Saturday, April 2, 2011

Getting started...

      I've recently become addicted to reading blogs, specifically blogs about farming and gardening. I don't live on a farm though I would love to someday. I do have several four legged family members, some live here with me and others live at my parents home in the barn. I started my first garden about 12 years ago. The first few years it produced more food than we could eat or freeze, so I learned how to can what was left. Then the pesky ground hogs moved in and it became a frustrating struggle to harvest anything before "Chuck" and family devoured it first. I just gave up. Last year I wanted to revive the garden but two things kept that from happening. One I started too late and two the weeds had overtaken the area, they were taller than me and there was no way I was going to clear them in time to plant. So I gardened small scale in containers. I had tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash and strawberries that did fairly well. "Chuck" wasn't able to do much damage with the plants off the ground though something did wipe out the last of the strawberries. This year I want my real garden back and I'm planning to garden in raised beds using the square foot method. As for Chuck ..I'm going to try fencing around the beds to keep him and his family out.
         I have a young horse named Beauty aka "Beauty Queen" who lives at my parents house. My daughter's horse Moon aka "Moonshine" lives there too, along with several mini horses and 5 hilarious goats. Their barnyard antics never fail to make me smile and I love taking and sharing pictures of them. My facebook page has far more animal pictures than anything else. There are lots of things we plan to do before next winter. We are currently working on clearing more land so we can make their paddocks bigger. My mother recently got a cart for the mini horses, so two of the minis will be learning how to drive and Beauty will be old enough to start training for riding in the fall. So this is the start of my blog, I hope you'll follow.

Beauty is the black one and the other is Moon. They are both American Paint horses. I'll post more pictures of the rest of the barn crew tomorrow.

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