Middle Grove Pick-up

The Iceland group made it home around 1:00 am so we figured they would be sleeping until quite late but that wasn't the case with Karin. She was up at 5:00 am and walked with us telling stories of the trip. Even Emily got up early. Which was a good thing, I had a long list of things she needed to do. Killian and Evan were both given baths. Killian is now stalled until things dry up around here. Jewel was teased and covered by Evan, Emma is still in and covered by Killian. Tomorrow the vet comes we will spring for ultrasounds to see where they are in their season. Emma should have been out but the last time Dr. Hoerr sonagrammed her she was not cycling. We hope this is a real cycle.
I left early for the Berean work, picked up a full load of mail at TEMCO then headed to the new office at the Unsicker farm. Below Gary and Bill are opening mail at one table, Jan and Eva Jean are at another table opening the mail. Chuck and mom are reading the letters and Joyce is opening and processing studies. Shirley showed up a little later and helped read letters.

 In the other room Megan was busy running the copier making thousands of copies while Marie, Timothy, Justin and Matt are busy stuffing and wrapping Bibles.

We broke for lunch once all the studies were entered. It is so nice to have such a big table and a big room for all of us to eat together. We are missing Dave and Kathy. Kathy is still in the hospital and could use prayers. Please don't forget to pray for healing for her. I got home at 2:30 pm had time to get a couple loads of laundry done while Emily was mowing. As soon as she finished the yard we hooked up the truck and trailer and headed for Middle Grove to pick up Prissy, her colt and Piper. The farrier is coming tomorrow morning so we wanted Piper here to get her hooves trimmed before she makes that long trip to Washington State. Soul was the first to greet us.

 Emily went over work with Jurista a bit when Ripper arrived for attention. Ripper is Soul's 2014 colt out of an Appendix stallion.

 Ayanna was the next to come out of the woods for attention. She is such a smart mare, she has lived at Middle Grove most of her life and knows exactly how to beat the flies by rolling in a mud puddle.

 Star and her filly are pictured below. This filly will be weaned the end of this month and go to her new home with Lia. Lia owns her full sister. 

 Below is Zoe, Zalena's filly by Evan. She was spotless. Zalena doesn't like to get muddy and has passed that along to her filly. 

 Lily was no where in sight. I was getting worried so let out a yell calling loudly, "Lily!"

She and her colt came running followed by Missy.

Her colt is only 3 months old but just huge. His foal coat is starting to shed off.

 Ayanna and Whitney started to follow us around, just look at Ella behind them. She isn't due until the end of August, another 2 months to go although she usually delivers 3 weeks early.

 Below is Serenity. She and Piper are best friends, she followed us almost all the way back to the trailer not wanting to see Piper leave Middle Grove. At the end though she decided not to go with us and galloped back to the herd. 

Prissy and Piper were de-wormed before we took them out of the trailer. Piper with Ivermectin and Prissy with Quest Plus. Her colt will be de-wormed in a couple weeks once we are sure the Quest doesn't go through the milk like Panacur. Prissy was teased before putting her in the mare pasture. Hopefully she will come in soon.

Mare Pasture

Right after the walk the mare pasture needed another round bale. We put one in on Friday but the mares rolled it out of the round bale feeder causing waste. Below Marika and Jewel are standing in the hay while their colts take a nap on that nice soft bed.

 Emma and her colt came right up for some attention

 Sangria's colt is smart, he stands behind the mare with the thickest longest tail. Today he was up with Emma and her colt using Emma's tail to keep off the flies. He is shedding off his foal coat and it looks black underneath. He was born bay so we are assuming he will be a dark bay or black bay when full grown. He has the curliest mane of all of our foals.

 Marika's colt jumped up from his nap and came over for some attention.

 After the bale was moved Indy had an itch on her belly and was trying to figure out the best way to scratch it. There really is a tremendous amount of waste when the bale is not in a feeder. These horses find all kinds of uses for hay.

 The foals watching Indy from left to right are Emma's colt, Ribbon's filly and Indy's filly.

Mark needed a sprayer brought down to the shop this morning and as long as I was there the first of the month bills could be paid a couple days early. I lost my glasses in the Berean move and decided since it has been 6 and a half years since my last eye exam it probably was time for a new pair. Sam's eye doctor starts taking walk-ins at 1:00 pm so I made sure I was there by that time. There was only a few minutes wait before it was my turn and I was pleasantly surprised to find my eyes hadn't changed much in those 6 and a half years. The eye doctor decided the eyes needed to be dilated which meant the rest of the afternoon either dark sunglasses were worn or a nice quiet dark room, perfect for an afternoon nap.
Karin called when they reached Boston, they made their connecting flight to Chicago and will be home late tonight or the wee hours of the morning tomorrow. We will be glad to have them home safe.
There is just too many mares on the mare pasture so 2 of the pairs were removed from that pasture and put in the pond pasture. Rosalie and Oksana were moved out of the pond pasture and put back in the middle paddock.  Emma and her colt were moved as Emma needs to be grained and Marika and her colt.  This evening Marika was teased and covered by Evan. Emma went over and started showing to Killian. If she is still showing tomorrow afternoon we will let Killian cover her. The paddocks are in terrible shape. Each time Evan is taken out he must be given a bath before he can be used. He has a nice dry shelter but the mud is deep by the waterer and by the gates. Poor Killian, even his shelter is muddy.  When Emily comes home he will be bathed then stalled. Wednesday we find out if Luna is pregnant, if she is she can go home then we will move Killian into that paddock as it is still in decent shape.

Closing in on a Record

Daybreak was cloudless, the morning clear without a cloud in the sky. One would think we were going to have another beautiful day and just maybe get out of the almost constant rain but that would be wrong. It was pleasant doing the chores this morning. Emma, the mare not Emma the dog was given her bucket of beet pulp and grain while Marika and her colt were put outside. The water tank in the field was dumped and filled with clean water then the stalls cleaned. By that time Emma had finished her grain so she and her colt were turned out.  By the time we left for church the clouds were rolling in and by the time we left church for home storms were threatening. Willis had the morning service with the theme "Be not Afraid." It is such a pleasure for us in Peoria to have Willis and his wife Lois living here. Mike Rieker had the afternoon service. There was a big announcement in Peoria. Tim Funk stood up in the afternoon and announced, "we all know Emily Ricketts has been attending here for a while, we would like to announce that she is repenting." At first we were so upset that she would be announced (for marriage) while gone and without telling us, then we were like, wait a minute she has been a member for years and finally we put 2 and 2 together and realized Tim was announcing her sister Megan, he just said the wrong name. Emily is really going to be teased when she makes it home.
Rhoda and Lee came over after church and brought their new dog Lila. She is a 3 year old Cockapoo weighing in at 13 pounds. She is more than likely pregnant with pups by a 7 pound Shih Tzu / Poodle. These puppies are going to be small and non shedding. How Rhoda got this dog is a strange story. She and Lee saw the ad for her on Craigslist, drove 2 hours to go see her and when they arrived the man that had her told them he had only had her for 1 day. The phone number he gave them of her previous owner was no longer in service. This seemed suspicious so Rhoda took her in to the vet clinic and sure enough she had a microchip. She was able to find that the original owner had been given the dog as a present and sold her. That was actually a relief to find that she was not a stolen dog. Not sure what one would call puppies that are Shih Tzu Poodle and Cocker mix but they will be non shedding and tiny. They are not due until August.
Phil and Anna and their 3 children along with Ben and Taunya and their 3 children joined Rhoda, Lee, Mark and I for supper. I had plenty of Lasagna cooking in the crockpot, hot garlic bread and salad but no dessert. Thankfully mom donated her cheese cake she was going to take to the Sunday School picnic for our dinner. There are usually plenty of desserts there and she had home baked sweet bread she was taking along with a big salad. So IF and this is a big IF there wasn't enough desserts at the picnic you can blame me. We had one rain storm come in before dinner and another big one after dinner. Mark helped move Emma, Marika, and their colts inside before the rain hit but once we got back to the house it started pouring. This may be enough rain to break the all time record for rain in the month of June but if not we will be very close.
Today was the last day for the Iceland group. They start their long journey home tomorrow. What an awesome trip this has been. Karin and Emily just couldn't leave this magical place without taking a scenic horse back riding tour on Icelandic's ponies. Below are a few pictures.

The group found a hot stream for a good soak after hiking. Who needs hot tubs when there are streams and creeks of hot water.

Hopefully they will be willing to share their adventures with words to go with all the pictures. 

Rare Day of Sunshine

We awoke to a beautiful sunny clear cool low humidity day, the first in quite a while. Grocery shopping was necessary today, 3 stores were visited before everything on the list was purchased. Mark decided we should spend $600.00 or less on food each month and after today we have $69.56 left to spend and only 3 days to do so. The bad news is even if we don't spend the $600.00 I don't get to keep the left overs so I may as well schedule another dreaded shopping trip Monday. Ruth was here with visitors that came all the way from Roanoke to see the foals. The mares were called and they came running. Marika and her colt were the only ones I brought out. The colt thoroughly enjoyed the attention. After the company left Marika and Jewel along with their colts were introduced to the mare pasture. Jewel is now showing on her foal heat and bothering Killian and had to be moved so he doesn't break any more posts.  Oksana and Rosalie were moved out of Valiant's pasture today and moved over to the pond pasture now that Marika and Jewel are out. They both needed a bath before moving them.

 They were not sure about being there without the other mares close by. 

Valiant was let back out and was he ever glad to get out of the muddy paddock and into the grassy field. He went galloping around and around showing off for the mares in the next pasture over.

Marie brought Justin and Timothy over to swim today. In the picture below big brother Justin acts like he is going to help his younger brother Timmy but that's not quite how it played out.

 They are brothers you know and brother just have to be ornery.

 Justin won the boat and took off flying across the pond.

 Timmy was happy with the duck.

Anna dropped of Kensley for an hour this afternoon. They are cleaning up the standing water in their new addition at the yellow house. Kensley was perfect here. She had just mauled a cracker all over her face, hands and chest. That made her thirsty so was given some water in a sippy cup which she thought was the best thing ever. 

This evening Emma was over teasing Valiant so brought out and covered by Evan. It is 5 days since she started showing but I'm not convinced she is actually cycling. After the cover she was taken into a stall for beet pulp and grain. She is losing weight nursing that big boy. Sheena is also losing weight both will need to be moved to the cabin field, put on an alfalfa bale and grained each day. 

And now for a few more pictures from the group in Iceland. Today they visited a city named Reykjavik.

Rain, Rain and More Rain

We are on the way to breaking the all time record for rain in June in our area. The rain has almost stopped this evening but pretty much rained all day once the walk was over. We are thankful it wasn't raining from 7:25 to 8:20 am and were able to walk during that time. At one point Ebby and Emma disappeared. Diane wasn't concerned she said, "Ebby has always found her way home." When Joan was heading home she sent a picture text that she found both dogs.

They were coming down the drive both carrying their trophies. They found a deer hide in the woods divided it up fairly and were proudly bringing it home.
Anna dropped off the girls at 8:15 so we had about 5 minutes to go toad hunting. Braelyn and Taegan both love toads so when only 1 toad was found we may have a problem but the girls did very well sharing it. We put it in a bucket so we could bring it in the house and even then all was well.

The girls were playing with the horses, the toad safe in the bucket when the dryer signal went off. Braelyn and Taegan followed me into the kitchen to change the machines. I heard a sound in the family room but didn't think too much about it. Walked into the family room to find Kensley had the bucket tipped over and was putting something in her mouth. Just as I went to find out what she was putting in her mouth the toad jumped out of her hands. So so thankful she didn't eat it. What kind of grandma lets the baby eat toads? The toad was put back in the bucket and the bucket put up on the table and the baby's hands washed.
Mike and Diane left this afternoon for Ohio to pick up a jeep for Middle Grove. Joan and Tim's family left for the Reinhard family camp, Spark and Rhonda are still in Gulf Shores and the Iceland group are still in Iceland. Speaking of Iceland below are pictures of day 5.

 Today they visited mountains, glaciers and the beach.

 They must have been bored on the way home.

 Above Jessica and Emily are braided together and below Emily and Anni are braided together. That's what happens when long haired girls are squished together in the back seat of a small car.

Mark helped move a bale in for the mare pasture this evening when the rain slowed down from a downpour to a few sprinkles. The place is saturated through and through. Everywhere is standing water on the flats and rushing rivers on the slopes.