I've been trying to post and keep trying, but I kept getting an error and my post wouldn't get posted! Finally today I found out why - you have to clear your computer's cache and cookies every so often. That did the trick apparently and now I'm back to being able to post.

Spring is really in full swing here now. The redbuds are open, the forsythia is still strong, and the dogwoods are just beginning to unfurl their flowers. I planted out some strawberries over the weekend and I am so looking forward to tasting some of the goodness from that garden this year. I should get some black raspberries and hopefully my peaches and pears will also make fruit this year. Tomatoes and bell peppers are a staple in my garden, but it's a little early yet for that. I have started seeds anyway, though, and put out two tomatoe plants that I got from Wal-Mart the other day. I would have bought the plants from our local nursery, Richlands, but she didn't have any. So from her I bought cauliflower and broccoli, lettuce and spinach, and a few herbs. Oh, and I started some melon seeds: Prescott Fond Blanc and Charentais - both new varieties to my garden and I can't wait to taste them! As you can tell, I really love fruit. But I also love things like glazed turnips and white gravy with biscuits with eggs, so I'm also pulling for the turnips to make good :)

Comanche is losing his winter fur and now his black is really looking nice. I hate it when they have the old winter hair and black isn't really black anymore, but a copper-black. He was gelded last weekend, so I'm keeping him at Frank's corral down at the mule farm until he's healed enough to bring home. I hope he and snippy become good buddies and that neither one tries to hurt the other. I think snippy might be getting lonely enough to be grateful for a buddy now. Since Spanky first died, he hasn't acted too lonely. I have been surprised.

whew! i've been sick lately with whatever it was that the kids both caught a couple weeks ago. it's a pretty bad upper respiratory/sinus infection sort of thing. i've been taking a fresh goldenseal tincture and that seems to be doing a good job on it, though. the kids both have been taking antibiotics, but by the time i could actually get in to SEE a doctor, i was feeling much better already. so i'm glad i didn't waste my time or my money.

it is really looking like springtime around here now. the forsythia is in full bloom everywhere (everywhere but my house, since i don't have any). the redbuds are just beginning to bud out, the spicebush is blooming, the hyacinths are blooming - don't know when they started, i just noticed them today, but they look like they've been in for at least a few days now. the tulips are not blooming yet, but they're growing.

something spooked snippy bad today. he came running at full gallop to the house from across the creek and kept on running all the way down to the gate, which is close to 1/2 mile from where he started, ran through the gate (which was open because we had just come through and i was getting ready to go back down to visit with comanche) and kept running til he got to the Felkin's creek bridge. he stopped there because all the mares in the pasture came running toward him to see what the heck was going on. i have never seen a horse spooked that bad, so i am thinking that maybe the mountain lion or a bear came out of the woods over there by where he was grazing, intending to see about digging on spanky's grave maybe. something keeps trying to dig him up and gary keeps having to go cover him up more every day. why we didn't think of it earlier, i don't know, but zack thought of it today - he put the game camera over there tonight so we can see what is trying to dig him up. i hope it's not my own dogs :(

Today I rode Snippy! I haven't saddled up a horse and ridden in a long time, even though we've been having horses for years now. All of my life I wanted a horse and while I was a kid, my parents would never get one. When my own daughter started wanting one, I decided to get one, but by that time I was so busy with work that I never had time to ride. I still love horses though, and decided I would start riding again now, especially since I'm getting a new yearling next week. Snippy needs a companion since we lost Spanky. He's very lonely and it is not good to try and keep only one horse. Comanche is a black and white paint, half Missouri Foxtrotter and half Spotted Saddle Horse. I've known him since he was born and hoped he could be mine. I enjoyed riding so much today. It makes me sad that I'm so much older now and not nearly as fit as I used to be, but maybe if I ride a little each day or a little at least each week, soon I will be in shape enough to ride better and longer. I'm posting a picture of Comanche so you can see the new baby.

For some reason, blogger is filing this post out of order. It should be listed AFTER the post about Comanche, which is above this one in my browswer.

I got a lot of gardening done over the weekend. Planted peas, carrots, mustard greens, turnips and radishes. In the cold frame I started tomatoes, bell peppers, echinacea, and some other things, but I forgot what all. Monday, the kids were both sick so I kept them out of school and brought them to the doctor, but before that we worked in the garden some more. Gabrielle transplanted 3 raspberry canes that had rooted, over to the trellis I had waiting on them. I love it when the kids help me in the garden, it makes me feel like everything will always be alright. It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't know what I mean, so if you've experienced this feeling and have a better explanation for it, let me know, haha.

well. not good news. spanky died. i'm too sad over it to post more right now, and i'm also at work and have a lot to do. needless to say, the kids got on the bus crying and i went to work crying, too.

OMG, it is so hard to lose a horse, it feels like a family member has died!

For the last several days I've been dealing with a horse crisis. My 3 yr old gelding came very near death, and may still not be far away from that end. It all started a week or two ago when we took in a friend's horse to board while they were away on a trip. She was a mare and very very bossy toward my geldings. She took an outright disliking to the younger one and a strong liking for the older one, keeping the younger one away and forcing him away from his hay and feed. I didn't know she was also not letting him near them in the pasture or allowing him to eat in peace some distance away. It wasn't until Saturday that I got a good look at him, because I work every day during the week and don't get home during daylight at this time of year. He looked awful! So, that evening I fed him by himself and penned the other two up so they'd leave him alone. Another thing that was also going on during this time period, was that my husband was trimming the huge old oak tree in the front yard and the limbs were on the ground. The younger gelding was eating the buds off of the limbs like they were candy and I didn't think much about it at the time, other than noting how much he liked them. Well, apparently oak buds are toxic to horses if eaten in large quantities. A horse with normal access to feed and pasture will not eat huge amounts, but Spanky wasn't being given normal access because the mare was bullying him so much. By Sunday Spanky wasn't moving much and was very depressed, head hanging and not wanting to eat. At that time I still hadn't thought about the oak buds and just figured it was depression because of the other horse bullying him and not letting him near his best buddy. Monday we brought the mare back to her own pasture at her own house, since the owners were back. Spanky perked up a little at seeing her leave, but he still wasn't eating or moving or acting normally. The idea that he might have eaten the oak buds entered my mind by then and I watched him more closely, or as closely as I could when I'm not home most of the day. He would drink water if you held it in a bucket for him and he'd nibble at the hay but not really eat enough. On tuesday he started bleeding from the nostrils a little, not gushing nor even as much as a nosebleed in a person, but it was bright red blood and it was alarming, especially in light of how far down his condition had gotten. So I rushed home from work and stopped by the health food store to buy some ingredients to make him a nutritious and immune stimulating mash. I bought slippery elm powder, astragalus powder, nettle leaf, licorice root powder, and weight builder from the TSC. He would not eat this mixture willingly, so i put it in his mouth and on his tongue and he swallowed. He seemed a little better and wanted to eat his hay, so I left him and went up to the house. He was located in a thicket full of briars and small trees. I came back down to check on him and he was down, nose bleeding and breathing hard. I panicked and told him I'd be right back, so I went up to the house to get a halter and lead rope. Panicked because I didn't want him to die, and if he was going to die, I didn't want him to die there where he couldn't be buried. Odd combination of thoughts, but I was feeling both saddened and practical with equal passion. But when I got back to him, he was up! I think he actually stumbled and fell, and when I saw him he was still breathing hard because of that. I fed him a bowlfull a couple times that afternoon, and by the nightfall he was much stronger and eagerly eating hay.

When I left out for work this morning, I watered him from the creek with a bucket again, by headlights because it was still dark, and gave him some hay. But the good thing is that he wasn't in the thicket and was watching for me to come down the driveway, with his head up and his ears forward!! He hasn't looked that alert and alive for days, so I am hoping he has rounded the corner and cheated death. I'll try to post again tomorrow and give you an update on his condition then. Some things I've found out about oak bud poisioning is that it causes red blood cells to burst or deform, making them unable to transport iron. So the horse will have the symptoms of anemia, which is exactly how Spanky was acting. I thought he was "shocky" the other night and we'd been keeping a blanket on him because he was cold. I'm so happy he seems to be surviving and I hope to have good news tomorrow. One other thing, I didn't bring him to the vet because he was too weak to trailer and they don't make house calls out here. I feel really bad that I didn't notice how poor he'd gotten before it was so bad, and I wish I had known that he didn't need to eat all those oak buds. It's a terrible way to learn a lesson like that!

Someone asked if there was "community", a sense of community, in rural areas where large acreage separates neighbors. They wondered how it works. Here there is a strong sense of community. we're separated by mostly 100's of acres, but all the neighbor's know and help each other out. my closest neighbor called at 5 a.m. one morning last spring needing help with a horse in delivery. we threw on clothes and raced down there, but by the time we got there he'd pulled it himself. we're always watching for their cows to calve and let them know if there's trouble, because they don't actually live there, but come in the evenings to feed. the other neighbors who do live at their land visit when passing on the gravel road. it's common to be stopped in the middle of the road, engines turned off, talking for 30 minutes or until someone needs to pass. the grapevine is alive and well out here, too, lol. once my husband was on the phone with our most distant neighbor and i was outside getting clothes from the washer and i saw my goat eat my fresh picked tomato that was waiting on the top step for me to bring in. i started hollering at her and the neighbor on the phone with my hubbie heard me and got a huge laugh out of that. before 10 minutes passed, the closer neighbor was on the phone laughing over the goat eating my tomato too. this joke carried on for days, with the most distant neighbor stopping me on the road as i was coming in from work a few evenings later, handing me a tomato, cause he just knew i wouldn't have any because of the goat, haha. the most distant neighbor rides his 4-wheeler everywhere, including the 3 1/2 miles to our place to visit. he's an older man, disabled from a skidder accident years ago, and has diabetes. once he busted his toe, and rode his 4-wheeler all the way to our house to ask if i would put a bandage on his toe for him because he couldn't reach it himself.

see? there is lots of community here, even though we are sometimes miles apart. you'll likely find that so anywhere you go in the more rural areas.

Garrison and I saw something interesting this morning. Two skunks mating on the side of the driveway, on the way out to the bus this morning, just before dawn. Garrison is 10 and the questions have been getting asked a lot lately about why he can't have a baby brother. This morning's interesting site brought new questions to the front. "What are they doing?" "They're mating, you know, like the chickens do?" Silence. A silence very heavy with more questions. So I ventured a little more details. "The momma skunk can't have babies unless she mates with the daddy." "Oh..." Our driveway is pretty long, so you can imagine that this was not going to go away quickly. "Oh, so I shouldn't be making the rooster get off the hens then, I guess!" I looked at him, "That's right, if you don't let them mate, then none of your eggs in the incubator will make baby chickens." More silence. "Okay, but I don't understand. How does the rooster help the eggs hatch?" This was going to get technical, I could see it coming now. And darn it if the bus wasn't there yet when we got to the end of the driveway. I was hoping that it would be there, but luck wasn't with me this morning."Well, the hen already has the eggs inside of her, but the rooster has to fertilize them to make them grow. He does that when he's on top of her, when they look like they're fighting." "But HOW does the rooster do that????" I knew it was going to get asked. "Boy roosters, just like boy skunks and boy people have private parts that are made to fit inside the girl private parts and they have a fluid that has the seeds for babies in it -- understand?" "Yes." Silence and complete end to the questions. I added one more thought: "When you become an adult you'll have what it takes to make babies, but it's a big responsibilty." "Is that why some families have like 21 kids, because they didn't be responsible?" I laughed, yes, that's why. It was like a huge weight lifted off his shoulders, and mine too, because I knew he'd been wondering how it works, and he's already been taught the technical words for his private parts, he just never had yet put two and two together when it comes to making babies. For now, his curiousity seems satisfied. Any further questions about the process are getting forwarded to his dad!

We live in a pretty rural area of NW Arkansas. My nearest neighbor is ½ mile away, and all the neighbors are mostly more than a mile apart after him. in between, there’s nothing but mountains and woods and cow pastures. All those woods give a much needed corridor for wildlife like bears and cougars, who don’t like being near people if they can help it, a way to get from one end of their territory to others. So far, they don’t bother us and we don’t bother them. HOWEVER, if I didn’t have good guardian dogs, that would likely be a different story because the predators would indeed come calling for my chickens, at least, and maybe even small children wandering too far from the house by themselves... but I don’t have any really small children. my youngest child is 10 and he doesn’t roam off on foot too far by himself. He’s not allowed to go up the mountain by himself, mainly because everywhere up there is out of earshot and it’s way too steep for him to go on the 4-wheeler without his older brother. And there’s lots of rattlesnakes and he’s not that good at spotting them on the trail, lol. Up the mountain is where the wild things live, and the ginseng. When ~I ~ go hiking, I go sooooo slow, looking at this and that, it’s hard to actually startle much. And if I got bitten, I would know to not run home as fast as I can, haha. At least I say that now, but I’ve never been bitten! The dogs don’t go far from the house, but they will run to the valley for the horse’s aid if they see or hear a coyote over there, or anything threatening of that sort. The land is set up so that it’s easy to hear and sometimes see what’s in the valley from sitting on the hill in front of the house, even though it’s a long ways across if you were walking. He can go over there alone to fish in the pond because it’s in good earshot.

I’m not sure which is really the correct term for it, but I finally built one! It’s been a project on my list of things to do for a long time, a place to start seeds before it’s warm enough outside for them. I don’t have space in my house in any of the windows. I made the frame from rocks stacked higher on the north end than on the south end so that when I put the glass down on it, it’s facing south at about a 45* angle. Put some old clay tiles down inside so that my seed trays will drain better than if they were sitting directly on the dirt, and plus I was afraid the roots would go through the trays into the dirt if I put them directly on the ground. If that doesn’t work out too good, I might just plant the seeds directly in there and transplant them as they sprout. I’m not completely done with it yet, though. I’ve been putting dirt on the surface of the rocks to give the glass a better seal. Right now there are still plenty gaps for cold air to get in. I have a way to prop it to vent, but I’d like to get one of those automatic lifters so it will vent on its own when it gets too hot in there. So, I’m excited that I finally got to do ~something~ homestead related, I’m usually too busy at work and it hasn’t been daylight long enough when I get off to get anything done. Also yesterday I took out my incubator and started saving eggs to hatch out. By the end of the week I’ll have enough for a small batch, but I’m putting the eggs I’ve gathered so far in there with no heat but the turner plugged in so they’ll get rotated while they wait.

Today a fellow OHG group member posted a link to her blog about an apron she'd made recently. I went to look at it (http://mybyrdhouse.blogspot.com) and decided that now I want my own apron, too! I used to have a couple, but now I have no idea where they've gone. In reading her post, I saw she mentioned that she likes to keep her fingers in lots of pies. That's true of myself, too, but it seems that the pies are all so DIFFERENT from each other! I feel strange saying that I like aprons because so much of my life is not categorized as "mother". Mostly I am "scientist" or "analyst", but I wear a lab coat all day, so it's not much different than putting on an apron on the weekends, is it? I love the "mother" category and I don't get to experience it enough. Funny how a little thing like wearing an apron could make me feel more "motherly", lol. I think my kids would like it too, and my daughter might want one of her own, since she also likes to cook with me sometimes on the weekends. Some people are weekend warriors, well I am a weekend mother. And gardener and farmer and wife... boy I'll be glad when the days start staying longer so I can move some of the roles over to the weekdays!!

Whooo-hooo! I got a new autosampler for my furnace today, which makes life at work much much nicer. This afternoon I can leave it running and actually expect it to finish the samples while I'm gone... it's hard to trust it yet, but we'll see.

Gabrielle is sick, hope it's not the flu. But I'm going to stop by and get some oil of oregano and olive leaf just in case. i have elderberry tinc at home, but she doesn't like the taste and refuses to take it.

I am trying to move my blog over to hosting at my website, but it is not working so well...so, maybe no one can even see it right now. Hopefully, this will get resolved soon and I'll be back on the road to blogging, lol, even though i haven't been a steady traveler on it lately!

1039 // Ah-ha!! I figured it out - took me a while, but now i know why it wasn't working. I needed to take the "www" off of the address URL. Not sure why, but for some reason it won't work like that and now it does, so I don't really care the reason :)

It rained all day yesterday and most of the night. When I left for work this morning, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to try the front way out or go on and take the back way. The back way takes much longer, but there are no bridges to cross. Well, I decided to try my luck. The first bridge had a couple inches of water on it, not too much for my jeep to handle, so I crossed it. I always hate doing that because it scares me after having seen my large dog go over the edge of it one time when it was flooded. But no problem this morning. Then the neighbor who lives on that side of the bridge was coming down the road in my direction, which meant that he didn't go over the next bridge, the King's River. So I turned around and was hoping that the water hadn't already risen too high over the bridge I'd just come across. When that happens, and it HAS happened before in the past (but not to me, thank goodness!), you have to wait hours for the water to go down while you're stuck between the two bridges. Felkin's creek will always be an easier pass than the King's River. They're all low-water bridges on our county road, which means they're just a concrete pass over the water, with no rails or sides of any sort, so the water can just pass over it when it rises.

Uh-oh. I couldn't remember my login details to get here and make a post, so obviously, it's been waaaay too long since I've posted! I'll make a better effort to post more often now.

Not much has been going on at the farm, it's just been cold and dreary now for what seems like a long time, even though I know it's only been a week or two. My parents and nephews are coming up this weekend for their Mardi Gras holiday. It seems odd that we don't have days off for that holiday here in NW AR.

I've been far more busy at work than at home these days.

Whew! It's been a while since I've posted, hasn't it? Well, there's not been much happening. I did finally decide to give my goat Frosty away. He was a cute little bugger, and I really liked him a lot, but I was afraid the coyotes would have him for dinner before long. He kept following the dogs up the mountain and they'd stay out all night, and he'd just follow them home when they came home. I still don't know where exactly they were going and what for. Another thing I found out that he was doing, was helping Badger eat the eggs. Badger would keep checking to see if the hen had laid yet, and then Frosty would pick up the egg in his mouth and bust it and then spit it back down in the nest for Badger to eat. What a hoot!!

...later the same day...
the dogs came home, finally, after lunch and the goat was right behind them. They don't look like they've had to fight for their lives, but are covered with briars and hitchikers. Silly animals! I hope they don't do that again.

Okay. Now I have two dogs and a goat missing. The goat, Frosty, actually thinks he's a dog, so I am sure they are all three together somewhere. I am thinking that the dogs may have gone up the mountain to look for deer bones and skin from hunters and the goat followed. Once up there, where the coyotes are ALSO looking for such treats, the goat probably realized he was in a bad neighborhood. I'm hoping that they didn't all get into a scrap with a pack of coyotes. They've been missing since yesterday, and I sure hope they get home soon because some really cold weather is on its way here.

The bridges over Felkins creek and Kings river were flooded this morning, so I had to take the back way out to work. On a normal morning, the back way would take me, oh about 30 minutes or so to reach highway 74. And if the bridge on THAT route is flooded, then I have to take the other back way, which turns off of the first back way, out to Hwy 21. That route takes about 45 minutes on a normal morning. Well, this morning was not a normal morning. It was misty rain and very heavy fog. I could not see beyond a few feet in front of me, so basically all I could see was the ground right in front of the jeep. The road was covered with leaves, but so was the sides of the road, and so was the forest floor after the sides of the road. This made it very difficult to actually see the road!! The only way I could really tell I was on the road was the absence of trees right in front of me, which can be misleading because the road is very curvy and steep, so sometimes the trees are in front until you complete the turn. It was so foggy that I could not see the county road signs at the junctions where I either needed to turn or continue straight, and all of the driveways look like junctions that might be where I need to turn when it is that foggy. At long last I finally came upon the aforementioned bridge on the original back way out. And there was the school bus which had left a full 20 minutes before me just reaching the bridge too. I was never so happy to see tail-lights, haha, because a.) that meant that I was on the right path (I could not see the bridge yet at the point where I came upon the tail-lights), and b.) someone else would have to cross the bridge first if it were flooded and I could watch and see how high the water was. Fortunately, it was not flooded, but the water was rising. This was also King's river, but it takes longer for the water to crest here than it does on our road, so sometimes if you're lucky you can gamble and make it out in time. Otherwise, if you lost your gamble, you have to turn around and go all the way back to the junction where you can turn to take the other back way out. It took almost an hour to get to the pavement this morning, but it was a very nice and quiet drive nonetheless.

This morning was cold! I wasn't expecting it to get to 21*F last night, but that's what the thermometer read when I woke up. On my way down the county road I stopped to watch another beaver, this one was waddling through the shallows at the Kings' river bridge. I told him he'd better hurry on up before Samson sees him there - Samson shoots some things on sight, beaver being one of them.

Frost flowers littered the sides of Hwy 74. At first I thought a chicken truck or turkey truck had recently passed by, there were so many that it looked like feathers all on the roadside, haha.

I'm posting a picture of Comanche, my new baby. He's still living with his mother right now, but he'll come to live with my horses in a few months. He's about 6 months old, isn't he such a cutie?!