After 31 years of the same old grind, I still love my morning commute. Although this is our fourth small farm in those 31 years, this one in particular, of which we hope and plan to retire on, is the most extensively “farmed” – we hay our fields, raise chickens for eggs, my horses adorn the fields as lawn ornaments for the most part but they do get use, sparingly. (those spoiled, spoiled horses).
We used to have a huge vegetable garden, but with enough produce yield to feed a lost continent full of folk and a weed war we could not possibly win, we downsized eventually to a two-raised bed configuration 1/8th the size of the original, now located in our back yard. We also have a small young apple orchard with peach and plum trees, blueberry and raspberry bushes, and a Christmas Tree lot in a back field. (haha..hahahaha… I’ll ‘splain later in the post).
So.. my morning starts with breakfast for the two of us around 5:30 a.m. for no good reason at all other than that’s when the Mr. and I religiously wake up. And we aren’t religious. We’re just *UP*. The dogs are let out to do their business and then fed. If it’s chilly, like this morning, I put on my outer layer of barn attire and Miss Sally waits by the door because she knows the routine and she loves OUT. And OUT with MOM is the stuff dreams are made of.
We head out into the frost coated everything to begin the rounds. Sally stays within the dog fenced area, but it allows her to follow me up the driveway to the barn area where she waits around while I feed and muck.
Side note: (I’m a little ADD, I’m pretty sure of it ) Peering over to the left in the backyard, my daughter’s home is in sight. We are absolutely loving our new neighbors 💖. Her new family member, adopted adorable Gizmo has blended very well with their dog Rex, and all is well in their new little kingdom in the field across the way.
Back on track we go – morning commute… The chicken coop comes first – I let the girls out into their coop yard and refresh the water and feeders, rake the chicken yard, and once a week the whole coop gets an overhaul of fresh shavings, swept out cobwebs, new hay in laying boxes, etc. This year’s babies have already been laying for months and they’re beautiful! The two shown here are Light Brahmas. They have feathers on their feet! They are part of my GOT flock. Winter and Ghost , with Arya on the right. Cersei died early on of a deformed beak ( if only that had happened in the series! ) Sansa and Daenerys are doing well.
Once the girls are all set for the day, I head up to the barn to feed and water the horses and turn them out for the day.
The two old boys.. Max1 and Max2.. are let out into the fields after they’ve finished their morning grain. They’ve just started wearing their fall sheets to keep the chill off on these 30 something degree mornings. Older horses have trouble keeping good weight on due to teeth that are ground down with time, so we give them a little help with special grains for seniors and blankets for added warmth.
The mini horses are little cherubs, chubby little cherubs. Their weight needs to be kept reasonable and so they are not allowed on the big grassy fields with the larger horses as they’d eat themselves to oblivion. So we keep them in a smaller dirt paddock and give them the appropriate amount of grain and hay for their size.
Once feed is done, I usually muck stalls. On Sundays our boarder does stalls to give me a reprieve, so this morning I walked about the fields and took a few pictures instead.
Our little orchard on the hill behind the house. The apple trees on the left are a few years old and have produced very little so far. It takes a few years for trees to establish themselves, and we’re still learning about proper pruning and fertilization – must be enough, but not too much. The blueberry and raspberry bushes will get a netting cover once berries appear, lest the birds and squirrels get them all. Yep, That did happen, lesson learned.
In the field behind the horse barn is a tree lot … where for three years, we’ve planted 100 Christmas trees. The first year we had a wicked winter and the wind chill was awful, killing most of the trees. *ah, crap. We replaced them with slightly bigger ones the second year… of which we lost more than half to a grub infestation. *crap again. And why does it seem so many have just planted a ton of trees and lo and behold, a tree farm was born – like, super easy. I mean it was such the infestation that when you walked among the saplings the ground crinkled and crunched for all the grubs squirming around just below the surface. BLEH.
We’ve planted the new little baby Christmas trees in this third year of tree farming, with a fence around lest the deer eat them up, ( can you imagine?) the ground is treated for grubs and we’ll cross our fingers for a not-so-terribly-cold windy winter, shall we?
With the walk about done and checking for downed fence rails, I walk back down to the house where Miss Sally has joined me along the fence line and up onto the porch where she waits to be let in while I shuck off my muck boots. We then get on with our day.
It’s a dirty business sometimes, this job of mine, and never is it glamorous – but I wouldn’t trade it for the world and then some.
Another Side note: Have you been a Downton Abbey fan? I hadn’t paid any attention to it for all these years, how did I miss such a gem? – just got hooked on Amazon and within three weeks I’m almost done with the six seasons, looking forward to the movie! I love it! Fantastic actors too – What a different world. Living not far from Newport, I’ve toured some of the old “cottages” and saw first hand their elaborate lives preserved for all to explore. These are not the estates of Europe, of course, but the summer colonies for some of the wealthy elite Americans of the late 1800’s early 1900’s.
Till soon, friends –
