Beyond Cows and Horses

L. J. Hand's New Booth

Our favorite farm store has a booth under the grandstand this year. It is very attractive and has Peggy-approved lollipops as well.

You can sign up for drawings to win cool stuff, chat with the nice people taking care of things, and check out the fine products offered.

Make sure to stop by when you visit the fair. 

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