Activities!

It seems the year has just flown by! I suppose that's because 70 of the days I spent riding....

This is a shot my dear friend Paula snapped while we were out on what turned out to be my last good ride with his shoes on. The weather was nice and we managed to sneak through some woods trails even though it was hunting season. I love that this horse is always happy to go down the trail with both ears forward. We had a great time!

Each weekend from Thanksgiving to New Year's was filled to the brim with activities. On this Sunday we really enjoyed seeing the Holy Family. Do they look familiar? My sister, her husband and their angel and baby. Sooo cute that little angel was, singing away with the rest of the children in the pageant. That sweet baby slept through the whole time.

The NH Farm Museum had a wonderful special event for Christmas. The Jones Farm was all decorated for the season. See the dried flowers in the windowsill? We ate chestnuts roasted on an open fire and they were delicious. We searched the barn for goodies and had a wonderful tour and wagon ride.

At home we decorated and prepared and celebrated. Caroling in the village here at a friend's party on a beautiful and thankfully not too cold evening. The cub scouts had a party and a caroling at a nursing home. We made 2 trips up to Vermont. One at Thanksgiving and another just after Christmas...blizzard and all. Lots of activities and fun!

Hope your holidays were as enjoyable as ours.

~Rachel

Fall

Coyote! This fall has been full of yips and howls, sightings and scat. And one missing hen while the chickens were out free ranging beyond the electrified fence. No more of that! They all stay in all the time now. This group of 3 coyote was so brazen and were passing through daily between 7 and 10am. The kids chased them off. I chased them off. We were getting quite tired of it really. We were worried about losing our new kittens too. I took this photo as there had been a discussion in a group I'm part of about coyote or coy-dog or coy-wolf, etc. I figured my photos might clear up for those what exactly we were hearing at night. We had singles pass through and groups of up to 5 for months on end this year. These animals are as tall as my 50 lb. border collie, but I bet they weigh about 35-45 lbs. maximum. This trio appeared to be a mom & her 2 young to me by the way they behaved. I think she was getting pretty desperate to have the young grow up and hunt for themselves. I think that is why she was looking for chicken. As soon as rifle season opened in November (deer) we stopped seeing the coyote. For wildlife sightings we have also seen opossum, mink, grey foxes (2 together) and the neighbor's dogs quite often :) Oh, a neighbor's horse too. Lots to look at out the windows.

My baby is 18. Here is my mom holding her newest grandson standing next to her oldest grandson. My sister welcomed the new little one this August. He's a big boy and growing! We enjoyed and nice afternoon of celebrating my son's 18th and visiting with one another. This fall has been busy for him. Wisdom teeth out and SATs. A weekend at MIT again (for both the teens) and now registering for college classes for spring semester to finish up his senior year of homeschooling. He will get dual credit for those. He is still so busy with odd jobs and friends and school. I can't imagine him moving out for next fall! Where did the time go?

Here is our littlest one on top of Blue Job with his good friend, T. They hiked it with the Cub Scout Pack 155. The pack is quite large and their den has a good number of boys. Scouting has been a good thing for our son this year.

This was a cool photo of what happens when you don't properly thin the carrots out. Cool, huh? We thinned most of them out but left one part of the row a little tighter. I think we pulled the last of them last weekend so that John could till in the piles of manure I kept moving over to the garden. This year I was lazy and decided to move some manure directly to the garden rather than letting it compost first. I remember Dad doing that many a time as I was growing up and it works out just fine as horse manure is not that hot and is mostly hay/grass anyhow. The garden was good this year but I was far too busy horsing around to spend much time pulling weeds, or thinning carrots. The teens worked in a garden each day for pay so it was hard to get them excited about gardening here at home. The little one was our most active gardener and I'm sure he will be the one to plan out the next one! I'll be interested to see what he wants to grow next year.

I'm still getting many, many horrible photos with the new camera. We are not good friends yet. Let's see how that goes in the future. :)

~Rachel

Kittens

Kittens! We have had so much fun watching and playing with kittens. This is our 12 year old cat, Mouse, whom the kittens would very much like to play. She allowed a little "cat and mouse" or should I say "kittens and Mouse" in which she would twitch her tail so they could jump at it. This game got old in about a week as the kittens wanted "more" of Mouse and she had had quite enough! She enjoyed being the only cat to go outside and that is where she would get some rest. That has ended now as the kittens are also coming and going; torturing our chickens and horse and following the dog and me on our daily walks around the land... what crazy little kittens.

Here is Jester for her close up.

Here the kittens are finally not scared of the dog anymore. Now Charlie has a routine of coming in from outside and spending a good minute or more rubbing himself all over the dog. Tossing his body into Tide's front paws and practically asking to be mauled. Tide is very restrained and often gives the kitten a brief sniff and then walks away. I'm a little worried about just how friendly and outgoing Charles is. The coyote here have been very brave. They should not be greeted by kittens.

Another of Charlie's habits is to sleep in curious positions. He will find a lap and "bloorp" off from it as our middle son says. He goes so limp during sleeping that he will start to slide off the lap and not ever stop himself until he has slowly dripped onto the floor. He also enjoys being upside down with his paws in the air.

Very, very entertaining.

~Rachel

Foliage

The foliage has been doing it's thing around here.

It is very sad though that we have been without a camera to capture much of it. Boo-hoo. I finally hit my breaking point as I was receiving e-mail after e-mail from my horse owning friends with photos of their rides and the beautiful NH fall foliage. We finally picked up a new camera for John's birthday and we're back in business. I snapped this shot while out on the trail last weekend. This is an unnamed puddle, as far as I know, along the snowmobile trails in New Durham where I was riding with my dear friend Lois.

I am still trying to "learn" the new camera so with any luck there will be more photos to post soon. I had the camera with me on my ride last night but I was too slow to capture either the red tailed fox or the otter that I saw while I was out there. The sun was setting quickly so the brilliance of the day was gone with the growing shadows. Oh well. I'm not sure how many leaves will be left on the branches after today's rain and tomorrow's wind do their work. The seasons do change in a hurry.

I'm nearly finished with a sweater and have several other projects that I'm inching along so I'll have to photograph those soon. The kittens, who we affectionately call "thing one and thing two" in their current phase, are very active and entertaining even if they are a bit destructive too! I'm sure we're due to photograph them soon too.

We grew some large and odd pumpkins...maybe I'll get a photo there too. Lots to leave to the imagination tonight! I'm looking forward to sharing photos on the blog again soon.

~Rachel

Summer

Ahhh Summer. The lazy days. We had quite a warm summer this year. One evening our little one came running to tell of a double rainbow. We enjoyed it and phone called all our neighbors to tell them to look outside. I will remember this one for all of the giggles my boys shared with me over the sharing of a beautiful sight with our friends.
Sailing was a great activity for the middle boy. Heading out on Lake Wentworth for the Point Breeze Race on this day. They didn't win but didn't lose either. I think the boys knew that crossing that line meant the end of sailing and they were simply having too much fun on the water! A competitive spirit they did not have and I couldn't be happier with their day.

I spent many Tuesday afternoons at the beach working away at my knitting and chatting with a circle of homeschooling moms while our kids waged battles with army men in the sand or played capture the flag in the trees or dove for fresh water clams and interesting rocks. Summer.
Kittens! I think there is nothing like kittens! We lost one of our dear cats just on the day or the day before she turned 12. She simply didn't come home. We were very saddened by our loss of Tiger Lily. 2 months later we brought home 2 little bundles of energy. A brother and sister from a litter in the neighborhood. Charlie is the black & white Tuxedo cat and Jest is his Calico sister. They are providing hours of kitten entertainment. As I type I can hear them chasing around upstairs.

Our middle son was very busy this summer with Driver's Ed and now has a license to drive. Can't believe that. Both teens worked at a local farm again and were busy with other odd jobs and friends. I realize they are young men now and not my little boys anymore. The oldest has odd jobs and requests for house-sitting, horse feeding, dog walking and other requests pretty consistantly as he is a reliable and hard worker.

Our anniversary found us getting away for a day of walking around some trails off the Kancamagus Highway. This remote pond was free of other tourists and we enjoyed walking the trail around it in the quiet.

~Rachel

Trail Ride Weekend

What a weekend! After lots of preparation by many people, the 4th of July trail ride ended up a hit. The ride went out from our little Stone Bridge Farm and people from the Southern Maine Association of Riding Trails enjoyed 2 days of pleasure trail riding plus camping and meals. It's quite the event.

We have a professional photographer (and friend of mine, thanks Dusty!) who came out in the deerfly filled woods to photograph riders on their way through. This is the view on Saturday. I think she took a fabulous photo of the King and I. :)

check her work out at dustyperin.com

This was on the way over the mountain on our 20 mile day. I was actually riding the trails with another lady on "point" which means we go out early and check that all of our markings are still in place for the riders to follow. The day was hot and steamy and peak deerfly season so we all donated a lot of blood to those...but the trails were fantastic and I had a great time. We had some long sections of good trail for cantering as well as some very technical trail going over the mountain.

The folks who were camping we set up in the back field where everyone had plenty of room.

The day trippers parked out front. Sunday's ride was through Branch Hill so no mountains, but a good river and a good brook to cross as well as the emaculate trails in that conservation land. Riders had options to cut the ride short as the temperatures were soaring into the 90s with high humidity. I think we only had 15 miles of trail marked out there anyhow. I didn't ride on Sunday as I was working back at home and going to the parade in town with my family. There were too many things calling me to stay home so I couldn't go and ride it. That's okay, I rode most of it marking the trail and I'll be back out there taking down the markings...the work isn't over yet!

here is another view of the campers out back. I can't get everyone in a single photo but 13 horses spent the night out there. I heard rave reports of "the campground" with the nights filled with fireflies. The neighbor donkeys kept the horses entertained too.

Whew! What a weekend.

~Rachel

Monkey Trunks

We enjoyed a day at Monkey Trunks in Tamworth, NH with other homeschoolers recently. This place is amazing. Pricey, but well worth it we think! There are different courses and interesting challenges which all 3 boys enjoyed all afternoon. Here is our middle son out in "the jungle".

And our oldest in the jungle too.

The little guy doing a zipline.

The middle boy out on the big structure.

And our oldest on the big structure too.

~Rachel