Uggh, right there with you 2 dogs. I am a bit down. I was thinking about getting a few flats of tomatoes and peppers started this weekend. I need some thing to chase the gloom. As to chasing the gloom.
Oh all right I'll admit it.....I went and bought some chicks on Monday. In my defense I thought I was safe from such frivolity. But as fate would have it. I was in the local TSC last week. My favorite cashier was there. So I said to her chick days are going to be starting. So after a short discussion I said to her if you ever get any Jersey giants in can you call me? She said she had never seen any JGs ever. I said I know I have been looking for the last 8 years and if I ever saw any I was going to grab some.
So as fate would have it I get a phone call from my favorite TSC cashier. She said your never going to believe it, but we just got our first shipment of chicks in and we have Jersey giants. What was a girl to do? Needless to say I hear peep, peep, peep, peep, as I type.
Another thing that sorta helps with my anticipation for Spring to get here is the horse expos firing up. I want to eye manure spreaders and horse trailers. Anything to keep my mind busy while waiting to spend my days outside digging in the dirt.
@Hulk Chicks are hard to resist, especially since Fate put them there for you, right?
If you were near me I’d invite you to put Hoosier Horse Fair on your calendar.
1st weekend in May - my club has been invited to demo Carriage Driving.
In exchange for doing the Parade of Breeds 2X daily & giving rides to attendees (from which job me & my mini are excused ;)) we get discounted stalls & a vendor table.
Any COTHers planning to attend, please look us up :yes:
2 Dogs I am looking up that horse fair, cause you never know. Plus I am an addict. Love them. What could be greater than a whole fair dedicated to horses. Except of course the food booths, which we do need to eat.
I would love to watch your clubs driving demo!!!! And I love when they do parade of breeds. :love-struck:
The daffodils are peeking out of the dirt in my old bed. So far, nothing in the new bed that I planted in late Fall. The Oregon Grape is covered in blooms and about to open. A few of the roses are showing shoots. I am really hesitant to prune the roses because we’ve had so much snow and cold this winter. We had a balmy late winter last year and the trees that were sprouting froze back. I’m now waiting for this year’s growth to see if some of those limbs are truly dead.
Lucassb Welcome to the party. The pics are lovely. As far as a girl can dream, you betcha. I have always held the belief that lots of good things start as a day dream. So as a result I do honestly spend a good amount of time with my head in the clouds.
By the way here weather wise we just had a blizzard and now snow all day, which made for travel hazard. But I guess it is all okay because March is coming in like a lion, so it is going out like a lamb.
Thank you, @Hulk ! As I sit here typing, the rain is coming down AGAIN and I can see the horses forlornly sticking their heads out over their dutch doors, knowing they will be staying in today. Poor things, they are as tired of this weather as I am. But I guess at least we don’t have a blizzard to contend with! Hope you guys do not have to try to travel in that weather. We used to live in the northeast and by this time of year, I was always SO tired of the snow and ice!
I like your notion of March coming in like a lion … that means soon the weather will be lovely again!
I am so over the snow. :mad: It makes it so hard to clean the stalls, because pushing a loaded wheel barrow through the snow. Sometimes when it is really deep DH snowblows a path for us. And driving in it, well DH is a 911 dispatcher so he drives no matter what.
Hulk - I was just thinking about the …“in like a lion…” line - hoping it would be true! Great pictures Lucassb. The beautiful green pasture of yours makes this high desert person dream.
Really? Are you in CA? < going by your sig - my folks lived in SoCal for 40+yrs
That would be a Hella Roadtrip!
We are quite a diverse group, my club.
One gal drives a Friesian & FriesianX, several Percherons, Haflingers, TWH, DraftX, ponies & minis.
Here we are getting ready for a drive:
And doing a Demo in December:
(me & mini are the Where’s Waldo in the middle :D)
Thanks, @TCA Arabians ! Honestly although it’s pretty to look at, right now that green is covering up so much water, you’d sink in 6" at least So your desert sounds really good to me at the moment!!!
I live in Western NY and today was just as cold as yesterday (mid-20s), but at least it was sunny not snowing so a completely different world! Things were melty. On the way home though I had to go to the car wash just to melt out my wheel wells before the built up ice wore out the darn tires! I came home to little baby broccolis and cauliflowers!
2 Dogs… We live in PA but we are so close to WNY that we basically have their weather. I looked up the horse fair it is about 8-9 hours from us. So we would have to do an overnight at the very least. I just don’t know if we can swing that this year. It is so hard to find a farm sitter.
Gosh the pics are amazing!!! Love the idea of a driving club as diverse as that. Love Minis, love Perchs, love walkers, love Halfies, love Frisians. Honestly I just love it all. This just clicked it up a big notch to make this happen next year.!!!
2DogsFarm - That driving club looks like a lot of fun.
Lucassb - We’ve actually had enough rain this year that we have squishy ground too. So much so that I’m seeing some ground failures in a few of the beds. Failures in that a section has sunk. And, a bank reinforcement fell. So, I’m pondering how I’m going to fix that - in a rose bed! But, added bonus of living in the desert is no snails?! No fleas! No termites! We have a million other pests that make up for it.
We have another wave of the “atmospheric river” coming in this week. This used to be called “the pineapple express.” Pineapples likely have an advocacy group now and they changed the name. There’s already flooding in NoCal and they’re predicting that possibility in Central Ca.
@TCA Arabians I guess we all have our stuff to contend with this time of year, LOL. Love the “pineapple express,” even if the marketing organizations disapprove!!!
I cannot WAIT to get my covered arena in and then maybe I will laugh at the weather. (We still have to get through zoning approvals and whatnot, so it may be a while.) Meanwhile, the ponies are out despite the drizzle. The winter fields are so torn up at this point I figure it doesn’t make any difference; they’ll have to be re-done anyway. And luckily the boys are all being sensible about the footing and are just enjoying a bit of time out of their stalls. Hope better spring weather shows up very soon for all of us!!!
@Hulk & @TCA Arabians Club is great.
I hitchhiked along on drives for at least 5yrs before I got my own to drive.
As long as you bring a dish to the potluck, it’s C’mon down!
I even drove through the drive-through of a (closed) local bank with Club Prez in his surrey:winkgrin:
Last year I joined another club that does more competing & clinics.
Both clubs were at the Fall National Drive, along with drivers from all over the US.
So far I’ve found Driving peeps the most welcoming - next to Eventers - to Newbs.
Even the fancy-shmancy folk at the ADS-rated Villa Louis Classic were more than nice to a first-timer.
Back on topic:
2nd load of stall cleanings went into the veggie plot today.
I’m “gardening”!
I am super late to the party… but am so excited to see this thread among fellow horse people and gardeners Im in SE PA, which was a mud pit all of 2018 and looks to be for this Spring also! Currently sleeting and super gross out! I cant wait to get to work in the dirt (as well as the many other farm projects that are just waiting for decent weather!) So depressing.
We have been in our place for a bit over 2 years, but this is our 3rd Spring. Last year I finally got an area fenced for veggies. It started out at about 16x16 and I expanded it to about 16x20 this Winter on a warmish day when the ground wasnt frozen solid! I hope to get cool weather stuff in toward the end of this month. I bought way too many seeds already during the many sales that were going on. Planning on Spinach, 2 varieties of snow peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, variety of different beets, green beans and lots of carrots among other things! I put in an asparagus plot last year and want to add more plants to it this year. I have put in quite a lot of perennial beds and ordered a lot of different flower seeds for this year too! Its an obsession haha
We inherited some very large and out of control Apple trees along with a sour cherry. We have been slowly pruning back the apples to get them to a more reachable height. That at least gives me something to do in late Winter! I planted 2 more apples, 2 peaches and 2 pears over the past 2 years as well.
I am loving the look of that triangular hoe… I think that will need to go on my wish list!
Spring wouldn’t be Spring without some chicks! I have 12 eggs in the incubator now, hatch day is on Monday! I cant wait
SWpreciousfew…Welcome to the party.!
To all on this thread it is totally okay to go down rabbit holes and get off track a bit. I never was very good and staying inside the lines while coloring as a kid, now that I am an old fart things haven’t changed much. And thank you all who post here for the great conversation and friendly atmosphere this thread has provided. All of you totally rock!!!
So this year I have to go buy starting medium for my seeds. I am so out of my comfort zone on that. I normally just go out to the garden and fill a plastic tote, but there is just too much dang snow here. Buying starter mix is akin to buying eggs at the store. Some things are just totally out of my scope and throw me for a loop. What a whiner I am!!!
So we went to the Harrisburg horse expo yesterday. We had a blast! Nice show great fun!!! Anything to bust up the winter blues!! I was going to start my seeds today but I am sicker than a dog because of eating out for dinner on the way home. Dang food sensitivities. So I guess I gotta mend up some before setting to that task. Perhaps next weekend I will get them done.
Father’s Day. Gotta wait until frosts are over.
-26C here this morning, and everything is still fully snow covered. Supposed to be warming up soon. I hope. All I am getting accomplished currently in the way of future gardening is my growing manure pile at my winter barn. Have been sick for the last week with the second bout of flu going round, coughing up a lung, again. Bought some seed packets a few weeks ago though.