Come From Away

. . . the sun.

Portobello has been extremely naughty lately. Our lock for the fridge has broken and the entire day is spent telling him to get out of the fridge. He eventually gets put on the back deck for the sake of everyone’s sanity. Today was a nice fall day (warm in the sun, but cool in the shade). He seems to not be overly upset.

I was outside today taking some pictures and I snapped a few of the roosters who came to say hello. The little grey one who is flapping his wings (Appleby or just Apple) is completely tame. He will come up and greet you if you are in the barn or near the fence. He expects to be told that he is pretty and wants a scratch.

After our horrible ordeal with Annie, K and I were very upset. We spoke to the kids and they all said that they would like to get another pony even though they were upset about Annie.

K started reading the Atlantic Rider web site and looking in the classified areas to see if we could find another pony. Our intention was to look for a long time and be very selective this time, because it would be devastating to go through another bad experience. As fate would have it, she found an ad. for a pony that was about 15 minutes drive from our house. We saw her on our way to town (when people in PEI say “town,” this always means Charlottetown) and she looked nice enough. K went back there yesterday to ride her and came back glowing. “Sophie” (possible name change is imminent) is 3 years old and looks very, very healthy.

She arrived today. I am still feeling very upset about the last pony. The kids are better at coping. I saw “B” crying out by where we buried Annie just before Sophie arrived.

K and I are acting obsessive and keep going out to check on her. She is obviously doing fine.

Back in August we visited the Belfast Mini Mills. They mill wool from all sorts of interesting fibre and sell the equipment world wide for people to make their mills. There were a series of animals there also. Some geese, a cow, a pot belly pig, some chickens and lamas that they use for their wool.

It’s a cool operation and the people there were really nice. We are planning on adding it officially as a site to visit on our Eastern PEI tours.

We went to two farms today as part of Atlantic Open Farm Day. One was a dairy farm that was milking 80 cows. It was a huge operation and really quite neat to see. Because it was a dairy farm, it was remarkably clean with fresh shavings down everywhere and sweet smelling barns.

We saw moo-cows, milk-cows and some cool tractors.

The second was a standard bred breeding farm, but there was only one horse on the farm that I could see. Apparently, the photographer was busy chasing children and there were no pictures taken there.

Yesterday, I purchased a very nice Crokinole board and the kids and I have been playing a lot. It’s tons of fun.

Annie had her teeth “floated” on Monday. She stopped eating properly after the procedure. Normally, this would make it easier for her to eat and she should start to eat more.

We gave her pain killers and she started to eat again, but still not very well. Yesterday, she just refused to eat and was clearly in some distress. K and I walked her around in shifts until 4:00 AM this morning. It was just going to be my turn (K was on her way in to get me) when Annie stopped moving. Her belly was hard as a rock, her bowel had twisted and she was completely blocked.

The vet came and said that she could have an operation that would give her a 50/50 chance of surviving or we could put her down. We woke up “B” and she came out to say good-bye to her already much loved pet and Annie was put down.

This huge and strange bird flew over us! It did not move its wings and made the most awful noise. We watched it until we were sure it would not swoop down and snatch up one of us or even a horse. Thankfully, we have not seen it again for weeks. I think that perhaps is has flown south for the winter.

Ok, well nothing really alarming has happened yet, but a bunch of our “teenage” chickens have started crossing the road – to get the other side…
(it had to be said)

I’m not sure what is better about the grass on the other side of the highway, but there must be something good over there. A car stopped today with his hazards going and blowing his horn at the three that were over there… The driver herded them across the road (still in his car) and then asked for directions back to “The Store” where he could get some gas.

He told me, “Those are some nice looking hens. You would not want to lose one.” I glanced at the three roosters, thanked him and off he went.

I was picking up a pizza a couple of days ago (no one delivers to our house, of course) and the owner of the pizza place that I was chatting with while my pie baked made me an offer I could not refuse: A telephone book cover!

The dreaded day has arrived where one of the “children” requires expensive corrective shoes. Strangely enough the one who needs them just moved in and is 23 years old!

These are necessary because her feet are a mess and she is walking on the wrong part of her foot. Come the winter when the ground is hard, it will likely be very painful for her, so we got her these. After a long time of careful hoof trimming, her foot should return to something more natural and she will not need the boots at all.