Bring Sunny Home

The first part of December was unusually cold and snowy around here.  I had been keeping Sunny at my trainers so that I could just go to lessons and she would be there... I know lazy on my part, but the other side of it is she was also getting extra attention and training of her own.  Greg called and wanted to know if he could bring Sunny to me.  There water was froze and they have plenty of there own horses to take care of.  Sure, why not? She's my horse I can take care of her. 

He brought her down to my parents and I stuck her in the field with the other horses. She was stressed.  Pacing non stop. I kept a close watch on her all day.  I went home and my Mom kept on eye on her.  I fell asleep and woke up to my brother calling me... he told me, I'm pretty sure your horse is in the middle of the road.  I jumped out of bed and grabbed my boots and made it to the truck before I decided I should at least put pants on. 

The temperature was hovering around zero degrees. Burr! I didn't have to go very far,  about half a block before I found my brother and his friend had Sunny cornered in someone's yard.  She was terrified, had crazy eyes. I got her calmed down and put a harness on her.  Sunny was going home, she was on her way back to Greg and Shana's house.  My brother told me that they followed her and watched her cross the highway. Scary! She got to the highway, stopped, looked both ways and proceeded to cross. At least she looked both ways.

At this point we were only about one country block away from my parents and the field that I keep my horses in. I decided I would walk her home (my horse trailer was in the shop getting some work done to it).    My brother walked her part of the way.. and I walked her the rest of the way.  It was icy, Sunny and I both were slipping and sliding all over the place. I gave her a piece of my mind as we walked.

After what seemed like forever I got her home and tied her to a fence post... got in the truck to warm up and watched her.  I decided that was not a very good place to tie her up because she was freaking out and was still having a panic attack.  So I decided to walk her across the field to some old corrals and tie her up in there.  Did I mention how cold it was?  With snow up to my knees I walked Sunny across the field, in the dark and uphill.  I'm out of shape.  Walking in the snow is hard.  Walking in the snow, uphill in the dark is even harder. hah!

I left her for the night and slept very little.  First thing in the morning I went over to check on her.  She had tore up her legs getting through the fence the night before.  My brother and I went and bought panels to make her a corral and fix the fence were she had gotten out. Needless to say Sunny spent some time in the corral and I learned a lesson.  Don't turn a horse out when you first get them, let them get used to the area in a corral.

I'm Back!  Been super busy.... and I'm not sure why because winter is normally super boring in the evenings!  Have added some new animals to our family... and lost a few... sad day at the Frankovich farm!

We "rescued" a cute little sheltie from the pound here and decided to call her Zella. She won my heart over when I went to the pound to see her, she was a stray and I can't believe her owners didn't claim her.  We just love her.  Other than her barking.  We are working on that, but she is super talkative.

Zella, not sure how anyone could resist this face!

 

Zella and Miss Cleo in matching sweaters, they are BFF's!

 
 In November, we acquired two new mini horses.  Penny and Gus.  Penny is 4 and Gus is 2, they are brother and sister and Gus was in pretty rough shape when we got him.  I've been working on fattening him up and his little personality is really starting to show.  They have been so much fun!

On a cold day in December, I went outside to check on my chickens and to my dismay... there were a lot of feathers but only 2 chickens.  We live on a canal so I went to investigate and see if they were playing in the dry canal, which they like to do in the winter.  More feathers, blood but no chickens.  I lost 12 chickens in one night.  Sad! Not going to lie, I cried! I had lost my porch rooster, Hope the week before and now I only have 3 lonely chickens (my brother brought a lone chicken over that they had).

We brought Sunny home from Dry Fork.... more on that later!

Sunny

We are trying to sell our house.  (if you know anyone that's looking) We are currently working on house plans to build a new house.  But we need to sell our house before we can start building. I'm so excited for our new house!  We will be living with my parents if/when we sell our house so I have to stop getting new animals for awhile... says my Dad. I can't wait to have our horses in our backyard! That day can't come soon enough!

House plans with redline changes

On a side note... I hate the new editor for pictures on this blog site... anybody know of a good app to add text to pictures?  I've tried a few but haven't found one that I like.

My Backyard

 

 

I love my back yard.  When we moved into our house it was a blank slate... all dirt.  After the first winter I was in a hurry to get a yard in.  I was sick of dealing with the mud and dogs.  I enjoy doing yard work and got right to it.  I hired out the sprinklers, curbing and sod.  But other than that Rick and I have done everything ourselves. The landscapers thought we were crazy  not to put weed barrier and bark in all of the flower beds.  But I love that flowers spread and re-seed and get prettier every year.

Our house is currently for sale (hopefully sold)... and our backyard is one thing I'm definitely going to miss!  I enjoy the old trees that have been there longer than I have been alive.  I love that my chickens have some where to free range, I love the canal and hearing the sound of water running through our backyard.  The flowers are one of my favorite things, I love the colors and beauty they add.

 

 

 

 

 









Saddle

Finding a good used saddle has been my latest venture.  I found a few online and talked a lady in bring one to me so that I could check it out.  I looked at the saddle and thought... this looks like a nice saddle.  But since I don't know anything about saddles I decided I needed someone to help me.  The nice lady let me borrow the saddle and took it over to Uncle Gary's for inspection.  Not the reaction I was expecting but I got not only and NO but and heck NO.  He took one look at the saddle and told me it was no good.  I took it back to the lady and told her no thanks.  So on with the saddle hunt.  I went to Southern Utah for the weekend and found a man that had seven saddles for sale.  On my way home I stopped to check out his saddles.  Charlie was a super nice guy that is moving to South America and needs to get rid of his horses and their gear.  I told Charlie I didn't know anything about saddles and we took a look at all the saddles he had for sale.  I also got a tour of his property, horses, corrals and had a nice visit with him.  I ended up buying 2 saddles, 2 saddle blankets, 2 bridles and reins.  I think I did good.  Hopefully Shana approves when I show her tonight.  I will tell you tonight weather Charlie is really a nice guy or a guy who ripped me off because I don't know the first thing about saddles.

County Fair Horse Show

Shana keeps telling me she thinks I need to do horse shows.  To be completely honest, I have no idea what that entails.  I kept meaning to look it up on the internet but never did.  When she told me that I there was going to be a local one I decided to go check it out.

I recruited my Aunt Mary to go with me and off to the Western Park we went.  I was surprised not very many spectators there.  We watched Shana and Ally Beth compete.  Ally Beth takes lessons from Shana and this was her first show, she rode BJ.  Shana rode Tucker, Ally Beth's horse. 

I was intrigued and I decided I want to try this "Horse Show" thing out.

Ally Beth and Cute little Coleman on BJ

 

Shana

 

Shana

Shana did so good!  She took best of show (or something like that) on a horse that had never been in a horse show.  Pretty impressive if you ask me.  Ally Beth did really good too!  She got ribbons in almost every class.  And little Coleman even got a ribbon and candy for his class.  He was more excited about the candy than the ribbon though.

Now I'm going to start training for horse shows.  So excited!!

Irrigation

My parents have a few shares of water for all of there land and I talked them into/we decided to pursue irrigating the fields this year.  Only one problem, one of the neighbors built his house over the top of the ditches.  My Dad had talked to the neighbor which just happens to be the Chief of Police about the situation and  they we still needed to be able to get water to our fields.  After the conversation my Dad found the slope of the property and the only way it would work to get water to the culvert. 

A few nights later he took Rick over to show him where to put the ditch in order for the water to flow when neighbor comes out of his house roaring that we couldn't put a ditch back in.  Ohhhh bad idea.  With tempers flaring they fought it out.  I wish I would have been there to see this but it's probably a good thing I wasn't there or I would have been right in the middle.

After a few days, of what I'm assuming the neighbor researched his rights and our rights, we got the A-OK to go ahead and put a ditch in his yard.  Rick cleaned all the ditches out from the canal down to the fields and tested the water out to make sure it flowed correctly. 

We scheduled to have the water turned on a Thursday, I went up to my parents to make sure that everything worked like it was supposed to... I waited... and waited... and then Myrna from the water office called and informed me she forgot to put the order in.  We rescheduled for the next day and I met Jerry the ditch master at my parents house to go over the process.  We went up to the head gate and Jerry turned the water on at 1/2 foot for 6 hours.  Jerry is a sweet old man, he had a hard time getting down to the head gate.  He drove like a mad man on the dirt canal road. 

The water wasn't flowing correctly so I decided to get the tractor and see if I could fix the ditches.  I got the water to spread out a little more but I made a huge mess of the ditches.  Driving the tractor was so much fun I lost track of time and before you know it everyone was waiting for me to go out of town on a road trip to Colorado.

I left and went out of town.  When I got home I decided to go check on ditches and see how much I messed them up.  To my surprise the water was still running.  6 hours, 3 days... same difference, right?  I tried to turn the head gate off but it didn't work.  I called Rick and he came over and worked on the ditches while the water was running.  I'm jealous of his tractor skills.  He made it look so easy moving dirt and fixing the ditches.  We went up to the head gate and well silly me, I turned the head gate the wrong way.  No wonder it didn't turn off. 

A few days later Jerry called me to see how long we let the water run for.  I told him I waited for him to come turn it off because that's how I thought it worked.  So future reference we are in charge of turning the water off.  Good to know.

Junior Rodeo



 

Sunset at the Junior Rodeo in Randelett.  Had a nice time watching Boston, my riding partner at lessons, compete.  She did awesome!  All the little kids at this rodeo could teach me a thing or two about riding horses!