Barmy Dogs

We are off to an agility trial early Saturday morning.

Here's a few snippets of the dogs playing the last couple of days.  The music is called Barmy Town.  Barmy is British slang for crazy, nutso, etc.  The dogs can be a bit that way:)

      

There was ice still floating in the dog pool  muck hole, so Jake didn't want to step on it.

A Bonus Day

The last few days have given us some decent weather, but today was supposed to be cloudy, the last dry day before the next weather system came in.

We got a real bonus though. It was lovely and sunny, a day where eagles flirted with jet planes.

A day when one man's many hours of fruit tree pruning is coming to it's final conclusion. 

A nice dry day to gather up all the branches under the trees and light the fire.

Where's the marshmallows?

See that building across the road.  That's where we've been going to practice agility for the last few weeks while our regular building is taken over by BMX racing.

Couldn't be much handier.

A day warm enough that guys can shed their coat and pause long enough to give Calli some lovin'

A day that you can take time to throw the ball for a couple of obsessed border collies

A day in which Jake makes himself look totally weird and uncoordinated

And then begs for the ball to be thrown some more

A day in which a Luna(tic) herds a chicken, herds the rake, chases the ball, herds a different chicken, chases the ball, herds the rake......

And a day when goofy Calli has to settle for half a brick when she can't find a rock.

There are so many things around here that need to be done.  Larry's job of choice just lately was to go out and work on the pruning.  It's one of those jobs that you don't have to think too hard about.  You just pick up a few tools, move the ladder to the right spot, and work as long as you want.  When you've had enough, you carry the pruning tools back to the house, and then go back out and do some more when you feel like it.  Much, much simpler than some of the other jobs that need doing.

I'm interested to see what he's going to pick to work on next.

I'm working on my own simple job.  It's no where near done yet.  The rate I'm going, it will probably be the end of the month before I'm finished.   

Wordless down in the garden Wednesday (by four minutes)

Feeding Time at the Farm

Yesterday the chickens had chicken.... for breakfast.  Are we making cannibals out of them?

Well not quite.

When I visit my 81 year old mother, she often hands me a bag of goodies for the chickens.  All her bread crusts, leftovers she didn't like, anything edible she doesn't want that doesn't go in her compost, all gets added to a bag in her freezer.  When it's full enough she gives it to me to bring home for the chickens.  

And if you didn't already know, well chickens eat just about anything, and yes, they will eat chicken.

But this was fake chicken.

My mother isn't quite vegetarian, but she doesn't cook any meat, although she will eat real chicken at a restaurant.

She thought this fake chicken might be good, but I guess it wasn't.

The real chickens thought the fake chicken was pretty good though.

I think there was a baked potato to go along with it, along with various varieties of bread crusts.

A real dog's breakfast.

And if the dogs could have got through the gate, they would be right in there grabbing what they could.

When I feed April and TOE, there is always some grain that gets dropped

TOE lifts her head out of the bucket and drops grain on the ground.

The clean up crew is standing by though.  

April's feed bag  bucket is still working really well.  She doesn't spill anything.

The dogs are quite happy to clean up any spilled grain that the chickens and sheep don't get.

Nothing much gets wasted around here.

....And just because I have to share the beauty, here's tonight's sunset. 

We've certainly had some lovely ones lately.

We're All Gonna Be Rich!

This ad has been playing on our tv quite a bit.  There is a whole controversy about the farmed salmon, and I'm going to stay away from that, but I find the ad kind of funny. 

I'm sure we've all seen those kind of emails.  I'm not seeing so many any more, probably because my spam program is doing a better job.  I just checked my gmail adress that is posted on the blog though, and there's a half dozen or so there, offering me great riches.

 Last week we got an envelope in the mail addressed to Larry.  It had this stamp on the front.  And since we don't know anyone in Tanzania.....

And if anyone collects stamps and is interested in this uncancelled one, let me know and I'll send it to you.

Yep, here it is, offering Larry the promise of great riches!

Wouldn't you think they could at least send a decent quality photocopy, with a 'real' signature on the bottom?

Wow, the mail is slow coming out of Tanzania though.

If nothing else it was good for a laugh.

And then yesterday we saw this on the front page of one of our local papers.

We're not the only ones that have the opportunity to be rich in our neighbourhood!

A few months ago my mother got something along the same lines.  Apparently they were searching for a long lost relative, due for a big inheritance.  The interesting part was that the Spanish lawyer and the office mentioned actually did exist (the miracle of Google), but the contact information was different.

Just point me in their direction, I'd be happy to bite their butts

Some Light Bulb Moments - Incandescents vs CFLs

Larry went to Otter Coop today, and came home with 14 bags of chicken feed, plus some horse feed.  Usually we store 5 or 6 bags down by the south chicken coop in a barrel, and the rest go in a couple of barrels in a metal shed not far from the north coop.  Eventually we have to carry some of those bags back down to the south coop, because they are the younger hens and lay more and therefore eat more, and that coop runs out of bags before the other coop does.

For the last little while there has been an empty barrel at the south coop, that we had been storing the chicken feeder in overnight when we were trapping the rats.  The light bulb came on (the incandescent kind, that gives you full light instantly), duh, why didn't we use that barrel to store another 5 bags of feed.  Brilliant idea.  It's bad enough dragging one of those bags out of the barrels to refill the feeder, never mind having to carry it an extra 150 feet, so to get rid of that carrying would be a great thing.  

Usually Larry parks the truck near the top of the field and carries the bags down, as it is a hill, and tends to get slippery, and our little truck isn't four wheel drive.  With this cold weather we have been having, the ground had all been frozen.  So I said lets drive the truck down there.  I mean, why carry 10 bags if you can drive them there.  Another light bulb moment.  Unfortunately though, this must have been a CFL bulb, energy efficient, but slow to come to full brightness.  We noted that the ground was thawing out today.  It had clouded over and was warming up. (still waiting for that CFL to reach maximum brightness)  So Larry starts backing down the hill. Already as he is braking, the truck is sliding.  The top half inch of ground has thawed out, and it is sliding on the frozen ground underneath.  Too late now.  He slithers down to the coop.  We unload the bags into the barrels.  There are still 8 bags in the truck, weight on the back end, a good thing.  He backs past the coop to get to some flat ground, and to get a run at the hill.  Finally that CFL bulb is at full brightness.  We realize this wasn't a good idea after all.

First attempt he almost makes it.  Second attempt is worse than the first.  We discuss our options.  Do we get the tractor or the 4x4 pickup to pull the other truck out.  Larry opts for the tractor.  Then we remember the sandladders that David has from his landrover days.  Drag those down to the truck.  Gain a few more feet.  Then the truck is slipping on the sand ladders as it gets to the steepest part.  Attempt to turn one of the sand ladders over so there is more grip. Can't get the truck to even get a start on the sand ladder. Find out later we could have done things a bit differently, and it probably would have been successful. Makes your male offspring feel superior when they can tell you how it should  have been done.

 Larry gets the tractor, we hook a chain from one to the other, I get on the tractor and he is in the truck, and just a little pressure on the chain and the truck is out.  

We had been going to take the tractor down there so we could clean out the coop and throw all the soiled bedding into the tractor bucket, but nixed that idea.  The tractor isn't four wheel drive either.  There were already enough mud tracks in the field.

Both chicken coops got cleaned out.  I shovelled, and Larry pushed full wheelbarrows, slip sliding away.

Luna ran her soccer ball through the muck.  She's a girl that doesn't mind getting down and getting dirty.

It wasn't anything that a good game of attacking the water coming out of the hose couldn't take care of though.

Some Birthday Reminiscing and Exercise

Today, well February 1st (it all depends when I actually get this post done) is Larry's birthday.  He's 36, or maybe that's 63?                          That's Larry on the left with big brother Keith

Larry in the center with brother Ken and Boston Terrier Dixie, and younger brother Harvey

Mom and the four boys.  That's Larry standing in front

Elementary school in Cloverdale, maybe grade 2 or 3.  Larry is third from the left, front row.

At the house on 64th Ave in Cloverdale, Larry's in the white t-shirt

Grade nine

Second from the left, back row.

Late 60's maybe?

Second from the left again

21 years ago, up the apple tree with David

On his 50th birthday down at the dyke with Meredith and David and Echo

And so it seemed right that we should go down to the dyke again today.  The water levels are back down to normal.  Compare this picture to the one just below taken 3 1/2 weeks ago.  The water is at least 4 feet lower.  The swimming hole has changed a little bit.

3 1/2 weeks ago

We do have this hunk of wood in the 50th birthday pictures somewhere.  We have a box of photos that I thought it was in, but couldn't find it.  I only found the one posted above.  It was another beautiful day though.  Before we were half the way through the walk I had my coat off.  Poor Larry, it was hard to look handsome, youthful and intelligent while squinting into the sun.

To heck with Larry, this was the best shot of Jake:)

The dogs were glad when we got the picture posing over with

Let's get a move on there folks!

Being such a beautiful day, there were lots of other people and dogs down there.  The most impressive one was a husky mix called Eskimo.  Luna was actually relatively pleasant (Luna style) to this one.

Jake wanted to play, but Eskimo was quite ancient, and didn't do much more than saunter along.

He would have been pretty impressive all brushed out, but there were some ugly big mats in his tail.  And speaking of tail, some dogs figured they'd better check under it.

If you're going to be another year older, it might as well be on a beautiful day like this one.

Happy Birthday Larry!!