Ordinary Time

One of the things I absolutely love about living here that wasn't a part of life in the Big Ugly House is being aware of the migrating birds. Last week I paused my barn cleaning to stand for a good ten minutes just watching the absolute river of dark eyed junkos fly overhead. Even when I stopped watching to go back to work, there were still hundreds of birds flying overhead. It's an amazing sight and I might have waved goodbye to them.  Then yesterday, the starlings passed through. Our property seems to be a brief stopping point for them as twice a year we are inundated. Most stay in the trees, with a lot of constant shifting from place to place. Others, though definitely a minority, land on the grass. Pretty much all the grass, including the pastures, has starlings on it. It is nearly impossible to take a picture that shows the full scope. But what is even more remarkable is the noise. They are very noisy birds, especially in large numbers. Turn the sound up on the video to he...

There are some things about the property that we talk about improving, but time or money (or both) make it so our plans are difficult to carry out. We had a free day today (well aside from our chauffeuring duties) and the weather was beautiful, so J. decided to lay a brick path where we had long planned on putting one.  It runs alongside the chicken coop in an area that has been pretty much an ignored wasteland. Well, except for the hydrangeas we planted in it a few years ago thinking they would line the brick path we imagined and just ended up looking as though someone had dropped them at random. The path will help the hydrangeas make sense. We also had the bricks already. We picked them up for free from someone right after we moved and have been living in a pile by the parking area ever since. Now that pile is nearly gone as well. J. only needed a few supplies, making it a fairly low cost endeavor.  Here's the nearly final project. (J. still needs to figure what he's going t...

K. has been spending some time at W.'s and MC's house. Since they have a lot of fish, K. has been taking a lot of fish pictures. I think he has taken some really good pictures. Want to see?

I'll spare you my sad and frustrating story about the project on my floor loom. It's ultimately going to be okay, but I think I just need several straightforward projects after this. Moving on... I'm also weaving 100% wool scarves on my rigid heddle loom. Here is the first off the loom and all ready to go. The next one is already warped and I'm working on the weaving.  This one will be a plaid instead of hounds tooth.  And that's all I have for you. As a bonus, I wanted to share a picture of our drake whose colors are nearly all in now.  But what I want you to really pay attention to is the cute little curl he has in his tail feathers. I know it's a typical drake kind of thing, but I think it's so cute!

For anyone who comes here to work with horses, we do a lot with emotional intelligence. I've lost track of the number of times I've told someone that the horses don't care how you feel, they just want you to be aware of how you feel. Incongruence drives them literally wild it is so uncomfortable for them. (I've got stories... ) Today I was listening to someone who works with parents of autistic children. It kind of stopped me in my tracks when I heard her say (my paraphrase): <<Parents need to do some work on themselves. They need to know how they are feeling and acknowledge it. These children don't care how their parents are feeling, but they want their parents to be aware of their feelings. It is very uncomfortable for them if the parents are pretending and that is when the behaviors escalate. If parents can get a handle on themselves then the emotional tone of the home changes and the big behaviors start to abate.>> I don't know why I didn't p...

I'm in the middle of reading Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mex. Yes, I know I am very late to the party on this one. I hadn't felt up to it. Last week I listened to an interview with Du Mex about her new book, Live Laugh Love: the secret history of white Christian women and the world they made. I will be reading this one; it's currently on my hold list at the library. The interview seemed to make it seem as though the second book builds on the first, so I figured it was time to finally read it.  It is as hard and disappointing and infuriating as I expected it to be. Sadly, it is also completely unsurprising. I really just need to plow through it and be done with it. With that ringing endorsement, I do encourage you to read it, especially if you are (or were) a Christian and have found yourself being completely mystified as to how so many people who are supposed to believe in love, goodness, and mercy have so completely lost the plot. It will answer a lot of those...

This morning G. and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival. We had a really lovely day. We wandered the vendor hall, watched some sheep shearing, ate a picnic lunch while watching the sheep dog trials, did a little more shopping, participated in a farm auction, and watched a Shetland sheep show. It was a pretty perfect day.  And there were a lot of sheep. G. took nearly all the pictures. This is the portable sheep fencing we got at the auction. By far the best part of the whole day was watching the ewe lamb class at the Shetland sheep show. This little white ewe lamb captured our hearts because every other baby was losing its mind and this one just stood there amidst the chaos. Be sure you have the volume turned up to hear what ~30 lambs sound like.

The other day, while I was driving Y. to do the onboarding for her new job , we passed by a pond that often has birds of various sorts in it. It was a jackpot day. Y., who is always on the lookout for birds, noticed that there were four egrets. We paused to admire them and moved on. Coming home, I paused to see if they were still there. They were, but they had been joined by a blue heron. So I took a picture.  You can see them if you enlarge the picture, but I'll make it a little easier. Take time to notice the bits of wonder around you. K. is here for the night, so he got in some picture taking. Here are a few of them. And my favorite.

Three quotations from two very different sources to start us off. "Allowing horses opportunities for decision-making -- such as choosing a route on a ride or approaching a novel object at their own pace -- stimulates dopaminergic circuits involved in reward, motivation, and curiosity. These include pathways connecting the ventral regmental area to the nucleus accumbens, systems that support approach behavior and promote cognitive engagement. Structured choices, introduced in controlled settings, help horses learn that they can influence their environment, building flexibility and trust. These moments of agency are not just training tools; they are exercises in shaping the brain. They reinforce circuits that allow horses to remain curious under pressure, rather than shutting down or reacting defensively." (p. 144, Horse Brain Science: The Neuroscience of Ethical Horsemanship by Dr. Stephen Peters) "From a neuroscience perspective, psychological robustness comes not from o...

This might be a bit braggy in terms of my children this week. Consider yourselves warned. But before the bragging, I want to give you a Vienna update. We have her insulin under control but her feet are still bothering her. The farrier thinks it's because the soles of her hooves are very thin so any amount of inflammation (from weather or whatever) is going to make her uncomfortable. She recommended getting Vienna boots to cushion the bottoms of her feet. You probably haven't priced horse boots, but let's just say they aren't inexpensive. But I want Vienna to be comfortable, so I purchased the most expensive set of footwear I have ever bought. The boots arrived today and I admit to holding my breath a little when I tried them on her to see if they fit. They did!  And here's a closer picture of them.  She wasn't sure at first, but within the first ten minutes of wearing them, she was moving more than I have seen her move in a long time. The boots need to be broken...