Winter, part two

The weather is starting to warm up here, so spring is not too far away. The horses are actually starting to shed. Gave them their spring lice treatment this week, and took the heavy blankets of the geriatrics.

Funny story. Somehow Buckley scraped the side of his left hock, so he had to come into the barn for treatment and some tenderloving care. He stayed in the barn for a few days. Buckley is in a field with five other standardbreds, two percheron geldings and Max, a paint gelding. The boss of the herd is Geraint Hannover (Gerry), a noble standardbred who won almost $100,000 on the track and knows it. He came to me from a wonderful trainer  who also had Pacing Artist. On day two of Buckley's tlc care, I went out to the barn in the morning and Gerry is standing at the gate by the waterer, and picking up his left hind foot and putting it back down. Every time I look at him he picks up his left hind foot. I went into the barn to get started with chorse (A sisters creek spelling), and when I came out to feed the other horses, there he is picking up the foot and putting it down. He actually got himself up against the fence and hopped a little on that leg, moving back towards the gate. All the time he is looking at me. Well, I thought I had better check that out, since I pride myself on how observant I am with the horses. Keep in mind that I hadn't taken Buckley out of the big pen and put him in the barn, and I usually don't do chorse when it is really cold because of my asthma, but he has me categorized as the carrot lady.

I went and got the halter, took it up towards the gate, Gerry is standing right at the gate, not letting anyone else close, and held up the halter for him. He threw his head into the halter, quietly came out of the gate, turned and waited for me - remember we have a foot of snow around, and in some places its quite rough; and off we marched to the barn.

In he went as happy as could be into a box stall with lots of hay and a serving of grain, and he was happy. Not a sign of a limp, no heat, nothing. He just figured out what he needed to do in order to get into that barn for some tlc. Never once called to the other pasture buddies. So he now is on a cycle of in the small pen, and back to his stall. This morning when I took him to the small pen, he looked out at the pasture as though to say "See what I've got". I am half expecting another standardbred to be at the gate in the pasture pen with a gimpy leg tomorrow morning, maybe Nron, or Zilch. They are very, very smart horses. Keep in mind that he used the same leg as Buckley had scraped, and looked directly at me as he raised his foot. Who's the boss here. You tell me.

Winter, winter, winter

Yes winter is still with us. Last week was the dogsled mail run. I thought it would be interesting for people to see some of this activity and also the snow!!!!!!!!!

One day a year, the dog sleds race from Quesnel to Barkerville, carrying Canada Post special envelopes. This year the weather was beautiful, and there was lots of snow, as you can see. It is quite the spectacle.

We, on the other hand, have been shovelling snow for two weeks now. Before Christmas there was very little snow, and all of a sudden in January, boom, the snow started to fall, over two feet of it. It is beautiful, but the roofs can't handle it sometimes, and as the news has said, there have been a number of roof failures. Most of the failures were on the east coast, because here houses are built to high standards of roof strength, but we still had some concerns, especially if it begins to rain (which it did last week) on top of the snow, so we took the snow off the house roof and the barn additions. Then in the warm weather, swoooooosssssshhhhhh, the snow flew off the metal barn roofs. Quite the noice, the horses were jumping around like crazy when that happened.

This is Tilly. For those of you who aren't interested in driving a big horse, this is more fun than a ferrari sports car. Tilly lives to drive, and will go as far and as fast as you will let her. They come in small packages, but they think they are really big horses, and they are so easy to travel with. So there is no excuse that you can't drive. Get yourself a sports car pony and have a great time.

Winter visitor

Thought you might like to see one of our winter visitors this morning. He obviously found a mouse in the carriage house. If you look closely you can see the little mouse tail hanging down by his feet. We're not sure what he is. He is about 9 inches from head to tail. Haven't heard his call. He thinks the carriage house is quite a good place to be, as there is chicken feed and mice. We would love for him to stay, to help keep the mice away.

Exciting times

Well, colder today, and thought I would share some of the happenings here at Sisters Creek over this winter. Technically it isn't winter yet, but at -10 C, let me tell you, it's winter. So work is going on inside now. Fred is shaping the timbers for the upstairs master suite. This is quite the undertaking. Posts and beams, gunstock braces, all need to be cut and treated. They are almost finished now, the plan is to put up the main posts and beams down the centre of the room on Saturday. Thought you might like to see what they looked like before they were put in place. It will be cold on Saturday, but the beam work shouldn't be too long. I guess we'll see.

Lots of new things happening

Well, Christmas is coming, and with it the prospects of sleigh rides on Christmas Eve. We are biting our fingernails, because the weather is very mild and yesterday and today the snow is melting. Everyone who is coming is so excited about the sleigh rides, so I hope we will be able to meet their expectations, if not, maybe carriage rides, we will see.

Working on some art, or trying to, and thinking about the garden in the spring and putting up a small hoop house to extend our seasons, we will see. Thinking about it doesn't really take a lot of effort, but actually doing it is something else. Eliot Coleman's books and ideas about year round gardening really look interesting. Also the zero mile diet books from Victoria. We are putting on an agricultural gardening workshop on January 22nd in Quesnel at the College to put forth some of these ideas.

Our newest nephew was born on December 10th, in Saskatoon to Carey and Josh. Congratulations little one. Welcome to the world.

Carriage driving this weekend

I probably shouldn't call it carriage driving, since I was driving my cross country cart, but we did go out and have fun at the local show, with dressage, cones, and a mini marathon. Artist was such a good horse, and we came home happy and tired. Did a few driving classes as well, and won the reinsmanship class which is important, since Rose won the last one we entered, so we kept it in the Sisters Creek family.

Not many posts this summer, so here is the up date. Hot, fires, smoke, more smoke, more smoke from forest fires in the area for the last half of the summer. Put concrete foundations under the horse waterers, went to a few driving activities including a combined driving competition in 70 Mile house which was a blast. We had two entries from sisters creek, the team and my single horse. We both got eliminated but it was an honor to show under Muffy Seaton. She was just great, and gave us extra help and was so concerned when we got eliminated. We weren't able to complete hazard one in the marathon phase. Artist just didn't like the cut out moose and we had to be excused from that hazard.

So now we are working to renovate our house, to create a master suite at one end of the house, and put new windows in that area. Actually they are new to us windows, as a friend of ours was replacing what we consider to be beautiful, perfectly good windows, so we got the windows. Our old windows will go into our green house, so we will be going on with our philosophy of recycle when ever possible. Hopefully will start replacing the windows this week, as the frames for the greenhouse walls are ready. Unfortunately gh strained his back on the carriage with the team this weekend, so we will see how he does tomorrow.

Got most of the potatoes up today, tried two new varieties this year, Blush and Ptarmigan. Haven't got the Ptarmigan up yet, but the Blush potatoes got a good yield. We should have hilled them a little better, and one row got water and the other didn't, but not too much difference in the rows. It was a very dry year. The red burbanks were the star of the potato patch though; bright, bright red and huge with no scabs. The russet burbanks were smaller than we would like, although a good yield. The Shepody did well. All in all, the potatoes were very good this year with the dry weather. The red burbanks were planted at the edge of the garden, in a row that gets planted with potatoes every year, so I was surprised that they did so well. We try to edge our garden with potato plants as it seems to keep the weeds at bay just a little.

A rest day for the horses, although the six pack of standardbreds; Nron, Gerry, Buckley, Outlaw Rob, and the other two did manage to get out and wander around. Max is in with them now so he probably got the fence panel down. We found him in his favorite place this morning, outside the west side of the house, munching on the lawn. He was happy to go back in though, and for the most part they stayed in their pasture, so we just left them. They can't get anywhere as long as the gates are shut.

Rose drove Buckley(Pump Handle) this weekend and had a good time in the dressage. We were going to pair him up with Outlaw Rob, but Outlaw Rob seems to be a roarer when he is exercised, so Buckley will go back to being a single driving horse. I think he would prefer that, although he does like Rob.

Rained this afternoon, so no more potato digging. Managed to get all we dug today into the basement to dry. Put a fan on down there to circulate the air so hopefully will dry any moisture off them. We have a very good yield. Only one more row to dig, and I think some carrots still to get out of the ground. Our corn did well this year as well. Most cobs manged to mature.

Will try to keep up with the renovating so people can see what we are up to.