Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Finally! Rain!

Although it wasn't much, the farm finally got some of the wet stuff. I came home to a wet horse, wet yard, and puddles in the drive way. I couldn't have been happier if you had told me that I won the lottery. Its been so dry here in Houston that everything has dried up. I was hoping to let the ducks out into the pond once they were big enough, but since the pond totally dried up, they have been confined to Poultry Paradise and their dishpans of water. We found the catfish that was in the pond in a tree where the birds had gotten to him. The horses loved their pond to play in, but now its the only place growing fresh grass, so they are in it constantly. The pond is not deep enough to get recharged by groundwater and when the new septic system went in, the installer insisted (and I'm glad that he did) that the washing machine water which was being drained into the pond go into the septic so its not being refilled there. I really do miss my pond. I'm crossing my fingers that we get a lot of rain (and no hurricanes! I'm not ready to test my roof yet) this hurricane season so that Houston can come out of its -10 inches of rain and I can have my pond back.

Friday, June 3, 2011

What’s In a Name?

We have finally settled on a name for the mini-farm. I'm sure you're all relieved. We were looking for something that exemplified our lofty goals, characterized the place where the farm was, what we were trying to do, and of course, that we liked. You can imagine that we’ve been thinking about it for a while. We live in the Brazos River Plain, in the state of Texas, we do horses, chickens, the garden when it is up and running in the fall, and there has been talk of pygmy goats appearing in the pasture. I swear…they just appear!

So not just any name would do and as you know from past posts, I suck at naming things.

We kicked around names like:

River Bend Mini-Farm
Small Wonder Farm (which I loved, but was outvoted on)
Lone Star Mini-Farm
And all sorts of things based on everything under the sun.

And we still kept coming back to the one that seems to have stuck….

Lazy M Farm


Its a play on our last name, as well as the character of the farm.
The gardens will still be called Jessamine Gardens since the garden concept has only moved, not changed. Now I just have to get them rebuilt!

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Sadness at the Farm

This is a hard post to write.

We lost Buddy earlier this week. He ran out into the street and was severely injured by a neighbor who was driving too fast. We took him to the vet hoping that it wasn’t as serious as it looked. But in the end, we decided that it was far kinder to let him go than to force him to live with the kind of pain that the vet said he would be in and an uncertain at best prognosis. He is now over the Rainbow Bridge with some of his brothers and sisters that passed early in their lives. Anthony knows that Buddy is in a new and better home now. He seems to be pretty okay with it. Four year olds bounce back quick. Not so sure about the adults in the house.

We'll miss you, Buddy.