high hopes gardens is a living experiment. Can a creative, hard-working family make a living working with nature? Join us on the journey from idea to practice as we revive an Iowa Farmstead.
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room!
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The plow has been by a number of times and the road is now at full width, but there are 6-8 foot banks of snow along parts of the road.
On the back sides of the banks on a downhill slope, Martin has spent many happy hours sliding, driving his Tonka truck, and pushing his truck down the drifts, kind of like the Hot Wheels jumps I made as a kid, only this is a much larger scale
What’s left to say. Another day, more snow. Another day without school. This round of weather started yesterday and ended today around noon. I am liking the tractor and blade!
I think April has the right idea. Find a sheltered spot out of the wind, wait for a bit of sunshine and sleep!
one year ago…
The shorts and straw hats are now packed away and out come the layers of clothes and boots to replace them.
Last Thursday’s snow recedes from the fields as well now that we are in the unofficial season between winter and fall. Shall this season be called “finter” “wall” “fallter” “wintall?” It’s getting too cold to work on some outdoor projects, but not cold enough to make you cringe when stepping outside.
Emma loves her dog - Maizie.
Here she is working with Maizie on some dog agility maneuvers. For a little dog, she can really jump - she can regularly clear the top level of the jump. She’s now about two and starting to settle down a bit and learning what it takes to be a good dog here. A couple of rounds of dog obedience lessons, some videos from “dog whisperer” Cesar Millan, and she’s on her way - not there yet, but much closer than a year ago.
Martin is very proud of his fish. If you look closely, you’ll find a gold and grey goldfish in the bowl. There is much “discussion” of fish ownership between Martin and the girls, who want to hone in on the fish ownership. Martin said “I started the conversation about getting the fish.” The conversation started more like “Dad, can I get an animal in a cage in my room?” Hamsters, rats, ferrets, and guinea pigs were all squashed and he finally seemed a bit shocked, when we agreed to fish. He was one happy boy to get them. It was worth at least two days of perfect co-operation!
The 50 degree days continue. Was able to get more stuff put away/cleaned up and begin to renovate the 2 buck doghouse. First order of business was the roof.
Here it is after the old roof is lifted off.
The insulating panels are put in place.
Finally, the new steel roofing (leftover from the corn crib- now three sides of the corn crib are done). All that remains on the doghouse is the siding on the walls, but that will wait for a while.
We have a bad dog! Yesterday we had a message on our answering machine from a neighbor telling us our dogs had been down chasing the sheep at his place. He also has very small dogs and was rightfully worried. These are things best discussed face-to-face, so I drove down and confirmed it was our dogs and told him I understood and would take steps to prevent it from happening again.
The first step was to buy a doggie trolley to keep Mazie chained up, yet give her some room to move. Next, we’ll get out the training collar and try to teach property boundaries.
March welcomed us with a nice 60 degree day. The most capricious of months, the temps in this neck of the woods in March range from a low of -35 (in 1996) to 90. The math comes out to a 125 degree range, the largest range of any month.
Today I got the pasture overseeded, the small fruit trees to the north pruned, and a load or R board hauled in the trailer - it was just right to carry 24 4×8 sheets with the cargo net - much better and easier than the truck.
Emma took the camera today and took this shot of Skunk. Skunk was the runt of a litter and has finally put on some weight.
Today we went to fetch Billy. He and Blaze “hit it off” right away. Blaze’s tail was wiggling and happy to see Billy. We’ll have Billy for about a month before he moves on. Hopefully Paullina’s time will come as well. We can sure tell there is a Billy here - it really stinks in the barn now.
Today Maizie entered the stinking dog sisterhood by finding and rolling in something disgusting. The girls gave her a couple of baths to try to remove the smell.
It was probably a good thing after coming home from the shelter - she is reported to be much more fluffy now.
The pup has been named Maizie. Linda noticed a striking resemblance to “Nipper” the dog in the RCA logo. It’s not a perfect match, but definitely similar.
Old RCA Logo featuring “Nipper”
High Hopes New Puppy “Maizie”
After our experience with Blue and the confidence Emma has gained in dog training, we now have a new puppy. Her name was Missy, but nobody really cares for that name, so we are thinking of a new name. We were leaning towards Maizzie, but when Martin says that it comes out like Macey. So we’ll decide tomorrow and get on with it. We got her from the animal rescue league - she is about 4 months old and a mixed breed that contains some spaniel.
After a period of decision-making and talking to animal rescue league and our vet, we decided to put Blue down. He had bitten Martin in the face, bitten a neighbor who fed the pets when we were out of town a few weeks ago and nipped at Martin again after we brought chickens back from the locker.
We got Blue from the animal rescue league this spring and he was Emma’s dog. Here’s a picture from one of his first days at high hopes.
She trained him to stop jumping on people, took him to obedience classes and taught him dog agility.
It became painfully obvious to us that doing the easy thing would be to do what so many others do to pets - dump him off in another town, bring him back to the rescue league and not tell anybody about the biting or make up a story to Emma that we did return him to the rescue league. It’s just too bad the the right thing involves a lot of pain and heartbreak.
Emma said it right - it’s not fair to lose two dogs in one year. I agree.
We’ve already replaced one door after April freaked in a storm and destroyed a door. This time, there was a possibility of storms, so the dogs were locked in the garage. This is what the door from the garage to the mudroom looked like.
Again, we are paying for the shortcuts of the previous owners who installed a hollow-wall interior door in an exterior location.
Our new Australian Shepherd has a new collar these days. We just couldn’t break him of chasing cars on the road. Rather than have a dead dog, we bought a “training collar” (which is a nice way of saying shock collar). Before, when he chased cars, he immediately got stern warnings and locked in the garage, losing his freedom. So after a few rounds of that, he would chase the car against our commands, then run in the garage to get his punishment!
It seems to be working. We’ve had it on for a little less than a week and I’d say the chasing has almost (but not quite) completely stopped.
