Staying Young or Aging Prematurely???

I once met a lady who had raised 5 boys, but looked like she was in her early 30s.  When I asked her what her secret was to staying young, she said it was "the farm" and all of hard work that went along with living that lifestyle.  She had done much of the same thing I'm doing now, and said she loved that the boys had the opportunity to be in the countryside.  Of course, she followed that by saying once the boys all moved out, she and her husband moved to a nice house in the city on a smaller piece of property with no animals and had hired a gardener.

I'm finding it hard to believe that this is supposed to be keeping me young - but my 87 year old neighbor who is still out mucking her horses' stalls every morning says the same damn thing.  To me, I feel like I've aged 10 years just in the last two! My hands are rougher than they've ever been, my knees ache, and my eyes are always heavy - but then again, I've never been happier.  I love it.  I guess we'll just have to wait and see! If I'm still kicking in another 60 years, we'll know they were right!

As you might have guessed, it has been a busy couple of days!  Friday was all about getting the horses settled in over at their new home.  Victor worked his butt off getting the barn in order and comfortable for them.  Frank's run outside of his stall was only about 9 feet wide, which would never have worked for him. He'd probably have gotten stuck if we had even tried it!  We asked Farah if we could pull out a few panels to include the unused run next to his, and she said that wouldn't be a problem.  We also had to cut down the clover that was covering the area in his run - or else we would have had an absolutely insane Thoroughbred on our hands!

Having the boys in that barn makes me realize how incredibly huge they are!!!!  The facility was previously a quarter horse breeding barn, so everything is built for "normal" sized horses.  There are two quarter horses boarded there right now, and they're so tiny in comparison to Frank and Avdoo it's almost comical.  I have lost perspective on what an "average" size horse is!  I swear Avdoo must have had another growth spurt over the last month or so.  He is at least 18 hands now, maybe even a bit more (for those of you who are unfamiliar with how we measure horses, a "hand" is 4 inches.  So from the ground to the BASE of his neck, Avdoo is about 6' high - add his neck and head to that, and it's ridiculous).  Imagine me leading him around - I'm only 5'1" on a good day -  I must look like a little pipsqueak next to him!  His head is massive now - we had to adjust the bridle size, and it has only been 3 weeks since I used that bridle on him last.  Seriously - it's nuts. I really do hope that this is his last "burst" of growing.  He's 6, so I'm crossing my fingers!

Both Frank and Avdoo are loving their new home, and have bonded with the two mares that were already there.  I think I'll get along great with their owner  - she lives on the property, so I think I'll be seeing her fairly frequently.  It's always nice to have a second set of hands and eyes when dealing with horses!

I was hoping get a bunch of pictures of the new barn and the boys playing in the pasture. However, I had a minor catastrophe with our amazingly wonderful, ridiculously expensive camera.  Or should I say with JEFFREY's camera.

Friday morning, as I drove over to the old barn, I stopped to take pictures of the lake.  Everything seemed fine...until I looked at the photos. There was an odd white blurry area in the same place on all of the shots. When I looked at the lens, I expected to see lint or a smudge or something that would simply need a cleaning.  What I saw instead was broken glass.

It's hard to see, but it's in the upper left corner...

I'm sure a lot of you know how pricy lenses can be, and if you know my husband, you know how much that camera means to him.  Someone recently had asked about the camera, and he had talked about the lens that we had on there, and as I stood there staring at the broken glass, all I could hear was his voice saying, "Oh, it was super expensive, we wouldn't be able to do this again anytime soon." I suddenly found myself trying to come up with stories of how to explain my complete irresponsibility.  But I just couldn't figure out what to say.  Sick to my stomach, I walked over to the pool house where he works when he's in town.  I stood in front of the door for a while, shaking, nauseated, wanting to just sink into the ground.  I turned away, and walked back around the garden, trying to muster the strength to tell him what I had done.

My phone rang. It was Jeffrey.  I clicked "mute," walked back to the door of the pool house, and pushed it open.  As soon as I saw him, all my bravery disappeared, and I burst into tears.
"What happened???" he sympathetically asked.
I handed him the camera.  He looked at me with a smirk, looked at the damage, and twisted off a broken UV filter to reveal a perfectly intact lens.
"That's why we have that on there! It's not a big deal at all!"
I can't describe the relief that swept over my body!  He then proceeded to tell me that we have it insured, so it wouldn't matter anyway - the insurance will replace it even if we break it.  Still. That was NOT a fun 20 minutes! PHEW!

Today we ran a ton of errands in the morning, then I finished preparing for dinner tonight with Colin, Jake, Mom, Ed, and my dear friend Josh and his girlfriend.  Josh is having some health issues right now, so the dinner was a bit different than most of our previous times with him at our house (in other words, we weren't all 10 martinis in and running around playing with Nerf guns) - but we still had a blast.  I love that guy - he's so true to himself, and confident in his strength.  He is facing his struggles with bravery, a smile, and a can-do attitude.  His girlfriend is sweet and seems very strong and stable - which is just what he needs right now!  I'm so glad he has her!  Ellie had a blast entertaining everyone with her myriad of faces, her silly antics, and her incredible energy!

yes, that's a Corona box!

Freaking Jackie-O, people!

Since our anniversary dinner at the Painted Lady back in October, I've been wanting to experiment and try to replicate their quinoa-butternut squash crepes.  I think I managed it! They were delicious!!!!  I'll post the recipe sometime tomorrow.  I also made my incredible Killer Cream of Onion Soup that was sucked down by everyone.  I think someone may have even licked the pot (and no, it wasn't one of the dogs!).  Mom made a wonderful salad that complimented the meal beautifully.

I had a few things to do after everyone left, but have decided that I'm just too damn tired!  I'm going to bed - I'm hoping we'll wake up at a decent time and be able to go get our Christmas tree.  We have Colin's truck (he has the Suburban), so hopefully tomorrow night I'll be writing about decorating a massive tree with a toddler. Hee hee - that's always fun! :-)

I Made It!

Wow. I did it. I made it through the day, and I even managed to get things fixed and back to working order on the farm!  I'm so proud of myself! Maybe I CAN pull off the country living thing!  My knees are aching from being on my feet all day, and my eyes are heavy - but I did it, and now my husband is home, the baby is asleep, the dogs are cuddled up, and all is well with the world.

On the way home from the airport tonight, Jeffrey asked how my day was.  When I started thinking about everything I managed to fit in, I felt even more exhausted!

The Canadian geese woke me up with all of their honking and screaming and flying and landing - yes, you can hear them flying and landing especially when there are hundreds and hundreds of them.  It's louder than I would have ever thought it could be!  The other thing that I seemed to have never thought about was how freaking messy those damn animals are.  As I drove across the dam with the horses' bran mash, I noticed little leaves all over the surface of the ice rink that we call our lake.   As I looked closer, I realized that those little white leaves weren't leaves at all.  It was goose poop - oh yeah, baby, oh yeah. DISGUSTING!

The horses got their vaccinations this morning.  It was awesome to see Dr. Fisher. I love that man.  He's just so sweet and kind and oddly magnetic! Plus, he loves, loves, loves my animals - especially my dogs!  I usually feel more confident after a visit from him, and that was certainly the case today.  Boots and Jax were on their best behavior, and the horses both looked great and happy.  I felt like a proud momma hen.  Greg definitely got more of a feel for how Frank is when he's healthy. He made the comment that now he sees why I was so darn worried: there's a HUGE contrast between how happy Frank is now, and how miserable he was a month or so ago!  I was happy I got a little Greg time, and the horses got their vaccinations just in time to head over to their new home.

Gabby came in the afternoon and we walked the boys over to 9 Star Ranch.  We turned them out in a pasture, and OH WOW! the party that ensued was just awesome to watch!  Frank was in heaven, running and bucking and playing...I'm not sure that Avdoo really knew what to do, as he's probably never been in a pasture that big!  He eventually picked up on Frank's cues, and they performed a little pas de deux for us.  It made me feel so happy to see them running around being horses again.  They didn't last long though, and soon discovered that there was grass, and decided that it was much better to munch and graze than tear around the paddock like crazed barbarians. We eventually brought them back in, and they had their mash, and are now settling into their new stalls.

That middle pasture is where they had their fun

Really, the horse move was the big event of the day.  Other than that, I learned how to run my well pump, learned a few things about plumbing, got some suggestions on preparing the house for winter next year, fulfilled an Etsy order, went to the market, ran to Target to buy a tiny heater for the pressure tank, picked up my husband for the airport, and customized a few gift baskets for a friend...now I'm more than ready for sleep!

Nighty Night!

RANDOM PHOTOS OF THE DAY

That's one way to wear your pj's, eh?

helping in the kitchen

Helping in the laundry room

If it's not one thing, it's another

The lake is FROZEN

There are days that I think the pastoral view of the countryside is actually just a wolf in sheep's clothing.  Seriously!!!!  Serene? Not me! I'm ready to blow a gasket after yesterday and today - or a pipe, as seems to be the fashion around Deer Park Farms.

That's a duck sitting out there!

The edge of the lake

In all my busyness and in Jeffrey's absence, a HUGE necessity went unnoticed: winterizing.  Yeah. And now, we're screwed.  Honestly, even if I hadn't been busy and Jeffrey had been here, neither of us would have done anything.  We've never had to prepare a house for winter - let alone 72 freaking acres: winters in Los Angeles just meant 3 days of rain here and there, and temperatures in the low 50s - and a shit ton of complaining from everyone about how incredibly cold it was. Yeah. That ain't Oregon.  Reality is, neither of us have experience with this climate, so I doubt that we would have done much more than empty the solar panels for the pool heater.

The ground in the field outside the pool house

Re-read that, will you? I said WOULD HAVE emptied the solar panels; which means, we DIDN'T empty the solar panels.  Which means, come spring we'll be forking out megabucks to fix the now burst solar heater panel.  It's either that or just try to pretend to enjoy the cold water and have EG freeze while practicing her 4-beat freestyle stroke that's going to take her to the Olympics. Hey, it'll toughen her up!

We discovered the burst solar panel pipe after we realized that there was no running water in the house because our well pump had frozen.  After talking with the well pump guys (who are friends with the family who used to live here), we got that problem solved by putting a space heater close to the nipple that connects the indoor reserve tank to the pipe from the well.  Thank GOD the guy knows the place well enough to walk me through that over the phone.

"Do you have a space heater?"

"Yeah. It's how we keep our daughter's room warm."

"Ok, take that out to the pump/utility garage in the pool house."

"OK. Done."

"Now plug it into the outlet that you see to the left of the door, under the panel."

"Ok. Done."

"Turn it on real low."

"Done."

"Go check the water inside."

"OH WOW!!! CHECK THAT OUT! There's water!"

Honestly, I feel like such a city girl, and I'm wondering what the HECK I'm doing out here pretending like I'm running a farm!  I talked to our neighbor Maribeth tonight.  Her parents owned DPF before us, and she knows the place inside and out, and has been my savior more than once!

"Did you turn off the valves for the outdoor spigots?"

"No."

"Ok. Open the cupboard......."

Poor lady should be getting a salary for teaching me stupid shit I should already know.

The insanity that ensued today was just ridiculous. We also discovered that one of the sprinklers in the front had a leak, and had frozen and therefore broken.  Victor and I headed to Wilco to buy what we needed.  We had about an hour's break, and then it got REALLY interesting.

Pain in the ass, but at least it looks cool!

I was downstairs trying to finish an order for 2 sets of place card holders, when I heard Victor's voice:

"Melissa! We have a problem."

Now, when Victor says we have a problem, you know it must be bad.  He's the kind of guy who fixes whatever problem he sees as soon as he sees it; if he needs a part, he just says, "Hey, I don't have this part; let's go get it."  But when he says, "We have a problem" it's because we have a BIG PROBLEM.

Apparently, a valve in the shop broke and was causing a bit of an issue with water, freezing, and the associated complications that brings - but that wasn't the big problem.  The issue arose when he went to try to turn off the water in order to FIX the water running out of the valve in the shop.  Turns out, the main shut-off valve to turn water off to the house is also broken - at least we THINK it's broken.  We may just be turning the wrong shut-off valve.  We called all of our contacts who used to work here, have worked on the plumbing here, or have previously lived here, to see if they knew where to turn off the water to the shop and they all said, "It's in the flower bed." SO, CRAP.  It ain't working.  I was so incredibly fed up with dealing with pipes and water and cold and complications, that I just looked at Victor and said, "We're not dealing with this tonight."  He gave me a blank look of complete disbelief, making me feel like even MORE of a city girl in the country, and then muttered something about ice and towels and tomorrow.  Seriously. I'm not sure I'm cut out for this!

Why can't it warm up? I mean, let's at least get above 18 degrees, please!

I spent the other part of my day dealing with the other big issue around here: the horses.  They both have been doing great.  Even Frank has settled down a bit; I think he just doesn't want to move around in the cold!  Getting them drinkable water has been a huge, huge challenge.  Each morning, their waters usually have about an inch of ice covering them, and even after breaking the ice, they don't want to drink it because it's just so damn cold!

Cold, but pretty!

I'm worried about them not drinking enough, so every morning I load Ellie Graye into the suburban with her toast, her milk, her egg and her blanket, and tell her that she's going to be in there a while!  I put a cooler in the back of the 'Burb in a second larger container, and I fill it with the hottest tap water possible.  I then mix more hot water with their grain and let it soak in to make a nice hot mash for their breakfast.  I fill two more buckets up with hot water, place them in a larger container and then begin the drive over to the barn.

Doesn't that look appetizing? hee hee

Sounds simple: drive to the barn. Yeah, well, if you have ever tried to drive dozens of gallons of water 1/2 mile over gravel and dirt road you'll know why it ain't so easy.  My goal is always to make it to the horse with at least 1/2 of the contents of each bucket. I've almost perfected my turns and learned how to navigate the bumps in the road so that I can make it there without losing more than 1/4 of the water!  The drive takes me about 10 minutes, but at least I know my horses will have something to drink!

Tomorrow things change. A lot.  I'm moving them to my neighbors' barn.  The only other horses there belong to the girl who rents a house on their property, so I'll pretty much have run of the place.  The owners aren't "horse people" but rather bought the place because it's beautiful.  They're most recently from Southern California (though are ethnically Persian), and decided not to have an equestrian program at the facility.  For me, it's only a few more minutes walking from where my horses are now, and I'll have access to an indoor arena and pastures pretty much free-will.  The place is a little funky, and the stalls are tiny, but if I can turn the boys out every day, I think it'll work for a while.  Most importantly - they have hot water!

that's Mt. Hood in the background

That's the indoor arena and indoor stalls

One of the pastures with stalls (cement floors, no stall mats, so the boys can't stay there!)

I took Farah (our neighbor with the barn) a basket of goodies for the holidays and to as a Thank You for helping us out by letting us use her facility.  She liked it so much, she ordered a few things as a gift for a friend down in Los Angeles.

The candle holders really are cool...

Thankfully, Ellie Graye took a four hour nap today.  Yep. FOUR hours! I actually had a typical mommy moment and got worried enough to go check on her at about hour 3.  She was still breathing, so I just let her sleep as much as she needed to! It took so much stress off having her sleeping rather than awake.  She's so active now, and communicating so much.  She's definitely a "spirited" child, and while I love her energy, it can be trying when there are other things that need to be taken care of!

In the middle of all the craziness, I did have a moment where I stopped and just looked at where I was and what I was experiencing.  As I was driving up our driveway at one point, I had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting a coyote.  The coyotes here are so much more robust than the ones that saunter around Los Angeles.  This guy wasn't shy at all either.  I had time to grab my camera, roll down the window, and get a few photos!

Look how fat he is!

BRRRRRRRRRRR!

Ok, honestly: a low of 18 degrees?!?!?  It's damn cold.  I'm just glad it's a dry cold - it makes things a little less complicated and certainly makes the roads a lot safer!

doesn't that make you shiver just looking at it???

This morning the horses' waters were completely frozen over, so I gave them a nice warm, watery bran mash to be sure they got some water. Transporting warm water to the stalls is a total pain in the ass! I drove some over this morning, in the back of the Suburban, but had to drive like an old lady in order to be sure the water stayed IN the buckets and didn't go splashing around in the back of the car.  In the afternoon, Jeffrey carried the buckets over for me, which seemed to be a bit easier, but there's no way I could do that myself!  I hope we find a place for them soon!

There was a loon (I think) swimming around the lake this morning, and as I shot a couple photos, he dove!  The first picture you see him floating; in the second all you see is his tooshy!

I don't have any other photos of today since it was one of those days that sped by, and was mostly filled with running errands, making phone calls, and wrapping gifts - none of which qualified as interesting enough to photograph.  Oh, but wait! Jeffrey did use his Blackberry to snap this one snapshot of Ellie Graye on the way to the airport! If she ever makes it to the Olympics, this is one of those photos that will certainly come up! It's absolutely precious!

I've been telling you guys my daughter loves to swim!!!

Such a Quiet Day

Though I had hoped we'd be able to go get a Christmas tree today, that didn't happen.  Once Jeffrey and I discussed the logistics of getting a 12' tree from a lot to DPF, it was decided that the only way that was going to happen was to have my brother Colin join us with his pick-up truck.  Unfortunately, my brother has a life, and was unable to drop everything to chauffeur a Christmas tree around.  What a jerk, huh? So, the day was the essence of a lazy Sunday!

I've finished most of the other Christmas decorations, so the tree will be the final touch - though I'm not sure when that will happen.

the side board

The TV room mirror

We did head over to the horses since we had to figure out a way to get them water.  For the last 9 months or so, we've had hoses connected one after another to run the 600+ feet from the shop to the barn.  We had set them on a timer, so the horses always had water.  Now that the temperatures drop into the 20s overnight, the hoses froze.  If you read the post yesterday, you know we're one step closer to getting water run out there, but today was a challenge.

Jeffrey asked what we have been doing since the cold came, and I told him how Victor puts garbage bins in the trailer of the little John Deere, fills them up, drives them over to the stalls, and then dispenses them into the horses' containers.  He volunteered to do that while EG was taking a nap.  About 40 minutes later, I saw him walking across the dam, sans John Deere, and pretty much melting the frozen ground as he seethed.  "Uh-Oh." I thought, "Didn't go so well."  Sure enough, when he returned, he told me he had tried twice to get the water to the horses, but the first time, the entire trailer tipped over, spilling water all over the dirt road - which will freeze and turn into an ice rink.  The second trip, one of the bins turned over inside the trailer.  Needless to say, he was DONE dealing with water in 32 degree weather!  I realized that I had forgotten to tell him that we usually tie the bins down when we put them in the trailer. OOOOOOPS!  Poor guy.  Things are always so much harder than they look out on the farm!

After Jeffrey tried his hand at being a water boy, he let me know that he had only given Frank the water that had actually made the journey.  Needing to visit the horses anyway, we all bundled up and journeyed on over to the stalls. I love going on walks as a family - even in the freezing cold!  Once I balanced out the two containers of water, I was happy to see there was enough for them to last through tomorrow.

Ellie had fun petting the horses, and she and Jeffrey spent some time while I loaded up the hay bags, prepped grain, and basically hauled around pounds and pounds of hay, water, and crap. Aaah! The joys of horse ownership.

Yesterday I had made pulled pork in the slow cooker, but we ended up ordering pick up at our favorite Thai place inWilsonville (Thai Delight), so I had a head start on dinner for tonight.  I ended up doing what I usually do and improvising with what I needed to use up in the fridge.  It turned out delicious!  I have so many recipes to post on the recipe blog - this being one of them...I seriously need to get on that!

  

some asparagus and onions...

some garlic and mushrooms

add some pulled pork an brown rice, and voila!

That was about our day here at the farm.  I worked a bit on some Etsy orders, Jeffrey ran some errands, we finally sorted out Victor's birthday present and got that to him, and we just had some down time.  Gotta love that!

Christmas is less than 3 weeks away - but it still doesn't "feel like Christmas"...suggestions on how to make that happen?  Oh yeah, getting a tree will probably help! HMMM. One of these days!