Peaceful farm days

It is amazing what can happen in three days.  I was away on business and in my absence spectacular changes were made.  Our pumpkin patch exploded, our English teen grew (his mother will not begin to recognize him when he gets home), the sprinkler system is working and the damn tree is finally and completely off the front lawn!  We still have a long way to go before this tree is keeping us warm in the winter and exactly which winter it is crackling in the wood burning stove is yet to be determined.  It hasn’t quite made it into the wood shed yet, but it is closer, lying in huge mounds of tree trunk wedges that cannot be lifted, but require splitting and stacking.  For those of you who rise early to go to ‘boot camp’ type workout groups, feel free to come to the farm.  We’ll be happy to run you ragged and ‘let’ you split, stack and haul wood.  We’ll guarantee beautiful scenery, blue skies, wind in your face and plenty of animal therapy be it horses, dogs, hens or of course cats.

Walking around the farm to check on all the creatures with my loving spouse, I felt great gratitude and peace to be home.  Emotions quickly replaced by adrenalin and anxiety as we realized the gate behind us had swung open, offering both horses the opportunity to go out and explore!  Most of you watching the Olympics had seen many lithe, athletic figures doing amazing fetes with grace, speed and strength, well nothing beats we two old people moving about the farm to find and secure our wayward horses before they got out onto the road, it was truly a gold metal performance.  Luckily, we really only had to catch Dolly (our elder mare), as Dixie (the yearling) has great separation anxiety and follows the herd, which at this point is just Dolly.  The girls were found happily trimming a bit of the grass around pumpkin patch.  Dolly was secured and led back to the pasture as Dixie came bounding behind her literally kicking up her heals at the bit of fun.

Today promises another peaceful day on the farm, the cats are chasing each other, the lawn is filled with birds, the teen boys are cooking breakfast and the smoke alarm is working, loudly.