What I did on my holidays

A week already since I posted last! Well I do have an excuse- I have been spending every single day over at our new place, painting every room- and I'm still not done. (I took a week's holidays to get this done.) Kitchen, mud room, 2 bedrooms are done, bathroom is partly done and still have an upstairs bathroom to do. It's a lot of work, the ceiling is 9'6" so it's up and down the ladder. Here are a couple of before and afters:

The kitchen, before 

and after. It will be a mess for a while, flooring going in over the next 2 weeks.

The living room, looking into the mud room: before

and after. It took 2 coats of primer and 2 coats of colour over that dark blue.

That room behind Thea has California Knockdown ( a type of stipple ) on the ceiling and bottom half of the wall; the blue is gone and it is now a neutral sand colour. It will be my studio room and I wanted a neutral colour that wouldn't reflect on any art I work on.

The other bedroom was another colour of bright green, it is now the same colour as the mud room. A type of soft brown called Shhhhh.

I finished the second coat of colour on it today and started on the downstairs bathroom.

Meanwhile, Ted has been super busy too! They rented a post pounder on the weekend and spent 2 days in the rain pounding posts for the horse corrals. 

On the left is the mare's pen, Beamer's pen is on the right and a big ole burn pile at the bottom. All the old busses and other stuff in the trees will be hauled away by a scrap guy, and next year that area will be fenced also for turnout.

He also spent the last 2 days putting in water lines for the horses- a stand pipe for the mare pen and one over by the barn for Beamer's pen. We wanted to put electrical cable in the trench too, but we'd have to upgrade the panel in the well house so it will have to wait until next year. I'll be chopping ice this winter!

He's pretty tired, lots of hard work but so worth it. We still have to string the wire for the horse pens, that'll take a couple more days and we'll have to do it in the rain: there is a big storm system coming in off the Pacific ocean and it's bringing rain for the next 5 days. I want to have it all done by next weekend so I can go get Coyote Belle and bring her to the new place. Then we also have to build shelters..... and get moved....

But it will all be worth it.

Especially with this view to look at.

Despite the rain

Even though I had to dodge rain showers all weekend, I did manage to get quite a bit done- but alas, no riding. Saturday I set up the electric fence around Rio's pasture- after tearing out the offending small section of barbwire!- and even managed to get the lawn mowed in between showers, and get some of the housework done. Sunday is a day of rest around here, and it was too wet to do much anyway. Today we got the electric fencer hooked up, and Rio got to go back on his modified pasture.

The panels are where the barbwire was, and I split the field in half, and ran the electric tape along the barbwire that separates his pen from the cow pasture. Ya I know, kinda like shutting the barn door after the horse is stolen.
Chickory is improving, I've been using my oils on her as well as the poultices. Even though I can't see any place where an abscess may have broken through, she is walking way better. Today I pruned some willow branches ( a good source of salicylic acid) and threw some in each of the horse pens, guess who was busy munching?

Belle gave up quickly, but Chickory just loved them. At first, Nitro though they were horse-eating branches, but then he became a horse, eating branches.
I got a lot of digging done today, moved a blackberry bush and developed the spot it was in for transplanting the new roses. Got a few "brown" shots for the next Sunday Stills- no, not dirt! And managed to get a really cool video of mama Raven feeding her getting-really-big-baby- Raven.

Tomorrow I'm going to get a photo from up the hill that shows the amount of water down here on the flats. I think there is some flooding just south of us, and I sure hope the diking system holds, or we'll be in trouble. It could quit raining any time now.

Running around

It was a no time kind of weekend- Ted was home, but had no time to relax; the weather was nice but I had no time to ride. Saturday was run around and get things done- like having to deal with the cell phone company with a phone that quit working, only to be told that the techs will have it figured out in 3-4 business days... yeah right.
Sunday- s'posed to be a day of rest- sure, after we went up the hill and cut firewood! At least it was a lovely day for it- but then Ted had to leave for work. So it goes...
Rio's wound is healing well. I know I said I was going to get some Uniprim for him, but I checked with the vet, and would have had to pay to have the vet visit and tell me what I already knew, plus they would have had to order it in. So I went with what I knew best- my essential oils. I cleaned the wound with a mild solution of Theives cleaner, and used Purification and Melrose blends to get rid of the infection. That took about 3 days. The wound was really deep; to the bone, and an inverted v shape. The Schreiners Solution that I originally used tended to close the outside of the wound, which didn't allow it to drain, hence the infection. Once the infection was gone I applied Ocotea oil along with the others- and wow did it start healing fast then. I have also added Lavender, which regenerates tissue. All the time, Rio has been really good to treat. He stands quietly while work on him, and when I pull his foot forward and hold it between my knees as I apply the oils he doesn't try to pull away, even when I take the time to go through all 4 oils. Good Rio! I did have him penned up for a week as he'd get to running around and reopening the wound when he was out with the mares, but it's healed enough that he's back with them now. Happy Rio!

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If anyone wants to know more about the essential oils, email me or leave a comment and I'll try to answer your questions. Also, I suggest you check out Gary Young's blog - he's the founder of Young Living Essential Oils.

The best laid plans...

of mice and men, oft go awry....
I have good intentions of riding Gussie, but things just keep happening that put my riding on hold. For example, this morning when I went to put the mares out to pasture, I was surprised to see that Rio wasn't in the stall with his mama- he was with Gussie and Chickory in the rest of the mare pen. Huh? The only way he could have got out was if he was laying down next to the panels (the foaling stall is 20 X 20, made out of 2W corral panels, five feet high, and covered with plywood on three sides) and managed to get underneath. So that stepped up my plan of removing the foaling stall, as Rio is now big enough that he doesn't need to be kept separate any more, and the mares have their herd dynamics all worked out from being in the big pasture together during the day.

So my plan to ride was put on hold while I dismantled the pen, and baby-proofed the rest of the pen. That meant going through the shelter that is in the middle of the pen, taking down one front wall that was a little rickety, patching a hole in the back wall that Velvet excavated, removing or pounding in any errant nails, and removing the empty bale feeder that I had stacked against one side of the fenceline.

You can see in the background of this photo Beamer's rickety shelter and part of the cattle handling equipment

Then I got looking at Beamer's pen, and planning how I'm going to make some changes in there: he has a rickety shelter too, if you remember the wind actually moved it off its skids, and it's too low; it's actually a cattle shelter. So the plan is to remove it, and make Beamer a shelter off part of the overhang that houses the foaling pen area. Which means moving the remainder of the cattle handling equipment that forms part of Beamers pen, and bringing in the extra panels from the pasture....and that means that I probably won't get to ride tomorrow either.

The dotted lines show where the panels will go to make the new fenceline; the yellow outline shows the roof of the overhang.

It'll probably take two days to do the changes to Beamer's pen, so hopefully  Friday I can saddle up her red roan self and have some fun; Saturday we cut and wrap the beef.

Respite

One of those rough days at work yesterday was made all better by coming home and spending time with my horses and dogs- yes and my husband too! After a quick trip to Idaho for groceries, which didn't even seem like a drop in the bucket in the cavernous trunk of the Caddilac, I  had three pairs of Border Collie eyes staring at me, then at the ball then me, then the ball...... you know that shifty, begging look..... so we played for a while. I have to kick the ball high to get it past Sammi, she's the blocker,

Tess is the retriever, she won't let anyone else catch the ball, then she drops it 10 feet away and lets Reba bring it the rest of the way. Team work!

This morning the big ole moon was sliding behind the ; since my camera doesn't do good moon shots unless there is some natural light I hustled out to see what I could capture. I found Beamer doin' a little moon gazing

before it slid out of sight.

Have a wonderful day folks, we are going to be sunny and beautiful here.

Getting there!

I know I've been AWOL lately but I've been busy, getting organised here and also I picked up a job painting the house of the elderly lady where my mares are pastured, a very nice person she is, and I will probably work there for a few more days. I get to see the girls while I am painting, and Sparkle was so funny today; she was galloping circles around mama and Chickory, almost as if she was in training for a future career as a reiner! Meanwhile, Beamer is adapting to his solitary life (poor boy!) He is so funny, for the first few days he was really pouting and wouldn't come and socialise with me at all, but now he's back to his lovable self.

Hey! You cows out there! You seen my mares anywhere?

Nope, don't see 'em over there.....

and they're not over there either......

and those definitely aren't MY girls!

(Sigh...) guess I'll just have to visit humans instead!

Just another day at work

Here are some of the faces I see at work. I think I prefer them to some of the faces I've seen at other jobs I've had!

This big boy had just come from being semen tested at the vets and he wasn't very happy..... (probably because the vet said that he wouldn't be visiting the cows anymore!)

I kinda laughed when I saw his ear tag; it says 60D but looks like it says God, which I'm sure he thought he was!

and I was real glad of the stout bars of the fence between us! Cattle prices are staying up a bit, but I think a lot of the older ranchers are getting out of the business- too much paper work and computer work these days for some of the old boys.
I was taking some photos for Sunday Stills Challenge; I've decided to do lines and animal husbandry. How about you?

Back for my 200th post

I have been working some long hours this week, so haven't had time to keep up with all my blogger friends. We had a long day at the cattle auction, the highlight of which was a group of these extra big, extra wild Charolais steers and bulls. One of them stood in his pen in the alley before he was sold, following every move of the young fellow who was loading cattle into the sales ring, swinging his head from side to side, and charging at him time and again. Creepy! In this picture a pair of them are coming out of the sales ring; one of our brave girls is at the door ready to close it and me, I'm up on the fence -I didn't know if they were going to try to leap the fence or not- then I had to scramble down and close the gate that you can see in the foreground. We made sure the alleys were clear, then sent them down to their pens ; they went full tilt, with the pen rider hard on their tails and got them penned without incident. The one that was hunting the young fellow got sent straight from the sales ring (where he tried to climb in with the auctioneer) to a pen; we didn't try to contain him, just sent him straight down to a good strong bull pen. At the end of the day, the last 4 or 5 were some of these, so we ended the day on an adrenalin rush too! I love my job.... really I do. I'd rather do this job than my other job, cooking in a restaurant.
All the horses except Chickory got their feet trimmed yesterday. I won't have time to work with her today, but tomorrow she will get some attention. I really need to get her halter broke before the snow hits so that I can turn her and Peppy out with the other two into the winter feeding paddock and put Beamer in the pen they are in, as it is his winter pen.

Work and play

We had over 1600 head go through the cattle sale yesterday, and worked until after dark. I had my camera with me and caught the sunset sky,and Kelly, one of the pen riders. We have two pen riders who push the cattle down the alleys for us to pen. They bring a total of 5 horses, and are in the saddle all day-often 9 or more hours. We do bulls first, so they use their best horses in the morning, then change out around lunchtime and ride their younger horses. They do a great job. Today, I'm working at the monthly horse sale, which starts at 6 PM, so I bet I don't get home til after midnight!

I had a good session with Peppy today. I introduced him to the idea of walking over the feed bag:

which he thought was a better idea than having it rubbed all over his body! He is getting very tall now, and getting a little pushy at feeding time, so he is getting his manners tuned up too.
When I worked with Chickory, she let me touch her at first, then regressed into being flighty, so out came the stick to rub her with, and the rope around her neck, asking her to give to pressure-which is coming along nicely until she decides to take flight! But we ended up on a good note with her letting me rub her neck, poll, cheeks, and under her jaw. She still hasn't got that soft look, though; I'm thinking that will take a while.