An Award Winning Week

GRRRRUMBLES

I really like my car, I do. It's a 
2001 Honda CRV (although DD called it a VCR for a couple of years :o) Anyhoo, I had a number of errands to run the other day and we made it all the way to the very last one before disaster struck. I had to pick up some items at Office Depot and DD ducked into Taco Bell to grab some lunch; it was one o'clock. I don't like Taco Bell, so I figured I'd just wait and grab something when we got home, since we'd be there shortly (wrong). We met back at the car, I turned the key and...click. Uh, oh. Starting to sweat in the 100+ heat, I turned it again and...click-click-click. Now I don't know about you, but I unintentionally follow Murphy's Laws to the letter and that day was no exception. I was in a hurry (it's chronic :o) and dashed out the door without my cell phone. Lovely. I dropped my head on the steering wheel and counted to twenty (ten wasn't quite far enough). Did you know nobody has pay phones anymore? I didn't. Thankfully one of the girls that worked at Taco Bell was nice enough to loan me her phone. DH rode to the rescue (I needed a new battery), but not quick enough to deliver me from the temptation situated directly in my line of vision...Baskin Robbins *sigh*. Eat well today chickie, for tomorrow you will diet. Although I hate to break down, I guess I really can't complain since it was the original battery - I think nine years is a pretty good life span for a battery, don't you?
 Adding insult to injury, our air conditioning went out. Although our house is well insulated, we have no trees immediately next to it so when the sun comes up it gets HOT in here (thankfully, the repairman made it out the next day, but that was one terribly toasty night - Ugh). They're going to send us a bill for the repairs. Um, okay, but now I'm scared...

BUMBLES  
I took this picture, because I thought it was funny. I have no idea why these bees seem to be attracted to the sulfur blocks, but they are. Maybe it's the pretty yellow color that draws them; who knows? :o) Do you remember my previous post about Sarabear getting into some bees? Well, I do believe we have found the culprits (and it's not the one on the block).
Now I don't know about you, but I have never actually seen a "swarm" of bees before outside of television. It may look like a cluster of pine cones, but the photo below is actually a swarm of bees. This is not a nest however, these bees are actually protecting their queen by covering her completely. Talk about being overprotective and smothering - wow. I didn't want to kill them, because I know that honeybees are in short supply and there are an awful lot of farmers around here. At

the same time, they certainly did not need to stay in their current location. They were in a low hanging branch on a tree directly over the path that the girls use to go to the water trough (that definitely was not happening). Thankfully, DH knew a guy from work that was a bee keeper, and he came out to get them. Of course you know I got permission to be out there following him around with the camera (and I was unfailingly polite in keeping my number of questions well under the gazillion mark :o)
Would you believe that the man just took a step ladder, climbed up there, grabbed himself a handful of bees, and put them in his bee box?? Yikes! I'm working on a lens for Squidoo, because this was some pretty [scary] interesting stuff. In the meantime, though, here are a few more pictures for you to see...I had to get up close and personal, as the subjects were tiny and my zoom is not that good:

All in all it was a fascinating thing to watch, and he was a super nice guy (for a crazy man :o) Very patient, happily explaining it all step by step as he went. I hope you enjoyed these photos, too, because my crazy only extends to equines (and I was really nervous getting close enough to take these pictures). Obviously, not quite uncomfortable enough to prevent me from taking them though, right? *Grin*

and MUMBLES

Some of you might remember the Sarabear Chronicles. It was a three part series of posts that I did awhile back about Sara's arrival at the farm. I had fun doing it, and hated to see it disappear into oblivion in the blogger basement (so to speak). I decided to combine all three posts and turn it into a lens on Squidoo. In the interest of multi-tasking, I also entered it into the Summer Sunshine Charity Contest as we are one of Squidoo's partner charities. Would you believe we won? Hot Dog!! I was so excited. Squidoo donates $99 to the charity and gives $99 to the lensmaster. Of course I'm donating my part straight to the farm too - $198 Woo! If you missed the posts (it was a *cough* dramatic series of events, let me tell you) you can now read the whole silly story here: Meet Sara.

After considerable research, we have "hired" two teams of maintenance workers to help control the amount of ick in our water troughs. I would like to introduce you to Maintenance Team #1 for The Girls (ladies first, after all):

And for the Moo Crew we have Team #2:

Of course I turned that little adventure into a lens too (and entered it in the contest :o) If you're interested in reading the rest, it's here: An Epic Farms Fishtail.  
I hope you enjoyed this post - and is it my imagination or are they getting longer?? Well I guess it's not much on short and sweet (that was over a couple of paragraphs ago) but I thank you for reading my rambles... really!

P.S. For those of you who think I showed tremendous willpower in getting only a small cup of ice cream, you should probably know that it was all I had enough money for :o)

WOO-HOO... We've been busy on Squidoo!

Farewell Frostbite, Hello Flashflood

Well, the subzero temps seem to be over with but I couldn't resist one last bit of photographic evidence. Rickey had to break up the ice in the Moo Crew's water trough; would you believe it was almost 2" thick? Woo! I'm pretty sure most of the 48 contiguous have experienced a whacked out winter. How about it? What was your weirdest winter day this year? I'd have to say that ours was the morning I walked out to find the ropes on the Girls' doors sticking out in frozen curls. It had rained a bit, then the temperature plunged. Is that bizarre or what?

Our week began with rain-rain-rain and:

While all of the horses got pretty darn dirty, I felt that Champ deserved some kind of recognition for going beyond the call of dirt duty.  What I can't quite figure out, though, is how he managed to keep his tail completely clean...go figure (??)

  

Mid week, Rina showed up for supper with a rather impressive ding on her hip...I have absolutely no idea what happened, although I can speculate that she may have slid in the mud while running and clipped a tree. As leader and the unequivocal Queen of Mean, I am sure that none of her pasture mates would dare to nip at her hip :o)

I kept it small in case any of you are squeamish, but it was a good two inches in diameter. I have to say that I was very proud of Rina for her cooperative behavior in letting me treat it; not only did she turn herself around and line her injury up right in front of me for the medicine, she stood stock still the whole time in an open area and without a halter - what a good girl! I'll do a shameless plug here for Skin Renovator for an awesome product. At $15.00 a tube it's expensive, but it is the best there is for healing wounds quickly. I even found a handy dandy way to recycle the empty container and solve the problem of the missing cap on our gate at the same time (ta-da! :o)

The week came to a melodramatic conclusion with one of Shadow's Blankie Moments...

If you would like to know more about Shadow's dramatic episodes, go to my Squidoo lens on Colic and scroll down to "Cranial Colic". A bit of love and some time with Blankie made for a miraculous recovery (he's such a silly boy!) Oh, and I forgot to squat while taking his picture so Shadow looks strangely disproportionate (oops :oP

How about your animals? Do they have a blankie or special toy that makes it all better? I'd love to hear about it, and so would Shadow. He's rather proud of his alliterated title of "Epic Farms' Eccentric Equine", (but he is secretly afraid of being referred to as "Whatta Weirdo" by certain hard-hearted bipeds). Do tell us please!

The votes are in

What on earth is Squidoo you say?!? It is a community website that allows users to create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest; they also split any revenue earned by lenses 50/50 with the author. I have been hard at work for the past several weeks to hit "Giant" status (50 or more lenses) which should give us more exposure, and more revenue (we hope). I'm not quite there yet (I have 9 more to go! :o)

I thought I'd post some of my horse-related lenses here for you to see:


I am definitely not professional writer, but the moment I saw the photos from that day the story just seemed to take shape inside my head. You don't have to know anything about horses to read it, although it may be funnier if...


***

"So You Want to Own a Horse"

Since the ripe old age of four I have been obsessed with horses. Having passed the 40-something mark without losing interest (hey, I even kept all my Breyers :o), I think it's fairly safe to...


***

"HIS: Horses in Scripture"

Why did I create this lens? Well, I suppose you might say I had a "revelation" of my own one Sunday morning. I was talking to some friends at church about how often horses (my favorite subject) were mentioned throughout scripture...


***


"Coping With Colic"

Colic is a word that terrifies most horse owners, and rightfully so. While mild episodes of colic are fairly common and sometimes easy to treat, severe episodes can be life threatening. Aside from old age, colic is the number one cause of death among horses.




***



"Body Language 101"

I'm not an expert by any means, but I consider body language to be the single most important thing we can learn when it comes to being around horses. Horses are inherently honest and forthright communicators and just as we expect them to learn to understand us, so should we make the same effort to understand them. It is the "failure to communicate" that so often causes problems between people and horses. By the time a horse kicks or bites, he has usually...


***


"Friends of Sound Horses"

FOSH is an acronym for "Friends of Sound Horses". The organization is incorporated as a public benefit humane and education organization. Its purpose is to provide information to the public about the humane care, treatment and...

***


"How to Host a Worm Paste Party"
Deworming your horse does not have to be a total "night-mare", nor does it have to be some stress inducing ridiculous undertaking (honest :o) With a few simple steps you can go from "It's kind of like doing aerobic exercise with a giraffe" to "Man, that was EASY".

This lens is primarily for horses that do not like worm paste (in other words, 99.999% of them...



***

"Helpful Hints for Horses"

Horses can be very expensive to own, but there ARE some things you can do that will help save you some money. This lens contains some things I've discovered...

***


"Personalities Plus"

It's hard to believe, but at one time I used to think that horses were pretty much similar to cows as far as personalities went, (although I knew there were some fundamental differences). I mean I could see that some horses were more...


Thanks so much for reading this far, and I sure hope you'll sneak some peeks at my lenses :o)

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)