Mustang Anyone??? Part 3

OK. I know the suspense was killing you. We hauled round pen panels and a bucket of food over to William's "secret hideout". We lured him to the "trap" we had set with the bucket of food. It took a day or two to finally get him over to the panels. Our plan was to get him used to eating the sweet feed inside the panels by having one end open and when he was in there eating we would shut the other panel and then he'd be caught.

It worked!!! But, it was like, now what do we do??? We didn't know anything about this animal, where he had come from, had he ever been handled, etc. But now we had the responsibility of making sure he had water and food until we could figure out how to get him back to my house.

So, a day or two after we had him caught in the "trap" I was gone and my neighbor called me on my cell phone and said William is at your house. I couldn't believe it!! He rode his horse, Blaze, over there, threw a rope around William's neck and tied the rope off to the saddle on Blaze. He said he had a heck of a time getting him to the house, but he was so proud of himself. Plus, I never told you, but my neighbor was in his mid to late sixties at the time.

I finally got a halter on William and had the vet come out and check him over. When I was brushing him I noticed he had a mark under his long mane running almost the whole length of his neck. I did some research and found out it was a Freezemark that the Government(Bureau of Land Management aka BLM) puts on horses that they have caught out west and adopted out to people. They adopt out donkeys as well. Come to find out William was caught in Nevada and was about 10 years old by the time I got him. Also, he had been adopted by someone. Well, it was obvious by the looks of William that someone must have let him go because he wasn't what they had anticipated. One man's trash is another man's treasure.

I still have William and he looks great now. He's a wonderful piece of yard art. He is what he is, a wild mustang stud. He doesn't like to be messed with and has long since gotten the halter off. We moved, before he got the halter off, and we brought him with us, but that's a whole other story. He has a pasture that he shares with our donkey Jack. They have bent the fence down so far that all they have to do is step over, but they know they have it so good that they never attempt to leave.

Mustang Anyone?? Part 2

The horse story doesn't end there. The man that came to ask us if it was our horse had made a call to the humane society and they sent someone out to catch the horse. Apparently having a horse running around is not a good thing because they could cause an accident if they were to get in the road.

The horse catcher showed up and I was able to talk to him and find out what exactly would happen to the horse. He said they would put the horse up for auction and if nobody bought the horse then they would put the horse down. Being the horse lover that I have been since I was a little girl I couldn't stand the thought of them putting this horse down. However, the horse catcher told me that if I were to catch the horse then I could keep it. At that point I decided I was going to rescue that horse from the chopping block. I deemed him William Wallace.

To shorten up the story a bit, the horse catcher was unable to catch the horse and actually scared him so badly that we didn't see him for a week. I called on the help of our neighbor who had two horses. We rode around for six hours looking for William and when we were giving up we finally found him.

I once again was able to get close enough to feed him by hand, but that was all I could do. My neighbor and I were going to devise a plan to catch this horse and make him mine. Can you guess what our plan was?

Mustang Anyone? Part 1

At the farm one morning, as I was sleeping rather soundly, a man knocked on the door. He was putting in a new Equestrian Community just down the road and apparently that morning he noticed a horse hanging around. He knew we had horses, or at least we used to, and wanted to see if this was one of our horses.

The neighbors, down the road the other way, had a mare that got out and came to our house all of time, so I figured it was her. I threw some clothes on and grabbed a bucket of sweet feed and headed over there.

I was quick to determine that it was not the neighbors horse. I wasn't sure whose horse it was, but the poor thing was starving. You could see both hip bones and just about all of the ribs. Turned out it was a stud horse. He had a large head which could have been because he was so thin but he had a different facial bone structure than I had ever seen on a horse.

I tried to approach him without much luck. My Mom was there now and she told me to try walking backwards to the horse so that I would be less intimidating. Well, I got pretty close and knelt down and extended my hand, full of sweet feed. It was more than he could handle. He gave in and ate from my hand!!

I Can Farm..or at least try.

OK, so where was I? To fill you in a couple of details, my mother's then horse racing husband was kicked to the curb and took all of the horses with him. Thank Goodness!

My father was spending quite a bit of time with me a the 3 acre "farm". So, after researching the alpaca farms and finding out they were out of our price range, we opted to go with fiber producing goats. Angora goats produce mohair. So I looked in the local Market Bulletin and found a woman getting rid of 2, a female (doe) and a castrated male (wether). We carried them home in the Jeep Cherokee and of course they peed in there and made the Jeep smell terrible. So I wouldn't suggest hauling goats inside a car.


We got home with them and put them in the barn. Our "farm" was started. From there we began acquiring some more livestock and ended up with another angora goat (a wether), 2 pigs, 2 llamas, a donkey, a wild mustang ( I'll tell you about that in another post), 2 more angora goats (both bucks), 2 angora rabbits, 2 Holstein steers, and 40 or so chickens. We had a real farm going on. It was a pleasure to sit in on the swing and watch all of them together in the pasture.

No Job, But not just sitting on my Bum either.

I was thinking that maybe my last entry made it sound as if I was just sitting around doing nothing. Well, to be honest I have been busting my rump at several different partnerships and businesses over the past 5 or so years.

My first endeavor was taking care of my mother's then husband's race horses. I had to feed, water, muck stalls, and actually walk one of them by hand. I don't know if you've ever walked a race horse, but it is not an easy task. It's actually quite scary, especially at 4am. I dreaded walking that horse. She was so mean and hard to handle. On top of the devil horse, I had to unload and stack the 50 pound bags of feed and the huge 80 pound bales of alfalfa/timothy mixed hay, which of course had to then be stacked in the barn. Unfortunately (because of the money not the tasks involved) this "job" ended a few months after it started. Racing horses is a costly business and it is real easy to run out of money when your horses aren't winning, as was the case here.

Have you ever found yourself looking for a way to make a living without having a "job"? I have several times in my life and I found myself at yet another crossroads. After spending so much time on the "farm" and in the barn I thought farming might be a good way to go. I had read Joel Salatin's book You Can Farm and thought "we live on 3 acres and have a huge barn, I should farm." I did a little preliminary research and alpacas jumped out at me. So, I wanted to start an alpaca farm and turn their hair, also known as fiber, into yarn and even turn the yarn into clothing and accessories. I had planned on adding value as Joel talked about in his book.

Then the bad news hit...after visiting a few alpaca farms and pricing them, I found out they were darn expense!!! Like $10,000 for one female and that was on the low end of alpaca prices. It would cost nearly $100,000 to get a small "herd"(1 male and 2 females of good stock). Well that pretty much ended that idea. BUT I was also doing some research on spinning and knitting and crocheting. There were other animals that had fiber to use...sheep, goats, llamas, angora rabbits...and they were much less expensive.

Sorry, gotta run, 18 month old to chase. Check back, I'll tell you more.

2 Kids No Husband No Job

Well, I started off with 1 kid, a husband, and no job. I had always wanted to be a stay at home mom and I was finally realizing my dream. But as always there was a price to pay. I ended up with 1 kid, no husband, and no job. Keep in mind I waited 2 years for the husband to join me across the country, meanwhile he had a new girlfriend. So that was the end of that dream. At least the whole package. But then I met someone new and thought eureka, I sure am lucky. Come to find out not so lucky. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed and preferred to start a project, grab a beer, watch a movie, and you guessed it, never finish the project. So it should be of no surprise that I ended that marriage with a lot of unfinished projects, which included a new baby girl. So here I am finishing what these men helped start; 2 kids to raise with no husband and no job. You may be saying, "put your kids in daycare and get a job", but I'm still struggling with that decision. I didn't have children so that someone else could raise them and I feel like if I were to get a job that's exactly what would become reality.