The Last Legend, a film by Farm Girl friend, Brant Hadfield. Shot largely (but not entirely) at Farm Narnia. Brant won several awards with this short film, which is so incredibly cool. What do you think about it?
Month: November 2013
Banana Conquers the Chaos | The Taming of the Tack Room
So one of the reasons that City Chick likes Banana so much is that Banana is not intimidated by the Farm Girl Scale of Doing Things. See, Farm Girl thinks, acts and delivers on epic levels. Our favorite motto at Farm Narnia is that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. There are two places where this is particularly apparent (and gets us into a little bit of trouble): The Studio (City Chick can’t even think about it . . . it threatens to explode her brain) and Farm Girl’s Tack Room.
Farm Girl’s Tack Room has had some, how to put this, extreme growth spurts over the last 18 months or so. Originally home to a smallish collection of grooming equipment, first-aid supplies and a handful of actual tack, it had, despite several attempts on both Farm Girl and City Chick’s parts, literally exploded after a few shopping excursions and several large donations to the rescue from a local tack sale. The sheer scale it was functioning on combined with some of the Kuhs Crew utilizing it when riding, the need to do an “insta-clean” of the barn – shoving anything in the aisle behind a closed door – and Farm Girl’s tendency to create a myriad of small piles . . . well, it looked as though the horse gods had thrown up a used tack and farm supply store in there, with a side of horse cookies and a garnish of horsehair.
City Chick made some brave attempts over the summer to tame the beast, errr, tack room. Farm Girl at one point moved everything into the hallway. City Chick made some, well, “edits” to the collection during its aisle days before it all got hurled back into the room and safely away behind a closed door during an “insta-clean”. City Chick felt the room had beaten her and her organizational zest. So whenever she felt urges to rearrange Farm Girl’s tack room, she’d slink off to dust, sweep and tidy her own tack room instead. (City Chick fully admits having an entire tack room when she has only one horse is ridiculous. But it is OK because having 3 saddles and 4 bridles for one horse is an absolute necessity, right?)
But then . . . the brilliant Banana got a bug up her butt (or a bee in her bonnet) . . . and 2 dedicated (to drinking and cleaning?) days later went from this (City Chick is pretty sure some cleaning had already happened before Banana thought to document – it already looks tidier in these):
To this:
There are still a few details to work on (the collection of halters might be a blog post in and of itself) and some additional, um, editing, to be done, but what a difference! Banana, you’re the best!
Wordless Wednesday: Respect the Cock (Truck)
Search Engine Typos | Sexy Rexy
City Chick loves the stats page for the blog. She finds it interesting to see what countries people are in when they are reading the blog (she has seen Great Britain, Switzerland, Germany and even Haiti once, but that’s because Twinkle Toes was there for work!), whether they found us because of the tags or maybe a friend shared it on Facebook, and it is nice to know people are actually reading what we post!
So, after she posted the videos from Tractor Supply yesterday, she checked the stats page and got a good laugh when Sexy Rexy inadvertently resulted in us getting a hit:
City Chick is pretty sure that was supposed to be a search for “big butt site of sexy girls”, but hope they enjoyed reading about Farm Girl and Sexy Rexy too, even if it wasn’t quite what they were looking for!
Saturday Shenanigans at Tractor Supply
Farm Girl has Kuhs Cowboy take her a ride:
City Chick crashing in “country luge”:
Farm Girl’s entry in “country luge”:
City Chick Loves Fall. | City Chick Hates Fall.
City Chick is really starting to have a love/hate relationship with fall. See, fall is the BEST riding weather. It is crisp, golden, leaves crunch under hooves and just magical. Unfortunately, it also coincides with the time of year where Sampson apparently thinks he has a lit stick of dynamite under his tail. For the non-riders out there, this particular phenomenon reminds you of exactly how fragile you are as (in City Chick’s case) you feel 1,500 pounds of muscle, tendon and hoof coiled and ready to fire underneath you, vibrating with the need for release, but not at your usual level of control at the usually easy give and take. While every horse generally feels pretty good and is sometimes a little stupid on those brisk and breezy sunshine drenched days, he’s pretty much settled into a new pattern of being up, up and away the minute City Chick swings a leg over him. In the summer, he’d pretty much nap unless he was actively being asked to move forward. City Chick misses her relatively mellow horse and wishes he would reappear over this turbo charged Suburban with failing brakes. This is the “winter horse”. City Chick likes her “summer horse”.
Case in point:
City Chick and Farm Girl FINALLY manage to get out on a ride together (it gets to be a rare thing during the event season – she obviously has to, you know, generate income to sustain the farm and all, which leaves less time for fun). Farm Girl is on Sexy Rexy, who might qualify as one of the calmest young horses to ever walk planet Earth, and both horses are moving at a walk. Sampson feels geared up to do more, but Sexy Rexy is still learning the ropes on a lot of things, so it tends to stay pretty low key when he’s on the trail, so City Chick stays at a nice steady walk. They turn into the park and meander their way down the big trail. Both horses were coming around a curve that lately has had a giant mulch pile that shifts around a lot. The horses obviously like to stare at it because it looks funny, but this time there was quite a bit of crashing going on in the woods behind it and both horses went into statue mode, sort of vibrating, waiting to see what was going to emerge. (Unfortunately, they also had dumb-dumb riders on them who were also staring intently at the noise – they probably should have been encouraged to just move along down the trail.) Lo and behold, 4 horses pop out of the trail – riders included!
Now, City Chick and Farm Girl do see other riders on these trails from time to time, but it can be weeks between sightings and they didn’t even realize that this trail went anywhere. City Chick distinctly remembers going down it 2 or 3 summers ago and it just sort of ended. You can imagine their surprise when they realized that these horses and riders were part of the Civil War re-enactment group from a nearby stable. Sexy Rexy settled down to patiently wait out the chat like a good fellow, Sampson had about 60 seconds of standing quietly in him before he got ants up his tail and had to walk off (and he knows better). As introductions are being exchanged, the noise starts up again and 5 more horses and riders emerge. Well, heck, now that’s a riding party! Farm Girl recognizes one of the riders and they begin a discussion regarding one of Farm Girl’s awesome friends (check out his Farm Video here – gorgeous, no?) who is working on a film project that requires Civil War soldiers and cavalry. And this group is the REAL DEAL – they were in the Mel Gibson movie, The Patriot, doing their thing. During all of this, their horses all stand like the well behaved and well trained creatures that they are and Sampson proceeds to make a horse’s patoot of himself, wiggling all over the place and even (horrors) pawing at the ground in impatience. One rider was over the discussion at this point as well and he announced he was going for a ride. They headed the way City Chick and Farm Girl had come, City Chick and Farm Girl pointed their mounts back in the direction of the field, continuing on their way home.
City Chick and Sampson head down a longer, rather steep hill and through a little copse of trees to start heading back to the farm. It isn’t unusual to blast up the small hill through the copse and then let him stretch is legs down the backside of the park, but this was supposed to be a low key, walking only ride. He expressed his displeasure at the continuation of the slow place (although City Chick can’t tell you the last time she did let him out on that stretch, it has been a few months!) and became a prancing, fire-breathing beast. City Chick was not happy – she wanted the plodding plow horse version at this point. This is, of course, where some completely random guy comes running around the corner of the field (where the visibility is obscured by tall native grasses) while wearing jeans (!) and asks if he’s heading the right direction towards the football fields, oblivious to effect his running straight towards two horses has caused. The effect is now two, large and spooking beasts with Sampson clearly considering a run towards home.
Collecting the two beasts back up and into some semblance of a walk accomplished, City Chick and Farm Girl again move forward. And then the crashing noise again . . . repeat of the stopping and staring on high alert. And here comes the re-enactment crew again! Sampson is close to losing it again, so she just starts letting him move for home, Sexy Rexy at his side, with Farm Girl calling over her shoulder and inviting the group back to see the farm. And thus the start of the least fun ride home ever.
See, summer horse Sampson, would have been more than happy to plod along – he might have been interested in one of the new horses, but nothing would have been a big deal. Winter horse, not so much. Two big scoots resulting in a rather quick canter (we will give him the benefit of the doubt on this one – he did slow down and stop, so we won’t call it an actual bolt) that City Chick just had to ride out for a few strides before she could ask him to come back down. He was just so worried about everything going on behind him, but City Chick couldn’t convince him to walk like a normal, non-turbo horse and stay at the back of the pack. And so, she could feel loop building – the concern and worry that he was going to actually do a bolt, him reading that tenseness in her and wondering what he should be frightened of and that he should be ready to bolt to get them out of there, feeding back into her concern of him bolting. Someone asked if the big gray horse was afraid of the cars going down the road and all City Chick could think was, “No, but his rider definitely is afraid of getting in the way of one of those cars!” And so, for a very tense and not-fun half mile, City Chick was a failure as both a rider and a leader for Sampson. Once they made the turn down for the road to the farm, both she and Sampson dropped on the tension scale a few notches , but City Chick was pretty happy to put her feet back on the ground that afternoon. Horses . . . sigh. They bring out the best and worst in all of us that have the “pony pox”, an incurable disease that results in always wanting to be eating, breathing, sleeping horses at all times.
Farm Girl continued to tour the group through the property, as Sexy Rexy tries to be a properly behaved beastie, while City Chick cleaned her fire-breathing dragon up and turned him back out. The rest of the group caught up while she was near the pasture – aren’t they a sight?
And so . . . City Chick has a winter horse right now. A huge, fat creature that is permanently dressed in his pony fuzzle long underwear coat resulting in a huge, fat AND sweating creature who is ready to run at the slightest of anything. Ugh. Some ideas must be tried to give him a chance to come back into being a horse citizen of good standing (this is not his only incident in the last three weeks), so stay tuned. City Chick has enough stress from her real life at this time of the year, must her stress relief start being a stress generator too? Is it spring yet?
Poor Dooley | When no one wants you because you aren’t broken.
Meet Dooley:
Dooley is under a year old and a very happy and go-lucky fellow. He’s a nifty dog, learns very quickly and hasn’t met a single person who isn’t immediately on his BFF list. He is a little bouncy (but hey – he’s a puppy!) and he likes to carry things in his mouth like car keys and his favorite stuffed duck. He will bravely lead giant ponies like Sampson. He can walk himself on a leash. He comes when you call him, even if there is something very interesting going on. He’s pretty awesome and he’s pretty satisfied with his life so far. He knows he has all the food he can eat, lots of great people to meet and lots of space to run with puppy friends.
And that’s the problem. Remember the puppy with the broken jaw who had very clearly had a horribly crappy life? We had lots of interest on adopting him. We had another puppy come in that City Chick never even got to meet because he immediately went home with one of our clients – poor pup’s leg was all chewed up and infected and he had lots of puncture marks. He would have been snatched up very quickly if he hadn’t gotten adopted about 3 hours after he arrived. He had had a crappy life too. But Dooley hasn’t had a horribly crappy life from what we can see. He had a sort of crappy day where he was on his own for awhile before Garden Girl found him on the side of the road and brought him back to the Farm. Dooley isn’t damaged. There is no recovery time on him as he never was injured. He’s neutered, microchipped and fully vaccinated, well socialized and very capable of being a great dog. And no one wants him.
City Chick does some work with multiple pet rescue organizations through her real job. And she’s always amazed at some of these great dogs that have trouble finding homes. She doesn’t get it. Many of them have similar stories – a kind person finds them dumped on the side of the road, no obvious damage physically or mentally, just had the bad luck of having an owner that didn’t recognize them as living and sentient beings and threw them out with the garbage.
So . . . City Chick is putting it out there. Dooley is way too awesome to be hanging out at the Farm. The Farm is full up on full-time Farm Dogs, so he really, really, really would like a person or a family to call his own. He is housebroken. He gets along with with pretty much everyone – poultry, horses, cows, goats, people, dogs. City Chick has seen the farm cats teach him some manners – he thinks they are really fun to bark at and he gets his face a little too close to theirs sometimes. He is a little baffled at pigs – he doesn’t do anything but bark at them to see if they’ll play. They won’t. They are disgusted by his antics. He likes kids, but can be a little bit bouncy/excitable for smaller kiddos unless they are the rough and tumble type of child. He would be a fantastic running buddy as he loves to get out and move.
So, Dooley says, “Please – will you help me find my home? I promise I’ll be as good as I know how and will happily learn anything you need to teach me. I’ll love you lots and lots and always make you laugh and be so glad that you found me.”
Kuhs Farm 