Vet Visit

 I went over early to feed and clean stalls. Tessa and her filly were moved across the aisle into a clean stall I prepared for them last night. On the way back stopped at the barn to get all the left over food from last night's dinner. Ruth arrived as I was on my way back to put the food away. Diane didn't come for the walk, instead she drove to the Peoria airport to get she and Mike's tickets for Gulf Shores. When we reached Joan's house Faline came running out of the woods and bounded up to Joan asking to be fed. 

Rachel was going to feed her this morning but was running a little late.

Rachel came out with the bottle and it didn't take Faline very long to hear the call and off she went happy as can be. Faline lives in the woods but comes 2 or 3 times a day for a bottle. I picked up Joan at 8:30 am and drove to church for Wayne Unsicker's funeral. Mike and Tim had the funeral and it was so personal and yet the truth was spoken. IF you would like to learn more of Wayne, just watch his funeral by clicking HERE, we heard he was a beast! We went to the cemetery for the burial then to the fellowship for the lunch. We didn't get back until 1:30 pm. After dropping off Joan, I quickly changed then took the golf cart over, hooked up the stock trailer to the truck, loaded Tessa and her filly and drove to Hoerr Vet Clinic reaching there by 2:30 pm. The clinic was swamped with customers but the cutest had to be the mini donkey foal who walked nicely on a leash right into the clinic office. 

We had a long wait, didn't get into the clinic until close to 4:00 pm. Tessa walked right into the stocks like a pro and her filly was tied to the front. 

While we were waiting for Dr. Pallen, Chris and LeeAnne were working on a critical pony foal. They had to bring it out of the stall as the pony mare was very protective and would try to bite to keep her foal safe from those people who were only trying to save the baby.

Dr. Pallen removed the bandage.

The wound is doing great, it was almost all the way filled in. Dr. Pallen decided to have Emma laser the wound and after that treatment the wound was bandaged back up.

Hopefully the bandage will stay on until Friday morning. At that time I will take her to have the wound checked and if needed Tessa and the filly will stay at Hoerr Vet clinic until either it is healed enough that she can be turned out or when we get home from vacation Aug 1st. Hopefully Mike will be able to pick her up Monday or Tuesday of next week. I finally got home after 5:00 pm. Mark was at the farm house and was willing to help move 3 bales in. The middle paddock got a bale, the paddock next to Valiant got a bale and the far paddock got a bale. 

We finally got home for supper around 6:00 pm. Sarah and Nolan had something awful happen at their new place. Sarah treated their pond and the upper pond and all of the fish died. They hired Mackenson to help get all the dead fish out of the pond. They had to bury them.

It was awful, lots of big bass in their pond and many bluegill in the upper pond. They are trying to find out what happened as they thought they followed the directions. What a shame. Hopefully they will be able to restock soon. The farm house rented today for the week we will be on vacation. Mark kind of panicked but I'm sure all will be well. 

Day of Rest

 Today really was a day of rest. I only did the chores necessary, such as feeding the horses. We left at 8:40 am as we needed to drive to Morton to pick up Nancy. Nancy was anxiously waiting. She loves going to church, she loves seeing Joan, Spark, Ruth, Rachel, Diane, Steven and especially Ryan. For some reason Ryan is her favorite. Must be the beard. Tim Roecker had the morning message. Gregg Rumbold pulled him out of retirement and asked him to have this as Craig was gone, David was gone, while Gabe, Dave, and Mike got back from Jamaica at 4:30 this morning. It really was the sermon I needed to hear. God IS Faithful and He will fight my battles, just as he did for David. Why I don't understand but I am so thankful. If you would like to watch this message click HERE. Bob and Myrna gave lunch today and that was just down right delicious. The afternoon message was the statement of faith Bible study. Gregg Rumbold had that. To watch that click HERE. Joan took Nancy home from church. The only real jobs done this afternoon was to fry up 4 pounds of bacon and make 32 hamburger patties. Mark did the grilling and others brought all kinds of goodies. We really had a feast at the barn and plenty of feasters to enjoy the feast. After supper we made our way to the deck to watch the kids swim but mostly we just visited. 

The girls all left for the barn, Rhoda brought Jewel out and the girls all got to practice vaulting. No pictures of that, I was one of the visiting people on the deck. When the girls left there was just Walter down on the beach. 

Everyone started packing up around 7:30 pm for home. Rhoda and Lee took Nancy home. Mark had Brian look at our electrcity in the garage and Brian figured out how to move the Tesla charger from the farm house over to this house. An easy relaxing day and I enjoyed it.

Cleaning Day

 Today was the day to finish cleaning and post the farm house on airbnb. I started work around 6:30 am going first to pick up the hand held battery vacuum to finish the camper going out today but the battery was dead. I took the battery from the air compressor and went over to Joan's to get that camper finished and from there up to the foaling apartment to get that ready for the guests coming in today. As soon as the foaling apartment was finished. I went to work on the stalls, first filling two water buckets and bringing a a wheelbarrow load of hay in. Once the grain was put in the bucket Tessa and her filly were just led across the hall into the clean stall. They are stuck inside all day today, tomorrow and then Monday I can take them to the vet for a bandage change. I was finished with those chores by 8:15 am and went home to make breakfast for Mark and I. After breakfast Spark and Elijah came to work on the plumbing, digging holes by hand and machine close to the house to find the leak but there was no wet ground there at all and no leaks. The leak is between mom's house and Spark's house. The man renting the camper arrived a few minutes after 9:00 am. This is his second time renting and was thrilled he ended up with the same one as the last time he rented. When he pulled away I went to the house to get the cleaning supplies and off I went to finish the Farm House and I did. It is now posted on airbnb. Some of the pictures will be updated. The patio is going to have ONE table and a few chairs, right now it has 2 tables and 1 chair. 

Above is the front of the house and below is the back of the house.

Nice LARGE grass yards. 

The door to the kitchen takes you right into the laundry area and then into the kitchen.

When you turn around you can see the bathroom door to the left and the laundry room door to the right which also has the door to go outside.

The bathroom has a jetted tub and a walk in shower.

Next to the bathroom is the downstairs bedroom

Through the kitchen is the dining room.

There are pocket doors between the rec room and the dining room. When we had the family eating Sunday dinners here we would have the kids in the rec room and shut those doors to keep the noise down so we could visit.

Those are cowboy boots on those shelves.

Looking the other direction is the living room.

The stairs are behind the black rocker recliner.

At the top of the stairs if you turn left you enter the horse bedroom.

If you turn right it is the other bedroom.

 At the end of the hall is the upstairs bathroom.

That bathroom has a walk in shower.

I finished after 3 pm but needed to go take care of Tessa and her filly before heading home. I was walking home with a laundry basket full of supplies when I saw Taunya and her 3 boys. They came to swim this afternoon but were just leaving so I only got to visit a bit with them. Sarah's family and David's family are camping, Anna and Braelyn were at a cross fit competition. We decided on hamburgers for Sunday supper so drove to Bartonville for groceries but stopped first at the diner. It was almost 5:00 pm and I had skipped lunch to finish. I ordered liver and onions and it was delicious.

Mark ordered a chef salad but it is called something else. That came with beef vegetable soup which he ate before his salad arrived. Since he doesn't like tomato or hard boiled egg, he put those on my plate.

After supper we went to Aldi which is just down the road from the diner and bought the ingredients for Sunday Supper.  I'm trying a new topping for the hamburgers Lee might like. It is a jalapeno cream cheese spread. In case he doesn't want to try it we also picked up pepper jack cheese. 4 pounds of bacon, potato salad, chips, salad stuff a watermelon and 2 containers of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. This evening I needed to move Tessa and the filly back into the cleaned stall. Before doing that though I went out back to see if any of those clouds might have some rain in them. I thought maybe they might but after moving the horses and finishing the stalls I went back out and what looked like rain had gone a different direction. The video below shows before the stalls and then after the stalls. There were fireflies flashing in the field. The camera didn't pick up the far ones but it did some of the close ones. 

Out With the Old and In With the New

 Diane spent the night at Middle Grove so did not walk with us this morning. Just Ruth and I as Joan is still in Jamaica. David, Rachel's husband took the creepy picture below. He was actually taking his 'girls' the pugs, for a walk as it was getting dark and saw those eyes glowing. He thought it looked like some kind of alien. 

Yesterday all 84 of the round bales we bought for this winter were delivered. Most were put in the winter pasture but later I heard he had some put in the summer pasture. It is a blessing to have our hay bought for the winter.

After the walk Mark and I worked on moving the broken washing machine out of the barn to make room for the new one coming today.

Mark got the hoses off then the 2 of us got it out of the closet and using a hand truck got it out of the barn. About then Sarah sent a message asking how tall Dahlia is, she shared the video of Rhoda working with Dahlia on a lot of facebook pages and one lady wanted to know how tall she is right now. I was very pleased that Dahlia stood still for sticking. Of course it helped that I had a bucket of grain on the back of the golf cart she could happily munch while I was sticking her.

She is right at 15 hands as a yearling. She really is going to be huge. Whoever buys her is going to need a ladder to get up on her. The new washer originally was supposed to arrive between 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm however at 11:08 am they called and told us they were one hour away. I was busy hosing off Tessa's filly's leg and once that was done Tessa and the filly were put in a stall to wait for Dr. Pallen. She called at 11:40 am that she would be here in 20 minutes. As the horses were already in the stalls I ran back to the house to get a drink and a check and told Mark he would have to meet the HomeDepo truck as the vet was coming at the same time and guess what? They arrived within minutes of each other. Mark was able to show the delivery person where to take the washing machine. Later he sent a text with the picture below, the machine is installed and is running through a cycle AND they took the old machine away for FREE. That was a win for us.

So it doesn't match but a working machine is much more important than a matching useless one.

Tessa's filly needed some sedation before she would let Dr. Pallen scrub it out. 

Above she is getting sleepy while Dr. Pallen is getting all the supplies needed. Below she has survived all of the poking, prodding and needles. Dr. Pallen injected into the tendon sheath to make sure there were no tears or openings in that but that was fine.  She has no infection in the wound and the tendon is also fine but she has some proud flesh growing.

That meant she needed a special wrap that needs to stay on for 3 days.

 I will need to bring her back to the clinic on Monday for this bandage to come off and a new one put back on. It was terribly hot and by the time Dr. Pallen was done we were both sweating buckets. I was glad to go home to get a big drink of water and cool off in the air-conditioning. A camper came back and is going out again tomorrow. That was cleaned but I need to go back with a sweeper, there was either cat hair or dog hair on the cushions. If the sweeper won't get it all, I'll bring tape.  Sarah sent the picture below.

They have reached their campground and are all set up. The girls are loving having the bikes. There are many roads and drives just for bikes. 

I found 3 ripe tomatoes so tonight we had BLT's for our supper. I was out of bread but toasted some Hawaiian rolls and that worked. Spark came over for a while this evening then Mark went to work at the farm house. We are so close to being able to list it. I'm getting anxious and might just try to finish what I can tomorrow then get it listed.

Almost Unbearable

 Today was a really hot day. Even early for our walk, there was no breeze at all and the temps close to 80. I went over to check out the motorhome fridge and was disappointed to find it still not working. Ruth brought the 2005 motorhome over. It had gone out West with 2 families plus 1. Ruth said they really enjoyed the trip. They had 9 people traveling and staying in it but 5 of those were young children. Mark was busy emptying the big black tanks then taking them apart. Because we are going to list the farm house on airbnb even the yard needs to look good. I helped some with the tanks then Mark came to help take the freezer/fridge apart to try to find the problem. We worked a couple hours on it then decided to send it as it was. Rhoda arrived and tacked up Jury. Iris got the first lesson on her.

While Rhoda was working with Iris and Jury I took Zeke to go help grandpa in the motorhome.

Not much later Sarah arrived with Zion, Eden and River. Zion got a canter lesson on Jury. We didn't get to watch that as I took the others into the 2005 motorhome to turn on that fridge. They thought this motorhome was amazing. While I was turning on things they found hiding places.

Once everything was up and running well. We went back to the horses. Zion was getting Penny tacked up to go on a trail ride with Rhoda and Jury.

After the ride they all went to the lake to cool off. I needed to hose Tessa's filly's leg again. She knows the routine, she is haltered in the stall then follows her mom out to the indoor arena, stands while I tie her up and then get the hose.

Tomorrow Dr. Pallen is coming to check it out. It is just not healing as well as anticipated. Rhoda and Sarah worked with Dahlia while I watched their kids in the lake. While they were working with her, I swam across the lake to get the lillypad. The rope had broken and that had floated away. It was a good time as the 3 older girls were playing near the beach and River and Zeke were playing under the trees. Rhoda worked with  Dahlia while Sarah recorded everything then Rhoda made the video below:

When they got back the 2017 motorhome's fridge was put back together and I was so pleased to find the fridge working. We really don't know what we did to fix it but it was cooling. Hooray! I checked the 2005 and it too was cooling well. Sarah picked up Nolan and they drove the 2005 to the Brewers then took the 2017 to their house for packing. They are all leaving early tomorrow.

We went to Taegan's softball game which was held at a park just 12 minutes from our house. It was supposed to start at 7:30 pm but was delayed as the game before theirs went long. Taegan's game didn't start until close to 8:00 pm and by the time it was over we got home much to late. This was the championship game and was hard fought. They won the last two games to get into this game but ended up losing in this game so came in 2nd in the tournament. WELL DONE GIRLS! Every time Taegan got up to bat she got on base. Below is her double.

Even after 9:00 pm it was 85 degrees with no breeze. I was wishing for a fan. The heat seemed almost unbearable. I'm glad I went, Taegan is a very talented player. She plays 3rd base, one of the girls from the other team was trying to steal 3rd, Taegan was thrown the ball, the girl stopped and headed back to second, Taegan threw the ball to the girl playing second, they went back and forth until the girl was tagged out. Too bad I didn't have the video going then. No one knew how that was going to end but the perfect throws and Taegan's team mates all in perfect position made this out happen. 

 

Not Working

 We walked but even before 8:00 am it was hot. There was no breeze, sunshine and lots of humidity. We didn't walk very fast. We stopped to see the new improvements on Mike's barn but the one we had to laugh at was his paint can shaker.

Most impressive the amount of hookups for his air compressor. There are many places to hook up an air gun for air gun tools on both sides of the barn and even in the front. There must have been over 30 of those. I had 2 campers going out today so ran over to Joan's to plug them in, turn on the fridge and make sure the air conditioners were on right after the walk. Mark wanted left over roast for breakfast. I was just heading over to meet one of the camper rental guys when Sarah arrived with her girls. They came to clean the house.

Above Zion is doing all the vacuuming while below Eden and River emptied and loaded the dishwasher.

Rachel and David were trying to remove the hornets from the outdoor volleyball court. Rachel decided to use the Kubota on that. 

Sarah and Nolan are borrowing the motorhome tomorrow so today I pulled it out of the barn, turned on the generator to make sure that worked, then plugged the motorhome in and turned the generator off. The front window was so dusty the hose was brought out and that window hosed off.

I came back to the house hot and sweaty. Mark had decided to go swimming and just then Diane and Mike arrived with their rafts.

I was going to go swimming but thought I should check the fridge first on the motorhome. The freezer was working great, the fridge wasn't cooling at all. Just then Jozef arrived to pick up a skid steer part so I asked him to look at at as he has a camper and camps a lot. 

No luck fixing it but he asked Google AI why and then sent me the 3 most obvious answers. I turned off the fridge then left for home. Tomorrow I will try turning it on again, if it still doesn't work I'll ask Mark to take the freezer top off so we can find where the obstruction is. By the time I got back from that it was time to shower and get ready for church. David had the message tonight and what a message. Click HERE to watch that. After church we we went to Culvers for a late supper. The Bradley/ICC young group joined us tonight both in church and also at Culvers. It was a good group.

Precious Memories

 Ruth, Diane and I walked but I only walked one round as today is Berean day.  I arrived to find Shirly, Sharon and Vonnie already there and waiting to get in. Skip couldn't come today. The big news at Berean is we now have internet. We were able to use the postage machine. 

Marvin brought in cucumbers from his garden and shared them with us. We all took some. He had to leave early today but got done what was needed. The rest of us worked until about 10:30 am. We didn't have a lot of mail but enough to keep us busy. We had left over Chantilly cake so I took that over to Lukie, she has the hospice helpers there pretty much full time now for Wayne. Please remember to pray for the Unsicker family, Wayne really is a man after God's own heart, he is such a wonderful servant, humble, loving and a very generous man. I know he deserves his reward but we will sure miss him here. I drove first down to Meisters to drop off studies then to the Hanna City post office to drop off the Bibles and studies going out today. Mark's car needed to be charged so I drove straight to the farm house, parked the Tesla in the garage,  hooked it up to the charger then walked home. David and Elisabet followed me in. Stephanie and Israel were already here swimming as was Anna and Braelyn. I got my suit on and joined them in the lake. Diane arrived right after that. I think we floated or swam for hours. At 2:00 pm the guy from Spoon River arrived (Stephanie was just leaving and saw him) I had to get out of the lake to take him down to the water softener. We are going to continue to rent this one and signed a 3 month contract. He also checked the level of the propane tank and gave Mark the number.  After he left I started making the chicken salad for tonight. Braelyn came in and visited for a while and took some of that home. I served it with those wonderful fresh cucumbers from Marvin's garden. After supper Penny and Tessa needed to be teased. Tessa showed right away but I needed Mike's help with her. Valiant got the job done.  Penny was out back in the pond pasture but came right to me. I walked her over to Evan and she squealed and then did a huge barrel kick with her hind legs. I thought she must be out but then she whirled around and started showing to him. Mike tied her but when I brought Evan up she kicked again and this time I walloped her. She stopped and then stood well for him. I will mark her down but am pretty sure she is either going out or gone out. I know she was in this morning but it was too hot when I came home from Berean and I wanted to wait until this evening when it was cooler. When I came back it was a good time to water the tomato plants and flowers. Mom has some beautiful flowers out on the deck ( I think Rhonda planted them) I think that because she wants to make sure they get watered and live. 

The purple petunias are my favorite. The smell and color bring back memories of Baer Greenhouse and weeding the beds. I loved the smell when I would walk into the glass houses to start weeding the beds. The work wasn't fun and exciting but that smell sure does bring precious memories.