Blogger Issues - Short Update

I have been absent from the blog lately as I have been spending my time trying to resolved the picture upload issue through blogger/picasa.   I think I may have found the issue with the upload size...the trouble is I already have over 180 picture in my blog so far and they all have to be resized to a smaller format...ONE at a time!

In the mean time tho, I must share the fun I had on Sunday.

My friend, co-worker and unfailing workout motivator, Lynn planted the seed of interest in running the Santa 5K in Hamilton.  We didn't run/walk for a top finish placing, but rather to finish and have a fun morning out.  

Here we are in our Santa suits.  

Then on Sunday afternoon I went out for my very first hack with both horses together with one of my best friends Reta.   Reta is by far one of the biggest influences in my life; a mentor, a friend, an inspiration.   Here we are on our way out to the back woods then over to the Grand River.

Molly "The Terrorist" Update
She's growing like a weed!  And her jaws are getting stronger and her hyperactivity is also showing an ever growing ferocity!   She's great on weekends when she has had time outside running and chewing and basically blowing off steam.  Weekdays tho when she is inside all day with nothing to do in her play pen...she becomes "The Terrorist" because she will bark, bite or bully anything she can influence into her sphere once she gets out of there.   We certainly have our work cut out for us for the next 2 years.

Let There be Light

With the time change life has changed considerably here on the farm.   It's dark out now by 5:15 pm and outdoor work has ground to pretty much a halt on weekdays after work.
Not that there isn't a full list of indoor jobs to do but the motivation has also slowed to a near death experience!   The work in the house just doesn't seem as much fun as the barn work!

The hydro has been getting fixed in the stable.  For some unknown reason the previous owners had all the stable lights as plugs at the back of a pump cabinet.   I know crazy; 1 - putting full strings of lights on receptacle plugs and 2 - having to climb into the back of the pump closet to plug them in when you wanted the lights on!  
We have had the local electrician (who is also our old neighbour from Decewsville Rd) rewiring the barn.   We have switches now for the stable lights, the aisle lights and the outdoor front barn lights.
We also now have a couple of plugs, which we had no plugs previously and the new wiring has been run for the new outdoor plug for the heated troughs and the LED flood light for the front 2 pastures.  
We also have the hydro service between the house and the barn marked so that the trenching can continue for the new service.   The first new pole is "supposed" to get installed tomorrow and then the second pole near the house on Monday or Tuesday.   Once the poles are in we can get the new transformer hooked up and that means the new hydro service to the barn and shop.  No more 30 amps running the entire lot of farm buildings!  

Even tho the motivation has been low for actual work around the house after dark, I have got the spark back for my baking urges.   (Uh-Oh, I can feel my clothes getting tight already!) I tried out a new recipe this week; Apple Cider Caramels from The Smitten Kitchen.   I have pictures to post however blogger has given me a limit on photos and I can't post them!   I am still pretty new to blogging, so if anyone out there has more info on how to get around the limit or if there is a new site that I can use please message me!!

I had a fabulous ride through the woods tonight on Izzy.  Just wonderful to get outside tonight before the darkness fell.  I timed it perfectly making it down the farm lane back to the barn by 5:10 pm.   There are so many trails to explore out back...I can't wait to get some of the farm stuff done so that I can venture out for hours at a time without having heavy guilt for being gone for so long on a perfect weather day.  (Knowing that there won't be too many more of those!)   The corn is now off out front by the river.   I was hoping for decent weather this weekend to take Izzy down to the river.

Baby Molly is growing and we have discovered that the dog we have on the weekend with loads of outdoor exercise is not the same dog that we have during the week when she spends the majority of her day in the crate.   The training is coming along very well.   There obviously has been the odd accident in the house...due to the lack of Mom and Dad paying attention that Miss Molly has woke up and should be put out!   DH has started to work on training her attention span.   At the moment its about the same as that of a goldfish!   This little dog is not interested in food treats...so motivating her to come when called hasn't been as easy as other dogs we have had.   Hopefully her ADD will disappear as she grows up...if not, we have a very long 10+ years ahead of us!!

Baby Molly and Beautiful Fall Weekend

We have decided on a name...Molly.
She's just such a little doll.   I can't believe that 15 pounds can exude so much love, enthusiasm and exuberance.   I also can't believe the set of lungs that a little 15 pounder has at night when she DOES NOT want to be in her crate.  DH being the big soft bleeding heart that I fell in love with has "rescued" her ever night except the first night since she arrived!   In all the years that DH and I have been together he slept his first night on the couch...with his little Princess baby sleeping with him!   I realized at that moment that I had once again slipped to the #2 spot in the household priority.  
The house has been restored to its previous level of chaos and I am loving every minute of it!

As I am sure you are all well aware...this blog will now be Molly focused as her antics continue to enrich the lives of those who live and visit us here on the farm!
 
Molly spent some time on the couch having her before bed nap.   I know some of you reading this are going Eek Gads...they are letting her on the furniture!  Yep...she's a family member so she gets a spot on the couch.   There are 2 types of homes; those with beautiful furniture and no pets and those with pets and functional furniture!   We have the later type of home.   Maybe in a couple years we will get some new furniture, once Miss Molly has finished her chewing phase.  Within 48 hours we knew we were going to be dealing with a chewer!   All the throw rugs have been stowed away, if not they would have been stowed away in Molly's bed...as anything she can pick up and carry ends up in her bed.

DH and I spent all day on Saturday re-leveling the stalls and putting in stall mats.   Who would have thought that adding stone dust, power compacting and then resizing stall mats would take so long!   Seven stalls are re-leveled and 6 stalls have mats now.   The other 3 stalls are full of hay for the pending winter, so we will have to get to those in the spring.   

Supervisor Molly found Kitty's barn bed and made herself at home.

DH and I took down the old owners tomato garden today.  We have been working away on cleaning up around the house before the winter hits.   Still lots of stuff to do, the job jar list doesn't seem to be getting much shorter.   The barn job jar list tho has been getting a series of things scratched off so I have been a happy wife!

BEFORE

Here's the south side of the house as it looked when we purchased.

AFTER

I know it looks pretty bare, but once the new perennial beds are put in it will look great.  I can't believe the change in the light inside the house; both in the living room and the guest room by having that big tree removed.

After 2 days in the barn reeking havoc helping, Molly was rather grimy.  Not to mention the kennel she was in was not exactly the cleanest..so she had a "bird bath" in the kitchen sink tonight.   Here she is getting her first bath.   She was a little superstar.   She didn't even try and climb out once!   I can't believe how we lucked out picking her.  <note - I will likely be eating these words within 30 days>   Dog shaming photos will follow as the need arises!

The Silence Is Broken

The uncomfortable quiet of our home is now a thing of the past...<Insert goofy happy grin, school girl giggle and teary eyes of joy>!

Introducing the newest addition to our family.

This is our 9 week old bundle of joy.   Female Golden Retriever...yet to be named.
DH and I have not come to a satisfactory choice that we both love and don't feel silly calling it out at the top of our lungs in a busy dog park.

Stay Tuned...A door has closed and now; a window has opened!

Christmas Decorating...has started!

Another crazy weekend concluded at HP Haven.
New horses arrived, trenching for the new hydro service is underway, horses have been trimmed, Christmas decorated has begun, shelter wall goes up...

My Dad started the trenching for the central metering for our new hydro service.   This is an anticipated additional to the farm...especially for DH.  He doesn't even have enough power to hook up his compressor at the moment and the arena lighting cannot be upgraded until this gets changed.
My dad just loves playing around on his tractor and digging is the thing he is known for.  ("Groundhog Trenching Service")   I don't think he had a sand box when he was a kid with Tonka toys!

Groundhog Trenching service hard at work.

The Trench so far.

...still another 100 feet to go before we reach the barn panel and then another trench to get to the house.

My mom was busy doing those tedious jobs...like mudding the holes in all the walls on the second floor.   That doesn't sound like a big job but if you have seen the second floor walls you would know otherwise.  The guest room was especially terrible including dozens of holes in the ceiling.   DH and I no longer looking in the bathroom mirror and thinking we are seeing a big black bug on the wall now that the hole opposite the mirror has been patched!
Mom also has a real amazing knack for arrangements.   She took care of preparing the driveway planters with the Christmas greenery.   Drove in tonight and seen these 2 beautiful pots and it sets a happy mood driving up the driveway.  

Thanks Mom...they look especially wonderful with horses in the background!  :-)

DH spent his wonderful warm Sunday afternoon closing in one wall of the old run in shelter my girls are living in.  No more hurricane wind blowing directly on my girls now!   Thank you Honey...you always but the girls and I first...even tho Sunday would have been a perfect day for the track.

New Residents Arrive

HP Haven is welcoming 2 new horses today to the herd.   Elvis and Gus have arrived on the farm and will be part of the on going blog entries moving forward!   Elvis is owned by my friend Terrie and Gus is owned by her partner Nick.
They settled in pretty well after just a day meeting my 2 ladies over the fence.   No angry faces over the fence and no drama while everyone is loose and free to move around.  The ladies have come into raging heat cycles and are both crooning the boys over the fence, piddling the entire time!   Shameless these 2 are!  
Feed time was a bit of a production with no horses touching their supper.   I know my 2 can be finicky when things change in their world, so I kinda expected some drama.   I am confident in a week everything will have settled down and life will be back to a more "normal".  

Here are the new boys and the first meeting between paddocks.

By the end of the night DH and I got the new manger completed and the feed tubs installed.   The new boys have a nice new shelter to enjoy.

Still need to install some metal edging to prevent chewing but it's inhabitable and safe!

DH and I also got the stall mats into the first stall in the new barn!    How exciting!  The feed room is now matted and has all the feed tubs and shavings etc back in.  We will also make this a temporary tack room until the new roof is on the bank barn and we can move into the space we had designated as the tack room.   

The Royal

Spent the afternoon at the Royal today with Heather and Sarah.   Not too much damage on my debit card!   Only 1 pair of new breeches.    There would have been more if they would have had more colours in my size.   I also bought 2 pairs of winter gloves.   My age old faithfuls...tan thinsulate lined deerskin and a new pair for me called 10 Below's by SSG.   A couple of woman in the store, that were not sales people, were raving about them and said I had to try them because they are the best winter gloves by far.   I figured I had nothing to lose and my hands are almost always cold.

But the real deal about The Royal was my favourite meal; the pulled pork parfait from Hank Daddy's BBQ!   Pulled Pork Parfaits rule the Royal.   This little meal is the smoky sweet taste of BBQ pork with the creamy goodness of mashed potatoes, topped off with a few baked beans for good measure.  Here's mine served up fresh!

The best $5 bucks I spent this year tho was 15 minutes in a $7000 massage chair.   After several hours of shopping we had tired feet and aching lower backs so took the earlier offer from the Pansonic salesman.  

Here's Sarah pretty happy after her well spent $5!

Going back to the Royal now after competing there 2 years go has a different feel to it than prior to being a competitor.   It has a touch of nostalgia and good memories of the red ribbon first ride we had there with our first trip to the big ring with the big indoor crowd.  The Elvis Quadrille is the stuff you talk about in the nursing home!   Two years ago I got to check off "ride at the Royal" on my bucket list.   I also retired the the most amazing horse that has touched my life so far.   It was a grand celebration with friends; to celebrate our overall second place finish in the team quadrille competition and the closing of a long, successful show career of my one in a million horse, Magnolia.

A trip down memory lane...The Elvis Quadrille

l to r - Liz Schilke, Sheila Dunbar, Bronwyn Barlow-Cash, Lynda Cooper

Uh-O! More Plastic & BUGS

I thought I had got the last of the plastic off the furniture from the moving company.  Oops, I found two more bedside tables with plastic!   Obviously, we have not needed anything inside!

When it comes to living in an old house with a crawl space basement you have to get really good at killing bugs!   I have squished more bugs in the last 10-12 weeks than I can ever remember killing the whole time I lived at the old house!   We started off inundated with flies.   I was killing them by the dozens and it seemed like we just never got ahead of them.   I guess it didn't help that when we first moved in we were refinishing the wood floors upstairs and we had all the windows wide open whether they had screens or not!   Then we went through a big ugly brown and black spider phase.  Actually, we might still be experiencing the tail end of this phase.  Starting a few weeks ago we started into a knew phase of the box elder bug.   These bugs are harmless to humans and they don't sting or bite...they are just ugly and everywhere.   They also smell pretty bad when you squish them and it's not advisable that you actually mash them against the wall to kill them because they leave a stain that even Mr Clean Magic Erasers don't remove!

Here's what the Box Elder Bug looks like.  

Have a mentioned yet that I am doing a little happy dance every night that I walk out the back door to the indoor to ride??!!   I can't believe how much time it saves when you are not packing up all your gear and horse and and traveling 15-20 minutes down the road to unload it all then ride, then load it all back up and drive it all home just to unload it all again to do it again the next day!   Ok...maybe that was a bit dramatic, because when I had no other option that was a great option and one that I did without regret.   I actually was grateful for the place to ride and the company it provided...BUT having to walk right out the back door to ride (even with the time change) is really awesome!   

DH's last round of indoor footing improvements is getting things approaching perfect!  None of the footing is so deep now that it feels like Izzy is getting bogged down.   Still a few spots that aren't quite as even as the rest but night and day difference from where he started when we moved in.  Had an amazing ride last night inside and tonight I ventured down the farm lane to the back bush line to check out the back 40.   Seen an abundance of deer that spun and flitted their white tails as they took cover into the woods.   Lots of guys with their 4x4's and quads over at our neighbours place for shotgun season.  Hopefully, I never drove them into the woods to their deaths!

Unpacking...Still

I finally made a point of getting the remaining movers plastic off the last pieces of furniture.   I know, 2 months and there was still plastic on the furniture!   I was so tired of looking at the boxes still piled in front of the roll top desk and book case that I just took the hour and unpacked them.  Seriously, that was not all that hard so why did it take 2+ months?   I think I might be becoming a tad bit of a procrastinator!  

I decided that the built in book case needed some books on it...makes it look like we actually live here with some of our stuff finally occupying the shelves.

I spent my weekend with a group of good friends, sewing, laughing and eating!   I didn't get a lot of actual "work" done but I had a very enjoyable weekend with the girls.   No finished projects to show pics of here but this is one of the gang.   Normally, we have 12 people but there were a few other commitments this time for a few...we missed them, as the full group has a wonderful creative dynamic.

Looking forward to our next weekend together in Feb 2013.

As I was enjoying myself with the girls, DH was busy on the farm trying to get the down spouts running and taking the water away from the house foundation.  The major down spouts have been fix or replaced.   After a week of rain we knew which ones were problematic and needed to be repaired before the continuation of the fall rain and before the spring rain.  

He also was busy re-levelling the footing in the indoor again.  I can't wait to give it a another ride tomorrow night.  :-)  It has been getting better and better after each time he has done his magic on it.

Lots on the To Do List still before winter...We are compiling a list so that we can start to knock things off and ensure that we don't miss anything.   LOL!    I think I will be happy to just get through most of the list!

Time change this weekend means its dark at night by 6:30 now.   This is a pretty drab time of year...minimal sun and short days.   It means that the indoor is going to get some good use in the next months.   Still seems pretty novel to be riding in the indoor out back.   I spent 3 years traveling to Bennville to ride during the late fall and winter months.    Those were fun days riding with the bunch there and catching up with Ferdi and Anita.   I am a very fortunate individual to have had so many generous people in my life that have supported me over the years in my riding adventures.    I hope that some day I will be able to pay it forward now that we have a farm of our own.

Grand River Trapping...Sideline Business?

Thursday night I got to put the live trap to it's first test.   A week or more ago I had a raccoon in the new barn and had closed up the doors once I seen it inside and set the traps.   I checked back at night check to see if I got it...nothing.   Checked back in the morning at feed time and the little beggar got the front door open and obviously escaped!   Low and behold on Thursday night what do I find in the shop/run in barn...a raccoon!

This little beggar was not running off when I turned on the lights and stood there looking at it.   We just stood their frozen for what seemed like a few minutes (reality likely 15 seconds) before I clicked into actions and went to the new barn for the trap!    DH stood "guard" while I got the trap and moved in for the invasion.   Obviously the coon was not in favour of just walking happily into a trap, so it hissed and sputtered at me.   That's when I realized it was hurt and not moving all that fast.   Very ticked off and cornered I was able to poke the coon into the trap.   It was rather humorous after the fact as DH was more in favour of leaving the thing alone and letting it decide it was a good idea to enter the cage when we were not around and I was all into getting that sucker into the trap come hell or high water!   As you all figured I won out.    I was trapping that bugger and taking him for a little ride to the other side of the river!    And that was just what we did.

Here's the intruder.

As some of you may remember I started a pseudo business at the old place called Grand River Trapping.   Since at the old place I trapped 2 opossums in 2 years and took both of them for rides across the river too!

DH has been busy again in the indoor arena.  He moved more sand around has got the deep and thin spots much better.  Still a small amount of movement yet to clean up the last bit of deep sand along the south wall.   It's getting better and better...almost perfect.   Thanks Honey...best gift ever!

I have been away from the farm all weekend and will be off again tomorrow.   I know lucky me...I have a wonderful husband that lets me spend time sewing with my quilting and fibre arts friends.   I was in need of this weekend to recharge my batteries and be creative for the first time since well before we moved.   DH never even bats his eye with my disappearance...Even when the list of things to do around the farm is longer than my arm!   I have had a fabulous weekend and I still get all day tomorrow with the girls. 

Vermin Report...

We still have mice!   I checked the bait boxes this week and the bait was completely empty in 2 of the boxes and partially gone in another.   I didn't check the one in the loft of the bank barn but I am going to assume that one is empty as well.   Refilled 2 and will now have to buy more bait again to restock.   I want to stay ahead of these rodents...never again do I want to have half a dozen mice sitting under the feed tubs waiting for me to feed the horses not even afraid I might step on them!

I noticed for the first time this morning all the wonderful and colourful birds in the yard.    I think the glorious sunshine for the first time on over a week had a hand it the sighting!   I stood at the window this morning and counted at least a dozen blue jays, a bright red cardinal and a wood pecker with a red patch on the back of his head.  All the trees have been stripped of their leaves so all the beautiful birds are clearly visible.   I look forward to getting the feeders out for the winter this year and choosing a good spot for viewing as I think we will be entertained with some fantastic wildlife.   At the old house we never had many colourful birds since we had no large trees or bush line close by.