scenes around the farm

Funny thing about blogging -- if I'm doing it daily, I've got too much I want to write about and have trouble deciding what to include and what to leave out. But when I'm not here typing away every day, I start to lose both motivation to write, and creativity to come up with something interesting to say (or at least something that's not a complete waste of time to read). Unfortunately for all of you, I'm in the latter mode these days. So I figured I'd just throw up some pictures from around the farm the last couple of days and see what I can come up with.

First photo is our two boys and their rapidly growing Pig. I think one of the reasons I don't seem to take as many photos this time of year is that the boys look like this -- if I didn't tell you they were mine (and they weren't, you know, pictured on MY blog), these could be any two kids anywhere. Well, the pig might be a dead give-away. Of course, the other problem is that I have trouble digging my camera phone out from underneath my dozens of layers of clothing when I see something picture-worth. By the time I finally finagle it through the maze of pockets and holes, the Kodak moment generally has ended. Combined with the fact that we're just not outside as much this time of year as we are the rest of the year, it means a serious lack of outdoor pics through the winter months.

Here's The Map Man working on one of our seemingly never-ending fencing projects. We're putting the top 3 boards on our 4-board paddock fencing. The bottom boards went on the day before we picked the pig up, because pigs have a tendency to want to dig out of their pens. Not so with this little porker, though, (who can be seen giving The Man a hand...er, um, snout?..with his project) -- she seems perfectly happy to hang out in her own little world with her chicken buddies and the occasional pony that sticks a head in for a visit, so long as we visit her three or four times a day to offer some food and a good back-scratching.

The kids playing in the pasture. Really. They're down there. Under the pine tree. You see the little orange dot and the little yellow dot? There you have it. That's their favorite place to hang out, and I don't blame them -- it's one of the sunnier spots, it's set low in a hollow (more correctly called a "holler", although that's what I call what I do when I want them to come up out of the hollow...) so that there's a natural wind break. And it's as far as possible from watchful parent eyes while still being inside the fencing (which is the rule 'round these parts, no climbing over the fence and escaping, be it children or critters). What do they do down there in the holler all afternoon? Beats the heck out of me. That's the funny thing about allowing unsupervised time. It's unsupervised. They could be building a small weapons store down there for all I know. Or experimenting with gravity. Or coming up with a scheme to climb over the fence and escape.... The fact that there's a couple of chickens (the even-smaller red and white dots) and a cat (the tiny black dot) down there with them only adds to the intrigue.

I'm running out of mundane details of our lives to share, so I'll leave you with Annie enjoying a good roll in the pasture...




Or, actually, a picture of her AFTER the roll, whence she is covered from tail tip to whiskers with dirt. (Go ahead, click on the photo to get a larger sized version so you can se how truly filthy she is!) Life really doesn't get much better for a horse. Multiply that times 3, and you can see why I'm suffering from a raging case of horse-brusher's-shoulder.