Peggy at the Fair

What is It?

As I strolled through the antique and farm produce building at the fair a nice gentleman of our acquaintance presented me with an object, the likes of which I had never seen before.

Mind you, when I was seven or eight, Mom and Dad opened an antique store so we grew up surrounded by cool and mysterious items of all sorts. Let's just say you can't fool me with a potato masher or a single row hand corn planter very easily.

However, the best I could do with this thing was some kind of bundt cake pan or something like that.

Alas, I was wrong.

Let's see if you can do better than I did. Answer in the comments and at the end of the fair I will share the answer.

Best guess will get credit for same.....

Do You Know...

I shamelessly stole this picture from someone...probably mom, herself.
 These two sure know how to have fun.

How long 65 years is? 

It is pretty darned long compared to most human doings. I don't have personal experience with the number as I am a year short of that particular age.....this is an important distinction by the way....but it seems like a pretty big deal, at least to me.

On this day in that long ago year......

Come on a My House, by Rosemary Clooney was number one on the Billboard charts.

Harry S. Truman was president.

Dragnet, I Love Lucy, Roy Rogers, Sky King, and the Red Skelton Hour were brand new TV shows, in black and white of course. Westerns were hot and adventure was high.

Iconic 1950 Chevys were barely broken in. Big, fat, rounded fenders were hot stuff and chrome was a boy's best friend.

Alice in Wonderland, (how perfectly fitting) African Queen, An American in Paris, and A Streetcar named Desire were big new movies.

In a small town in Upstate NY a young couple was getting married. Mom says that everyone told them that they were too young.....

Everyone was wrong I guess, because, all those years later, they are celebrating their 65th wedding anniversary today. In the interim they raised a family, started and operated several businesses, one of which is still in operation today, showed us all how much fun it is to be passionate about life and our interests and loved each other through thick and thin.

So Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad. We love you both.

Becky's Horse

Of course she has a real one too, Jack, but she sometimes makes horses and cats and such for our special friends.

This is a Halflinger she made for one of our family's dearest friends, who gave me my show ponies and taught me a large part of what I know about horses and ponies.

This is where you spend your time if you have a white horse.

Gambit

Gambit didn't place, but it was fun to watch him go. Very few ponies had any clue about side passing down the pole and putting their front feet in the hula hoop and pivoting around in a circle.

Diamond at the Fair

This is the pony-in-hand obstacle class at the Fonda Fair. Most of the ponies, ours included, had never been asked to side pass or pivot a circle with their feet in a hula hoop before. However, they all gave it a go....some with more success than others.

Diamond did us proud and came in third. The voices you hear are me shushing Peggy, Peggy singing, and the dairy judge in the other ring giving reasons.

Shopping for Beef

The boss and the kids went shopping yesterday and brought this guy home. He is a milking shorthorn from a nice herd near here. We like shorthorn beef better than anything else we have grown, although ours were always half Holstein.

As you can see he is well armed

The Only thing You Hear

Is crickets

I am ashamed to say that I find even minor mistakes in books awfully irritating. Like I was reading an otherwise entertaining novel yesterday and there were crickets chirping in the early spring.

Yeah, yeah, way beyond minor I know, but when you live by the seasons and are listening to three or four billion of them chirping around your yard.....and it sure as heck ain't spring....you begin to suspect that the author lives in town and observes the seasons through a closed window.

Fin loves crickets. He thinks they taste like chicken, only grittier.

There are myriad other insects as well.

Some of them are even pretty.

Bug

Very soon the box elder bugs and lady bugs will begin to filter through the walls like so many inopportune ghosts and I will wish, as every fall and winter, that there were out-sects!

There Be Dragons

Over New York

They flame in magic mountains

And sleep in crystal canyons

They mean no harm and only show themselves to the watchful
and weird
among us

Nevermore

Chasing a Common Nighthawk

The clothesline is a good place. Good breezes, good birds, which are not afraid of me because they consider me part of the wind-tossed laundry, green trees, gorgeous skies.......I hate it when winter forces the laundry drying indoors. I always see something good out there every single day.

The birding is phenomenal there and yesterday was no exception. 

Found

I was hanging up blankets contaminated by a teeny tiny leak in my waterbed. (Got to get one more small part and we will be remedying that situation.)

An absurdly loud series of calls came from the other side of the lilac bushes right next to me. It was loud enough that it spooked Diamond down by the barn where Liz was washing her for the fair next week.

Of course I looked up. Who wouldn't?

The sky from the clothesline

Right over my head flew a pair of Common Ravens. Talk about loud!

Not that they are rare or anything; we see at least a couple every year. However it was cool to know exactly what they were saying in such loud, raucous voices.

Thank you, Mr. Poe.

National Dog Day

Alarming News

This was taken from the porch this May.
We have seen this and several other foxes many times since

This story is just one reason why I think it is a good idea to own, and understand clearly the safe use of, a firearm if you live where there is a population of wild animals...which is pretty much everywhere.

It happened just a couple of miles from here in the same town in which we reside. The kids even know the folks involved.

We have plenty of foxes, right here on the farm, as attested to by the attrition of chickens and guinea fowl if ever they get out of the coops.

Rabid Fox Bites Young Girl

The Fairy Wogdog

Is no relation to either of ours....

Yesterday Mack laid a good one on me. Of course I should have known that a Jack Russell terrier would have guts of granite and a constitution to match, but I am used to Border Collies.

They are much more tender.

Anyhow, each morning I have been taking Fin out on a leash and letting Mack run loose...in order that neither be inside barking while I walked the other, in deference to the night shift. They have a great time mauling each other.

I think it will be a long time before I can trust them together though. Mack loves the pup, but he is so darned fierce. I fear he might hurt him without meaning to.

Then I bring Fin inside to have his breakfast and leave Mack out to hunt rats. Yesterday he was most successful....except that his chosen prey was the lovely carcass of a deceased chicken.

A long deceased chicken. Bones, feathers and decay.

Or actually, upon further research, two of them. I think he found them up under the small chicken coop, which is vacant because something...probably rats....was killing the teenaged chickens there.

Guess the clean up crew missed a couple.

I did not discover the crime until AFTER I had given Mack his breakfast. He was bulging in an interesting fashion and looked as if he might soon pup a nice litter.

Then all day long he ate newspapers. This is not normal for him. I guess he wanted to pad the bone ends or something. I worried, as worrywarts are prone to do. We had just finished getting the other pup over some typical Border Collie tummy troubles. Just what I needed.

However, this morning the signs of pregnancy have subsided and he seems to be his usual obnoxious and overbearing self, barking at something or other and tearing around like a wild man....btw, Jade went back on days and the darned dog is back on his cable....bark away, buddy, bark away....

Me, on the other hand....at least ten new grey hairs.....see, right here.....

Gem

If morning is, then ours is opal

All misty firmament and heart of fire, 

And trees the secret of the Orient within.

But whatever is up in the garden driving the dog nuts and making him bark.

Stopping my work and getting me out there, dog as excuse, and camera in hand

Be still.....

Go away wild thing, whatever you are, I need to write.

Fair Time

Lily

The fair is almost upon us, so one of the veterinarians from Midvale Veterinary Clinic, where we have done business longer than I have even been here, is here doing the "fair work". Getting legal for attending a show where many animals from many farms are all grouped together. This doctor is great with the horses and does a good job with pups too.

Coggins, rabies vaccinations, ditto Potomac Fever are being done on the horse and the three ponies. We have heard that Potomac is really bad this year so everybody got an extra booster. Even if they aren't going to the show they need their protections......

And lucky me, the doctor who is doing the work today had dog vaccines and medicines right on the truck.

Thus Fin got his rabies vaccination and his third distemper, lepto, etc. shot, plus some Frontline for the fleas that seem to have taken over his person....er....dogson.....puppyson? He saw fit to retaliate by peeing all over me during the rabies part of the deal.....

Ah, well, it's only laundry, right?

Meanwhile it is finally cool enough to feel lively again. I think I may be at least ten years younger than during recent weeks.