of camera-shy dogs and helpful horses

Okay seriously, can someone please slow time down a little bit? I need more hours, more days, more weeks....

Eeek!

There is a particular photograph I'm trying to take of Angus, because I want to use it (well, "them" I guess, I want several photos) as a reference for a drawing. When the front door is open in the morning, he'll lay on the tiles and look out at the world through the screen door, watching the neighbors, waiting for the dog biscuit fairy, etc. The lighting is lovely, and he's so cute with his ears just slightly perked, his eyebrows all curious....

But if you point a camera at his face and he catches you doing it, he kinda shuts down. He'll turn away, walk away, look dejected, look guilty, look miserable, etc. None of which is what I want, so I'm going to have to enlist a little help (perhaps bearing dog biscuits) for this photo shoot. See, these photos just don't show the expression I'm aiming for! Ha ha ha...



Speaking of camera-shy, that doesn't apply to the horses at all. (Whoa, was that like the worst transition ever?) My horses have very different personalities. One way to notice this difference is to prepare for some sort of activity around the barn. This is the sort of response you'll get from Gwen:

Right, she doesn't give a rat's butt what I'm doing, she's busy.

Shylah, on the other hand, is always ready for adventure:

Even if the adventure is something really mundane like... picking up poo! Oh yeah, she's REALLY "helpful" with everything, has to inspect everything, and is pretty much in my way the entire time.


A friend of mine takes home buckets of horse manure for his compost pile... that bucket is empty! Shylah likes to give everything a "pre-fill inspection."



And then Mom brought out some overly ripe zucchinis and put them in Shylah's feeder....

Angus says "Hey Shylah, whatcha got there, smells good!"

And he proceeded to clean up everything she dropped, and she proceeded to drop large chunks of half-chewed zucchinis onto him. Gross!

And then she cleaned him up a bit! Ooooh I was laughing so hard!

What a bunch of dorks!

a frog story

how to can peaches

I actually took all these photos last year but never got around to posting them at the time. So I'll do it now. I canned a lot of peaches last week. Not anywhere nearly as many as last year though, must have been a smaller crop this year! Or maybe more people showed up to pick them!

I've been canning peaches for a few years, and they are WONDERFUL. I got into making jam probably ten years ago, it was something my mom used to do when I was a kid, but she no longer had time, and I hate to see the summer fruit go to waste. And then I guess I figured if I could make jam I could can peaches, because when they are ripe boy they are all ripe at the same time and have to be used! It's really not difficult, but it's enormously time-consuming particularly if you are working alone! Totally worth it though when winter rolls around and you get to eat peaches! So here's how you do it:

1) Pick the peaches! Or buy them at a place that has good fresh local-grown delicious fruit!

2) Get your stove all set up! On the back left is the big stock pot for boiling the finished jars. On the front left is a pot of boiling sugar water (I use a mixture of 1 part sugar to 2 parts water, you don't end up eating this part (well, you could) it's just used for preserving them). On the back right is a small pot in which I boil the jar lids. And on the front right is a pot for boiling the peaches so that they are easier to skin. Oh yeah, and wash your jars! I don't have a pic of that.

3) Dunk a few peaches at a time into boiling water for 30 seconds.

4) Then immediately submerge them in cold water. This will loosen the skin.

5) Peel and pit the peaches. I cut them into chunks, and drop those into a solution of ascorbic acid (you can get this at the grocery store in the canning section), 1 tsp per 1 cup of water. Make sure they stay in there at least a few minutes, this will keep them from turning brown. Don't rinse this off!

6) Fill the jars! Use some care arranging them so that they pack in as tight as possible, because they will float up.

7) Pour the boiling sugar syrup into the jars, leaving almost an inch of head room.

8) You've probably made a sticky mess out of the rim of the jar by this point, so you need to wipe it off really well with a damp paper towel. You don't want any peachy or sugary goo on the rim or it won't seal! Put on the lid (which you have now removed from the boiling water, so it's freshly sterilized), tighten down the ring, and submerge the jars into boiling water for 15 minutes.

9) And there you have it! Canned peaches! It's really kind of magical, they will look just as lovely and fresh a year from now, and taste oh so delicious! You have to make sure your jars seal though! If the lids still make that popping sound when you put your finger on them, they haven't sealed. It can take a while on these big jars, but if they're no longer hot and are heading toward cool and still haven't sealed, take the lid off, clean the rim again, clean the lid again, put it all together again, and put it back in the water bath for 15 minutes. If you keep everything clean, this is unlikely to be a problem. I've never had a jar not seal when canning peaches, and out of 88 jars of jam this year I didn't have a single one not seal.

animal bath day!

It was about a hundred degrees outside, and I was getting annoyed at being nagged to do things that I already know I need to do (OH I hate that! grr!), so I decided to go outside give all the 4-legged black animals baths today. They got real clean and I got real gross, but it was worth it!

Angus is fairly stoic about the whole thing.

Aaaack!

Sudsy Shylah!

Washing Shylah!

Washing Gwen!

Gwen, who actually enjoys baths, still manages to ALWAYS stand on the hose and reduce the water to a trickle...

Clean girls!

Pretty Shylah!

I had to put them in the shade to spend some time brushing out their manes and tails. Whew it was hot!

All done, Shylah says "I'm outta here!"

So long, horses!

So clean, it'll last for at least a few minutes, right?

Uh oh...

Aw heck...

Come on!

Oh well, it never lasts...

The end...

And Angus resumes his usual position...

don't mess with that mama!

I wish I had photos of what happened, but I'll take a cue from another blog I read and do a little photoshopping to help you imagine what I saw!

I had just gotten out of the pool yesterday morning, following a hot 3 mile walk with Angus, and was sitting in the back yard sunning my toes when I heard the chickens go on "full alert" and saw a Cooper's Hawk land on the corral fence where the chickens and ducks hang out. Eeek, the babies!


Angus and I made a hasty beeline for the back gate and ran out to the barn, and as I got closer the hawk took off and flew toward the yard, and I was grateful to see there was nothing clutched in its talons. I love raptors, for the most part, but I really hate Cooper's Hawks... So I watched it fly in front of me, maybe just 8 or 10 feet off the ground, and Angus barked at it.


And then I realized there was another bird hot on its heels, just a few feet behind and a few feet lower but moving right a long. What the heck? I did a double take, probably a triple take, it just didn't register at first what on earth was chasing the hawk...


Holy crap! It was the mama hen! I have seen these little hens go to extremes to protect their babies, (attacking cats, screaming up at hawks that land on coops when birds are enclosed) but I have NEVER seen a hen chase a hawk on the wing. I was absolutely blown away. Don't mess with a mama hen!