Wind Ranch

Exciting day at Wind Ranch

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:52:02 +0000

Last night I waltzed in the door, after visiting my favorite hair dresser for a few hours around 10:30. I was alarmed to find the toilet had backed up in the front toilet room! I called for help, woke the husband. We spent 2- 3 hours futzing with the toilet and to no avail the solution was not in sight. I even drove around town looking for a store open, to buy a snake.. Found one at Walmart around midnight. O M G the people you find at Walmart at this time.. wowza.

Today, the septic gods came and removed the lid.. found out that our little septic tank was brimming. The pump was dead. They hauled off one big load (shit load) of excrement and planned on returning tomorrow to haul a 2nd load and clean the septic out as well as replace the pump. There goes my bonus $ (down the shitter)..

Grooming Llamas – first attempts at handling and grooming

admin — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:40:57 +0000

I bought this video, online, that has Bobra Goldsmith that helps with training llamas. Link Here. I had a little fear of llamas because I just did not know what to expect. I would walk way around the llamas when hanging with them, as if they were a wild mustang tied to the post. Ha ha. Of course the kids saw my first attempt at playing with them and this imprinted in their little minds. They feel some fear of llamas, now. This video was enlightening. I watched in awe as this 70+ yr old woman wrangled these unhandled llamas and taught them various forms of manners with ease. I was stunned. I was inspired.

It turns out that the next day I needed to catch our pony, who had not had a halter on for the entire winter and was hard catch period. I used a method I saw on the Bobra video and had the pony captured, haltered and ready to go in no time. My confidence was up. I caught and haltered the llamas not long after this..

I tried brushing the burrs out of the llamas. The were losing much needed hair (it is pretty cold this winter) and they were just not enjoying this at all. So I gave up and hugged their long necks and let them back out to the corral. I have caught Mac a few times since this first attempt to brush. She is the older and more handled llama. She will let me catch her, halter her, walk her and hug her long llama neck. Cheese, on the other hand, will not take feed from your hand yet. He leads, but he is just not as trusting. This summer we will need to work on him some. I am assuming he is a little more hard to handle because he is a male starting to hit puberty.

I was chatting with a friend at work about the burrs. I told her I figure we will leave them in their coats and in the summer when we attempt our first shearing/shaving of them, the burrs will go then. Oh, this will be a spectacle in itself- for sure! I mentioned that I fear their fiber will be a loss because of this. She asked me if I had ever heard of Grooma combs. I had not. She raved on and on about how miraculous these combs are and brought me one the next day. As soon as I got home, I caught Mac (could not catch Cheese) and tried the comb out. If does work, but I think I need a detangler to go along with it to really make a solid dent on the burrs in these guys.. She was not into being away from her horse and llama pals, so I did not work on her coat too long.

I am sure I will read this post a year or two from now and laugh at my fledgling attempts at llama handling.

Revamping the Look and Feel of Wind Ranch

admin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:16:18 +0000

With the recent changes in our hobby farm theme (llamas), I feel it is time to do some updating on this little site. I took a look at the viewing stats and was amazed that we are getting so many hits.. Therefore- it is time I take better care of our viewers.

Keep your eyes peeled, as this site improves..

Did Someone Say Llama?

admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:08:10 +0000

Yes.
Windranch has taken on a new direction. After not much consideration and lots of impulsive behavior, Jinx did not fight the impulse to buy a pair of Llamas from someone on Craigslist.com. ( Croy just read the start of this blog and said, “That just about narrows it down, doesn’t it?”. )
On Thursday I responded to an ad on Craigslist.com that offered up a single registered llama for $150. I inquired and the folks were honest enough to say you can not get a single herd animal and offered a 2nd llama for really cheap to pair up. I understood this, because when we bought our first goat, the people did not tell us about the herd instinct and the poor baby goat cried and cried for a companion. These llama folks were honest. I planned on mulling it over more.. But these people were really pressing to see if we were ready to buy. After some emailing, they admitted that they needed money for a bill and really would like to sell by the weekend. They lowered the price and offered to deliver. I bit. On Friday, I left work early and prepared for the new arrivals. Around 2 PM a pickup truck with 2 llamas rolled up the driveway and 2 nice guys took the llamas out of the back of their truck and helped me lead the llamas to the front pasture.
Did the fact that they had llamas in the back of a pick up give you a visual? It was amazing to see. And here is the real kicker… They drove up from Missouri with these guys in the pick up. Imagine the looks they got with the 2 funny looking animals laying down in their truck on the interstate!

Horses and their new pasturemates

The 2 are now out there, with the horses (who are keeping their distance). I think we will call the Male Cheese and the female Madonna. Still not in love with Madonna yet.. I do like Cheese, however.

X is plastered

admin — Sat, 09 May 2009 02:50:19 +0000

Let me start from the beginning.. Tonight I sat down at my pc and logged into Facebook and saw my friend Mel had done another stupid quiz about pet peeves. I thought what the hell and started taking the quiz too. (I am a sucker for idiocy) I started up the pet peeves quiz and wrote in Whining in the little search box… and low and behold a photo of XOE came up.. I jumped up and ran and got the family, dragged them in here and we all had a good laugh..
I was stumped. Who put her face on the word whining, and where did he get the pic? So I googled “whining” in the Google images Yahoo! Images and MSNs Live search and all of these sites came up with Xoe’s image! you know where they got it? From the etling.com server (that does exist any more) back in 2004. That is when it surfaced on the first website, listed below. I am sure there is more out there..

Crazy huh? I grab other folks photos and use them in my blogs etc.. I just never fathomed I would see X on the Atlanta Falcons site, let alone Babble or ClusterStock.com.
Here are a few of the sites I found with Xoe on them..

http://www.freeprintablebehaviorcharts.com/whining.htm
http://life.atlantafalcons.com/index.php?showtopic=3841779
http://www.mepreport.com/category/websites/
http://machetera.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/how-about-a-little-congris-to-go-with-that-whine/
http://janeheller.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/03/like_cc_i_lack_feel.html
http://www.priorfatgirl.com/2008/11/full-force-rant-not-for-faint-of-heart.html
http://vnboards.ign.com/ac_friends/b5258/110273322/p1/?9
http://www.psystudent.nl/web/lijfstijl/57-mind/136-ik-weet-niet-wat-ik-wil
http://forums.mammothmountain.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2054&start=45
http://www.larkinsway.info/archive/2004_11_01_archive.html
http://www.vividblurry.com/2004/07/
http://www.tektoonics.com/etc/parody/pocemon/scholarship_believers_independently.html
http://gamma.sitelutions.com/~toucans/sbc/secret/whiner.html
http://www.californiagoldenblogs.com/2008/10/1/625774/fantasy-week-in-review-wee
http://www.campussqueeze.com/post/People-You-Hate–New-Years-Edition.aspx
http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/tags/whining/default.aspx
http://dessertyears.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/camp-no-whining-after-extended-kryptonite-exposure/
http://www.gamestv.org/event/8781-masuj-dzika-vs-punkd/
http://www.clusterstock.com/2008/8/stop-whining-about-high-gas-prices-it-s-more-affordable-now-than-in-1960s
http://aire.blogstest.arlingtonva.us/cfl_lighting/

I will attach some more pics of Xoe in that series and a photo of Xoe now..

March Recap

admin — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:26:16 +0000

Here is a small photo documentry of this past month..

1. The baby goats are alive and well. We are keeping Oreo, the one with a white nose. Milkshake is going to go to a new home that raises Aussies and has other goats.

2. Sage’s photograohy skills are manifesting. She took the 2nd photo in this set. That is Dave the kitten. Dave got fixed this month.

3. That is Milkshake cuddling with us.

4. Took that photo of my chuck norris sushi with the iphone.

5. Burned some boxes. Kids love fire. Should we be scared?

6. Nice photo of Dave, in black and white.

7. This month we all got our teeth cleaned.

8. Jinx holding a goat.

9. If Sage and Xoe get up early and we get out the door early, sometimes I reward them with a trip to the coffee shop.

Wild weather

admin — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:04:04 +0000

We have gotten several inches of rain over the last 24 hours. We officially have a few big run offs going through our property.. There is actually a loud current of water going through the goat field. I hope the kids do not try out swimming! The horse coral is knee deep in mud and muck. I closed the front pasture to save the ground from getting muddied from horses treading through the over saturated ground.

Just looked out the window and we are now getting a combination of huge wet snowflakes and rain. If the run off is as bad as it is here, I wonder if the local creeks are overflowing yet. I hope this year is not as full of flooding as last year was.

Updates. Photos of the babies

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:07:00 +0000

Babies!

admin — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:45:31 +0000

We have babies! Today while we were at work, our goats decided to multiply! We have 2 little guys. We have not sexed them yet.. Check them out.

January Update

admin — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 15:45:20 +0000

Goats- Jami Lynn is Looking Huge.
I just do not know.. We bought her bred and she never had babies.. Awesome-o humped her all fall (as a buckling) and now she is so fat her belly drags.. I want to say she is PG, but I do not want to get everyones hopes up. Croy says her little goat nipples are not so little anymore. Is she bred? I hope so.. I am going to stop saying she is. Maybe believing she is “jinxes” it.. hmm.

Horses are Fluffy.
Winter coats are thick and the horses are quite warm with their long fur. This winter has been particularly cold. I try not to throw a blanket on them unless the weather goes below 0. The weather man has not been to great at predicting the weather when it gets below 10… I missed putting the blankets on them on some of these freezing nights. The horses are still alive. No colds. I am suprised Sunny is as healthy as she is. She is in her upper 20’s and has Cushings Disease. Her disease has not gotten worse at all. We do not ride her anymore and she has become a lawn ornament. She has the life of companion.
Con and Roverd are best buds. The run and play all day. It is somewhat funny, because Con is so huge and Roverd is so small.

Cat show next weekend.
yes, you heard it right… Cat show. Our kitten Steve aka Reti Opening, has a cat show on Valentines Day weekend. He is our curly Laperm kitten that my friend Christina sold to us. I am going to show him with her. This should be fun. I have never shown CFA before. I used to show Pixie-bobs in TICA. I had 2 cats that ranked in the top 5 of their breed internationally, and I barely showed. It was fun.

The House is a Celebrity……. well sort of.
I have photos on Flickr of alot of the stuff that goes on here at Wind Ranch. In December, we got an interesting inquiry through Flickr. This person asked about our house, because they were building a Field of Dreams (not so big) house too. They were wondering about the things we would recommend to them. I said they needed great out door furniture, because we use the porches here, all of the time in the spring-fall.. After talking a little more, we found out they are building their house in Iowa! Not only that only about 15 miles from our house… amazing. We have become contacts in Flickr so that we can watch their house go up. Right now, they are starting their framing. Amy, the one who I am talking too, asked for a couple shots of the stairwell yesterday. She is having a hard time explaining it to the framers. I shot a couple and posted them. It is neat to follow their journey.
There is a creepy weird aspect of this connection. Since they live so close, though a suburb of this big city, there has been a chance we would run into them. Beyond email contact…. Well, at one of Xoe Futsal (indoor soccer) games, we ran into them.. They recognized Xoe from Flickr pix. Their son plays Futsal too. Croy and I both have had a chance to chat with them.. They seem like good people, but the creepy factor still lingers..

Our Family in a Nutshell.
Croy and I are still employed, even with the economic turmoil. We both quietly worry and are always listening and watching for red flags on our projects. You can never tell. Xoe is playing Futsal and is participating in soccer clinics in town. We are amazed every time we watch her play. her foot skills are really improving with these clinics. When our little local soccer league starts up, she is going to totally be bored.
Sage is starting to read more and more. As I have been trying this blog entry, she has been in here 3 or 4 times asking what this or that word is from her favorite Dick and Jane.. She is out on the sun porch reading in the swing, now.