Whirlwhind

Obviously with my absence, it's fairly easy to guess that my life got busy and blogging (as always) took a backseat.

"INSERT SNAX HOOMAN"

Our juvenile male goat is still touch-and-go -- despite working closely with the University vets to develop a multi-product dewormer protocol based on his fecal egg count and following their instructions to the letter, he is still incredibly wormy and sick, so they finally pulled out the big guns medication-wise Wednesday. Jury is out on whether or not that will be enough to turn the tide -- he has been a pretty sick goat this week. I'm trying to steel my heart to the possibility that we might lose him. For as much as I bitch to DH about the goats being "his", I'm the one who handles 90% of their care, and I'm the only one Sam (the goat) would eat for this week. If we lose him, it'll be hard.

Goat sideeye for days.

Creating mini-forests for him in isolation was... time-consuming.

We also had a scare with one of the babies last Sunday -- she went missing and we assumed the worst (we have a terrible predator problem). Thankfully she turned up, but it was a rough half hour of thinking that we are the worst animal caretakers ever and should probably just sell everything off and move to the suburbs. (although side note, my dad called during all the hysteria and I told him what was going on -- we've been making "kid" jokes since they were born, and apparently that morning when he went to church, he asked his pastor to pray for his daughter because she had 3 kids on Friday and one was missing. I'm assuming the pastor knows my dad well enough to know that was a joke, but once all the dust had settled, I did get a good giggle out of that.)

No fucks given about giving us both heart attacks....

Things have moved firmly into manic at work as well -- I work in the health insurance industry and our open enrollment period starts Sunday. Last minute fires to put out, problems to solve, and mistakes being found and hopefully corrected. Of course 10 minutes before I walked out the door yesterday I got an email that wrecked my whole day. Then I came home to hook my truck up to the trailer for the clinic this weekend to find that it wouldn't start.... hooray! So my evening last night was spent frantically making contingency plans for truck/trailer combinations and hoping that SOMETHING would work out.

Sunset and the subsequent morning's sunrise from this week.

I did manage to swing by the barn and see my horse yesterday -- I was in flip flops, so wasn't planning to ride, but BM was kind enough to loan me some socks and my tall boots managed to zip over my jeans, so I did climb on Ruby for a bareback hack to try to calm my brain down a bit. She was her usual perfect self. DH's work schedule hasn't been the same two weeks in a row for like the last 3 months, so I'm juggling that mania as well (he had to be at work at 1:30 am today and works through 4 pm, so you can imagine what kind of fun that's wreaking on.... well, everything?).

Perfect mare is perfect.

My phone is also on it's last legs and fritzing the eff out on the regular, but a new one should arrive today. Incidentally, blogger shoutout to Nicole who gave me some pretty solid phone suggestions when I griped about the shitty pictures my current phone takes, and my complete and utter disdain for the phone company's new programs where you "lease" a phone for like 3 years and pay a monthly fee.... haha. I ended up buying a phone she suggested as a possibility (after copious obsessing and comparison reviews obvs) so hopefully I love it. Although at this point I'll love anything with a screen that doesn't embed glass shards in my fingers when I try to use it, or shut off randomly and refuse to turn back on. #firstworldproblems

Bebe goats and rum pineapples. What's not to love?

#ifeelyouruby

#beachedwhale

Basically, life is... LIFE. But I'm very much looking forward to auditing the Centered Riding clinic my GMO is hosting this weekend, and hopefully that will give me some much needed content and media to write about ;) in the meantime, thanks for hanging out with me through all the good and the bad, through the times where I write and give you fun photos, and the times where I drop off the radar for days at a time. Even when I'm not keeping up with posts, I'm lurking and reading and trying desperately to keep up with everyone's lives, trials, tribulations, and success stories!

The Only Kids in my Life

I'm sure you can guess that I spend 90% of the weekend watching and or snuggling goats (that is when I wasn't dripping sweat from our triple digit heat index, BLECH. IT'S FALL. WHERE IS SWEATER WEATHER?). So I don't have much in the way of things to write about the horses or media of them, but what I do have is a PLETHORA OF CUTE GOAT PICTURES (#sorrynotsorry).

Roja (momma goat) with her little spotty boy (left) and girl (right) -- Sam (our future herd sire) in the back.

Blanca and her little girl kid.

Blanca's girl -- her face stripe is THE CUTEST THING EVER.

A good shot of the little boy kid's spotty leg!

She's a keeper for our breeding stock.

He is for sale (although hopefully spoken for already!).

Spotty boy in the front, with his sister (who we're retaining as breeding stock) in the back).

Samurai, our future herd sire :)

Goats on goats on goats guys. That's all that's going on in my life.... haha.

Totes Ma Goats

Look what we have! Baby goats!!!! Born Friday during the day and discovered during evening chores :) two girls and a boy.

Sleeping bebe goats tucked into their straw bed while mommas stuff their faces haha.

Blog Hop: Truck and Trailer Set Up

EventingSaddlebredStyle did a fun post on Friday about her current hauling rig, and I’m making the executive decision to turn it into an (unofficial) blog hop! I feel like pictures of my rig make it on here on a pretty regular basis, but in case you haven’t seen it….

Lookin' sharp at Von Holten Ranch.

The truck is a 1999 Ford F250 Superduty with the coveted 7.3L engine – it’s also diesel with a standard transmission (my two least favorite parts about it, haha). Extended cab, long bed, 4WD, the works.

We bought it when it became clear that my towing needs had outstripped the capacities of my beloved 2000 Chevy Silverado 1500 (although it’s still rolling right along as our hay/miscellaneous farm chores truck).

Picking up the trailer 7 years ago.

The first time I drove the diesel with the trailer -- ack! It was nerve-wracking.

Learning to drive a manual came with a pretty steep learning curve for me, but I have finally gotten to the point where I’m pretty comfortable driving it on the regular (well ya know, except for that time we put a new clutch pedal in and I had to relearn how to drive it!). The truck isn’t the prettiest (in fact, I call it Brienne. Props if you get the reference), but it runs like a top with TLC and regular maintenance. This particular engine is well known to last FOR.EV.ER so I imagine I’ll be driving this truck for the rest of my natural life (I'm only sort of joking -- these engines can easily get over 400K). I think the next project will be doing something about the incredibly rusted out cab corners, yikes!

Earning it's keep hauling hay -- 50 bales in the bed? No sweat!

Brienne is currently sporting some sweet truck magnets that were a Christmas gift from my dad a few years back.

The trailer is a 1999 4-Star gooseneck 3-horse slant load with a collapsible back tack room. We are the second owners of this trailer, and even though it’s older, it’s still in really great shape! A few years ago the roof was badly dented in a nasty hailstorm, but thankfully my insurance company had no problem replacing it (to the tune of like $7K, yikes!).

That time when I finally got around to acid washing the trailer and it looked brand new again haha.

4-Star makes a super quality product, even though there are a few features of the trailer I don’t love. Honestly what I’d really love is a 4-Star 2+1 (and of course I literally saw one for sale last week), but this trailer is perfectly serviceable and meets my needs. It also has the added bonus of being fully paid for ;) so probably won’t be changing it anytime soon (unless anyone out there has a 2+1 and is dying for my trailer instead? No? Didn’t think so… haha).

Topaz and Ruby hanging out at the trailer at a clinic I went to a few years back.

The tack room is spacious and I love the gooseneck for storing lots of things that are convenient to have in a trailer, but that take up a lot of space (like 5-6 folding chairs, a canopy, several Rubbermaid totes, etc). There is a rack for 3 saddles, copious bridle hooks, and another hook for hanging clothes. I've never had a horse not fit into the slants, from Topaz (16 hands and 1350 lbs) to Jasper (much, much smaller haha). Although I really wanted a ramp when I was trailer shopping, the step up is a reasonable height and most horses load into it quite well.

We recently installed Kensington trailer screens (LOVE) to increase airflow to the horses, and I’m still eyeballing fans and a camera as ideas for long-term upgrades.

How about you – what’s your current hauling set up? What do you love about it? Are there things you’d like to change about it?

Friday Five

August and September are typically my busiest months at work, and this year is no exception -- some long days and late nights, combined with juggling the rigors of helping to organize my GMO's fall schooling show tomorrow, means I haven't had very much time to keep up here. What's new, right? But I figured I could check in, and share some snapshots from my week!

I rode my horse. With tack. She was excellent (if a little stiff on her right lead canter). But it was a pleasant ride with lots of stretchy trot, sharing the arena with a fellow boarder. Afterwards, we went on a brief walkabout to cool the horses down!

I might be biased, but she's pretty pretty.

These cuties make it tough to leave for work in the morning <3

An unusual set of ears ;)

And last but not least -- expanding goats! haha