Sugar Creek Farm

Duddy

A friend of ours invited Olivia on a trail ride this past Saturday, out at his in-laws’ farm. Sounded nice. Just so happened that the guy who sold us Star had mentioned the week before that he had another horse to sell us, and he’d be happy to bring him over and let us try him out for a week or two. So I called him up and asked to borrow the horse for the trail ride.

We went and picked him up last week Thursday. That’s him in the picture up there. His name is “Duddy”. Half Arabian, half Quarter Horse, 6 year old gelding. A big boy! He’s quite a handsome gentleman, I think, and very affectionate to boot.

Now keep in mind that though I’ve always wanted to be good with horses, I’ve always been quite intimidated and maybe downright frightened of them. I’ve learned a lot watching Olivia take lessons and calmed down considerably around them. But still, I’m a “beginner beginner”.

Olivia’s last words as we started the trail ride were, “Mom, I won’t be surprised if you fall off today.”

Not 10 minutes into the trail ride, my saddle slid off. A kind older gentleman held Duddy while I put it back in place and tightened it up again. This held up the trail riders behind me and we got separated from the other half of the group. Not off to the best start.

Not 10 minutes later, it slid off again. A kind gal got off her horse and put my saddle back on for me. However Duddy was not happy, because Olivia & Star had gone on ahead with the rest of the riders. He would not stand still and kept swinging his head at me. He gave the poor gal (and me) quite a hard time. But bless her, she got it fixed and I didn’t have any problems with the saddle the rest of the ride.

But when we got back on the horses, Duddy decided he did not like that gal’s horse and was bucking and kicking his back legs at her. I let them go ahead of me, and once we got caught up to Olivia & Star and the rest of the riders he settled down a bit.

His owner had told me that Duddy was so mellow I’d have a hard time getting him to trot. Um, I guess Duddy didn’t get the memo because that’s all he wanted to do. My arms were quite sore the next day from trying to hold him back the entire ride!

The trail wound along the river and through the woods. We came to a very soft, sandy stretch and all of a sudden Duddy stopped. He looked down and I thought, “Oh, he has an itch on his leg and he’s going to scratch it.” And 2 seconds later I realized, “We’re going down!” I guess that sand just looked like a nice soft place to lay down to Duddy. I jumped off and wasn’t hurt or anything. I got right back on and we finished the trail ride.

So it might sound like with all of this “adventure” I didn’t have a good time. But I actually had a great time! I know horses are going to act up, especially when they aren’t used to you as a rider. And especially especially when said rider is a beginner beginner. There was only one time, when Duddy decided to take off at a run uphill, that I thought Olivia’s prediction might come true. And that a helmet would have been a good idea.

The experience was actually a confidence booster for me. Despite Olivia’s prediction, I didn’t fall off! I slid off twice, and jumped off once, but I didn’t fall off!

We’re taking Duddy back Wednesday night, and I will miss seeing him out there in the pasture with Star. As I said, he’s for sale. I didn’t mean to make him sound like a bad horse with my trail ride story – it’s more about me being an inexperienced rider! He has a very sweet personality. So I can hook you up if you’re interested. But I’m going to keep looking for the right horse for me.

Olivia & Star, who did awesome on the trailride

Clean up on aisle 7!

The kids had the day off school today so I took the day off, too, and we hit the Appleberry Farm to pick some apples. Appleberry is just west of Marshalltown, which is a couple of hours south of us. We’d never been there before and really enjoyed it!

The Golden Delicious apples were at their peak. A taste test in the field confirmed that they are indeed delicious – and sweet!

The kids really had a good time at it, especially learning to wield the basket picker. We came home with 2 bushels of apples and a gallon of cider.

Now to figure out what to do with them. I believe pie filling and sauce, as well as pie and crisp, are in the plan for the coming weekend.

Of course no trip to Marshalltown is complete without lunch at Taylor’s Maid-Rite. I’m always amused at the people who just order it by the bowl, no bun.

And no trip to Marshalltown is complete without a stop at Gracious Acres, either. A too-brief visit, but still a treat.

Yesterday afternoon’s task was to sort 5 pigs…

from a pen of 14…right after a heavy rain.

And not just any 5 pigs. The 5 Chester Whites of the bunch. It was a little hard to tell which ones were white, let alone which ones were white Chesters and which ones were white crossbreds.

So we chased them through the mud, sorted off 7 or 8 that we thought were them, chased them through the mud some more, and then narrowed it down by size (the Chester Whites were slightly older and slightly bigger) and body type (the Chester Whites were longer).

The pigs sure enjoy the new mud a lot more than we did.

At one point Madeline and I looked at each other and said, “How’s this for fun family time on a Sunday afternoon?” and rolled our eyes. A couple of hours and 5 showers later, we were done.

one brussel sprout at a time. Well, that may be a bit grandiose. But this quote from Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” (which I just finally started reading) really floored me:

“If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast.”

Isn’t that crazy? 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. Every week!

The mind boggles.

Double digits.

Our middle child. (What will that come to mean in the future?)

The loudest child at home, but very very quiet anywhere else.

The “horse person” in the family. She’s teaching us about them.

Straight A’s so far at school this year.

Goofy funny.

Loves to draw, read, play sports.

The toughest kid I know – through all of the procedures and surgeries she went (and still goes) through with her ear, there have rarely been tears.

Taking after her mom at the piano 🙂

We are the luckiest family in the world to have her in ours.

Travelling again, for work this time. Just had to try out this airport wireless thing with my new laptop 🙂 This has been quite the year of travel for me. Ready to stay home for (quite) a while. It’s definitely fall and I’m feeling like a squirrel, scurrying about getting ready for winter. There are still tomatoes to be canned, and chicken coop to be cleaned, and windows to be washed.

Colorado Springs is beautiful and I stayed at nice resort with an amazing view of the mountains. But in a couple of hours I’ll be back in the midwest, where I belong.

Time to board!

Some pictures I took in my brother’s barn recently

I feel like there’s so much to catch y’all up on. Here’s one of those things. A couple of Saturday’s ago Olivia came in from feeding pigs and said, “Um, we have baby pigs?”

You might remember the disasterous farrowings we had last spring. We kept 2 of those 3 gilts and gave them another chance. And I’m so happy to report that things went so much better this time. We weren’t quite expecting the first litter yet, but this is the gilt that didn’t raise a litter. So she was ready to go, so to speak, whereas the other gilt had to dry up first. She should be farrowing within the next week or so. Evidently Oliver got his job done quite expeditiously.

So she farrowed, with nighttime temps in the 40’s, no heat lamp, no creep area. On top of it, she had a bum foot which made it hard for her to get up and down. And yet she only layed on 1 pig (the litter was originally 10). And the rest of the pigs have thrived beautifully.

The piglets are at that fun age now, where they’re small enough to fit through holes in the gate and explore the farm. The chickens like to hang out with them in their pen.

Of course every new mom deserves a spa day once in a while. A mud bath hits the spot.

Ike and his flock

The electric poultry netting we use is on its last legs. We’ve used it for 4 years now, 8 batches of broilers. Some of the wire has come undone, leaving gaps in the fence. That’s not usually a problem as long as the fence is hot, but we’ve got a fault somewhere in the electric fencing that surrounds the pasture. Matt’s walked the entire fence but hasn’t found anything yet. Now it’s time to check all of the insulators for a faulty one.

So the poultry netting isn’t getting any juice, and last week the chickens discovered a couple of these gaps in the fence and staged an escape. It was Wednesday, one of the days that the CG magazine crew was here. We were sitting around, I think waiting on the food stylist to whip up the next watermelon recipe for photographing, when I noticed chickens meandering about the pasture. Matt rounded them up and re-penned them, but a little while later I noticed a couple had escaped again. And when I went out to feed them I came upon a hawk noshing on free-range chicken.

I went around and tied up the broken parts of fence the best I could. All of the chickens stayed in the pen the next day and I thought we were in the clear. We’ve never had a hawk problem, and I figured we only did this time because they were outside the fence. But on Friday afternoon I discovered a headless chicken inside the pen. On Saturday there were two!

And the war was on.

Sunday morning when I went out to feed them I took Ike, our Great Pyrenees with me. And there was the hawk having his breakfast right there in the pen. Score 5 for the hawk.

Pyr’s are livestock guard dogs (LGD’s), but we’ve never tried Ike in that capacity. He’s pretty spoiled. I’m really the only thing he usually guards, working from home as I do. It’s a cushy job. (His, not mine. Well, maybe mine, too.) So suddenly taking him out and putting him in the chicken pen was a little like a reality TV show where a rich, spoiled little frat boy is forced to go on a 2-week cattle drive. (I can’t believe I just admitted I watched that one.)

I gave him a pep talk. “Okay Ike, this is it, this is what you were bred for. Dig deep. Tune into your instincts. Channel your sheep-guarding ancestors in the Pyrenees mountains, fighting off bears and coyotes to protect their flocks. Guard the chickens, Ike, guard the chickens.”

And then I left. And he just stood and stared at me with big eyes, like when you leave your kid at school for the first time and he really doesn’t want to be there. It was a look that said, “Where are you going?! Don’t leave me here! TAKE ME WITH YOU!!”

He’s been out there 4 days now, and no more chicken deaths. A neighbor even saw the hawk a couple of days ago, sitting in a tree right near the chicken pen. (And bless the neighbor, he did his best to scare it off for us.) The chickens don’t mind Ike. He goes in their shed and lays down, and they down around him. He drinks out of their waterers. But I wouldn’t say that he’s embraced his new role yet, more like resigned himself to it.

What is that chicken in the middle looking at?

Ike in the shed, checking out the super flexible chicken

will probably never look this nice again. Matt spent an entire day weeding and prettying up the entire garden for the photo shoot. He thought he might never stand up straight again.

Some more melon-y goodness for your viewing pleasure: