Team EFA Makes For A Mare-y Month of May!

...and mudboggin' on Monday. Wow. It is definitely possibly to have too much of a good thing (except for chocolate cake, that is). Where is the sun? Does it still exist? Is it seriously soggy at your house or dry as dust? Or are you one of the lucky few that is somewhere in between perhaps? I pass a little pond every morning on my way to work that I look to as an unofficial water table. At the beginning of the year, that thing was down to a large puddle (and had been that way long enough there was grass growing where there had been water). I've never seen it get that low in 20+ years. Anyway, not only is it slam full, it's on the verge of brimming over. Not sure how much rain that translates to, but I know we've had umpteen inches in the last month or so. I sure do wish such things didn't always seem to wind up feast or famine. *sigh* Like the photo? Kinda puts you in mind of soaring eagles and majestic hawks, doesn't it? Ha. Apparently even vultures look pretty darn good from a distance. Huh. Sounds like some kind of life lesson to me ;o)

I wanted to apologize to my email subscribers for the previous post. *smacks palm on forehead* I totally forgot that the video clips don't show up in the emails and did not include a hyperlink to it for you (how rude). If you missed last week's clip and want to see it, click here to watch it on our Vimeo channel. I'm sorry, and I'll try really hard not to forget next time (have a hug?).

I have a couple of photos to share with you today. Pamplona may have the running of the bulls, but around here we have the running of the hay. The horses are quite familiar with the sound of the tractor and the moment that engine starts, heads pop up out of the grass all over the pasture. Most of the time, I let the girls into the training area [which is normally closed off] to distract them with forbidden forage so we can run a rope across the area that leads up to the hay without interference. Because we have to bring the rolls in through the Moo Crew's pasture, we block off the bottom of the girl's hill leading to where we set the roll so no one winds up in the wrong field. For some reason, this never fails to create an atmosphere of giddy anticipation among the girls.
While this next photo is hardly brilliant, it cracked me up because it looks like Lady (L) is giving DD the evil eye for closing off the upper pasture before she can sneak up there (which she actually managed to do last time - the heifer):

Now that I have a modicum of understanding with regard to camera settings (aperture, to be more specific) I finally managed to get a couple of halfway decent shots of the girls charging up the hill toward the hay. I think I should have uploaded at a higher resolution, though:

The pasture is, of course, a disgusting muddy mess...

Not so fast Rina... Woo!

Lady and Sarabear bringing up the rear...

Other than the icky mud, I thought this was a nice photo of Sara:

And finally: (though completely irrelevant to the theme I had going) a pretty sunrise over the tree tops on a misty morning just for you (I forgot I was going to post it last month :o)

As always, thanks for reading this far and have a wonderful week everybody!

Etsy for Animals (also known as Team EFA) is a wonderfully diverse group of creative souls that have banded together through Etsy to help animals. I am happy to announce that Epic Farms has been selected as EFA's Charity of the Month for May 2009. HOORAY! Participating shops will donate a portion of their proceeds for the entire month of May; what a blessing! To see some of the wonderful handmade items available for purchase from EFA members please click here.

April brought with it torrential rains that exacerbated our ongoing battle against erosion (see pics below). Over one two day time period, we were hit with over 12" of rain - can you say "whitewater"? Sheesh. The following week brought more storms with high winds that cost Rina and Taya their roof. Thankfully we did not lose any trees in the pasture, especially along the fence line (always a worry). We had a very industrious mole zipping around out there for awhile a couple of years ago and that little booger tunneled everywhere! Because we have lost so much topsoil to the rains, the areas where Mr. Mole created his little underground habitat are now collapsing and leaving dangerous pits everywhere...


On behalf of the Moo Crew and The Girls (and us bipeds too! :o) we would like to offer a special Thank You to Meghann Gervais of Little Studio Photography and Jewellery for nominating us and of course a big fat Thank You to Team EFA for selecting us. Horsey hugs and happy thoughts to you all!

If you would like to pitch in with a donation, please visit us on the web at: Epic Farms.com