Winter Learnings & Olympic Spirit

Once again this weekend found us learning more and more about life on the farm!

I thought I would start this post with a few points on what I have learned in the last few months.

• Frozen horse poo balls are weapons when they become projectiles from the PTO snow blower.
• Poop frozen to the ground will break a plastic fork if you don't take your time trying to pick it up.
• When you leave the hose hooked up to the frost free hydrant, it no longer works in frost free mode.
• The farmers' walk in strongman competitions is a real event and farmers really have to do that walk with 2 full pails of water in the winter when the water freezes at the barn.
• If you leave bagels on the edge of the counter overnight all that remains by morning is a ripped bag on a dogs bed.
• Gloves that are rated for -10F really aren't warm enough at -10C!
• The propane shortage in Ontario is real…and very expensive.
• Not running 5 days a week increases your clock time by ~30 sec per km.
• Two dogs are happier together than one dog on it's own.
• If the gate gets left unlatched the wind will blow it open.
• Cold weather brings out the beauty of Jack Frost on the windows.

I am sure I will have additions to this list in the coming months…stay tuned!

I wanted to show our Olympic spirit at the farm…so with DH's help I spent a little time dyeing the snow on the front hill of the house.    Go Canada!!

Marley is turning out to be a solid contributor to our home.   She is training us in new ways that we have never experienced.   Such as eating from the counter and opening doors!   We have the easy open latch style handles on our doors and she has figured out how to jump on the handle and open the doors to let herself out!   A dead bolt is now needed on the garage door to prevent the door from being wide open all day while we are at work!!

She has also gone on her first winter hack.   She was super and stayed with Molly the entire ride.   She was however exhausted when we returned home!   I don't think she has ever run 6K all in one stretch before.

The amaryllis that my mom gave me for Christmas is continuing to provide winter beauty.   Here it is with a new head ready to bloom in the next few days.

To help with the long, cold winter I bought a little pot of crocus for the bathroom window.   What a bright light in the dead of winter.

DH and I went out for dinner with Rob and Tracy (our previous neighbours) to celebrate Tracy's 50th birthday.   We went to The Combine in Simcoe…nice spot, worth a try if you haven't been before.

Here I am with the Birthday Girl!

The cold weather has been sucking the moisture out of everything.   The arena footing included.   The next treatmeant of MAG has been laid on the arena to hold the dust at bay.   

This is how defrosting the hydrant looked after I left the hose hooked up overnight and froze the water line.   After 3 hours of blasting it with heat, the hydrant was defrosted and I have learned one very valuable lesson about hoses and frost free faucets.

Izzy is once again sound and working wonderfully.   This weekend I had a lovely, forward, uphill and soft 2 days of schooling.   All the movements are starting to be well understood and we are now working through the finesse of the movements to pull them all together into a well ridden test.   

You can now clearly see the abscess that caused her the excruciating pain that made me nearly sick to see her moving around on 3 legs…it's just a black mark on her coronet band.   An abscess is kind of like a small microscopic cold virus to a human…you can't always see what is ailing you.