Our Neighbors Horses

As our neighbors ore out of town for a vacation, I get to help take care of their horses. I am in charge of giving one of them his medicine. No big deal but because I am not their regular care giver am a bit nervous doing this. I have now done it for a couple of days now, and am much more comfortable giving the meds. They are very friendly horses. The one on the right in the second picture Is the one I usually ride, her name is Cochina and the one getting the meds is the guy in the first picture, his name is Jackson Brown. I forget the third horses name, is that bad of me?
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Dangerous Woman!

This woman is the stupidest woman ever! Well,,,,,, she does know how to rake in the dough from other stupid people! So I guess she is bright enough to take advantage of her own kind. Dog eat dog! Imagine what she would do to our country! As far as the picture below..... I say, do it Sarah, do it!

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The Fire!

As we drove down to the town of Bisbee to celebrate Gay Pride. There is a stretch of road that runs across the valley from the town of Sierra Vista. Here they are experiencing majors fires! We saw them! The mountains above the city were covered in smoke and the fires were creeping down the hillsides. Into the town. They seemed to have reached the town. We saw the flames and massive pillars of smoke! It was an terrible site to see! This picture does not really capture the scene but gives you an idea. The town is in all that smoke!

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Location:Ok St,Bisbee,United States

Can I post while laying in bed?

This is a test to see just how easy it is to post remotely. Here is a picture of Aleah being herself,


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MORE OF BRAD THE TRUCK

I'm sending out these photos I guess as part of my healing, and to say good-by to my vehicle friend 'Brad'. Brad was so good looking, a little stud and a damn hard worker.
This is where I got hit. If it was any further back, like on the door, they say that I would not have lived with how fast the other driver was going.My poor Brad, I loved that truck. He served me well for many years. On the upper drivers side windshield is written o5 o1 09 this is the date it happened, January 9th 2005. Below that is Brad's A.Z. license #. Also notice how many vehicles there are in the impound lot, they drive really bad here in Tucson. The American way, only be concerned about yourself. SAD!The black truck on the left is the one that hit me, big bully pick on someone your own size. When we looked inside, it was littered with beer cans.See my shoe? on the floor of the drivers side? The drivers side door doesn't fully close any longer. While this was new and I was dealing with a head injury, Steve told me that after the accident I kept telling people that "What happened to me? I fell on my shoulder," but he kept correcting "no you were in an accident." Later when I read the police report it said that I was found near the scene. So now we think that I unbuckled myself ( I had a seat-belt bruise ) 'fell' out and then passed out. I guess we'll never know for sure. He did almost miss running into me, maybe he thought he could squeeze through. That's probably why he floored it. I have no memory of any of this, that bothers me a little, or maybe it's better that way. Yes, I don't want to remember!Good bye my friend. I'll miss you! We had great times together!

Our Chicken Coup, 6th in the series

The property is horse property, but we are not horse people. We moved here from San Francisco (we're city folk, and fitting in nicely). I can ride a horse and I do all the time, because my neighbors have horses and need riders to help keep their horses exercised, so they ask us. It's all open range out here so you can ride through everybody's property for miles. The previous family had horses and did roping in the roping arena ( I'll show it in the last picture). Because we don't have horses, I turned one side of the old and rustic stables into a chicken coup. That blue tank on the left is our well, pretty good water but hard, although, it sure is better then city water! The stables look old and they are, we kinda like that! There are two stables with a tack room in the middle. I turned the left side into the coup, the right side I plan to house swine for pork. Our house is to the left, about one hundred feet.
Inside this stable is the hen house, nesting boxes on the left center. We have six egg layers. All the girls have the same name, Matilda, chosen by my neighbor. My neighbor says that she can identify the one she named Matilda, but they're all Matilda to me. Plenty of eggs for us! We're always giving eggs away to all our friends. Six eggs a day, I just can't eat that many! The feed store buys them from me too, three bucks a dozen, not bad! Thank goodness, I'm not counting on that for income!
They like their yard, it is snake, coyote and bird of prey proof. They get all the green waste from our kitchen that I'd normally throw out or compost, they love it and wait for me each morning to come and give them a treat. As far as composting goes, I pick up all their droppings and that makes great compost. The term 'chicken shit' now takes on a whole new meaning for me these days! I surrounded the whole coup in chicken wire and snake wire, dug the heavy snake wire into the ground two feet and anchored it with pressured treated wood (to stop coyotes from digging under. The pig pen will be to the right in this picture. Swine coming in September after our next trip. We also raise 'Broiler Chickens' Chickens that you raise for two months for eating. I try to keep the freezer filled so as to not buy store bought chicken. These chicks are three weeks old and growing fast! They live happy lives, when I clean their separated coup each day, they get to run around with the egg layers. I can't let them out with the egg layers all the time because they'll be pecked on, you've heard of the pecking order, well this is where it comes from. I do the butchering myself, it's not difficult except for time to do the killing, never easy! These chicks have names too, Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dinner, Dinner, Dinner and Dinner.

This is our roping arena, it's old and very rustic. We use it as a place to run Kody and Aleah during the summer months, when snakes are everywhere. It is so open you can see snakes on the open ground, and it serves as a parking lot when we host our winter bonfires or for pool parties. Our neighbors stables are right there ( the white building), they have really nice stables because they are horse people. Real Cowboys and Cowgirls, husband, wife, son and daughter.
Here's Kody, excited to run after his ball when there are no rabbits to chase. You can see his Boxer head with the Greyhound body. He's my funny little guy! Quite a dog!!!

Back To Picton, The Last of The South Island

From the west coast we head along the north coast to Picton to catch the ferry back to the North Island. This coastline is also very beautiful! Full of deep fjords.
Something that I didn't mention before, is the harvesting of lumber in New Zealand. They have, what I think, is a really great way to produce lumber. Trees are grown like a crop. Planted and harvested continually like any crop. As we drove around both islands, we saw evidence of the process. Trees were cut down and replanted to keep the system going. They did it in a way that did not look like the clear cutting process that goes on here in the states. They do it in a way that is not offensive nor too obvious. As you can see in the picture above, there are areas that have no trees right next to areas that are forested. It looks so natural that you'd not have noticed it if I didn't point it out. It even looks good, well manicured. And I'm sure keeps the fire danger down too. When driving, we did notice the forests had all the same sized trees. There were forests that looked big and old, there were forests that looked young and new, with all the same aged trees. And then we'd come across a newly planted tract that looked just that. Freshly harvested and freshly planted, But that was not an eyesore because we knew the process and this is what happens in such a program. I loved it, as we saw signs that read, New Zealand's forests, Supplying the world in a sustainable way! Good on ya NZ!
The two pictures above show the port at Picton where the lumber is loaded and exported to where ever. Here I had a funny experience. I have had trouble understanding the Kiwi's continually on both islands because they tend to speak too quickly and don't pronounce consonants! Here we stopped to take these photos, there was a man there with his children. He was pointing out the lumber and telling them that "when he was a boy, this is the spot that they froze and exported the land." "Before they turned it over to exporting lumber, they exported the land here." I was baffled! I was overhearing him and at one point had to ask, "how did they export the land here?" He responded to me, "LAMB, not LAND". OH! I miss heard you I told him. It wasn't that funny, but was happening all over the place. I could not understand the people very well at all! And they said they were speaking English.
Here we ate dinner before we catch the ferry ride back to the North Island in the morning. It is a beautiful little village, Picton is.
And here is one of the ferries that carry people and autos back and forth.