Leave a mark on me

The other day I hung a fly trap in my barn. Annie thought it was a horse eater. She would look at it, turn in a circle and look at it again. Yalla! had no idea what was so interesting but she obeyed her mother, staying by her side and going in circles too. It didn't take long for Annie to decide it wasn't going to hurt them. She decided to ignore it and went into her stall to eat with little Yalla! right behind her. Now she completely ignores the hanging bag. She is so much calmer than she used to be.

Today, while the horses were out in the field (arena) it rained on them. Then, I saw Yalla! roll for the first time ever! Unfortunately, I couldn't get any pictures but I did notice that the star on her forehead has changed somewhat. Now it looks like someone painted an "F". Look at the next photo. Don't you agree? I guess she's had it for a while but it just looks so prominent now. This is very cool since her name is going to be Kaheema Fantastyka or Fantastyk Kaheema. I haven't decided which way to write it yet.

Here's a head shot of Annie looking at the fly trap from the other day. Isn't she pretty?

Leave a mark on me - song: Beat of your drum, artist: Tin Machine, albm: Tin Machine

It's happening outside

My boys and I arrived late Friday night at my mom's house in northern new Mexico. We gave her a bouquet of flowers and some birthday presents. Of course, we sang Happy Birthday and watched her blow out the candles on her birthday cake. Then we headed up to my cabin for the night. We are welcome to stay with my mom but I love my little cabin at the top of the mountain.

When we unlocked the shutters on the windows in the morning we saw my lodger sleeping under the window boards. He takes a little while to wake up. Then he flys away for the time we are at the cabin but he comes back when we leave.
We had egg burritos with sausage, green peppers, cheese and salsa and freshly brewed coffee for breakfast. Then it was time for a little work.
A couple of years ago my husband cut an enormous pine tree down that was growing too near the cabin. This was taken last fall and it doesn't do it justice. The tree is much bigger than it looks. The base is easily 2 feet across. This is a view of THE TREE from inside my cabin. This is the upper part. You can see how close it is to the cabin. If it had fallen wrong it would have taken down the cabin.It still needs to be cut up for firewood. Ross is quite handy with a chainsaw so he went to work at it. However, our big chainsaw wasn't acting properly and the small one wasn't big enough to do the job so we only got the upper branches cut up on this trip. It was still a pretty good load to bring home. Here he is trying to figure out what to do with the blasted chainsaw!After the woodcutting, Ross wanted to have some fun, so he went fishing at one of the little ponds down at the bottom of the mountain. I joined him for a while but he wasn't having any luck at all.

I decided to go for a walk near my cabin. I only made it to the field next door but I took lots and lots of photos.

This vine was growing up through a pine tree. Does anyone know what kind of plant it is?

I love how the rocks are mossy and the trees grow all around them. It rained a few days earlier and this rock still had a puddle of water in it. This is a four foot high boulder that I climbed on.
Does anyone know what this cute little vine is called?
Look at all these young pine trees! They're all about 2-4 feet tall.

I love how all these branches are so crooked. Unfortunately, they look like dead trees so we'll need to take them down.
This pretty pine tree is growing up through the branches of the other trees.The ranchers were very creative in the old days, using anything they could for fencing.

There is a whole art on barbed wire. Every rancher twisted his a little bit differently.
I came across some scat, a lot of scat actually! This pile was huge!!! This is only a few hundred yards from my cabin. Seeing that, and then another pile near it, I decided it was time to return to my cabin.

Later in the day, my boys were driving away from my mom's house at the bottom of the hill and they saw a black bear run across the road in front of the truck. It was huge, they said, 300-400 pounds! Judging from the pile of scat I saw, I would agree.

Here's a picture of Trevor, kicking back and enjoying the cabin.

Soon it was time to go home again. Always, too soon!

FYI- I spoke with my mom yesterday and she saw the bear walking near her yard. She agreed that it was big! And the other day, she saw a hawk circling around near her Pug dog. He must have decided that Tobey is too big because he gave up and left. There are eagles in the area though so I guess she needs to keep an eye out for Tobey when he's outside now.

It's happening outside- song: Outside, artist: David Bowie, album: Outside

Sunday (Clouds 8-16-09)

This was sunrise on my doorstep a few months ago.

The sky is on fire, but thankfully, not the ground. Here are some alien spaceships. This was the moonrise a few nights ago.
Walking in the clouds on top of Wheeler Peak, the tallest mountain in New Mexico.

The sign points to Heaven.

For more Sunday Stills, please visit here.

Sunday - song: Sunday, artist: David Bowie, album: Heathen

Lodger

Tomorrow is my mother's 82nd birthday! My boys and I are going north to visit her as soon as Trevor gets out of school (his first day back). We will be staying at my cabin. I haven't been there since the 4th of July when Lisa and I spent the weekend to do some letterboxing. Since the day Rojo died right after we came back, I haven't spoken nary a word to her. I don't know why she's not talking to me, (she told me once that bloggers are strange, strangers?) but, whatever...

We'll go past the old mill,

up and down a couple of hills,over the river,and through the woods,

to Grandmother's house we go.

I have my Mom's cake and flowers ready to go. I'm going to finish this post and wrap her presents now. This time tomorrow, we'll be celebrating with my Mom and then heading up to my cabin for the night.

And if we're lucky, we'll get to see our summer lodger.

Lodger - album: Lodger, artist: David Bowie

Hey, hey

Yalla! began eating with her mother at about three weeks old. At first she was just curious, grabbing a nibble or two of her mother's grain. So I started creep feeding her at that time. Now she looks forward to her feedings and eagerly munches down. I am feeding Annie a mixture of grains and supplements and her teats are ridiculously full of milk. Yalla! is still nursing, of course.

Twice a day, I like to feed Annie a mixture of 1 - 2# coffee can of cracked corn, 1 -2# coffee can of 12% sweet feed, and 1 - 2# coffee can of 10% pelleted feed (I buy it at WalMart). I also feed her 1/2 ounce of MarePlus vitamins and about a 1/4 pound of Calf Manna. I've read both good and bad about Calf Manna but I've used it in the past so I decided to go ahead and use it again.
If you don't overfeed it, it makes a good supplement. The biggest complaint I've heard is from too fast of joint growth and too much protein.

I add a squirt of apple cider vinegar and a dollop of vegetable oil to the mix. I prefer to use corn oil but I figured I'd use up the veg oil first. I take Annie her grain in a big yellow bucket and then turn it over for a stool for me to sit on while I bucket feed Yalla! For Yalla!, I feed about a 1/4 pound of Calf Manna, a handful of cracked corn, and a handful of sweet feed. She doesn't eat it all yet so I just sit and let her eat what she wants while her mama eats her grain. Annie is a slow eater, savoring every bite, but she sloshes grain around so I should have her teeth checked, I suppose). It takes Annie about ten or fifteen minutes to eat up her grain so that's as long as I'm creep feeding Yalla!

Yalla! likes to taste everything, just like a kid, everything goes into the mouth. I've had to work on breaking her of nipping. She would take a bite of grain and then nuzzle my arm and then nip it while I was holding the bucket. I started smacking her mouth whenever she tried. She would walk off in a pout and then come back and we'd start all over again. I will not tolerate her nipping at me. I think she's getting better although I still don't fully trust her.

I feed the horses grass hay in the morning and a combination of grass and alfalfa at night. A week ago, when I was feeding them, I heard some strange scrittering noises in the hay trough. I investigated and found a baby mouse in the bottom of the feeder Annie and Yalla! had been grazing from. I caught it in the grain bucket.

Now, what do I do with it? It's been a week and it's still alive. I give it water in a little plastic cap and there's grain for it to eat. Because of the oil in Annie's grain, it got all greasy for a few days. But, I just can't kill it! I throw away dead mice all the time from the traps in the tackroom but this is a little baby! I've even been able to hold it in my hand. Any suggestions? I've thought about just letting it go in the field next door and I've considered a cage. What would you do with it?
The same day I found the mouse, I found a bird's nest in my hay.

I also found a tiny egg (the size of the speckled candy eggs at Easter). I don't know what kind it is or if it actually came from this nest but I suspect it did. The nest is interesting. It has hay, string, horse hair, and feathers woven together.

In regards to hay, my sons and I went out last weekend with the truck and trailer but we could only get about 35 bales of alfalfa. I didn't like the looks of the hay so we only took half of what he had. I guess you get what you pay for-it was $5.00. This was in the north valley so it wasn't too far away. Otherwise, what a wasted trip!

Last year, I bought a truckload of hay and had it delivered. It was a fiasco. They dumped some of the load on the way over to my place when they turned a corner too sharp, so I don't know if they lost some or not. Anyway, the trailer was too long to back up to my barn so they unloaded it in my arena and we had to haul it into the barn using my son's little truck. All 200 bales! We might as well go get it ourselves and drive it into the barn, huh?

However, after last weekend's wasted trip I called around for another delivery. I found an ad for grass hay at $6.00 a bale, DELIVERED and STACKED!!! I called him and although he doesn't usually deliver as far as where I live, he said he would bring it to my house if I bought 200. Also, the ad I saw had no restrictions on delivery. He has a smaller trailer than the guys last year, although it's bigger than mine. He can fit 100-120 bales at a time. The only problem with where I live is that the freeway has road construction all through the canyon which means a twisty two lane road with high walls on both sides and a huge hill to climb. It's very scary to drive anyway, much less with a big load, and hard on the truck engine in the heat! I told him to come along Route 66, the old highway, because there are no stops and the hill isn't as steep. So he agreed.

In record time he, his two teenage daughters, and my two sons had unloaded the 100 bales and they were off to get the next load. It started raining just as they were finishing, big soaking drops, but it only rained about fifteen minutes or so. Luckily the hay was safe in the barn by the time it began raining. I suppose you wonder why I didn't help. Hmmm, I was in town running errands and headed for home when my son called to tell me they were at the barn. They unloaded the hay so fast that they were gone before I got there.

He brought back the second truckload in just a couple of hours time. They were pulling in with the second load as I was pulling brownies out of the oven. I fixed up a plate of still hot brownies for the man and his two daughters and went out to help them all with the hay.

The bales are clean grass with some alfalfa although they are on the light side. Now I know how they could have unloaded so fast! But the hay looks good and it was a fair price. I spoke with someone else who would only deliver for an extra $3 a bale and that hay could easily be the same weight bales!

Update- I have let the little mouse go. Hopefully he will run far away and never come back. I cannot guarantee that my traps won't get him next time.

Hey, hey - song: Amlapura, artist: Tin Machine, album: Tin Machine II

And then I'll lead her on the ground

I am working on halter and lead training my little filly, Yalla! She has doubled in size since birth so I need for her to be extremely manageable because I don't want to get hurt by her. She is still a little resistant about haltering, but every time I put it on, I see improvement. She throws her head up and down right when I am getting the halter on and, because it's so heavy, I worry about the brass fittings hitting her. I guess the more I do it, the better she'll accept it. I have had to adjust the halter out two holes now since I first started putting it on her.

When I have a butt rope on her, she leads like a charm, even if I don't use it, but if I take it off, she refuses to budge! Any ideas? Hopefully, this will work itself out. Meanwhile, I guess I'll lead her two handed. lol

This photo was a few weeks ago, before she really started darkening up on her back.

My how she's changed since that photo! Yalla! is almost two months old! She's over two hundred pounds now and her upper body is turning chocolate brown. She's getting wild markings now- goggles around her eyes and her muzzle is all bare. Every scrape mark grows in with black or chocolate brown hair. Even her belly is turning chocolatey. Her dorsal stripe is blending more into her coat too. Notice the blackish tint to her backside and forearms in the next photo? She has a fifty percent chance of being gray or not gray and right now I'm betting on her being a dark horse.

Isn't she funny looking though? Now I know why they shave the foal's head and neck to the chest, so that it blends in better. I think her scraped knees are funny too, just like a kid!

I decided to bling up Annie's and Yalla!'s halters. I bought some rhinestone Christmas ribbon and glued it to their halters. I only put the ribbon across the nose and on the cheek pieces because of the adjustable straps on the poll, throat, and under the nose. It was so easy but I think it turned out kind of neat.

Notice how Yalla's mane is still standing straight up with a just few curls here and there. You can see in this picture how she needs her halter adjusted down again. Just think, I wondered if she'd ever grow big enough to wear it! hahaha!

Hmmm, Annie has dark bald spots on her face just like Yalla! Crazy! Her halter is decorated with the same ribbon as Yalla!'s but the rhinestones catch the light differently all the time. Here's a photo from last week. She pulled the fly mask off a few minutes later. Oh well! But you can just about make out how much she's nicked up and changing colors.I don't see Yalla! napping so much any more but I did catch her laying down today. She has always preferred to lay in manure piles and she's still doing it. She thought about getting up when I walked up to her but I sat down next to her (not in the manure, though) and gently pulled her head down. She closed her eyes and slept with her head in my lap.

And then I'll lead her on the ground -song: Don't bring me down, artist: David Bowie covering The Pretty Things, album: Pinups