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! 

New chicks and old hens

I have upset the balance of my chicken coop.  This year I have added new hens to the coop.  I bought 6 chicks at one time, 2 another time, 3 another time and picked up 3 older hens.  The balance is off.  The old hens, Margo, Melva, Thelma and Sally do not like the new chicks.  I kept them all separate but close to each other until they were big enough to "defend" themselves.  I lost one Wyandotte when she was a chick, she got out of her cage and the older hens picked her to death.  I lost 2 Silkies within a week of when I brought them home. 

Now I have 15 chickens that want to kill each other on a daily basis.  4 separate flocks and 1 loner. Hope, a rather sweet chicken, has decided she wants nothing to do with the other chickens and now lives in my backyard away from the chicken jungle. 

Betty White has a battle wound the size of Texas but has a fit every time I isolate her from the other chickens. 

Margo is still naked.



Even my cute little Dolly gets in on the picking!

 

My 3 newest, littlest chicks, Roxie, Rosie and Olga stick to there own.  Rosie the cute little blue cochin protects Roxie the Silkie.

Its pure chaos in the chicken jungle and I really just wish they would all get along... I'm hoping in time they will all get along.  As for Hope, I think she is going to get her own little chicken coop, come winter she will hate living on the porch with no shelter.

Rebel

This week Shana is out of town, she told me to spend as much time with Sunny as I liked and to work on the things that we had already been working on.  Well on the first night I went up there I had the brilliant idea to put a saddle on Sunny.  I got Sunny out of the corrals and took her down by the arena.  I just thought to myself I will practice putting a saddle on Sunny.  So I helped myself to Shana's saddle and tack.  I put the saddle on, which takes me forever because I'm super slow.  Sunny didn't seem to mind.  I put her bridle and bit on and once again Sunny didn't seem to mind.

I decided to take Sunny in the arena.  No problems.  I then decided that I should get on Sunny.  Now keep in mind I've never rode without Shana being there and I've never rode Sunny other than when we laid her down and I got on her bare back.  So I just thought to myself, I will get on Sunny and then get back off.  So I went to get on her and off she went.  I lost the reins and she took off like a mad lady.  Running around like crazy and all I could do was watch. 

She eventually stopped, which I knew she would.  But she broke Shana's reins and even worse she scraped her leg up when she ran in to the fencing.  Crap-ola! I was busted.  I now have to fess up to Shana that A. I decided to try and ride Sunny when she wasn't here and B. I broke her reins (well Sunny did but its still my fault).  I feel like I'm ten again and have to tell on myself.