Why, why, why!!

We have lived in this house for 5 years. For 5 years we have had to haul water from a water tower 5 miles away with our truck and water trailer. So last fall the county finally put in a water line near our house. Soooooo.......... yesterday we got our water meter in and the guy that set the meter was kind enough to leave his trencher so we could get it to the house. Yippie!! Things are falling in place!!!
Well....... last night Rob (my husband) got about 3/4 of the trench dug to the house. We watched the weather last night and TWO stations said no rain until afternoon the next day (today, Thursday). Well the alarm went off at 5 am and as I was just about ready to get out of bed I heard thunder!!! I quickly checked the radar and saw a small band of rain headed our way. Ok, I thought, it will be a quick little shower and everything will be fine. NO!!!! It has rained almost all day! The nice pretty trench is now filled with mud and water! Why! Why! Why! couldn't the rain have just held off for 12 hours!

I guess I should be happy that the water meter is set and ready to go.
Maybe next weekend.
Ok...everyone think no rain for us until after we get this done!

Have a great day!!!

First try at hand shearing

Well I did my first try at hand shearing today. I did it all with scissors. I did my angora buck Rufus because I knew his fiber was going to be of little value because of all the VM (hay and debris) in it. And he is the wildest one of the what I have left to do. Here are a couple before pictures.

And an hour later here is the results.

I was very happy with the results! And if the fleece had not been so full of VM it would have been really nice. I can see huge advantages of doing it with scissors. It will be so easy to do most the the skirting as you are shearing. The extra time it takes to hand shear is less time it will take to skirt it and get it ready to sell or process. And for those that don't know, skirting is where you pick though a fleece that has come off the animal and you get rid of all hay, dirt, manure, and short pieces of fleece.

Now I have four shetland sheep to do and one merino sheep. Don't think I will get to them all today!

Is it too cold for a swim?

Well, apparently Sammie thought it was warm enough for a swim. Or at least a soak. She has not blown her coat yet so she gets pretty hot. That cold pond water must feel pretty good!!

She is the only Great Pyrenees that I have ever had that likes the water. The only time she ever really swims is if she can stop swimming and her toes can still touch the bottom.

Hailey was waiting for her to come out of the pond so she can play some more. Wouldn't you think a lab mix would want to go swimming too? Maybe when she gets older and it is warmer outside.

And this is where we all run back into the house before Sammie runs over to us and shakes all that water off!

She did this about 7pm tonight. And once the sun went down the tempature really dropped. When she came in at 8:30 she was shivering a little.

Luckily she dries off fairly quickly and doesn't smell like pond water!

Hoping for another beautiful day tomorrow!!!

Admiral Don

Thought I would post a picture of Admiral and some information about him. He is for sale. If you anyone interested in him please past this blog along.

14 year old, 14.3 hand, bay gelding. He has been shown western pleasure, hunter pleasure, halter and showmanship. He has been trail ridden and ridden bareback. He is currently on pasture with four other horses but is comfortable in a stall ( and very neat). He has been ridden a limited amount of time in the last five years. But I have ridden him 2-3 times a week for the last couple of weeks and he has done fantastic! He is sensitive to the leg, has a ground covering walk and trot, but will also do a Very nice slow jog. His canter is wonderful! He was ridden and shown mostly by a teenage girl who has lost interest in horses. He is not for the very beginner but for a knowledgable youth he would be a great horse.

His sire is Ansa Tajamal and his dam is Admiral's Miss Conduct, a daughter to Couragous Admiral.


He is a really fun horse to ride and feels like a bigger horse underneath you.

Have a wonderful day!!!!

Busy, busy day!

Wow!! Today was a very productive day! And it was beautiful outside which is an added bonus!

I was able to the get so much done today. Below is a picture of our walk way up to our house and on either side are flower gardens. I was able to get them both weeded along with the north side of our house where the hostas are weeded as well. Still have a ton of weed pulling to do but now I can walk to the house and smile instead of saying " I have GOT to get to them tomorrow!"  Makes me so happy to have clean flower beds. Now just waiting for more flowers to bloom.

Someday the walk way and the garden edges will be stone. Right now this serve the us well.

The only flower in bloom right now! I just love it!

My poor little cabbage and broccoli plants I forgot to plant for three days. They were in the back seat of the car! Hopefully they will make a come back.

I planted this bed last weekend with lettuce, radishes and beets. So far only the radishes are showing tiny leaves.

My tiny blueberry bushes I planted last spring. The bunnies had fun nibbling on them this winter so now berries from them this year! At least they are coming back! But I will pick off all of the blooms so it can get a little stronger and bigger. (again)

I also moved the shetland ewes and lambs and angora does and kids. Moving their eletric netting can be a challenge. I usually let them run loose while I do it and them raddle a can of grain and they all come running back to their new home for the week. I was suprised that they all came so easily today. This was the first time for the two 'wild' angoras does. But all came for that feed bucket. Here are a couple of pictures of them in their new paddocks.

Sweet little Agatha!

The twin shetland ram lambs.

The angoras with their movable shade.

The best thing I did today was ride Max. I have not ridden him for almost a year. The end of April last year I ripped my ACL in my knee and had surgery for it in June. Then it was November before I got the ok to ride again. That is about when winter stuck this year and never let up! I had ridden one of my other horse's this past couple of months because I need to get him in shape to sell. I had told my self I was not going to ride Max until I had Admiral sold (pictures of him later this week) Well I could not stand it and rode him today. He was fantastic!!! After not being ridden for almost a year, I saddled him and rode away from the house on a long rein like we had been doing it for months! Rode about 45 minutes and he was great! I just love riding him! ( Can't tell can you :))  Sorry no pitures of our ride.

Ok, one last picture. This kind of explains how busy the  whole day was. This is Hailey. I think she might be a little bit tired. LOL

Have a wonderful day!!!

couple intros and the newest shetland ram lamb

 Finally got batteries for the camera so here are pictures I took tonight.      Here is Agatha with her mom Cedar. I have not gotten Cedar sheared yet.

Here is a really good picture of Agatha. Isn't she the sweetest thing. She will be staying at the farm.

The new shetland ram lamb doesn't like his picture taken. This is the best one I could get tonight. He kept hiding behind his mom!

Matilda feels much better today after her hair cut. With tempertures in the 80's today she was nice and cool. I have the collar on her so I can tell the difference between her and Cedar. They look almost identical in full fleece.

Here is Adian. He will be moving to Iowa after he is weaned. It will be hard to see him leave but just can't keep them all.

And Alex. He will miss Adian when he leaves. They have such fun running around the paddock together picking on their mom's.

Well that is all for tonight. I need to shut the computer down, we have a severe thunderstrom heading our way. I was hoping it was going to miss us so we could stay nice and dry. Ahhhhh.... spring in Kansas!

Beautiful rainbow!!

Friday was a weird weather day. In the morning we had strong storms and heavy rain. Then it turned cool and the sun came out. When I go home the weather was perfect.......until..... out of the blue a strong storm about two miles wide and three miles long came right over our house. So as we where looking out laughing at the fact that the sun was out a half a mile away, I went to the front door and saw this beautiful rainbow!!

We also had our last shetland lamb born Friday. A single ram lamb. So all ram lambs form the shetlands this year and two buckling and one doeling angoras with one more doe left to kid. I am hoping for another doeling!!
I moved the electiric netting Sunday night. And tonight I got one of the angora's, Matilda, sheared. She is the last one to kid so I really wanted to get her done so I can keep an eye on her bag. She had been due to kid March 24th but no such luck. So now I am not sure when she will kid! I ended up using my horse clippers on her and they worked wonderful!! No worrying about cut her or me! It took longer and I have quite a few more second cuts but since my big clippers need a part I was going to hard clip her. So I think it went a whole lot better.
Well, I was going to get some more pictures to night but my camera needs new batteries. And of course there are none in the house and I can't find the battery charger for the rechargable batteries.
So hopefully tomorrow I will have some more pictures!

Weaving

Boy, has it been really nice the last couple of days. Highs in the 70's. The wind has been a little strong, but that makes the clothes on the line dry fast. Nothing like the smell of sheets and clothes that have dried out on the line!

With warmer and longer days it is becoming harder and harder to get any weaving done. I finally finished two rug and towel sets last night. I had them woven for a couple of weeks but I needed to sew the ends up. And I had been probably 20 plus years since I used a sewing machine so I need some practice. Good thing I had about twelve samples that I also needed to sew up. Made a bunch of mistakes on them!

These are two different sets. They each have on rug and two towels. They have the same warp threading but the rugs have differnet weft. I had a lot of fun with this project and still have one more on the loom! neither one of these will be for sale but I do plan on making some more that will be for sale. The maximium width I can do is 22 inches but the lenght can be unlimited. So if any one is interested in a set or just a rug or towel let me know. They are all cotton. Made with mop cotton and cotton flake yarn with a lot of color choices.

Have a wonderful day!!