Villhauer's Farm Blessings: Where Did Summer Go?

We had turned our air off Wednesday night, but by Friday things were getting steamed up again, with temperatures hitting 90 degrees. Even without the air on, it was still a relief to come into the house to cool off.

      I went for a great morning ride with Lisa out at Moraine View and finished up last week's blog after a late lunch. Farm chores with the extra horse and cow take over an hour, morning and night, and in this heat, watering livestock and gardens is a continuous task. Somehow the weeds manage to keep growing, but mowing is much less of a demand.

     Joe finished setting up the new (larger) freezer we bought. He has plans for Sir Loin.
     He also drove to Peoria to pick up a newly refurbished trailer. Now we will be able to haul wood shavings, dirt, or rock. I removed the back section and had Kaysha get in for these photos.

I took Roni to Marj's for an evening training session. Not a soul was around... just a few horses in the barn. Roni was "scared of the dark" and nervous about shadows, so he did not behave as usual. But we got through all our exercises in a fairly good manner. When untacking, the mares were racing around in the near-by pasture. Roni was on high alert hearing the thundering of their galloping foot falls.
Saturday started as kind of a lazy

day. After watching the sun come up during chores, I sat in the office with Joe, each at our own computers, catching up on whatever. I had heard on the radio at 5 am while cleaning stalls, about the 31 US Special Forces soldiers killed in a helicopter crash. And then read in an e-mail from Dan: "Just to let you know, everyone from our unit is ok." (Later he said that "the helicopter had been shot down. U.S. soldiers killed the ones who shot it down and secured the area and called it in. Then our unit volunteered 3 individuals to go and help recover the bodies and clean up the wreckage.") My heart goes out to all the families and comrades that have lost a friend, brother, son, husband, grandpa, uncle, etc. I wish all wars would come to an end and bad guys would go away or become good people.

I did the usual training of Roni, weeding, watering, and helped Joe out in the barn with a little more work on a gate and the manger that Roni eats at. The temperature wasn't so bad, but the humidity really made us sweaty.
Notice in this picture of Zorro, how

dried the grass is but look at the weeds in the background by the railroad tracks.
We drove over towards Moraine View to test drive a Tennessee Walker. (not the right horse for us) Courtney came over and we brushed and worked with our horses together. It was so nice to see her and hang out together. It has been over two weeks because she has been sick. She stayed for dinner, Roma Ralph's Pizza. While eating, we noticed Roni racing around the front pasture. He seemed to want to get to the back with the cow boys and where Zorro and Amiga's grazing pens are. I quickly finished dinner and went out and "rescued" him. After 15 min of racing around, he had gotten so hot and sweaty, that I decided to hose him off.

5:30 Sunday morning I turned the air back on. It ain't the heat it's the humidity that is so oppressive. When I feed the cow boys, I let Norman into
the calf pen so the big boys don't

steal his food. He is still on calf food.
I give Frankie and Sir Loin separate bowls of cattle feed.

But Sir Loin kind of pushes Frank off before he is even done with his.
So Frank moves over to Loins bowl.

Some how I miscalculated the time it takes to put horses in their stall and water everything, and ended up being late for the nursery. They were short handed and very glad to see me, even though I was late. After Church I ran in to school to water plants and fill water jugs. Looking at the disarray of the rooms, thinking about having to change classrooms again, and knowing the time I needed to put into preparation for teaching, I felt a little overwhelmed. I scurried out of there, not wanting to face the challenge or even think about it. Once home, Joe and I finally finished up the last of the construction work out in the barn. Here is Roni's feed manger completed.

We added the middle section to hold his hay and dipping bucket. He likes to dip his hay in water as he eats it. I don't blame him... otherwise the stuff is pretty dry going down. But he does have a way of making a mess.

This second manger is beside Roni's stall, next to the wood shavings. The chickens use the two grain bins for nest boxes. We put a floor in this and it is where we store tarps and feed bags. It feels so good to finally have closure on the barn projects.

     Late Sunday afternoon we loaded the kayak and Roni and headed for some fun. Joe dropped the horse and I off at Marj's and went on to Moraine View to do some boating. Marj and the gals got back from the fair while I was riding. The added excitement in the barn got Roni revved up, and he started miss-behaving. He was really ornery when Marj rode him outside. After an intense training session, Marj working and I watching, I hosed the sweaty boy off. Joe came to take us both back home where I then joined he and Ralph for some relaxing TV watching.

     I have been watching this swallow nest for a few weeks. It is right above the horse feed containers practically. In this video there is a split second glance at a baby right at the beginning, before you hear it chirp. Otherwise the babies keep hidden. Then of course, I have silly Zorro at the end.

I had a good training session with Roni at home mid morning Monday. I haven't worked with him here in quite awhile, so was curious to see how it would go. He was a bit more excited, but the training session went okay. There were a few moments when Roni got in trouble for refusing to go forward, but we ended on a good note, so I felt we had success. I took care of e-mails, worked on old blog posts (from 2 years ago) and messed around on Facebook and You-Tube for way too much of the day. Then I went out to
clean all the unused boards out of the

barn, grade the dirt floor, and take care of farm animals. (Brushing the dog and house cat were part of that.) I love having a place for everything, and everything in it's place.
Rain was predicted throughout the day, and some areas around us were lucky enough to get some. In the evening thunderstorms and a tornado passed through to the north of us and we were under a severe thunderstorm watch till midnight... but still did not get a drop of rain. The front did move through, cooling things off considerably however.

Tuesday was a beautiful morning. The day started at 65 degrees with a cool breeze. The ground was still parched, but at least the air felt crisp. It felt like fall and with the start of school fast approaching, all I could think was "Where did the summer go?". I gave Roni the day off, went into school after lunch, and then met the girls from Marj's barn for dinner at Monical's. From there we went to the movie "Buck". A documentary about Buck Brannaman, an awesome and inspiring horse trainer.

"It’s not just because of his incredible way with horses, which made him the inspiration for the book and the film, The Horse Whisperer. What makes Buck so inspiring is that despite the horrific abuse Buck suffered at the hands of his father when he was a child, he did not go the textbook route of continuing that cycle. Rather, with the help of his foster family, Buck grew up to not only help horses, but to help their human counterparts in the process." Huffington Post

Here is a clip from the movie to give you an idea. http://www.buckthefilm.com/

Wednesday I didn't accomplish as much as I had hoped for. I did have a good ride on Roni. This time he never refused to go forward, but he kept turning his head as if to ask "can we go this way?" I held fast and didn't give in, so eventually he stopped messing around and walked or gaited quietly. One of Mark's guys came and cut hay. (At far right in first photo.)

Since it was so cool outside, I read my Bible in a lawn chair and fell asleep in the sun. When Joe arrived home from work with wood shavings,
I had to get busy helping him unload

them. The little trailer worked well for this job. We parked it in the cleaned west end of the barn once finished.

And the barn kitties quickly made it into a new "toy" for hid and seek.

We moved the grazing pens back out onto the front pasture since we have been putting Roni out there.

Courtney came out after we were done and we worked with Amiga and Zorro. She was helping me get Zorro to walk nicely and not run over me. He has been getting more and more disrespectful with me.
Ugh... training is never over.
Coming in at 8:30 it was already dark. I no longer have to wait and go back out before bed time to shut the chicken coop. The chickens get in the coop before dark and the ducks shortly after.

I went into school for 4 hours mid-day today and faced more frustrations and challenges than I was mentally prepared for. I won't go into the details... but nothing was easy or went smoothly, and way more time was spent than necessary accomplishing very little. Oh well, tomorrow has got to be better. I had cleaned and filled the duck pool yesterday and noticed

several of our fowl enjoying a drink or a swim this morning.

I rushed home from school to get Roni over to Marj's in time for a 2:30 lesson. We did very well with ground work in the indoor, and not bad while riding. But when we went outside, it didn't take long for him to kind of fall apart... and then my form fell apart as well. Marj came out on her horse Arbolada and helped me work through the trouble areas with Roni. I did need to take him back in for some lounging as a reprimand. But with time and patience... we made some good progress. I am so lucky to have Marj helping me as I work at helping Roni. He was very sweaty so I hosed him off once we got home and turned him out with Amiga and Zorro. He had a great time rolling in the grass and then grazing as the sun got lower in the sky.