Blackberry Hill

We’ve found a name for our farm.  The more and more we explore, the more clear the name becomes.

Blackberry Hill

We laugh and joke that 18 of our 22 acres is covered in blackberries.  However, it just might be true!  We live on a hill and most of the land seems covered in blackberries.

We’ve been doing a lot of berry picking lately.  They freeze great and we’ll have plenty come winter.

Here’s a quick and easy recipe I’ve found for them:

Blackberry Dumplings

1 quart fresh or frozen blackberries (loose pack)

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided

3/4 teaspoon salt, divided

1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2/3 cup milk

half and half, whipped cream or ice cream, optional

In a Dutch oven, combine the blackberries, 1 cup sugar, 1/4 teaspoon salt and lemon extract.  Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, nutmeg and remaining sugar and salt.  Add milk; stir just until mixed.  (Dough will be very thick).

Drop by tablespoonfuls into six mounds onto hot blackberry mixture; cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in a dumpling comes out clean (do not lift the lid while cooking).  Spoon into serving dishes.  Serve with cream, ice cream or whipped cream if desired.  Yield: 6-8 servings.

And finally…

Meet Merlin!

(Pardon the mess, CP still has my desk buried in his clutter)

Merlin was also trapped in that car with George.  They are buddies.  The biggest tragedy is that their former person was inside volunteering for the kitty rescue when the vet tech at the rescue discovered them.

Both Merlin and George needed ice baths to bring their temps down from 105 degrees.  George got a funny haircut and shaved on the belly, Merlin seemed to not need it. Unfortunately, their bunny friend who was also in the car did not survive.

We were told that Merlin is 3 yrs old, but a peek at his teeth really puts him at 7 yrs of age.  He’s quite attached to George.  In fact, we call George Merlin’s “leash”.  He’s never very far from him.  Merlin is also sweet and loving.  He will stretch up to you, requesting that you pick him up, much like a demanding toddler “Uppie!  Uppie!”

He also guards the kitchen if someone is cooking.  And often we have to chase him out of there and off the counter as he is quite the scavenger.  One morning, CP found a tomato in his office with cat teeth marks in it.  Clearly, Merlin was hording it and hiding it for later.  It’s the oddest thing we’ve found him take so far.

These behaviors tell us that at some point, food was scarce for Merlin and George.  While George can no longer jump up higher than a chair seat, Merlin seems to provide for them both, when we’re not looking.  At this time, all the cats are free fed, food is plentiful and easily accessable.  Hopefully, with time and some corrections, Merlin’s scavenging behavior will disappear.

Oh, and if you’re curious, Merlin is indeed all white.  However, he has green eyes and hears just fine, when he wants to.

Merlin also has that same perpetual sad, scared look in his eyes that Casey has.  Hopefully time will help with this as well.

And now meet…

Rosie!

Officially, her name is Rosemary Anne, but we call her “Rosie”.  Kitty picked Rosie out to be her own kitty from the same shelter George and Merlin came from.

Rosie is just under a year old, has had a litter of kittens and was picked up as a stray.  She’s very teeny tiny, not even having grown into her ears as you can see above.  Rosie was spayed the day before we brought her home, so she will never have to be a mommy kitty again.  Hopefully, with some good food in her, she just might grow a bit bigger.

And that is the end of the surprise critters for now.  You just never know who will pop up next though!

Introducing….

MADDY!

Please meet Arab-Andalusian X Maddy’s Mocha Madness!

(Ok, she’s not papered, but that’s what we call her.)

Maddy is going to be Casey’s new best friend and Kitty’s new pony friend.  She’s been with us now for a week and is settling in nicely.

Now, originally, we were told that Maddy is a Quarab, but with careful consideration and observation, we believe that she is actually Arab- Andalusian.  There are several in the area, so it’s not an impossibility.

Maddy is 16 yrs old, has been a trail horse for the last 4-5 yrs and hasn’t been worked regularly in the past year.  She longes, ground drives, rides both huntseat and western and is calm and collected on the trails.  Someone, somewhere taught her more than just the basics.

So, now that you’ve met Maddy, I’ll have to keep you all in the loop as o what Maddy and Kitty are up to!

What else are we up to here on the farm?  Well, we’ve been wine tasting!  And Steph, I found a bottle of wine for $100. so keep me in mind when you get to work on that bucket list!

Anyways, we’ve been busy with farm cleanup and repairs.  We’ve come a long ways, but we’ve got a longer way to go yet until this place is suitable.  So far, we’ve hauled out 3 truck loads to the dump, taken down 35 branches, pulled about an entire hay season’s worth of twine out of the pasture, taken down some weird boards in the barn (18″ off the ground in the doorway.  What ever for??) among other things.  We’ve got quite a bit more to do yet such as take down a couple dead trees, pressure wash the chicken coop, put in gates, replace pasture fencing, string hotwire and replace the box, get the tack room set up and explore the trails more!  Oh, and we hope to get our neighbors to build a road through to the other side of our property where the ground is more level and pasture like so we can make an outdoor arena, another pasture and build another barn over the winter, hopefully.  Can’t wait to hack our way over the creek with a machete so we can see the land there!

More to come!  I’ll post again in a day or two!

testing

Testing, Testing! Just trying out the app I downloaded from my Blackberry! Hopefully this will let me post more often since my internet seems to be spotty.

Meet…

George!!!

George is a new addition to our family.  He is 11 yrs old and has a class IV heart murmur.  (That’s class IV out of V possible, which means pretty bad.)  George came from the same rescue we adopted Smudge from a couple years ago.  He was living in a car with his homeless owner and left in the car in over 100 degree heat while the owner was volunteering at the cat rescue shelter.  The shelter Vet Tech found out, took him away from her and fired her from her volunteer position.  George had to be put in an ice bath to bring his body temp down and sedated, which slowed his internal systems and prevented shock.

With his heart murmur, George may only have days or weeks left.  Any excitement could potentially kill him.  When we heard about his plight, we simply couldn’t leave him there.  After all, even old guys like George need a home where they’re loved and safe.  And in reality, there aren’t many people willing to adopt a kitty with a defective heart on his last legs.  So now George spends his days sitting around on comfy chairs, pillows and people watching all the activity around him and believing he’s found his retirement mecca.

A walk around my neighborhood

Here are some of the promised pics!  Let’s take a walk, shall we?

My house and the pasture from the bottom of the driveway.

The view from the back of the neighbor's tasting room

Same point of the drive above, but the other side

What's this? A face in the road!

More of the driveway, Kitty and Dude

And yet another view from the driveway. Did I mention it was a half mile long?

Leaves are falling and dying up by the mailbox. Is this from the triple digit temps not long ago?

A closeup of the vineyard below my pasture

And home again, up in the clouds

Gross!

Luna just ate a mouse one of the cats caught before I could get it away from her.  Yuck!

A Teaser

The view from my front deck

Let’s Try This Again, Shall We?

I had this all typed out yesterday and my internet connection conked out just as I hit “publish”.  Little did I realize that this had not auto-saved after the first couple minutes of writing.  Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be “The Longest Update Yet” as I had titled this piece.

Oh My!  I have so much to tell you all and well, this is going to turn into a novella.  Please bear with me.

I am officially at the new house and have been for some time.  We arrived here on the 16th, the date we were legally to take over this place to find the previous occupants were not out.  They promised to be out and have the place cleaned by the morning of the 17th.  Um, well, they didn’t clean.  They apparently didn’t attempt to clean at all.  And, they had essentially destroyed things since seeing this place and entering into contract back at the beginning of June.  I have one word for it…  “Ugh”!!

In the process of their moving, apparently the previous people sold off everything that wasn’t nailed down and some things that were.  Like fencing.  Who the hell takes the fencing with them when they go?  And gates!  What kind of hillbillies do that crap??  Well, we were about to find out.

So, on the 16th, they were still moving their few chickens.  On the 17th, from the back deck, I believed the coop smelled horrible.  Appearances led us to believe upon quick inspection that the coop hadn’t been cleaned in like, forever, and I didn’t investigate futher.  This past week, Kitty was poking around the coop and discovered the true source of the smell.  Rotten eggs.  There were 15 eggs left in the nesting boxes.  YUCK!!!  What sort of person loads up their 4 chickens after 8 pm one evening and doesn’t gather up or dispose of the eggs for what?  Weeks?  So, there are rotten eggs we need to clean up from the coop when CP has a minute to help us deal with the yellow jackets that have been feasting upon the putrid objects.

To top off my “hillbilly” comment, it appears as though they all just stood out on the front deck and hucked various things out into the pasture.  Shoes, bricks, plastic objects, a black garbage bag, a coffee can, empty dog food bags, etc.  Seriously, you’d think that after we entered into contract that they decided to fore go any attempts to keep the place picked up.

The barn contains two goat stalls.  There is so much crud and build up on the barn floor that you cannot close the stall doors.

Since we saw the property, they allowed animal(s) to be inside and urinate all over the family room carpet downstairs.

They left moldy hay, a couple truck loads of garbage and various bits of food stuff behind.

There is a goodly amount of work to do.

So, beings this has all happened, outside of the cats and dogs (and the kids if you wish to classify them as such), no animal can be moved to the property, yet.

Other than that, all here is going as well as can be expected.

We have recently hired an attorney to seriously fight for custody of Kitty, as verbal agreements have been broken and her paternal grandmother is attempting to sue for custody.  So, instead of trying to get along and keep the peace, I hired a shark.  Quite frankly, I’m tired of my rights being trod on and my good name being slandered by The Marine and his family.  Wish us luck as it’s going to get ugly, but hopefully will be all said and done in about 2 weeks.

Speaking of Kitty, she’s doing great!  She cleaned up at fair in the Intermediate Novice group with several blues and reds, not to mention the Hi-Point Trophy for the first day of fair.  She even beat out ALL the other kids in Gaming Showmanship on the last day of fair!  Mind you, this was with a month off of riding while she was at her father’s.  I am just so proud of her!

Doodle will be leaving us on Friday to go to New York with the Disney Princess and get all settled in before school starts.  We are very sad to see her go so soon.  We will not see her again until Christmas.  Doodle is growing like a weed and really beginning to become more and more her own person.  She had her first bicycle accident a couple weeks ago and it was pretty spectacular.  She’ll have a scar to show for it as I had to glue her head back together.  Lots of blood, little owie and she’s fine.  Also, she learned to not use her front brakes when going downhill!

Dude is soon to be 8!  I can hardly believe that I was in Alaska so long ago!  More, I can hardly believe he’s becoming so grown up!  Where did my little boy go?  We are going to be scheduling an appointment here with the Director of Special Education and the Principal of our local school (whom is the former Dir. of Special Ed) so that we can get Dude into the best placement possible and the right class for him from the beginning.  I don’t want to experience all this moving around from class to class garbage again.  I want Dude to have the most successful year possible from the start.

Casey somehow tangled with a hornets nest over the weekend and is now a “puffy pony”.  He’s doing ok, just puffy.  We had planned to go ride him as we were going to be down there by Tasha’s, but we found him all stung up instead.  ( This is the first boo-boo he’s had in the 10 months he’s been with me.)  Obviously, it wasn’t the right time to take a couple first rides on him for us.  This coming Saturday, Tasha will be taking Casey to a local show just to hang out and get used to the sights and sounds.  Then, Kitty will take a lesson on him on Sunday, provided he doesn’t get more owies.

Luna is doing great!  She’s going through those growth spurts that leave the short-haired lanky breeds looking thin and a bit harder to fatten up.  She’s wild and crazy and loves to zoom around or just hang out with the kids.

Copper is so much happier with all the room here.  And he’s impressed me with his recall too!  He’s never been put in a position to have it seriously tested until we moved here.  Now, even out of sight and far away from the house, he comes when called.  It may take a few minutes and we’ll hear him crashing through the underbrush, but he comes none the less!

Freya is happy and has gained a sparkle in her eye that’s been missing for the past year.  She’s been having a great time chasing bunnies and squirrels and getting herself full of weed seeds.  Freya is truly happy here.

The cats seem to be adjusting well.  Three of them like to be outside and come and go from the house.  However, Ms. Smudgie does not like the outside, not even the deck.  She is horrified at getting her pristine fur dirty.  That’s pretty ok with us.  She can continue being a house cat.

We adopted a couple more cats from the same rescue Smudge came from.  They are in quarantine here in the house until we know they’re health and won’t get a kitty cold from the stress of moving.  I will tell you more about both of them and they will be showcased here in the future.

There are some more critters in the works, but I’m going to save that for another blog.  And I have a big surprise!  But you’ll just have to wait for now as this blog is more than long enough!

Pictures of the new house to be showcased here soon!

I have so much catching up to do!  How are all of you?

Honey, I’m home!

I’m back online!  Did you miss me?  Well, I missed all of you!

CP picked up a wireless thingy-mabob from our cell carrier today since we only get that or satellite service up here on the mountain.

Anyways, I’ll be back to update fully tomorrow!