban or pick-up.  I had to learn to remember to steer around them, not over them.

2.  I can't see cool free things people have set out beside the road, stop and load them up.  They don't fit in her trunk like things fit in the back of the Suburban or pick-up.

3. I might not be outgoing enough to drive her in public.  I'm massively introverted.  It has taken me by surprise (and sometimes uncomfortably so) to have people wave at me while I'm driving her, or even stop and strike up a conversation at the gas station or grocery store parking lot (typically men).

4. I'm deathly afraid of hitting a deer while driving.  With the Suburban I always knew I'd come out unharmed in a car-deer altercation.  With the car, I have no such confidence. I don't want to drive her at dawn, dusk, or at night.

But I still love her.  I think I'll keep her. 😁

Horse Update, December

 I am loving having horses at this little place here finally.  I confess that there are some days that I feed horses their breakfast, then go back to bed for an hour, then get up and continue on with the day.  My energy levels are still not what I'd like them to be.  I also wish my family could see my barn time as a JOB and therefore my schedule is my work schedule and don't ask me to do things for you during that time period.  But, so far, they seem to think I'm home all the time so what's the big deal if they want me to do things in a different order rather than 6:30 a.m. is morning feed, 9 a.m.to noon being my 'office hours' where I'm at work (training horses and cleaning stalls) so leave me alone, and 5 p.m. is evening feed .  I guess the LBM (Little Black Mare) isn't the only one I'll be training in the next few months. . . 

Speaking of the LBM, she has some traits I find not so great--like being hugely insecure and not knowing what to do with herself if the Poetess is out of sight, but she also likes attention and likes being worked.  So far all our work has been in the cross ties (learning to NOT having a fit that she's in the barn being groomed while the Poetess is out in turnout), on the longe line (where she's a rock star), or in hand as I walk her away and out of sight of the Poetess in preparation for when we get to the stage where I'm riding her and we head out to the paths through the woods.  She's ready to be ridden though, so that's next up on the docket.

And while she's absolutely in love with the Poetess, Poetess is not in love with her.  It's more of an "I'll tolerate you, but only so close, and only if you remember that I'm the boss" kind of relationship in Poetess's eyes.  There were two big kicking type incidences early on once I put them in the same turnout (after a few days of being separated by a fence), but nothing drastic.  Now if the LBM gets out of line Poetess pins her ears and turns her head and the LBM beats a hasty retreat several yards away.

As close as Poetess will allow.

Poetess is rather jealous of me working with the LBM, and, if I go out in their pasture with them, she will keep herself inserted between me and the LBM so that the LBM has no chance of getting pets or treats.  It's both annoying (makes it hard to get the LBM for working her unless I do it first thing in the morning before turning her out) and kind of entertaining.  All summer and fall Poetess was kind of "well, I guess I'll let you catch me" in regards to me going out in the pasture where she was boarded; sometimes she would come to me and sometimes she would reluctantly stand still while I came to her.  Here, however, she has laid claim to me in no uncertain terms; whinnies when she sees me outside and is always first to the gate when I go to get her (or the LBM).

I was honestly kind of afraid that now that we have two horses in residence, DH would lose interest in finishing the barn and fencing the other pastures.  Interestingly, it's been the opposite.  He's been doing all kinds of stuff, from tinkering with the barn doors to make them less drafty, to setting depth on the stall floors and getting the gravel base in, to buying all the lumber we need for the remaining four stalls and getting a large majority of the walls built!  He took the day off work on his birthday and spent the entire day building the walls to cover the metal barn siding on the stall interiors.

Screeding the floor
(I had done the screeding on the first 12' but it messed up my back,
 so DH had to do the rest of the stall floors himself)

Stall boards

A third stall, minus the front!

Two days' work from DH.

He's also been working on extending the hot tape above the perimeter fence; it now goes on three complete fence lines.  As soon as he gets ahold of more insulators for the wood posts it will get finished and be connected the the existing hot tape on the perimeter of the two existing pastures.  He's also talking about setting gate posts and t-posts for pastures three and four in the coming month.

Looks like I need to get in gear with advertising for a third (or fourth?) stall being available in January for more horses to come board with me.

The Wine Has Been Bottled!

 This week, DH and I bottled his wine that he'd made from our bumper crop of concord grapes.  It could have been bottled sooner, but staying in the carboy after it was done fermenting wouldn't hurt it any, so we waited until we had a spare evening.

He decided instead of putting it into wine bottles, he was going to use some green Grolsch style beer bottles that we've had for a long time.  This decision was based on a) we typically don't go through an entire bottle of wine the day it's opened and b) he had loaned out his corker and given away our corks years ago when he and some coworkers made a batch of wine from a kit.  By using the Grolsch bottles we didn't need corks (or corker, which he did actually find the night we bottled) and the bottles were a much more manageable quantity of about 16 ounces.

It's been a long time since he's brewed anything (10 years?  Don't remember for sure), and the tube that attaches to his racking cane was in questionable condition when he took it from where it had been stored.  So I grabbed a length of tubing from my maple syrup supplies (complete with plastic spile attached) and he stuck that on his racking cane.  It worked really well and the spile was actually easier to hold in the corner of his mouth to get the siphon going than the original tubing.  Might just leave that spile in with the winemaking supplies for future vintages.

The carboy had quite a bit of sediment in it (brewer's note: next year buy and use cheesecloth for filtering the must in the first two phases!!) and some got into the pail we were racking into.  So, the carboy got rinsed clean, then the wine was poured back in there and we racked a second time; after rinsing the bucket out.  Then DH bottled from the valve on the bottom of the bucket.

Sometimes he got a bottle a little fuller than he wanted it, and so a juice glass was set beside the bottling bucket for him to pour the extra into (rather than mixing it back in).  If the glass got a little full looking, we sampled it in order to make room for more wine from overfilled bottles.

It was an interesting taste; very similar to what we remember his Dad's wine being (it's been a long, long time since the last of that got drank up--his father having died in 1994. . . ) yet different.  DH thinks ours is a tad sweeter, but for me, I get the same initial "wow, that's dry!" reflex when it hits my tongue as I remember his Dad's creating.  It definitely has a kick; it's not a sweet dessert type wine.

I forgot to count how many bottles we ended up with.  We did use up all the green Grolsch bottles we have, plus one larger clear one.  There was quite a bit of sediment that we did a not very in depth filtering of, so that decreased our wine yield from what we'd expected.  Next year I'll have to buy some cheese cloth to filter the must through in the transfer from initial fermentation to secondary; we didn't use any this year and that is probably why we ended up with somewhere in the vicinity of a gallon of sediment-filled wine.

this little place here heritage wine, 2023 vintage

December Sewing and Stitching Update

 I sewed zero things.  I do, however, have the pattern pieces for a corduroy jumper (a Christmas gift for Faline) pinned to the fabric and ready to cut out.  That is a project I thought would be mostly sewn together by now, but, alas, other things have taken up my time.

Two cross-stitched beaded Santas are finished, though!  One is about to be hung on my own tree, the other will be gifted to my Mom who collects Santa stuff.

Deer Harvest 2023

Warning: if you're PETA, or if you're squeamish, you might want to skip the third, fifth and sixth pictures in this post.

Given that we have a lot of project stuff we've been trying to accomplish before winter sets in, and that DH was able to get an elk on his trip out west in October, neither he nor I have hunted as hard this deer season as we have in years past. 

For him, that meant not going out in bow season (Oct 1-Nov 14) hardly at all.  For me, that has meant if I'm not feeling up to the hike to the woods and up the ladder to the tree stand, or if the weather is rainy, (or like the several days in the second week of firearm season snowy, windy, and suddenly subfreezing) I haven't gone out. So, although deer season is not done yet, I'm going to post about it now.  December gets really crazy with all the Christmas stuff added in.

The morning of November 15th (opening day of firearm season) was beautiful, if a tad warm.  I didn't even wear my insulated bibs (and I chill easily), that's how warm it was.  The sunrise from the tree stand was reddish, and I thought of the old saying about 'red in the morning, sailors take warning' and wondered if it applied to deer hunters too.

The deer were active.  I saw many in groups of two or three, and occasionally a lone deer also.  But they were either does, which I wasn't going to shoot on opening day (especially as we are low on freezer space since DH brought an elk home from his Colorado trip), or they were fawns or small bucks.  I began naming the bucks as I saw them: Skewers (tall, spindly spikes reminiscent of shish kebab skewers), Tiny Basket (six points, but the whole headgear was shorter than his ears and wasn't any wider than his ears), Fork-Half (antler on the left only, and forked, which distinguished him from the buck DH has seen that also only has an antler on the left but has four points on that one antler).

Small deer eating windfall apples at the entrance to the woods

DH was also seeing does and smallish bucks.  Until, slightly behind him over his right shoulder and coming through the trees, he saw a much wider rack.  I heard a shot ring out to the south of me, where DH was sitting, and I got excited, thinking he'd gotten something.  Then a second shot rang out, and my exact thought was "either that's not him or he's shooting trees", as rarely does DH take a second shot unless the first one missed.

As I found out a few minutes later, via text, he'd shot a tree.  Literally.  His scope was not adjusted quite right for that distance.

But he'd also shot a deer and there was a clear blood trail.  So looked like we'd be bringing a deer in from the woods later that morning.

painting the woods red

We waited almost two hours before I got down from my tree stand and walked carefully to the other side of the woods where DH was sitting.  I didn't kick anything up on my way there, so we hoped that meant that his buck was dead and piled up somewhere.

From his stand, DH directed me to the spot where he thought the buck had been standing when he'd shot it.  Then he got down, and we started following the very clear blood trail. But after only about 10 minutes, up ahead of us a buck leapt up and went crashing off.  Dang!  It wasn't dead yet.  And we didn't want it to run across property lines, so we backed out the way we'd come, away from the direction the buck went, and went into the house for some brunch.

DH tracking

It so happened that opening day was a half day from school for the grandkids, and I'd told DS1 I would pick his kids up from school so he wouldn't have to take off early from work.  When I went to get K3, Toad and Rascal, DH went back out to the woods to locate his buck.

By the time the grandkids and I arrived at this little place here, DH had located the buck and was getting ready to go bring it in from the woods with the 4-wheeler and wood hauler trailer.  The grandkids and I quickly threw orange hats on our heads and jumped on the trailer to help.

They were quite interested in touching and examining the deer, although Rascal was a little sad that it was dead "Because I like deer".  (I wonder if being around the deceased deer touched something in him about the death of his mother this Spring. . . ) 

While they may not have had classes at school that afternoon,  they got quite a life science class at this little place here instead.  Started with Field Dressing 101 where they watched intently and asked questions while DH dressed the deer.  That rolled into an Anatomy Class as I explained each step of the process and DH pointed out organs as he removed them.

After the deer was dressed we put it back on the trailer and hauled it up to DH's shop, where he rinsed the gut cavity with the hose, and then hung the deer from a gambrel.  More deer anatomy lesson as he explained to the grandkids how there were tendons in the back legs that you could hang the deer from and what they did on a live animal (and how people have tendons in our legs too).  Once the deer was hung, K3 was excited to find the entrance and exit wounds, although she wasn't brave enough to put her finger in them.

A few days later we had them overnight, and we served venison from that buck.  They looked a little skeptical at first, but then dug in heartily (except Rascal who doesn't eat hardly anything except pizza and chicken nuggets; neither of which this Grandma is willing to buy premade just for him.  I was/still am a picky eater and learned to either eat or go hungry and am of the mindset that he can learn the same thing.)

Hunting is pretty much over for me now that there's horses at this little place here that need to be fed at certain times of the day (I'm not that fond of late season hunting anyway since it overlaps all the Christmas prep craziness).  Dh has gone out a few times a week, but he's not in a hurry to harvest another deer unless a really impressive one happens to walk his way.

Knitting Update, December

 In the past month, my knitting has consisted of dish cloths.  Lots and lots of dish cloths.  All using patterns that I've made before, although it's been at least a handful of years.  I'm undecided how many I'll keep for myself and how many I'll gift at Christmas.

I read The Winemaker's Wife by Kristin Harmel and was surprised to find exactly how the World War II era characters were tied to the modern day characters. All in all, I'm not sure I liked most of the characters.

I also read The Road Trip by Beth O'Leary and didn't really like it as well as the other two novels I've read by this author. It was a decently written book; but I just couldn't quite relate.

I finally finished reading New Track, New Life by Kimberly Godwin Clark.  I had started reading it over the summer, hoping to find some insights into retaining an OTTB like The Poetess.  It wasn't as informative as I'd hoped, and so I picked it up and put it down several times before finally reading to the end of the book.

Currently I'm reading Where There's Muck by Catherine Robinson.  It is a sequel to Forging On, which I read earlier this year, and I'm enjoying the further adventures of the characters I'd met in the first book.  As in real life with horses, there's always something you didn't quite expect waiting at the turn of a page.

I Have a Horse Farm!

Let me tell you a story about not giving up.  Patience.  Endurance.  Hope.

As a child, I loved horses.  Not surprising, as it's a phase almost all girls go through. In fifth through seventh grade I sold hundreds of boxes of Girl Scout cookies in order to earn (pay) my way to Girl Scout summer camp, and for three years running I spent a blissful week at Camp Deer Trails doing the horse program that was a (somewhat pricey) camp option.

I came home from that third summer camp just wickedly smitten with the desire to own a horse so that I could ride all the time, not just one week in July.  I begged my parents to buy me a horse.  Practical people, they told me they didn't have the money for it, but if I could find a horse that didn't cost more than the amount in my savings account (my entire life savings for nearly 13 years, minus the time in Kindergarten I talked them into letting me buy a parakeet and birdcage) they would consider letting me get a horse.

Being someone who doesn't give up easily when there's something she really really wants, it took me a month of daily scouring the for sale ads in every newspaper I could get my hands on before I found an ad for a horse that didn't cost more than my bank balance.  This was the days way, way before internet and horse for sale websites.  And we (my parents and I) were pretty clueless that a horse is not a horse is a horse.  That maybe some horses are better or worse than others.

To shorten the story a bit, several weeks later, my bank account was empty and we were taking delivery of a nearly tailless (hence the low price) 8 year old Arabian gelding, delivered by it's former owner to the boarding facility that was just 2.5 miles from my house!  2.5 miles which I rode my bike, both ways, every day (except maybe Sunday if my parents objected) rain or shine, to go see and ride my horse.  When the weather turned snowy, my parents did drive me, rather than having me bike on slippery roads in the days where a 10-speed was standard and mountain bikes with fat tires were unknown, but a lot of times that meant I couldn't ride my horse everyday. There were stipulations to this deal: my parents would pay board, veterinary and farrier expenses as long as I was not only dedicated to this animal (ie. didn't lose interest in a few months) but also kept my grades up and stayed on at minimum the B honor roll (I'd always been on honor roll, often the A honor roll) every quarter of school and took riding lessons so I would learn to be safe in the saddle.  Because a cheaply priced horse of your own is not the same as an experienced camp or riding stable horse.

I really believe they thought this was a phase that might last a year.  It's lasted much, much longer than that.  All through my teens I got more and more involved in horses. I joined 4-H and was super active in that, being a club officer all but the first year of my membership and the club president for three years before I aged out of the program.  I showed my horse extensively in the summers.  My own horse needed retraining, which I learned to do via riding lessons. Then I sold my original horse and bought a half-ownership in another one, who was barely three years old and that I trained myself (again with help from my instructor during lessons).  That horse I paid for by doing barn chores for it's other owner for a year straight.

In fact, I graduated high school (almost five years after that initial horse purchase) with a 15-year goal: I wanted, by the time the 15th anniversary of my graduation and entrance into the adult world rolled around, to be married, have four kids, and have a horse farm of my own.

So, fast forward 15 years from graduation, and lots of hours in the saddle and even more hours mucking stalls at other people's farms.  I'm married, we have four children (the oldest of whom will be starting high school that Fall), and we're living in a house we built on the 40 acres we bought with the intention of making it a horse boarding and training farm.  Built the house first, and were making plans to build the barn, which I designed and DH was going to sketch up blueprints for then construct ourselves.

Then, fast forward 20 years plus a few months, kids going through high school and then college and then marriage (3 of 4), a recession, several head count reductions at DH's employer where we weren't sure he'd have a job to pay the mortgage let alone fund a horse barn, seven different horse farms I've been employed at (three of which I also boarded my horses at), and well, here we are this week.  Same 40 acres, same husband, same four kids now age 26-34, five grandkids, having owned and sold 1 horse and owned and put to sleep 4 other horses (including the kids' pony)--all of which I worked off board on during the time I owned them-- and this past summer bought yet another horse.

Which brings us to now.  I finally have my horse boarding and training farm.  The Poetess moved in on Wednesday, along with a large pony/small horse that will be boarding here over the winter and be in half-training while I tune her up (after not being handled hardly at all in 2023) and make her pretty much that anyone can ride type of horse people think of after having ridden at a camp or a riding stable.

It turned out to be 35 years (and a few months), not 15 years, but I didn't give up.  I kept hoping, kept trying, kept being patient, and now I have my horse farm.  I'm not mucking stalls for someone else. I'm mucking my stalls. I'm not working horses owned by my employer or that someone else is collecting the training fee for (while I get an hourly wage that is way less than the hour's training fee).  I'm the barn owner, I'm the trainer.  Goal attained.

Stalls are full!

Poetess in her new home

Now we just need to get the other four stalls built and rest of the pastures cross fenced so that I can have more than one client at a time!

Prepping for Horses

 I last posted on horse barn project progress two and a half months ago.  There's a whole lot that's happened since then.

We bought stall mats!  That was an epic search in itself, trying to find somewhere that sells the 4' x 6', 3/4" thick rubber mats with grooves on the bottom side (for better grip to the stall base) and a slight texture for traction on the top side.  For some reason the vast majority of places we looked, both in store and online, are carrying mats that are completely smooth on one side (not good for horses to walk on, very slippery when the slightest bit wet--like a humid summer day or when there's a fresh pee puddle) and have raised circles on the other (folks, I've cleaned stalls that had mats like that and they're killer on your plastic manure fork tines, plus it's really hard to sweep them clean of packed fine bedding/manure particles especially if that stuff is wet).  Those wouldn't do. Not in my barn.

We were about ready to order some from a place out of state and actually take a day to go get them and bring them back to this little place here.  And then, out of the blue, I found the right kind of mats only about 30 miles away.

Not only did I find the right mats, they were on sale when I found them!  Normally $50 per mat, they were only $35 each.  Hallelujah!  With a price savings like that, and being how hard they were to find, DH said we should go ahead and get enough mats for all six stalls even though our goal was to finish just two stalls before winter.  The savings on buying all the mats we'd need at the $35 price rather than as needed at regular price was like getting about 10 mats for free.  That's about 1 2/3 stalls out of the six we're going to build matted at zero cost.

unloading a pallet and a half of  mats with the tractor

Of course now that we had them, we needed to install them.  They are heavy (almost 100 pounds each) and I'd heard horror stories about installing them, especially when you need to cut a mat to fit around a post in the stall, or if your stalls aren't exactly 12' x 12' (which with mine aren't as we put boards over the steel barn siding to protect it from being kicked through by a naughty horse).  Having build lots of stuff ourselves, with the exception of one miscut mat (whew, glad we had more on hand than just the 12 mats needed for two stalls!) everything went easy peasey.  Keep your utility knife blade sharp, measure three times not just twice, and snap a chalk line on your mat to keep your cut straight.

a matted stall

 (with a whole bunch of dusty footprints from carrying each mat in over the packed base)

Like all aspects of this horse barn project, we didn't actually buy mats and install them on consecutive days.  Nope, I think we actually owned mats for about a month before we got around to installing them.  Because on good weather days, we needed to take advantage of the favorable conditions and work outside.  On fences.  There were gates to hang, like the one below which is 16' and allows access into the pastures with machinery (like the haybine and baler used to cut and bale the second cutting hay in August).

There were t-posts, lots and lots of t-posts to pound in rows to mark the individual pastures within the 6-7 acres we fenced in with the non-climb mesh.  We put in posts for two initial pastures of approximately one acre each.

running a tape line to keep our t-post row straight and evenly spaced

Once there were t-posts marking the boundaries of the pastures, we had to put the insulator clips on them (three per post) and then we needed to string the three rows of 1.5" electric fence tape up to complete the fencelines.  Plus a single strand of same electric tape 6" above the non-climb perimeter fence to discourage any horse that thinks they might want to try to lean over the fence and eat what's on the other side (typically squashing the fence shorter).

Of course this all didn't happen in a weekend either, as pounding in about 1,000 linear feet of t-posts spaced 10 feet apart didn't happen in one day.  And, while the clip on insulators for the t-posts were readily available locally, for some reason matching white insulated caps for the posts (for the top strand of fencing) were rare.  Tons and tons of yellow ones, but only a few packages of white ones (and we needed about twenty packages) could be found--at $15 per package of 10.  

Online, DH found a place down south that had the white caps for less than $9 a package, although it was somewhere neither of us had ever heard of before and thus weren't sure we wanted to just trust an unknown website to actually send us 20 packages of caps if we entered our credit card info for a payment of $180 plus shipping.  I emailed customer service of a horse supply/tack shop I have done online business with for many years and asked if they would be willing to price match.  They agreed, and so we ordered our 20 packages of caps from there, even getting free shipping since the total order price exceeded their minimum requirement to qualify for free shipping.  Shipping was very quick, so in the end it worked out better than trying to convince the local farm store to price match the online place plus order the extra quantity we needed that exceeded their tiny supply in stock.

Once we had all the insulators, caps and electric tape installed, DH needed to put in the grounding rods, and run electrical wire from the fence blitzer located in the barn, outside to the first corner of the fence.  The electric tape on the perimeter is what is directly connected to that wire, and then jump wires had to be put on from that top strand of tape to the three strands of electric tape on each cross fence where they abut the perimeter.  This was only recently finished; as you can see in the pictures below the trees have lost their leaves by now.

Before DH went on his elk hunting trip out to Colorado in early October, he worked on electrical inside the barn, getting the outlet and switchbox for the aisle lights in.  Now we could work in the evenings too, and on cloudy stormy days that didn't have much sunlight.  Which was good, since most of our project time was after DH was done with his regular job each day, and there wasn't nearly as much daylight for that as there had been in June, July and August.

He also put in the light above the two stalls we'd finished, although until we get the outer wall of the tack room built (where the switchbox for the stall light is going to go), I control that light by turning on and off the circuit breaker in the electric panel.

While he was away elk hunting, I stained and sealed the stall walls, both inside the stalls and on the aisle side.  It was something I felt was necessary as I don't want to eventually end up with graying wood or with walls that have manure stains soaked into them.  I wanted to keep the wood light, as barn interiors tend toward the dark side anyway, so chose a stain with barely any tint to it.

Partially stained, 

you can see the difference between the natural fairly freshly milled pine color and the stain tint.

(Note the floor had not been matted yet)

All stained!

Once we got power to the fence, there were just a few small odds and ends until the barn was ready for horses to move in.  A major 'small' thing was that I insisted DH finally (after 18 years!) put the door handles on the big barn doors, both inside and outside so they were easier for me to open.  Because on nasty cold days, who wants the barn door open longer than necessary and it's so much faster if I can open the door with one hand while holding a horse in the other, walk through, and without letting go of the horse, shut the door behind me (with one hand).  He can usually open the doors with one hand even without handles, but I almost always need both hands.  I was so happy the day those handles were put on and I could slide doors open and closed effortlessly.

A handle on the door!

Another 'can wait until last' little thing was installing the bucket hangers in the stalls for water buckets and the corner grain feeders.  I did not want to feed out of floor tubs, as horses tend to dump them and then waste feed by getting bedding in it (thus not eating it).  And I didn't want corner feeders that are permanently attached to the walls, as those are a pain in the rear to clean and sanitize (in the instance, say a horse decides to poop in it, or when a new horse will be living in that stall and I want to sanitize feeders between occupants).  So I needed eye screws in the corner from which to hand the grain feeder.

The buckets were hung, 

in the stalls with care;

in the hope that horses

soon would be there.

And that, dear readers, brings us to this current week in time.

Unexpected 'Home Improvement'

 Two weeks ago, I was washing dishes, and went to turn my kitchen faucet to the side of the sink that I rinse dishes in.  It practically came off in my hand.  Uh-oh.  That's not supposed to happen.

Luckily, there was no water seeping (or spraying!) anywhere, so I carefully finished the dishes without touching the faucet lest it come completely off. Then I told DH that we had a problem I needed his help with.

When he started investigating, he found that the little metal plate that sat (hidden) underneath the faucet had rusted through. 

 If you remember my post from about a year ago where I mentioned we'd  replaced the kitchen sink in early Spring of 2021 but had reused the fixtures/faucet because I couldn't find any I liked. . . I guess maybe we should have at least replaced that plate.  Because it's demise was about to cause rather a headache.

In the process of removing the rusty remnants of that metal plate and reattaching the faucet (with a random washer from the garage doing the duty of that plate), we ran into a problem.  The water lines wouldn't connect, even though they'd been in fine working order just shortly before, when we'd disconnected them.  DH was on his back, his torso squashed into the cabinet under the sink, with limited mobility of his arms and hands.  He's not a small guy, and has pretty much always had broad shoulders. Through the years they've gotten rather well padded and even broader. Not the build of a person who puts themselves into sink base cabinets.  And try as he might, he just could not get the plastic clamp-on connectors for the water lines to reattach snugly.

The verdict: they were broken/damaged in removal and now we needed either new ones, or a whole new faucet (which would come with new lines and connectors).  Not the thing you want to find out at 9 p.m. on a Friday night.  Especially when you look up any and all of the big box stores within a 30 mile radius and find that NONE of them have that type of connector (ahem, 20 years old now) in stock.

Which meant, oh dread of the existential kind, I would have to get a new faucet.  Something I couldn't find a style back in 2021 that both fit my needs and my aesthetic.  I'm rather picky about the function of my kitchen faucet, not just in the part that the water comes out of, but also in the ease of adjusting temperature of the water (personally, I find two-handled faucets to take more time and effort to make small adjustments in water temp) and also what the thing looks like.  

Friday night I think we were up until midnight looking and looking and looking at faucets online and then, when finding one I said was acceptable (none matched all my criteria exactly), seeing if we could get it in store the next morning without driving 100 miles to do so.  We found exactly one, about half hour away.

On Saturday morning, DH went and got it.  We pulled the old faucet and components out, dropped the new faucet and components in, and reconnected the water lines.  All in all, that took a couple hours from start to finish (and stuffing DH in the cabinet, then pulling him out again when he got a cramp or had to take a peek at the installation diagram, and stuffing him back in again.)  I got the (dubious) honor of being the tool girl, or surgical nurse, or whatever you want to call the person handing tools to DH while he was in the cabinet and could neither see nor reach them on the counter or floor, then taking tools from him when he was done with them, then handing them back again because oops, he wasn't really done with that size wrench yet.

After much marital tension, we did manage to complete the task and I have a fully functional kitchen faucet again.  It's a little darker color and a little chunkier design than I prefer, but at least it's got the high arc faucet I need for washing large pots and canners and the single handle that is not attached to the side of the faucet. The italicized part being super important to me, and a huge reason it was so hard (in 2021 and now) to find a faucet I like.  The ones currently in style with the handle attached to the side of the faucet just make me think of science lab sinks from high school, and, well, as much as I loved science lab, I just don't want to think of that every time I see or use (a billion times a day) my kitchen sink!

Task complete, new acceptable faucet installed

Probably the vast majority of people in this situation would call a plumber to deal with the issue.  Not me and DH.  Nope, we know we can do this ourselves faster and cheaper (and I can be waaaayyyy pickier) ourselves than if we tried to find an plumber and get on their schedule.  Besides, why deprive ourselves of the great opportunity for some husband and wife bonding time?

Horse Update, November

 The Poetess and I took a step back, and moved forward in other directions this past month.  It began with canter troubles popping up to the right when longeing in the bridle.  A very frustrating session of Poetess getting most of the way around the circle and then stopping dead from a canter, lap after lap after lap.  She'd been doing really well when this seemed to pop up for no reason.  The next session, she was fine again and in fact gave me the most awesome canters she's ever done in each direction.  But after a handful more sessions, here came the canter tenseness and stopping issue again.  So I decided to stop longeing off the bridle and go back to longeing just from the halter without even having her wear the bridle.

That was the 'step back'.  Going back to just a halter when longeing, I decided to do a longer amount of  pole work in each session.  We warm up doing all three gaits without them, then spend about five minutes in each direction going over poles at walk and trot.  I even added a third pole to the circle, one stride from our original pole. So on one half of the circle she steps over a single pole and on the other half she has to do two poles in a row.  That has gotten her a bit less distracted and more focused on longeing rather than outside the arena--all the falling leaves have opened up views into the woods and brush near the arena that she didn't notice during the summer--as well as having her stretch through her back more and regulate her tempo.

We also had a stretch of quite a few rainy days that made the sand arena rather deep and I didn't want to longe her in it for fear of inducing injury to her legs.  Some of those days we just hand walked around the arena and over the poles.

Something I learned, or rather, was confirmed during the wet spell is that Poetess doesn't mind the wet weather; she likes to play in puddles and roll in the mud.  So, there's been lots of time spent grooming, especially on days the arena was too wet to work in at all, or my breath isn't good enough to walk out there and back with her.  

Only a little muddy

We've also spent time bonding via hand grazing as well as practicing being caught.  She's getting better at seeing me and walking to me rather than standing and 'allowing' me to walk to her.  In fact, in late October, for the first time ever, she saw me come through the gate to her pasture and she ran to me!!

That was such an awesome thing to see: my horse recognize me and willingly come to me rather than just stopping and waiting somewhat grudgingly for me to come to her.

Her winter coat has come in a lot, and her dapples are gone.  But I don't mind, as her winter coat is darker than what she'd bleached out to in the summer and that makes her little bitty star of white hairs more prominent on her forehead.  Honestly, I'd forgotten she even had a star!

Stay tuned, as big changes are ahead for us both: Poetess will soon be moving to this little place here instead of being boarded elsewhere!