Animal Issues. Yeah, I know, no surprises there.

There are certain things that will wake me from a sound sleep.  One of them is the sound of a baby crying, and, apparently, it doesn't seem to matter what species of baby.  Two weeks ago when I went to bed my tiny cat was hugely pregnant.  The poor thing would follow us around the house and then collapse to lie on the floor... until we moved to another room when she would have to get up and move with us and collapse again.  On this particular Sunday night she jumped (with some difficulty, I might add) up on my bed and went to sleep at my feet.

Shortly after midnight I was awakened by the tiniest little mew.  I sat bolt upright knowing exactly what it was, but was very surprised to see it was on the end of my bed!!  Then, of course, I was bummed because she was having her kittens on my bed for Pete's sake!  I got a towel and carefully put it under Stella Louise and her new kitten to save my quilt as best I could.  For the next few hours I read and watched as Stella produced four tiny kittens in all.  Here's a picture of them this morning, two weeks later.  They are the sweetest little fluffy creatures.

Whit looked over the side of their box this morning and said, "Huh.  It's going to be awhile before there's any good eatin' there."  Nice.  Look at them all lined up, snoozing.  It's been a really long time since we've had kittens (and will be a really long time before we have more) so we're enjoying these.  Especially since they're all spoken for already.

Another noise that will wake me from a sound sleep is the sound of hooves thundering down our road and across my yard.  I know exactly what that noise belongs to too.  I will awaken to the sound of one set of hooves (ah, that would be Scooby) walking across my yard, even if he's tiptoeing, which he doesn't because everyone knows a Belgian couldn't tiptoe if his life depended on it.  However, the sound of thundering hooves coming down the road always makes me sit bolt upright and cringe because that means the whole trio is out and terrorizing the traffic, or heavens to Murgatroyd, the walkers!  Okay, I really doubt they're terrorizing anyone because they tend to go on their walk-abouts pretty early, before my friend-who-doesn't-like-animals is out walking.  Furthermore, there isn't much traffic on our road, especially not at that hour on a Saturday morning.

So on this particular Saturday morning, the sound of hooves thundering back up the road at 6am once again made me leap for my shorts and shoes from a sound sleep.  (I guess Scooby had knocked enough of the fence down that Pat followed him this time.)  Shortly after the two goons went past my window I realized that all three horses were out when poor old Magnum came wheezing up the road. It's tough keeping up with buddies who are running when you have asthma.

My garden is nothing to brag about, but yesterday TBear and I spent about 4 hours reclaiming it from the weeds that had sprouted with all the rain we've had lately.  We discovered that someone might have planted the beans a little too deep because there is a serious lack of plants in the first two rows.  So I had TBear try again with some more beans.  Pat and Scooby ran around my garden when they came galloping back into the yard, but, um, someone forgot to give Magnum the memo...

Ah well, he did a nice job patting them down into the soil.  I guess.

It took a few more minutes to get the bad dogs back into their field.  I managed to take hold of Wheezy there on the left (aka Magnum) and lead him back to their pen, whinnying in distress because he felt left behind again.  Little did the lunk realize he was actually leading the herd at that point. :)  After racing around the field behind my garden there, Scooby (on the far right) finally stood still long enough for Whit to put a lead on him.  I took him back to the field while Whit chased Pat around a little more.  Pat is naughty, no two ways about it.  He didn't want to be led.  I opened the gate for him so he could "escape" inside to his buddies without having to suffer the indignity of being caught.  Here they are.  Busted.

I hear a few cars going by on the road now.  Look at them standing there waiting for their breakfast like nothing ever happened.

I'm going to go have another cup of coffee.

A Day on the Farm

Our grandson spent six days with us on the farm a few weeks ago.  We had lots of outdoor chores to do, and Sunny was right there helping with everything.  What a fun age three years old is.  He wants to be independent and do things by himself.  He also wants to do anything everyone else is doing...even the hard work.  Encouraging his help is good training, I say.

A friend gave us this old Farmall tractor for Sunny to play with.  It steers like an old Farmall too.  Sunny's legs are a little too short to reach the pedals on the big tractor yet, so he likes to ride this one around.

Daily chores start and end with milking the goats.  TBear was most patient to let Sunny help; however, Sunny really was a good watcher this week.  One needs to be especially quiet around the first fresheners or they tend to jump around trying to get away from the scary, small noisemaker, which can be a real pain when you're milking.  Three is a big boy age.  Sunny was able to stay quiet and calm (as in no fast moves.)  Here, he's explaining how to do the milking to TBear.  Just in case he forgot.  (I love it!  He's naturally narrating what he's learned.)

The horses' pen isn't really that far from the barn, but it is a long way to try to carry the bale of hay and their feed pans, so Grampa uses the golf cart he's turned into a work cart (note the dump body on the back...excellent for transporting grass clippings to mulch the blueberries or take weeds to the compost pile.)  Sunny is holding the horses' feed trays on the way back to the barn.  He loves any job involving the golf cart.

We have a dear elderly neighbor a quarter of a mile down the road with beautiful fields that need to either be grazed or cut each summer, so we happily help her out and do both.  The horses graze all day in a pasture behind her house where she enjoys watching them through her kitchen window.  At the end of the day, Grampa, Sunny, and I go down and fetch the boys.  Sunny got to ride Scooby home.  I know I've mentioned this before, but we are going to be so distressed when Scooby goes...he is such a gentle, patient creature.  Sunny can barely get his legs around the old boy.

Pat is not exactly a juvenile at 10 yrs old or so, but he gets a little antsy when he knows his dinner is waiting for him.  Which is why Grampa is wearing that face...he's telling Pat to stand still while I take their pictures so as not to jostle Scooby and scare Sunny on his back, or worse yet knock him off.

 

Another day found us cutting up firewood to stack in our woodshed.  It was not a good day for haying, but we don't have a chore shortage.  There's that faithful old golf cart, so of course Sunny wanted to help.  His job is to toss firewood into the back of the golf cart for transport to the wood shed while  Grampa and TBear do the splitting.

It was kind of a high toss, so Grampa set up a stump for Sunny to climb onto so he could throw the wood into the back of the cart.  I couldn't believe he lasted for the entire job.  When the cart was full, he and I would drive it up to the shed and he played while I unloaded it.  Then off we'd go for another load.

Some days are better than others in the haying operation.  This particular week, both our Farmall C AND the H had serious issues requiring them to come back to the barn.  Whit is diagnosing the issue with the C here, trying to decide which one can be repaired quickest to get back out to the field.  It turned out that the C needed a new water pump.  It went back to work.  Sadly, the H is in the dead row with, hopefully, only a blown head gasket.   Poor old H.

 

Nope, Sunny's legs still don't reach those pedals.

Finally, at the end of a busy day, it's time to sit on the front porch and chill for a bit before dinner.