Last Wednesday here at the ranch we connected to the 21st Century by tying into Charter broadband cable/Internet connection. Gee, does that make a world of difference in how fast things move around here now. I can actually open and view emails coming at me that are larger than 250 kbs. I hope you have configured our new charter.net email address into your home puter by now. If not please drop me an email at the old oregontrail.net address before Thursday 1/14 and I will flash you our new Charter address.
Friday Kittee and I loaded Summer and Misty in the trailer and took Summer into Walla Walla for her baby vaccinations. We are now hoping that this will be the last trip we have to make to the vets until we start having pregnancy tests in the early summer.
This past weekend Kittee and I tried to stay warm, by keeping the home fire burning. Saturday morning our outdoor temperature was sitting in the mid-30’s as Kittee went out to feed the herds and I prepared breakfast. During breakfast we moved the furnace thermostat up to 68º to really heat up the house while setting a fire to start in the living room fireplace after our work was done. After breakfast we shut the furnace off and went to work. Kittee and I re-arranged a couple of rooms in our house, and just stayed close to home for the rest of the day. While taking an afternoon break we noticed a herd of about 15 mule deer grazing on the hill in the backyard.
Saturday evening we had a delicious pot of chicken veggie soup that Kittee had put on earlier that afternoon, sit by the fire reading, then listening to a live broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion. Probably for the first time in a couple of months we raised our living room temperature to above 70º. After listening to the opera tenor Raúl Melo (see video attached), and the latest news from Lake Wobegon on A Prairie Home Companion coming from San Francisco we felt it would be fun to watch the Cali-forn-i-a Gov. Arny Schwarzenegger and Miss American Vanessa Williams doing their thing in the movie Eraser. This was quite an action packed thriller movie which followed our Friday night movie thriller - Enemy of the State very well. Lots of action, good stories back-to-back two nights in a row.Sunday after breakfast we went to our indoor arena mid-day riding session. Kittee again took Derby and Nugget, while I took Misty. With the weather being cold and very damp I didn’t ride due to arthritis aches and pain. While Kittee was riding/ponying Derby and Nugget, I spent the time just petting and brushing Misty, Derby and Nugget.
FTR -- I marked the calendar to make note of Misty’s attitude the past few days. Late last week, actually Friday p.m. Misty and Goldie got into a kicking-pissing match with each other. This is not at all typical of Misty. The two trailer trips Misty made over the weekend, she was very reluctant to trailer load, again not typical of Misty. Kittee felt that she was having some early season hormonal mare moments. Misty is a very easy keeper as a horse, but we have not successfully bred her, I am going to track her cycles from this point in time and see if we can succeed in getting an Arabian / Paint breeding this year. This year we are hoping to breed 3 of our 4 mares, and being January we are trying to decide which ones other than Shaiela to bred, which is to be breed back to EAGLEFROMTHELIGHT as she didn’t take last year.Today, we started with the house being quite chilled as last night’s fire had burned out. Looking outside we had freezing drizzle covering everything in ice at 5:00 a.m. After getting back from my a.m. bus route, the temperature was sitting at 38º as I was feeding the herds and about mid-morning the temperature went to 46º with sunbreaks. Made me think we were heading for March in a hurry.
Now as I eat my lunch of a large bowl of spicy curry-chicken-noodle soup I look outside and see the temperature is again at 35º and I can only see the silhouette of the barn and some horses.And that’s the way it is around the ranch --- Dale
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