·:[ high hopes gardens ]:·
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After a long winter, Chelsea finally gets some attention.

It’s been a long winter, and an initial brush of the winter coat sure feels good!

one year ago…”Committee Work”

Just because it’s cold and dark, doesn’t mean that chores can slack.  Winter outdoor chores are greatly reduced - the horse, a couple of goats, laying hens and pets.  Everybody needs water and food for the day and eggs need to be gathered.

We’re on a seasonal rotation, with duties changing with the turn of each season - so starting in a few days, the chores will rotate once again.
one year ago…

December is in like a lion with an ice storm.  So far, it isn’t holding a candle to the ice storm that left us without power for 4 days and our neighbors for 8 days.  See February 23-March 4 blog entries for the worst 8 days of ice, snow, and wind I’ve ever lived through.

Chelsea doesn’t seem to mind the ice - she’s out running in the pasture this afternoon.

So far the ice accumulation has not brought any trees down, although it did cause some airplanes to slide off the runway in Des Moines.

one year ago…

This week the kids (even Martin) worked hard getting the rest of the corn cobs out of the horse stall. It became a bit more imperative as I want to start working on the hog barn soon and can’t when she was in there for temporary lodging. So I whipped up this gate to fit the odd size of the stall.

We thought it was a nice big space,but she promply ripped the gate hinge out of the wood. So, a sturdier design and she seems to have calmed down and is starting to make it home.

one year ago…

This might look like the girls are out on the road taking the dog for a walk.  But it is a moment Emma thought would never come - the day a horse came to the farm!

The person we bought it from (The Jolly Rancher) preferred not to turn around her horse trailer in our yard, but was kind enough to bring it to the beginning of the gravel road, 1/3 mile away - so the girls got to walk/run the horse home!

The horse is a 6 month-old miniature horse named “Chelsea.”  She won’t get too much bigger.  We saw some at the Iowa State Fair pulling carts and Dad softened from his hard line of “no horse ever on this farm” to “I could see having one of those for the girls to train to pull a cart.”  The upside is they don’t eat much and aren’t as dangerous as a full-size horse.  So here’s Chelsea, the latest addition to high hopes gardens.

one year ago…