Finally getting around to my poor neglected blog so I’m just going to jump in and give everyone an update.

We ended up having to postpone the barn raising. The month of May proved to be completely uncooperative dumping heavy rains on us for 22 days in a row. Never mind the fact that I couldn’t buy a raindrop now and the pasture and gardens are as crispy as the colonels fried chicken. C'est la vie. I'm not sure when we'll have the barn raising at this point but hoping for sometime this fall.  In the meantime, Josh and I have started setting the uprights for the stable by ourselves. 4 are up with too many more to go. We managed to get the horse fencing installed too! It's the really nice white wooden fence that you see at all the fancy farms in KY. I'm pretty happy with that, not only because it looks nice but because I get to play in the paint. For those of you not familiar with my handyman skills let me tell you, handing me a paint brush and a gallon of paint is a recipe for disaster. I swear a 5 yr old could make less of a mess! I have so much fun with it that I tend to forget that it's a real pain to get it out of my hair, clothing and pretty much anything else within my path, dogs included. I tend to get bored after awhile so something always seems to distract me and I invariably lean against whatever it is that I'm "transforming" coating myself in the process.

The gardens aren’t doing too well this year which really bums me out. We had expanded one of the areas quite a bit and added an additional 100' of potatoes but with drought conditions we haven’t even begun to harvest hardly anything. Not a single potato either, they grew like gangbusters early on but didn’t form tubers before the extreme heat and lack of rain By this time last year I was already canning tomatoes and freezing various squash and zucchini like a maniac. The upside is there aren’t as many weeds to pull. The meager produce that we have enjoyed has been baby carrots, green tomatoes (gosh I love those fried!), onions and a few yellow squash. I haven't given up yet and dutifully drag the garden hose out every morning to water everything, it’s hanging on but just barely...

Last week a friend and I made 6 batches of strawberry jam and it turned out great. The one thing that did produce well this year was the strawberries and while we still had to use store bought berries for the bulk of the jam making it was nice to have mine added to the mix. The lavender is doing great too as is the basil. I made a big batch of pesto and froze it ice cube trays for a reminder of warmer days this winter. Maybe I'll make another batch today?

On the business front, things really picked up this year; which was suprising (to me anyways) with the state of the economy. I've added a few students to my riding lesson program and sold "Dozer", the Amish Draft horse to a wonderful family in Broken Arrow. We also had 5 horses check in to board at the end of March. They arrived late one night and were welcomed to Oklahoma with a freak blizzard the next morning that dumped 10" of snow on us. It is no fun to trudge through snow to take care of 13 horses and muck stalls! I was under the impression that I was in pretty good physical shape until that day. We were all pretty happy to see it melt away within 24 hours. Two of the horses that came to stay here had foals at their sides and wow were they cute. I had forgotten just how much fun it is to watch frolicking babies in a pasture with my morning coffee. Today the horses will be leaving for another boarding facility closer to the owner's home leaving me with only 7 horses to care for.

We added a training arena to the property this spring and while I haven’t had the chance to use it as much as I'd like it is so convenient. The dimensions aren’t huge, only 100' X 120' but it works perfectly for keeping everyone tuned up. It's a perfect training arena. Thank you Josh Oh and I cant forget to mention that we now have the riding trails expanded enough to go around the entire perimeter of the property. Woo-hoo! Reclaiming the east side of the woods was no easy task. The briars put up a heroic fight.  Between them, the poison ivy and seed tick infantry it was hand to hand combat in some of those areas. Armed with shears, loppers, brush hog, chainsaw and bug spray we won. Ah the sweet smell of victory…and Deep Woods OFF.  Now it's just a matter of keeping it all maintained, so far so good.

We've decided to take a little break to go camping in a couple of weeks. Our very first since we bought this place 2 1/2 years ago. One of my friends has generously offered to feed the horses while we escape for a weekend. I'm not sure where we'll end up just yet but we will be taking 2 of the horses with us then meeting up with some of Josh's buddies from work. We are so excited to get a little break. I'll be sure and post about our adventure. Happy 4^th of July everyone!