One of the dogs up at Getaway Farms died today.
Homer was one of those good old mixed breed 14 year old dogs that every farm needs.
This Summer Cyndi decided was going to be the “Summer of Homie”. She didn’t put any restrictions on him and let him do his thing. Luckily he went before the cold set in and the ground froze solid. It sounds morbid, but you have to think about these kinds of things when you are in zone 4.
RIP Homer.
After we got done clearing out the old garden and hauling tires into Kiel, WI for disposal, we took all of our scrap dry wood and tree branches and made a nice burning pile.
I stacked it so that it wouldn’t get out of hand and because it was so close to the garage and house, we had two water sources to keep it down if things got too crazy.
So we finished up this HARD day of work with three pitchers of Sangria and a big-ass fire. You really can’t do too much better than that.
THAT would be Cyndi saluting our work after our first glass of sangria!
So we drank a second pitcher and thought it seemed like a really, really good idea to start scavenging the barn and farm for more dry lumber that wasn’t firewood she would need this winter. We found an old door in the second storey of the barn extension. I was hesitant, but when I saw that it had been cut down a couple of times and wasn’t restorable, in it went… along with some old rotten 2x4s and more than a couple of split pieces of real firewood that we decided to sacrifice.
It is always neat to watch structural things burn – things that have panels and edges. The fire consumes them at the weirdest points and in some of the thinner spots they burn from the middle out. In the case of the door, it caught fire first where the panels join the frame.
We just watched it from there…
As we watched it burn down we decided to open a third bottle of wine and make a third pitcher of fortified sangria. This too seemed like a good idea.
We began to drink it and talked about how we may be burning some kind of a portal door.
So then the party came to an end, as these things often do, by a little kick and over pitcher #3 goes… So sad. We thought (briefly) about pulling out the whiskey, but then decided that would be too much and got ready for bed after digging out and muting the fire a bit. It had started to drizzle a little and we felt safe that everything was under control.
Fast forward to the next morning and I am uploading images from the camera to the Mac. Everything is clipping along until I get this series:
And so there you go. We shouldn’t have burnt the ghostly monster portal door. THAT, my friends, is what too much sangria fortified with vodka will do.
I rode again today for the first time in a while…
Here we go!
My horse was Kayla, a chestnut Quarter Horse with (what seemed like) an even disposition. Even until we got out on the track, that is. She was pulling me this way and that and then started cantering to the barn.
View to the North as I got dragged along the track.
We eventually came to an understanding, but not before a couple of scares. Once we began to understand each other, we really had a nice time.
Riding in the practice field.
Like Cyndi was saying: Horses just want a leader. The herd mentality is strong and they need that direction. If they don’t get it, they assume it for themselves.
Out of the Gate!
So we rode for a while in the heat and it was really nice.
A lot of the time I will talk to myself in a kind of broken piginy German. In this case, I kept repeating “Reite Das Pferd! Nichts Das Pferd Wird Von Mir Geritten!” A real German would laugh at that, I think… They would rather see something like: “Gerittente Pferd” or something, but whatever. I use the word Tagleuchter too, so what do you want?
I know what you want. You want more pictures from Getaway Farms.
Well, here you go:
