Category: Farmers

We, at last, found a pony for Lisa, a beautiful five year old chestnut gelding, with a million dollar disposition. Lisa named him “Big Fellow,” but mostly he was just called “Pony.”

By June, it was time to take “Cat” to the vet to be neutered, so he would not be straying from home. Slowly, perhaps, we were learning to avoid some of the pitfalls that come with having a menagerie. We had not yet reached the threshold where we could bring ourselves to eat our own lambs. Hypocrites that we were, we marketed the ram lambs, from the past spring, to Wilson & Co. at Albert Lea, MN.

Opie was a constant worry; he was determined to run over anything that moved. We wondered if he might have had a high fever when he was affected with founder, and that perhaps that could have caused changes to his brain and the change in behavior. Whatever, he was certainly a problem.

Shortly after we returned from Milwaukee the oats harvest was under way, loads of combined oats were being hauled in from the field, and blown into the grain bins in the granary. A substantial amount of grain was spilled on the ground during this process, so Opie had to be kept away from the area. We had been shutting the barnyard gate and letting him be loose in the barnyard, but now he had to be staked out again during the day. At night, some snow fence was set up around the spilled oats, and we shut the gate and turned Opie loose. Little did we suspect that as darkness fell, he was pushing his nose under the snow fence and eating oats.

All the neglected projects were getting fairly well caught up, and we were settling back into our usual routine, when I got an early morning phone call from another friend in Milwaukee, with terrible news. Our friends had gone on their camping vacation, and after the first day at the lake, had been on their way to pick up some groceries, when they had a car accident.

It was a very big week for Lisa. In addition to having her Uncle Bob, Aunt Stacia, and Debbie visit, which was exciting enough, they had brought her a very nice bicycle, she had lost her very first tooth, and the day after our friends left, her new horse was delivered! How much more could one stand?

By February 28, there was still no snow on the ground. We’d had only only a few light skiffs of snow thus far in the winter, the ground was bare almost all of the time. We had never had our driveway plowed! By this time the previous year, we had been plowed out a total of nine times! It may have been a relief not having to battle the snow all winter, but according to my journals of that year, we were quite depressed with all the monotony…

Once again, we ride out the storm, it’s a rough ride, but I stay in the saddle, the sheep stay on the farm, and all is not lost! The rams, however, are locked in the ram pen in the lower barn, pending their sale within a month or so.