Stormy stories from the ranch ⛈️🌪️

Jan 13, 2024

Happy Saturday friends!

The sweet little video above just made my day. Not sure what this game is called…maybe I’ve Got the Ball and If You Try to Take it From Me I’ll Whap You With It? This slow game usually leads up to full scale racing around the pasture at top mini speeds, bucking and farting and rearing and biting like two teeny tiny stallions 😂😂

THE RANCH:

You can call this photo, “I should have listened to my Inner Voice.” Sigh. Yes, the patio umbrella pole is through my office window:

This is where it should be:

We had a big storm this week with a lot of wind. Before it came, I kept thinking I needed to go put that umbrella down and I kept putting it off. Ugh. I was sitting in the neurofeedback recliner working on some art when the umbrella flew by, got stopped by the bushes and then the pole crashed through the window, blowing glass everywhere. So glad I wasn’t working at my desk!

After we got that cleaned up and boarded up, B-Rad and I headed out to do chores in the middle of the 50mph winds and sideways rain. These are the things that people don’t think about when daydreaming about owning a farm! In my almost 8 years of doing this, I’ve never had weather that my heavy Carhart jacket couldn’t hold up to, until that storm. It took two full days for it to dry out.

The next day I found that the umbrella had actually flipped the table over. The table that was holding my 4 little fairy houses that needed to be repaired. Well they are beyond repair now!

This👇🏽 was true. They actually robo-called everyone the day before and said they were closing school 3 hours early the next day so everyone could get home safely before the storm really got going. My brother sent me this meme which is also true:

Making dinner last weekend and I guess I Love Lucy just needed to be close to me 😂

Speaking of...it was Lucy’s birthday this week! She’s 7! You can read that post here.

The winter lichen is back (with Wynter in the background)! Isn’t it cool looking?

This little guy was incensed that I dare to walk into his barn (the girl goat barn) during morning chores on Tuesday. He was screeching and chattering at me! It's funny how hard it is to tell age with squirrels here, they are so little! In Colorado the squirrels were at least double in size, big chunky creatures. When the Polar Bear would hide in the flock of sheep and stalk and kill them we would get to see them up close. Just huge.

My little family is already struggling with allergies these past few weeks, ridiculous! Is it mold? Some sort of weed that's starting up in winter? We haven't really had a winter yet. And then look what I found, spring is already looming and it’s January :-(

Raynie having a little rester. In case you’re wondering she has an eye condition that is kind of like glaucoma in people. She wears a fly mask to shade her eyes in the upper pasture because there is no shelter up there. She can see through it just like you can see through a window screen.

Jaffee on the same day:

The horses and donkeys had their mani/pedi this week and as always the bigs supported the littles:

I really feel Dancer is pregnant but Denali…I just don’t know…I may only have one breeding doe now.

If you remember, I bred Denali around the same time Dancer was bred and they were both going to have April babies. And then she came into heat again about a week later. Shoot. Bred her again. All was quiet for some time but Wednesday, she was in heat again, so I put her in with Oliver yet again. For the last time! So, either she hasn’t been taking for some reason, or she’s just a bit wanton LOL Her current due date is June 3rd. We’ll see. Maybe she just loves flirting with the boys and she’s actually pregnant and is due April!

We move the horses and donkeys to the upper pasture for the day time on nice days and back down for the night. I went to halter Sweetness and he picked up his lead and carried it around while waiting for me to halter Rayn. Donkeys are just the cutest!

We've started using our horse trailer to go get hay instead of our big 20' flatbed trailer—we never have to worry about weather this way. I'm not super excited about not having a horse trailer in an emergency though! Anyway, I let Rayn out to wander while we were doing chores one morning and wondered where she had gone. I found her with her head in the trailer. This girl always knows where the food is:

Yes, she's filthy, that storm left so much rain that there is no clean or dry place to sleep!

B-Rad and I went to the art museum with my aunt and uncle to see the Dutch masters exhibit last week. We are faster museum goers than some, so we wandered the rest of the museum when this piece caught my eye:

What do you think of it? I couldn’t find a plaque so I don’t know the artist’s intent but I immediately thought of an office worker jumping out of a window. I texted it to my brother and he thought it was about 911. Lord we are dark creatures sometimes.

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I wrote something new about Mom grief this week, you can read it here.

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MEMORIES:

One of my favorite little snapshots in time: