The votes are in

Believe it or not, this small "pile" of metal in the back of this truck constitutes 1.6 TONS of metal roofing material (wow). Rickey made the haul with the farm truck, and though it won't win any beauty contests - can you say RUSTY?? - at least you know we're not spending people's donations on a luxury vehicle for us, right? (apparently not :o)

He was a little leery about hauling it in the back of the truck, but made the trip without any trouble. We were very blessed to have gotten a great deal from the sheet metal manufacturing company by being willing to use a discontinued color that they had leftover - works for me!

Before we could start putting the roof on, however, we had to run some lumber across the frame to anchor it to...

After that, we were ready to start putting on the roof - hooray!



I think the name of the color was light bronze, although I'll be the first to admit it looks more like a light taupe to me (but who cares about the color anyway? I'm thinking the girls certainly don't :o)

There was a bit of a hiccup getting it started (apparently the frame is not quite square so a few adjustments had to be made before they were off and running, or should I say roofing?


Of course "you know who" just HAD to come and park herself right smack in the middle of everything to see what was going on...

Once they got going, they made fairly short work of the first run. Looks pretty darn good so far, doesn't it?






Thank you so much for reading about our progress...See you next time!

Let the nail biting begin!

Well, the votes are all in, and we got our feelings hurt just a little bit by coming in dead last but I guess somebody had to do it, right?

Although we didn't win the $3,000 donation, it sure did go to a worthy cause; Marine Parents won by a landslide (with well over 5,000 votes). This organization funds programs for U.S. Marines - a care package program for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, support to the families of Marines (including those of soldiers who were killed or wounded serving their country), and Operation PAL (Prayers and Letters) sending comfort to our injured Marines, to name a few. Congratulations to Marine Parents for a well deserved victory!

We did, however, get some great exposure for our organization and two wonderful lenses were made for us by members of the Squidoo community:



Horse Themed Gifts was created for us by Crystal, and Epic Farms Donations was made by Holley to help us further our cause, isn't that great?

Thank you so much for taking the time to make us these fabulous lenses (it certainly made my day! :o)

Fine Dining in New Digs

We Squidoo, Do You??

Oh my goodness, Epic Farms is in the running for a $3,000 charity donation from Squidoo! In case you've never heard of it, Squidoo is an online community that allows you to build lenses (web pages) on just about anything you can come up with. It's fun!

This month, they decided to hold a contest for a charity giveaway of $3,000. In order to be eligible, each charity had 7 days to create 10 lenses - talk about your crossed eyeballs, right? Well, we did it! Tremendous thanks goes to my two legged and four legged family members for allowing me to closet myself in my office where I holed up like a mad scientist creating lenses left and right (got 'em done, though :o) After submitting our lenses, we were officially qualified and in the running. The winner of this donation will be decided by popular vote this Monday and Tuesday (July 20th and 21st) and the officials at Squidoo will make their announcement on Wednesday.

Voting opens "bright and early" tomorrow morning, (although I started biting my nails yesterday in preparation) and if you'd like to vote for us here's the link: http://www.squidoo.com/charity-giveaway-voting You have to belong to Squidoo to vote, but signing up is a piece of cake. The competition is pretty stiff, but believe it or not there are only 8 competitors total. This means we have a pretty darn good shot at winning this donation!

Here are the lenses I created over the past week; just in case you'd like to see them:

http://www.squidoo.com/FOSH * http://www.squidoo.com/EasyPeanutButterFudge * http://www.squidoo.com/ShadowsLens
http://www.squidoo.com/RandyAlcorn * http://www.squidoo.com/EpicFarmsPhotoFun * http://www.squidoo.com/ChampsLens
http://www.squidoo.com/His * http://www.squidoo.com/Psst * http://www.squidoo.com/ilovefireproof
http://www.squidoo.com/LadysLens

Although we could definitely use the donation (with the storm damage and everything else we have going on around here :o) it is nice to know that however this ends up, the money will have gone to a worthy cause. You can't ask for better than that, now can you?

We're Almost There!!

Monday, July 13th

I am happy to report that except for the roof, the stalls are done! We've had a couple of runs of musical rooms, but other than that the girls have settled into their new quarters nicely.

Pictured on the left are Lady and Rina in their new rooms. Looking good girls!! :o)








Rickey found some nice gate latches (not that we use them very often, but you never know) and then added a 2x4 across each of the dividers to keep greedy little noses out of other people's buckets at mealtimes. Thank you again EFA (Etsy for Animals) for helping to make the Girls' new stalls a reality!

The next inSTALLment (shelter for The Girls)

July 10th
Well we've been both rained out and pooped out for several days running, but we finally managed to get a bit more work done on the stalls last night. Taya must have missed poking around all of the cool tools, because she was all over everything. Here she is helping Rickey to measure for a gate...



With Taya's invaluable assistance, Rickey managed to get all of the gates built yesterday and Lady graciously agreed to come down and inspect each one individually. Wasn't that nice of her? :o)


Of course it wasn't long before everybody was down the hill checking out the new digs...


We left the stalls open for the girls to wander in and out of and help them get used to the idea of dining in a new spot. Now all we need is a roof (we're still waiting to hear from the guy in Eufala - I'm praying like crazy that he'll donate most of what we need :o) See you next time, and thanks for reading this far!

Body Language 101 - Part Four: The Tail End :o)

We missed a couple days of working on the stalls due to rain (and although Tuesday night was rain-free, we were all just too pooped to do anything but sit around and stare at each other :o)

Tonight we decided to put the dividers in between the stalls. We used 2x6's for these, not only for overall added stability, but also because any squabbling that takes place usually happens between the stalls (you know, "nah-nah" fights).



It would seem that Taya was feeling a bit guilty over sending Evinrude to supervise the other night; she was all over everywhere today...


I think she was a bit disappointed that there was no auger involved in today's work, but she did inspect the post hole diggers most carefully (I explained they were a low-tech relative to her favorite toy :o)

We managed to get all of the dividers put up tonight - it's coming right along. Next up will be the gates, hopefully followed by a metal roof (we still have not heard back from the building place yet, but I am ever hopeful) . I stood on my tippytoes to try to get you a decent photo of tonight's work:


It's looking good, isn't it?? Thanks so much for reading this post (see you next time :o)

July 1st

Aside from the fly issue, the tail can also be an integral part of a horse's body language . It is usually used to indicate extreme feeling (an exclamation point of sorts, if you like - I do :o)

Swishing - (not at flies) Angry, extremely aggravated or total happiness/euphoria.*

Flagged - Extreme fear (when running) or utter delight (together with a head bob while trotting/prancing in circles or other patterns; a full-body celebration).**

Clamped - Fright (usually precedes a kick; they may just drop their derriere and scoot) or if feeling cold and/or wet.

* Visit our website and watch the video clip of Blue Horse Matinee on our Horse Heroes page to see some of those happy swishes in action :o)

**Some breeds have a higher tail set (see Lady's photo, above) and consequently offer a more intense version of the "flag". Both Bella and Shadow's tails will flip all the way upside down at these times (there is a photo of this further down).

Casual vs. Clamped

There is usually a small space under the horse's tail (L). The horse on the right has his tail clamped due to cold (if it is due to fear, it is usually a precursor to either bolting or kicking).

Comparing The Tail Set

These two horses have different tail sets. While both horses are trotting and each has raised his tail slightly, the horse on the right has a higher tail set. If I was going to guess, I'd peg the horse on the left as a Quarter Horse and the one on the right an Arabian.

Tail Torquage: How High Will it Fly?


This photo shows a horse with his tail flipped completely over. Two of our horses; Shadow (a Tennessee Walker), and Bella (an Arabian), do this. Actually, I have been known to tell all of our horses not to get their tail in a twist over things (when asking for calm :o)

Punctuation is Crucial to Clarity: Be sure to read the complete "sentence"!

Looking at the photo on the right, note the pinned ears, pinched nostrils and tucked chin of this horse. It is easy to tell by looking at these things that she is angry.

When you add in the tail as an exclamation point, however, you can see that this mare is not merely angry she is LIVID.

Next up: Practice putting it all together with some more sample photos :o)

We got a little bit more done today (nothing terribly exciting, mind you) after we put some more hay in the pasture. Cassandra decided to roll in this afternoon, instead of riding in her usual place on the back of the farm truck :o) Champ appeared to be somewhat confused by this.









The girls did not come down to supervise
our work this evening, but instead sent a duly designated representative (photo right*).

Taya did come down once to check on our progress (and make sure their appointee was fulfilling his duties). But since her favorite toy, the auger, was not there she left :o)


* I'm not quite sure what this little guy's fascination was, but he stayed perched on the fence wire for a good hour while we worked and actually turned and looked at me when I took his picture - isn't he cute? Oh, and just in case you're wondering about his name, it's from the Walt Disney movie, "The Rescuers".








We put stainless steel plates inside and out to splice the individual of 2x4's together down the sides; we had a little trouble with one or two of them because the wood was slightly warped (grrr).


Rickey pulled them together as close as he could using a scrap piece of 2x4. We'll leave them that way for a bit and wet the wood to pull them even closer.



That's all for now - thanks for staying with us all the way to "the end" :o)