Professional Donkey Trainers

This post is about my donkey, but it's also about friendship.  How am I going to talk about donkeys and friendship in one post....

There are alot of people I know, alot of people I like....but there are only a few oustide of my family that I hold close to my heart as a friend.  Margie falls into that category.

Margie and I met about 12 years ago when we worked together at Williams Energy.  Niether one of us are girly, girls, we didn't have much time to spend together outside of our work day, and we were both crazy about our kids.  We were Tom Boys and Athletes.  She was the Matron of Honor at my wedding. 

One of my favorite things about Margie is that we have always had this unspoken rule that we could brag all we wanted to each other about our kids.  We would never compare our kids, never be jealous of each others kids.  We shared our kids with each other: their successes, their failures, their funny stories....and the other would listen.

The other thing about our friendship that is special is that it has survived both time and distance.  Margie and I have lived in different states for over six years now.  We've only managed to see each other in person a handful of times in those last six years.

So a few weekends ago, she got to come up here and visit.  I was excited, but I was kind of nervous too.  We hadn't seen each other in several years and both of our lives had changed alot since then.  She got out of the truck and it was like we had never been apart.

"A true friend is one who picks up right where you left off, whether it's been a week, a month, or twenty years." -Henry Miller
What did we do on our day together?  Exactly the things that have always defined our friendship.  She went to a basketball game with me and we watched my little girls play. We had lunch together at a great resteraunt. We talked and talked about our kids.  And we TRAINED MY DONKEY!!!!

It's been a long time since I've had as much fun as I did that day teaching Lizzy to lead.  Oh, and Marige.  I found one of your gloves in the bottom of the donkey's water pan the other day....in case you've been looking for it!!!

Who has the best er......arse?  Me, Margie or Lizzy?
 

Does it have The HydroPhobee?

In case you haven’t seen the movie Old Yeller, that’s what they used to call Rabies.

Yesterday
, I was the last one in the family to leave the house.  I walk out the back door headed to the mini-van, and there is a raccoon sitting in my driveway.  I stared at it and it stared back at me.  Then it slowly started walking away weaving back and forth.   

The first thing that popped into my head was “OMG it has the beginning stages of Rabies.  Which of my animals are current on their rabies shots?  Which of my kids are current on THEIR rabies shots…oh wait, kids don’t have Rabies shots.  Oh CRAP kids don’t have Rabies shots!!!”

So I’m standing there in the yard frozen with indecision.  We don’t own a firearm, for reasons we’ll discuss some other time.  Who around me has a gun and is willing to shoot?  Everybody has already left for work.  So I’m looking up the number for animal control on my phone with one eye, and keeping the other on the potentially rabid coon.  It is hard to use a Blackberry with just one eye. 

As I’m fumbling around with my phone, I see my neighbor leave his driveway.  Ohhhhhh…he is a wildlife officer out at the lake!!!  I run to the road and flag him down…which probably scared him to death.  He gets out of his truck.  He looks at it for a minute and says “Wellllll it COULD have rabies.”  NOT makin' me feel any better here Alan!!  We watch it a few more minutes and then we see that it has a broken back leg.  Still no one around with a gun to put it out of its misery.  Alan says it will probably wander off during the day.

I’d really forgotten about it.  The girls had practice at 5:30pm.  In order for us to make it on time, I have to fly home and they have to be in basketball clothes ready to go.  So I pull up in the driveway and no one is in sight.  THEN I heard the screaming. Madi is running from the back five acres bawling hysterically.  Frank is right behind her with Scrappy in his arms, and the other two girls are hot on their heels.  I could not IMAGINE what was going on. 

Madi reaches me first and she says “Mom, it’s leg is broken.  Frank broke its leg.”  I see Frank running with Scrappy and all I can think is “OMG, Frank broke Scrappy’s other leg!!!!”

Frank finally catches up.  Madi is continuing “There is a raccoon back there and Frank is beating it with a stick.  And he beat it so much he broke its leg.  He’s trying to kill it.”  At the same time Frank is saying “Mom, Scrappy was attacking it and they were fighting and I couldn’t get Scrappy to stop so I only hit it with the stick once so I could get Scrappy.” Carlie adds in “I think Scrappy is bleeding.”  (Which he wasn’t.)  Inwardly I grown. “Ohhhhh…..the coon.” 

So I walk out to the field and the poor old coon is curled up in the middle of the pasture miserable.  It made me want to cry to think about shooting it, but there probably wasn’t anything that could be done for it either.

So I walk back to the new house.  There were three different groups of construction guys in the house working.  I walk into the house and say “Does anybody here have a gun in their truck?”  Boy THAT got a lot of wide eyes.  And then I think Duh!!! And explain about the raccoon.  None of them have a gun (that will admit to it anyway).

So a couple of minutes later the builder pulls in.  I say “I have a dumb question.  Do you happen to have a gun with you?”  He looks at me and says “No, I only carry a gun in my truck on Mondays.”  NO ONE is helping me here!!!  He goes “If it wasn’t something as mean as a raccoon, I’d go out there and hit it in the head with a 2x4 for you, but those things bite hard.  I look over at Frank and he says “I’ll go do it.”  Uhhh…no you won’t!!!

I left it out there in the field.  I didn’t go check on it this morning.  Hopefully it’s not still out there suffering.  I thought briefly…ever so briefly about opening up a raccoon rehabilitation center on our land.  I felt so badly for it.

The Pool's Pool

The kids have really enjoyed having a swimming pool in the back yard this summer.

Attack Donkey

This is Lizzy




She's my attack donkey. She's a little over a year old. At first she wouldn't let us touch her, but I came home from work one day after she'd been with us a few days and Libby was out there brushing her. I told Libby that the donkey liked her because they are two of a kind!!!

She we have her in the pasture with the fainting goats. Bob had several high school boys helping him move our trampoline and play set from the old house. When they got to the farm to unload the stuff, Frank told them about the fainting goats.

So these big high school boys run at the pasture to try to make the goats faint. The goats couldn't have cared less, but the scared Lizzy. She started braying and charing at them and those big old high school boys took off running!!!

The Farm In Summer

We are quickly acquiring animals on our “farm”. We now have two pygmy fainting goats, two angora rabbits, one dog, three inside cats, five outside cats, a litter of kittens outside. AND my kids are saving their money for a horse. They are currently taking horseback riding lessons and they beg incessantly.

I work on the farm with the tractor at least once a week. I’m turning into a farm girl. I have cut down trees with a chain saw by myself. And recently changed the box blade on the tractor over to the brush hog by myself. And that was NOT easy to do, certainly not alone.

And I got my first case ever of poison ivy last week. I’m trying to get in as many new experiences as possible before I turn 40 this Fall!

By the skin of my teeth???

or the shirt off my back????

Frank and Carlie came running inside the other day shouting "Mom, Mom!!! Guess what?!?!?! It was SO cool". At this point my Mom radar goes off. Then my Mom radar starts SHRIEKING when I notice that Carlie doesn't have a shirt on. Hmmmm.

Well we have an ancient cedar tree in the front yard that is perfect for climbing. And they go up alot higher in it than Granny would like....maybe 30 feet up. I have warned them to be careful, but they don’t listen.

I caught Carlie the other day about 15 feet off the ground with a pillow and a blanket in the tree!!!! Can you see where this is going????

I’m not sure how far up Carlie was, but she lost her grip on the tree. On the way down the back of her shirt hung on a nail that had been there from a previous tree house. The nail ripped a hole in her shirt and she hung there by her shirt for a second, then the shirt turned inside out and skinned off of her and she continued falling to the bottom of the tree (shirtless) where her brother caught her. No harm done, thankfully!!!!

And they thought that was the coolest thing ever. Whew.

Ugly Cat aka Butcher Knives and Lanterns

So last week before Memaw got sick, the girls we are a baseball game with my neighbors, and Frank and Bob were not home yet. So oddly enough, I had the house to myself. I walk into the master bathroom at the end of the trailer house, and I hear an awful racket. I listen closely and it appears to be coming from UNDER the trailer house. I "follow" the sound of running and crashing and it moves from under my whirlpool bath, under the cabinet....over by the shower. When we first moved in, we'd had a disconnected floor vent under the trailer, and a cat had climbed into the floor vents and "popped" the vent out of the floor i nthe middle of the night and came into the house. So I opened the vent and looked around, but couldn't see anything.

So of course, I "had" to know what was under there. So on that end of the trailer, the trailer sits close to the ground. The only way I can see under is to remove a piece of the trailer skirt and lay flat on the ground. Under the trailer there is a liner that protects the bottom of the trailer. It's drooping down on that end, and sure enough I can see something moving around inside the liner and it looks BIG.

I decide that I have to find out what it is. I'm thinking possum, racoon, large rabid rats. So I go back into the house and come back out with a butcher knife and a lantern (cause my kids always lose every flashlight we buy). I stretch out on the ground flat on my belly, set the lantern down and use the knife to cut a hole in the lining. Whatever it was...it got realllllly still. And the WHAM, it charges towards the hole that I had cut.

Now I am lying flat on my stomach on the ground and its hard to run from that position, but I do still have the knife in my hand. About the time I'm poised to run, I see a tiny nose and whiskers peek out of the hole.

Awwwww....Momma Cat's missing kittens!!!! Then of course I had to lure them out. So I go back inside and this time I come out with a weiner!! I stretch back out on the ground and home the weiner up to the hole in the liner under the trailer. I lure two of them out. Two of the ugliest cats that I have ever seen!!! We are gonna have to get Momma Cat fixed because she makes ugly babies.

The boy kitten is black and orange brindled...and then it looks like he was slapped around a bit with a white paint brush. Poor thing. I let the kids play with them a bit when they got home then slipped them back under the trailer.

I wonder if my neighbors watch me and laugh at me!!!

Every Farm has to have ANIMALS.

These are FAINTING pygmy goats. They faint if you scare or startle them. The kids asked if they could try and make them faint when we first got them and I told them No. Well we kind of forgot about it. Then this weekend, we got the lawn mower out for the first time. And when Frank drove it by their pen they took off running and then fell over on their sides with their legs in the air. I thought Frank was going to fall off the lawn mower laughing.

This is Bill and Gruff. The bunnies are Brownie and Fluffybutt. Oh, and Momma Kitty DEFINITELY has a Baby Bump!!!

Goat Feeder?????

I am driving home from work today. I pull into the driveway and Libby is striding purposely across the yard with my good Longaberger Basket in her arms. The EXPENSIVE.....LINED....LONGABERGER basket.

And what's in this basket you might ask??? Hay for the goats!!!!

Early Spring on The Farm

The old shed is entirely down. Now we just need to clean it up. The girls are already asking about putting the swimming pool back up!!!

Mama Cat

This is Mama Cat. She came with the farm. We are watching her carefully...we think we see a baby bump. We are hoping for baby kitties this Spring. I told Libby I thought she was pregnant. And Libby said. How do you know? Is she in heap?

Ahhh...that's heat Libby...not heap. LOL.

Winter on the Farm

So peaceful and quiet.

Bye Bye Barn!!

The swimming pool is down...half of the barn is done...making progress. We are moving in during Spring Break if we haven't sold the house in town by then.

Frank and Papaw worked really hard tearing down the old shed.

I can bring home the bacon...du dum da du

fry it up in a pan.....

Last night Frank and I went out to the trailer to take care of the animals. Frank went into the house to water the cat, and there was no water anywhere in the trailer. I hadn't paid the rural water bill last month so I was HOPING they had shut off the water since it's been about -87 degrees....well maybe 20 something.

So I went to work this morning and called rural water...and she said "No dear, we didn't turn it off...your pipes are frozen." I called my Dad and he said I'd have to call a plumber and that I'd probably have busted pipes when they unfroze.

I called at least 7 plumbers and all were booked until Wednesday or Thursday. So I went out there myself. I removed a wedge of the trailer house skirting until I found where the water came into the trailer. Sure enough it was not wrapped like it should have been. I drug an extension cord around there and a hair dryer….shimmed under the trailer with it.

While I was out there, I had let our half grown bird dog puppies out of their pen to stretch their legs. So I got the pipe unthawed and miraculously there didn’t appear to be any leaks, and the water in the trailer came back on. Hurrah for me!!! I drove to the nearest hardware store and got fiberglass wrap to wrap the pipe up. I get back to the trailer and shimmy back underneath it.

I’m all the way under there with only my boots sticking out. I’m stretching to wrap the fiber glass around the pipe and concentrating and something grabbed my booted foot that was sticking out from under the trailer and pulled. I shrieked and promptly hit my head on the beams under the trailer. It was one of the puppies pulling on my boot. I finished the job and proudly (there was my mistake) put the skirting back up around the trailer.

The puppies had also run off with one of my gloves and I found that. I made sure I had my keys before I locked up the trailer and checked for my Blackberry…it was missing. Sure enough, I had to crawl back under the trailer to retrieve it.

Fall on the Farm

Last night I made a fire in the firepit, covered up in a blanket and watched the sunset. Two kittens crawled up in my lap under the blanket and purred. And as it got dark the coyotes started howling.



This will be the view from my front porch once the house is built.




Hanging out laundry in the Fall Weather.

Updates on the Farm

We have the new shed up. I actually got on the tractor and ran the brush hog. I was quite empowering. You just run over small trees and it chops them up into little pieces. I must admit I was imagining certain people as I mowed down tree after tree. I seriously love our little mini-farm. I stay out there as much as possible. The next couple of big projects are to tear down the old shed and start moving furniture from our house in town out into the new shed. Furniture that we know won't fit into the trailer.




Tractors are the bomb!!!!





Buddy and Rex. They are half Bird Dog and half Basset Hound. Carlie calls them our Bert Dogs.