When the Herd Gathers Around You

Happy Saturday friends!

This week I'm jumping straight into the farm photos so I can get back to updating my website. It has taken up every spare moment of my week other than clients, farm chores, and this one hour on Thursday where I grabbed an old moving blanket to put on the ground and went out to the upper pasture to sit with the herd. Tori was the first to come visit and sniff me all over with the donkeys hot on her heels:

Someone must have taught her to give kisses, she came to me knowing that. Precious:

For a while, all 4 of my littles surrounded me:

And if you've been here and spent time with the herd, you know this is a common sight:

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Well, it's official, the goats have enough pumpkins:

For a couple years now, I've asked the local Nextdoor folks to drop their pumpkins off and boy do they! I forgot to mention that goats don't eat "decorative gourds" so I have a bunch of those too but I'll just put those in the compost when they start to look iffy. But the rest of them, so pretty on my front steps and the goats are very happy! Thank you everyone!

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Looked out my window and found The Polar Bear happily soaking up the sun earlier this week:

Maybe she crashed after her sugar high? Haaa! Couldn't figure out why there was a ripped open bag of candy over by the lower pasture and finally realized that it was probably her—I bet she found it at the barn next door! No idea if she ate any of it, hope not but who knows. 

After the Jan 2nd fire this year, when we had all the workers here at the farm, we would occasionally find The Polar Bear wandering around with a tied plastic grocery bag carefully dangling from her mouth. Bow still tied, completely intact. A worker's lunch was wandering away to be eaten on the sly. OMG! Then we started finding her trying to pull the grocery bag with rotisserie chicken in it, out of our car! If she finds anything in the garage trash can that smells like food, she's definitely going to root around, steal it, lick it clean, and then destroy the container. Ugh.

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Things around the farm that disturb me, I found this gate unlatched (horses in the pasture) at the upper pasture:

Brad put in a new gate on the side of this pasture that's closer to us, so we've not been using this gate. Luckily, apparently the whole herd forgot about this gate as well. Gulp.

Time for new signs, yes? Gross:

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It felt like Sweetness was saying, "Moooom! She has her head over on MY side of the fence! Moooom! She's drinking my water!" 

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My funny girlie! We had been out in the field playing frisbee until she was tired but when I told her we were done and it was time to go back inside, this is what she did:

"Fine, you don't want to play with me? I'll just amuse myself!" The more I laughed, the more she rolled around smiling :-)

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When Michael, Nic, and puppy Penelope came to visit, I had to get my bedroom finished and the guest room finished as well. The guest room is the loft (my old bedroom) and it overlooks the living room. We weren't willing to completely wall it off but wanted more privacy and the ability to heat and cool just that room (there is a separate heat pump ) since my bonus room bedroom now has a mini-split unit for heat and a/c. So, this is what we came up with and love it:

And then my room:

I'm standing in the door and to the right of another painting area with my easels and acrylics. And then this is my princess bed:

I know, I know, it's SO over the top isn't it? OMG! I love it so much! It's sooo girlie lol. Funny because I don't consider myself really a girlie girl but my bedroom says otherwise!

THE MEMES:

Keep Moving Forward

Keep moving forward,
not because the path is clear or free
of obstacles,
but because something within you
still leans toward the light.

Grief presses its weight
against your ribs,
slowing every breath,
yet some small part of you
continues to rise,
to take the next
trembling step.

Moving forward isn't forgetting,
and it never asks for heroics.
It asks only that you honor
the life still unfolding,
the mornings that break open,
the hands that reach for yours,
the tenderness that finds you
even in the darkness.

To keep moving forward
is to trust that healing
is a journey, not a moment,
a gradual shifting toward a gentler place.

It is the quiet defiance
of choosing to breathe,
to feel,
to hope,
just enough
to meet the next hour.

And in time,
your small steps become a path,
and the path becomes a life,
one that carries
both the tender shadow of what has
been lost
and the trembling possibility
of what might be.
~ 'Keep Moving Forward' by Spirit of a Hippie
& Mary Anne Byrne

This one strikes me so funny:

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This is an AI-free newsletter! While I love to use AI to help me figure out a piece of software I don't understand, my intention is to use it to help me with the drudgery, never with writing, art, creation. All em dashes are intentional and mine, I was using them way before ChatGPT was a twinkle in Sam Altman's eye :-)

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Thank you for reading :-)

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