Two Offers

Our home is officially on the market and today we made offers on two houses in Montana. 

The original one in St Regis that we both love and its perfect for what we want, 

and one in Plains that's close to what we want 

BUT its got a 24 unit storage facility that's part of the deal. 

That would make our house payment for us right there.

Our house & farm are on the MLS and 

FOR SALE

with an asking price of $629,950.00

Its a holiday weekend and its been on the MLS for 3 days and exactly ZERO people have come by to see it. That's a good thing because we're still completing projects.

We had never finished the stair treads with the hardwood flooring so realtor suggested I paint them, so I did, the turquoise you see here. It ties in with the color in the bathroom.

And this evening we're hanging up this sliding barn door Lan made for the downstairs bathroom. 

In this photo its just standing there, not complete. 

In about an hour its going to be FINISHED

and the white door should be gone.

We will save the white door for the future owners of the house 

in case they dislike the barn door and wish to remove it. 

That makes them total losers. 

I hope whoever gets the house and farm love it and continue to improve it.

I've been painting a lot, off white on a bunch of spots where there were either marks on the walls 

or entire places I hadn't finished before. 

I'm also busy painting the porch swing again, its hard to get something orange enough!

NO PHOTO!!

Lan removed a couple busted posts in the cross fence, removed a gate and built this new gate with electric fencing on the top. 

No more horses reaching over. 

Assholes.

I've been painting the metal on the pony cart. I know I'll never teach Gussy to pull it so I'm going to let it go for $500 to another gal. I'll include the leather and nylon harnesses and a whicker basket that I picked up somewhere along the way. I'll get better photos of it tomorrow, this morning I actually painted the arms and back supports. It looks good.

Home Looks Great

Who doesn't like gravel?

OK, so lots of people don't.

It does look a lot nicer than tall grass growing up the side of the house and rotting the outside wood. 

No one likes rotten porch rail either

So its now repaired and painted with a fresh white coat

And the floor is clean and treated

Inside the house I took down Uncle Mels blanket and put my favorite horse picture up on the mantle, Its called 

Morning At Lumahai Beach by Kim Star

I need to vacuum the bricks and clean the fireplace

And the driveway is about 20% bigger now that Lan has cut the grass off the asphalt. We knew it was a bit bigger but in the 4.5 years we've lived here we never bothered to clear it off. Now its all spiffy.

Took this yesterday morning and sad that my phone didn't get the actual colors of this BEAUTIFUL sunrise. It was blue & gray and the cloud made it so we could look directly at the sun for a minute.

I'm going to miss this when we move.

Aw, here's Gussy. It had rained on him a bit and I had just spent and hour giving him a spa treatment. He just GLOWS with good health.

It was so good to have quiet time with him. He was nice and calm and enjoyed it. He didn't call out to the other horses and paid attention to me.

I haven't been able to spend much quality time with him with Soren here because he is so loud, he runs in the barn, screams, makes a ruckus. The other day he chased Gus out of the arena and made Gus slip on the concrete & hurt his legs. I was pretty fucking mad since I had JUST told him NO RUNNING in the barn. Sent the kid into the house screaming.

Gus has a muzzle he wears when hes out on the pasture but he got it off twice while in the back pasture so I've been leaving him in the barn in a run with a little grass in it. Tomorrow I'll leave the big horses in the middle pasture and hope no one does anything stupid.

I emptied the water trough in the front pasture yesterday and it had an inch of sludge in the bottom of it. Tomorrow I'll scrub it all out and refill it. Its so icky I don't know if the horses were even drinking out of it. There were two 6" gold fish in there a month ago, they were 4 years old but gone now. I'm sure that was local raccoons; little assholes.

Game Of Thrones

I wasn't always a fan

In fact, I resisted watching until I couldn't take the hounding Brandan gave me.

So we sat down & watched the first episode 

& we were hooked.

Binged watched all 8 seasons in 2 months.

Last night we went to a GOT 'tailgating' party so we got dressed up

I was an old Kaleesi

Lan was whoever.

But everyone there LOVED him!

I made dragon eggs

In horsey news:

I've let them out on the front pasture a couple times, in the mornings, 

for an hour & NO LONGER.

this morning I headed out to bring them to the back pasture (where their hay was put out) and Gussy ran from the back of the field to the front, where these guys are. He's got his muzzle on because with the grass coming in so well, he doesn't need to be eating it and foundering.

One Year Review: Stable Comfort Stall Matts

We've been using the Stable Comfort stall matts for about a year now & it's time for a review.

I originally had Joey & Mack on them, Joey is  TB gelding weighing about 1150 and Mack is a huge Appy gelding weighing about 1250. The matts held up to their weight FINE but Mack was terrible on the stalls. He broke the dividing wall between the stalls, chewed the doors and demolished the runs. It was easier for ME to keep him in the arena at night.

But then he would whinny at all hours if the others went out to the runs & he couldn't see them so Joey went into the arena with him.

Now its just Wifi (900 lbs) in one of the stalls & I use the other one for hay.

Here is her stall. Its standing up GREAT to the use. Shes in it for about 12 hrs every night and currently we have the run door closed (due to the gutter leaf protector being down from snow). In the mornings I always let her out first so shes much less likely to pee in it.

This is the stall right after I cleaned her poop & stripped it of shavings. I still have to use 

EXACTLY THE SAME AMOUNT OF SHAVINGS 

that I ever used before to absorb her pee but I don't have to put in enough to make it soft. But I NEVER DID bed to make them soft because they have the attached runs to go outside.

Here is the front door area and its holding up well. No matter who the horse is, they bang their front hoof on this rail as they walk out but all horses are lazy. The stall fronts we used have a metal bar across each door to hold them rigid and strong and they are the perfect height for the matts.

This is the section just to the right of the above door, under the water buckets. When we installed it the wood on the wall was rotten so Lan used the wood strip to help. It I were to replace that wall wood right there we wouldn't need to use the strip along the floor.

The robber matt top is holding up quite well. There aren't any holes or indications of them at all. They hold all the pee just fine. The pee does puddle and its a bit harder to clean up compared to a flat stall with regular matts where the pee would go underneath when I use regular shavings.

The ONLY PROBLEM I have is 

that Wifi's shedding hair sticks to the rubber matt and won't sweep off very easily. I sweep my stalls every day so there is no dirt/sand/hair where their hay falls out of the hay nets. This hair just wants to stay on it.

But this is a problem that doesn't bother me too much since horses will eat hair as they groom each other. 

Snowy Farm

Miniature horses can handle the cold and snow just fine, as shown here by Gus. He stood outside in the snow and it melted off his back but froze again on the hair on his sides.  

This photo was taken day before yesterday when we had 2 inches of snow.

Its snowing good again & up to 8 inches 

Heres our home from the road

The barn with just 2 inches. Its so deep now that I wore my snow shoes to go out there & walked around clearing a path for the hens to come outside. They still didn't.

Southworth beach from the dock yesterday morning

Friday night at about 3:45am. John came down & did the best job he could for me.

It snowed 10 inches that night. I didn't have a shovel, except the broken one, had to borrow one half way thru the night. Only 6 bags of salt. I shoveled the sidewalk 3/4 of the way up to the sellers booths, then came back down to the bridge & shoveled there, over and over again. As soon as I cleared it off, it was covered again.

I got off work at 8am and it was coming down hard. Got to within 2 miles from home & the road was closed so had to back track to Fred Meyers where I picked up cold meds, then went to the freeway and drove the 2 miles at 30 MPH till I got to my exit. 

Horses aren't too thrilled about being locked in the arena but at least its not locked in stalls like so many barns in the area. I know a lot of people fear for their horses lives in this weather but they do need to be horses. I'm going to take their hay up to the top of the pasture tomorrow and let them eat up there but I'll have to be sure they get their hooves cleaned out when they come back to the arena. Snow balls in the hooves can hurt them.

Hes Fat

Gus is really hairy

and 

Gus is fat

His mane is thicker than ever before too

I Rode

I rode, but only for a few minutes, on Mack. 

Then 3 days ago I got an injection in my foot, into the Plantar Fibroma.

In the 1st photo the bright white dot is the middle of it, all the darkness is the lump.

I was given a lidocaine shot to numb my foot, that went into the back of my ankle and it took about 4 minutes of him poking the needle around into the proper spots.

 I spent 12 minutes massaging the medicine into the area.

Here is a raw shot of the needle inside my foot. It began at a size 6.2mm in size, the previous biggest it got was 4.9mm. 

Here is an 'enhancement' of the same photo.

It was mostly numbed but once in a while he would hit a nerve & it would feel like my foot had a hot poker on the heel.

This part of the procedure lasted about 8-10 minutes.

Afterward I put on my boot and came home. I had to borrow crutches from Mora and she also gave me a Lidocaine gel patch. I cut it down to three 2"x3" pieces and put 1 onto the bottom on my foot. They last 12 hours. The 3rd is on now and I'm sure it has helped a LOT.

I used the crutches for 2 days, today is the 3rd day & I'm able to walk without them but still in the boot. 

All this foot lump tumor BULLSHIT has a name, I'll go into more detail at a later date.

HORSEY NEWS:

I was too cheap to order harness pads for $10 online so I paid $30 and made my own.

At least I used a color I like.

I'll get photos of them actually ON Gus later.

Gary is coming out to trim horses tomorrow.

Gus, September to October 2018

Can you see differences in Gus in one month?

 Different things happening with him are:
He is out on pasture without his muzzle all day.
He is in his stall every night, with hay, senior grain & alfalfa pellets + raspberry leaves.
I've been lunging him 3 times each week with lots of trot to walk transitions.
He is getting groomed more often.
His winter coat is growing in.

I wonder what he will look like in another month?

I bought 2 new inner tubes for the cart.

And put padding on the arm rests. So far this thing seems ready to go.