Stormy Weather

Over the last week, much time has been spent at the Scharf family farm. On Monday night after work, I met Trevor at the farm and we worked on "Pinky" (the distractor) until 10 or so before coming home to bed.

Yes, I can be a grease monkey too!

Tuesday was meeting night, so again we got home late and went straight to bed. On Wednesday, we again worked on the tractor until fairly late. Thursday night we went to the farm and moved the cows. The pasture that we were moving the cows from is fairly solid bush, so we had planned ahead and trapped the cows at the water hole when they came up, to try and prevent missing some in the bush. We still seemed to be missing some, so Trevor and I rode the length of the pasture, but saw no calves. With Sneef's help, we moved the cows into the barn yard and sorted a few off - one heifer to be bred to a different bull, and a couple of cow/calf pairs so we could tag the late born calves. The barn yard was slick from the many inches of recent rain, and with some trees and manure piles around, it made for a somewhat dangerous place to try to sort cows on horseback. We got the job done, but some cows seemed to be missing their calves, so we let them out back toward the area they had come from and closed the rest of the cows into a small holding pasture for the night. By morning, the cows had found 7 stray calves and brought them to the gate where Alex let them in with the rest of the cows and turned them out to pasture.
On Friday night, we stayed home and cleaned up our weeks worth of dishes among other things, just a lazy night "in". For most of the last week we've had a thunderstorm each night - with daytime highs between 85 and 100F and humidity of 70-99% it has been a crazy week! The first BAD thunderstorm was Friday night with an F-4 (on a scale of 1-5) tornado riping through the town of Elie, a little more then an hour's drive north east of here and several smaller tornadoes in the same area. It took out 4 houses and the town's flour mill - but all lives were spared.

I worked on Saturday morning, it was a very quiet morning and a very hot day! When I got home at noon (I only work half days on Saturday) I decided it was too warm to work outside (over 90 degrees and HUMID) so I stayed in the house and worked on some continuing education - I'm taking an online course in canine and feline nutrition as part of my annual mandatory 10 hours of CE. I finished the first module by 2:30 and it seemed to have cooled off some, so I went out and attacked my front flower beds - in an hour and a half I was pretty tired from the heat and had cleaned out everything that is visible from the street - I called it enough, since I still had to make supper and get cleaned up for Dyane's wedding in the evening. Trevor came home from the farm and suggested we go out for supper, so we cleaned up and went to the local restaurant for a quick bite, then home again to get changed into wedding clothes. It was a nice wedding, but the evening got somewhat nasty. By 10 when we went to leave, it was raining steadily and thunder and lightening were fairly frequent. Just when we got to our car, the sky let loose with sheets of rain and as we headed towards home, the lightning became more intense, so that it was almost a constant flashing and a constant rumble! The wind and rain and lightning combined to make it nearly impossible to see the highway, so we took refuge at my in-laws for an hour or so until the worst had passed. Then we continued on to home. As we approached our town, we noticed that we couldn't see anything....the power was out... We had also forgotten to tie up my dog before we left, and she, being petrified of storms, had taken refuge in the neighbour's garage, where they comforted her and allowed her to stay until I came home - thank goodness for good neighbours! During another storm she tried to get into their house even! We were spared any serious damage, although there are branches and leaves down all over town, but there were several tornadoes all across southern Manitoba that night, two different ones at separate lakes - one damaged over 1000 cabins! Another serious one touched down in one farm yard, destroying most of the yard, including the house - but once again, there were no serious injuries!
Sunday after meeting we went to the farm for lunch with the whole family - we had taco salad, enchiladas and chili with cornbread - talk about a feast!! In the afternoon, Trevor and I sorted off a few more cows to put with a different bull for Alex - it was a sloggy mess, with all the additional rain from the thunderstorms! I then caught Riata and took her out to work with her. She is coming along nicely, with fairly good manners and responding to me well. When I purchased her, we had trouble loading her on the trailer, so I decided to practice yesterday just for fun. I opened up the trailer and she walked right in with me - no questions asked! I was very happy. I then tried to back her out - as that is sometimes necessary, but she was quite scared to back up off of the edge of the trailer and she resisted. So I let her turn around and walk off and then walked her on a few more times, the last time, I managed to get her to back off, and I ended with that, as she had done well! If I can keep her comfortable, I can get her to do almost anything, so anytime she gets somewhat uptight, I just stop, rub her neck a bit, talk to her and let her relax, then ask her again - it seems to be working well. I have been using information from Curt Pate and Pat Parelli, and blending their two styles seems to be working well for me! Riata had no hesitation following me down a 2.5' wide dark alley in the barn to get through from one side to another - I had expected that to be scary to her, but she did well! I'm looking forward to the new experiences with her as she grows and I'm excited for the day when I'll get to ride her!
The other major event of the last week is that we got confirmation that we can rent this farm yard that we've been looking at outside of town. Though we don't have a set move-in date, it won't be until the fall sometime, as the current tenants won't be out anytime before then. We decided to list our house, as the housing market is strong right now (which rarely happens in this town!) and if we end up having to be out of here before we can get into there.....well, I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it! In anticipation of the bigger house, we've decided to keep our eye out for some used furniture. Upon perusing the classifieds on a local community website, I came across a beautiful dining suite, and since it was the exact type we wanted, and ours consists of a couple broken down chairs that came with the house, and an old plastic topped table that we found in my dad's barn, we decided to invest, so here is our second real piece (or pieces) of furniture (the first real piece was my piano!) The set is about 8-10 years old, but hasn't been heavily used, there are a few wear patches on the table top finish, but no serious nicks or gouges. The set only cost me $325, and an almost identical set in the sears catalogue right now is $800, so I'm happy.

I was off work today, since I worked Saturday, and I went to Morden and picked up the suite, as well as running some errands, picking up salt and mineral for the cattle, renewing my license, getting my passport picture taken and picking up the essential things the household needed to keep running. We met with the real estate agent tonight and signed the listing, so we'll see what happens from here.

My next blog will likely be next week sometime, as we will be away from Thursday-Monday. Trevor, Andrew, Julie and I are travelling to New York for a wedding, it will be a whirlwind trip, driving straight through both ways, but it should be a blast!

More Rain

Its been a nice week for the most part, but today it decided to rain again - oh well, we've been about 4 days without rain so we were starting to get "dry"

It was a week of Haircuts for me - well actually by me.... I groomed two dogs at work on Monday, then I did my own dog yesterday and Trevor last night! Sneef looks like a little girl with a fresh "bob" now that she's all cleaned up and trimmed. Her favorite place is the dugout, so it won't stay this way long I'm sure. I bathed her after I finished work on Friday afternoon and then left her at the clinic overnight to dry. On Saturday I went to the clinic and brushed her out and trimmed all the matts off of her hind end and behind her ears, since she has so much hair you can't even tell that I took some major chunks of hair off of her. I brought her home and she immediately crawled under the porch as soon as I went inside and she had mud all over her when I came out again, so I got out the scissors and trimmed up all of the long hair, she looks like she has longer legs now! I was going to take a picture of her, but I forgot - and now its raining so she is wet. Here's a pic of her the last time I brushed her out completely.

On Thursday night I had volunteered to do a special vaccination clinic in a neighbouring town with one of the vets, last week I found out that we were also having a special meeting that night at 8 - so I figured I'd still make it, since the clinic was supposed to run from 5:30-7 We ended up being there until 8:30 and then I raced to La Riviere and changed my clothes quickly before slipping into the meeting about 40 minutes late!

On Friday we had a family dinner so we could all get a chance to visit with Mr. Bristow from Australia. We had barbecued steak and smoked pork chops, potato salad, macaroni salad, marinated veggies and all the fixings with it.

On Saturday night we were going to go riding until Trevor got distracted, or distractored as I say now.... Here is the subject of his distraction. For those of you that don't know, Trevor loves vintage Allis-Chalmers crawlers, HD11's in particular. They are equivalent to a D6 cat, so they're of decent size, but they're somewhat obscure. This is the 6th of these machines that he has purchased in the last 7 or 8 years. The first one he still has part of - its his parts machine, #2 and #3 came from Texas I believe - one he still has (the yellow one in the bottom picture) and the other he fixed and sold; #4 was completely rusted out and he sold it as a parts machine; #5 he fixed and traded for 7 bred heifers two years ago. This machine, #6 came from North Carolina and hopefully it will be fixed and sold in a shorter time frame then the last few :S This purchase was somewhat of a point of contention, I have to admit, but its good for us to have some conflict in order to learn how to resolve it I guess. So this machine (which I have dubbed "pinky" will always remind me of how we learned to get through conflict....or I should say, started to learn).

Last week, before the distractor got here, we had a chance to go riding - here are some pictures - please note, fashion is my lowest priority on these rides - I have to wear something long sleeved to keep the ravenous mosquitos away from me, but it has to be lightweight to keep me from melting, so I only have the choice of two shirts....Here is a sample of the flowers blooming in my garden right now - its raining right now, or else I'd get some more pictures. These are the lupins beside my house, currently I also have peonies, irises, tiger type lilies, lily of the valley, lady's mantle, daisies (they're kind of a weed...) and there are lots more coming...

A nice day off

OK, before you all faint by seeing two blogs from me in only 3 days, I'll just say, I'm sick, and don't feel like doing much, and this doesn't take much energy...so....thats my excuse!



I really enjoyed my day off on Monday, I slept in til 9, did a few errands around town, and then went out to the farm where Velma and I were planning to plan the garden. We ended up planting almost the whole garden. We started about 11 and had planted lettuce, carrots, beets, beans, peas, dill, corn, cucumbers and zucchini by about 2. Jaime came by and help us out as well, it was warm and sunny, with quite a stiff breeze to keep it cooler and keep the bugs away. We then went to town and got some bedding plants - 26 tomato plants, 9 pepper plants and a few flowers. We also had lunch at the local drive up place. When we got home, Velma had to leave for her weekly course, so Jaime and I transplanted the peppers and tomatoes and then Jaime went home, and I finished up by watering the newly transplanted plants and putting cages around all the tomato plants. The only part of the garden that we didn't get done is the Potatoes, but we'll try and get them done soon. We also picked up a few more seeds on Monday afternoon that we didn't get in the ground, some squash, radishes, spinach and parsnips.

In total we ended up with 35 rows of garden, with each row being about 25' long I guess.

Later I also planted the bulbs, which I had dug out of my garden, in Velma's garden - many of them had started growing in the container we had stored them in since digging them - so I hope they'll survive the move.

In the evening, Trevor and I went back out to the farm and checked the fences on a couple of pastures before dark. The snow really does a number on the high tensile fences in some spots! We got two pastures done, so now there is only one more to do. It was a nice evening for this sort of work, with the wind to keep the bugs away again, but it didn't keep the wood ticks away...eww, we each had a few...If anyone heard the new country song "check you for ticks" ...Its kind of appropriate in this country...if only the song didn't have other connotations.

I finally took some pictures of my new Filly -

So here is Riata, she finally shed out for the most part, but she still has some fuzz on the sides of her belly. I really like her color now, and though she has alot of growing to do, I think she's going to be a nice looking horse in the next couple years. She was a year on May 18, so she's got lots of time to fill out :D She's very quiet and gentle, and easy to handle so far!

She was much more interested in eating then in standing for this picture, but she's got a cute head :)

Another two weeks down.

In the process of trying to remember what happened since the last post, I asked Trevor to help me recall the happenings of the last two weeks.

Last monday, being the holiday monday we had planned for a nice little trail ride in the valley with some friends and their boys. Since it rained all week the week before as well as the night before, we decided the valley might be too slippery for young children to ride, so we decided to call off the ride. The day dawned grey and cold and windy, but we decided to still get together for lunch. We planned an impromptu weiner roast. Trevor and I left in the mid morning to go to the farm and get things ready, and as we started the fire, I thought, man this is going to be a cold lunch!! But within the hour, as we waited for our guests to arrive and made final arrangements, the sun came out, the grass dried up and it warmed up nicely! Nothing could change the fact that the cows had just grazed around the firepit area and left their "presents" behind, and nothing could convince the wind to stop blowing, but all in all we had a nice day! Trevor's parents, his sister, his brother and sister-in-law as well as Darren and Melinda and their two boys joined us for weiners, beans, chips, rice crispie cake and fudge. It was so nice, that we decided to saddle up our two horses and my father-in-law's horse and go for a ride with Melinda. We left the boys in the care of Darren and Alex, and saddled the horses. With Sneef (my border collie) in tow, we set off down the valley and had a beautiful ride, so nice in fact, that I sunburned my ears! We went across the river, which came up to about the horse's bellies and across to the far side of the family land. The current was decently strong in the river, but we all made it across safe the first time. On the return trip, we crossed in a different spot, where there was a fair amount of drift wood lodged just downstream in the river, we rode across and stopped to chat for a minute, when I realized that I hadn't seen Sneef come across the river. We looked and Melinda finally spotted her sucked against some debris by the current, paddling in vain to get free, she was getting tired, and looked scared, so I decided to ride back in to pull her out. On the way back down the river bank, my horse decided it would be a great time to roll, at first I thought he had just lost his footing, but when he tried the second time, I bailed off to avoid getting my foot caught and ran into the river to grab my dog. Thankfully Trevor grabbed my horse before he took off to far, because I was thinking only about my dog at that point! So thanks to a poor mannered horse, I have alot of tack that needs the mud cleaned off of it!! The experience obviously didn't cause Sneef too much mental anguish, because she went back and swam in the river later that day...she just LOVES water. It was a very nice day overall!

Back to work on Tuesday was somewhat stressful, since I was the only tech on duty in Morden, which meant I was quite busy all day!! I put the vet student to work helping with many duties and I was glad that he was there that day!

It rained pretty well all week with a total rainfall for May totalling about 8 inches! There is water in the ditches everywhere now, and the farmers who are spraying their fields are leaving deep ruts because the ground is so soft!

Last weekend I went to Morden/Winkler with Velma and Jamie to do a bit of shopping and have lunch together - Although I work in Morden a few days a week, the lunch hour never seems to be long enough to get things done that I need to get don in the area! We went to two second hand stores, giant tiger, the drug store and superstore...all great places to spend money :S I felt like I did fairly well and didn't buy anything too frivolous. I found a cute blue hat to add to my collection, and I purchased some piano books and crochet books at the second hand store - 6 books for 75 cents!! We had planned to eat lunch with Julie-who was working at the clinic that day, but she was too busy to get away for lunch, so we took her some take out. We enjoyed Thai chicken soup and chicken bagel melts at a great lunch place called Java Junction.

On Sunday afternoon it cleared up and we saddled up to move the cows to another pasture. Just when we started to get the cows moving, Alex took off after a stray calf and hit a wet spot with his horse just as he turned, the horse fell and landed on Alex's ankle. We took him up to the house with the truck and Velma carted him off to the hospital - thankfully, nothing was broken, just sprained! Trevor and I then went back to finish the job, and found the cows and calves had joined up and moved themselves into the nice green grass! Trevor and I rode through them and found that we still had 10 cows who hadn't calved, its getting somewhat frusterating, since we have only 17 calves out of 27 cows with only a few weeks left for them to calve. Trevor and I then took off for a beautiful ride through the valley, we followed the valley for a mile and a half, then took the road up out of the valley and followed it home, a total of about 5 miles of riding - it was beautiful, except for the bugs...gotta love manitoba "wildlife"!

Trevor was sick all this week with every symptom possible, stuffy head, coughing, runny nose, nausea, headache and fever. He missed 4.5 days of work and is still recovering. I didn't sleep very well most of the week, a combination of feeling slightly less then par myself and waking every time he woke to run to the bathroom or cough, and the last few nights he's slept on the couch to elevate his head...good thing too, since his snoring kept me awake for what seemed like the whole night on thursday night! I was busy at work, I worked here in PM all week since our only tech here was off on holidays, I spent a large part of my time on the phone setting up our on-farm vaccination clinic for dogs and cats which happens all this week. I must have talked to 50 or so answering machines and a good 50 or more real people as well!

Yesterday we had a bit of a girls day on the town. Jamie, Julie and I headed towards Carmen and picked up Melinda on the way. We went to a consignment store and another clothing store and had a great lunch at a local Bistro. We enjoyed the soup of the day- shrimp and halibut creole with a salad or sandwich - it was delicious food! It was a nice day of visiting and just enjoying our time together. I found a great jean skirt at the consignment store that I wore all day today....very rare for me to be comfortable enough in a skirt to actually wear it all day!

Today was our regular potluck lunch sunday, but with a few members sick and some away or working, we decided to make it a more casual affair with just three of us young couples getting together with my father in law and sister in law, we were pleasently surprised by a visit from Evan and Katie and Jakob, and it was a beautiful afternoon! Andrew and Jamie hosted a BBQ and we all brought the fixings :D Part of my contribution was a caramel apple pie that I made last night (Chatty, you inspired me). I froze a half dozen or more apple pie fillings last fall, so I made a lazy crust (press in the pan oil pastry) and plunked one of my fillings in, the filling was made for a small pie plate and I had the crust in a large one, so I cut up a fresh apple and filled in the space around the edges with that. I popped this in the oven for about 15 minutes while I made the caramel topping - a can of sweetened condensed milk with a cup of brown sugar added to it and cooked until thick, mmmmm my mouth watered as I smeared that over the pie, then I popped it back in the oven and made up a streusal topping for it with rolled outs, flour, brown sugar and butter. Definitely not a low calorie pie, but it was tasty! I meant to take a picture of it before it was devored but, my intentions are always better then my actions! I did break out my camera though, so here are a few pictures:

My two favorite little guys, Carson and Conner - they're getting so big though!

Here's little Jakob trying on Katie's glasses.

Katie and Jakob

Little Finny isn't staying very little!

Trevor's Baby - I had to put this on here, since its very much a part of our lives...In fact this part of lives is multiplying, he bought HD11 #6 this week...the saga continues - They've come from Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Manitoba...