Hey :)

Just so y'all know...

(assuming any of y'all are still hanging around that is)

 

1 - I am alive

(for the most part)

 

2 - I have not been kidnapped by aliens

(at least that I know of)

 

3- I have not been swept up in a torrid romance 

a'la "Fifty Shades of Grey"

(bwahahaha)

4 - If anyone is actually still out there reading HotR, 

I promise to start blogging more ASAP!

(IS there anyone out there still?)

Friday Funny ~ Retiring Farmer

A retiring farmer needed to rid his farm of animals in preparation for selling his land. So he went to every house in his town.

To the houses where the man is the boss, he gave a horse. To the houses where the woman is the boss, a chicken was given.

He got toward the end of the street and saw a couple outside gardening.  "Who's the boss around here?" he asked.

"I am." said the man.

"I have a black horse and a brown horse," the farmer said, "which one would you like?"

The man thought for a minute and said, "The black one."

"No, no, no, get the brown one." the man's wife said.

"Here's your chicken." said the farmer.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Best Buddies

So long yet it seems like yesterday...

Eleven years, it should be a long time and yet so often it feels like yesterday.
I'm someone that doesn't remember the details of many days in the past.  There are certain moments that are hard to forget, but huge chunks of time in a whole day?  Not so much.  However September 11th, 2001 remains vivid to me.
So much so that driving to a job interview today, listening to the radio I made the mistake of listening to the news/talk channel and welling up.

great for a first impression, 

thank goodness I had time to compose myself

It seems this is the case for most of us, and I'd leave it there except I need to say shame on NBC!  While many people in the USA, Canada and other countries felt the pain of today what did NBC do?
Instead of observing a moment of silence starting at 8:46 am ET they kept with regular broadcasting.
Now if that had been something relevant to the day, or even another topic but something of substance and importance it may be forgivable.  But what did they air?  An interview about breast implants with a trashy 'reality tv' "star".  Disgusting.

**image above found via Google images.  Credit here**

Friday Funny ~ 21st Century Newspaper

I was visiting my son last night when I asked if I could borrow a newspaper.

"This is the 21st century," he said.  "I don't wast money on newspapers.  Here, you can borrow my iPad."

I can tell you this, that fly never knew what hit him.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Meet Norman

Hay!

It's been quite a spring & summer for weather.  Some places have had a horrible drought, others have been at the opposite end of the spectrum and had records amount of rain, and then it seems like a large portion of the States have suffered through an incredibly bad fire season.

Hay has been on the mind of a lot of horse owners I'm sure.  I know it was on mine, Saskatchewan was one of those places with lots of rain.  I swear it seemed to rain every 3rd day, at least.  There was a stretch (when my neighbour books off from his mine job to hay) that it rained 5 out of 7 days! 
Seriously, how do those of you that live in places where lots of rain is normal get your hay put up?

Then there was the challenge of finding someone to hire to cut & bale our hay.  This is our 3rd summer here and neither AP nor TW, who each did our hay the last two years, were able to this year. 
When we bought our place Pie & I had talked about buying baling equipment and pretty much everyone laughed at us and told us what a waste of our time & money that would be.  This year most of those same people were saying "Why don't you get your own equipment?" lol
Well with how things were going we looked at used stuff and thanks to my awesome stepdad B we bought an old self propelled swather and a used square baler.  Small world moment, I had talked to the swather guy on the phone but I didn't realize it was someone I KNOW until I pulled into his yard... it was an older guy from sorting that always asks if Voodoo is for sale.
In the meantime we were put in touch with a neighbour and he had the time to do our hay, and wanted to.  Funny how many people think it's not worth their time... I wouldn't be so quick to turn down a grand or so! lol

So the end result, our hay barn is stuffed full of small, hard-core rounds and there are 7 more sitting outside.  Also I have a lead on some squares that aren't too rich & were baled when it was dry and are available at a reasonable price (delivery included!).  Squares are always handy to have around.  AND next year we should be set to do our own hay! (well, B is set to do the hay lol)

The back rows are 9 bales across, 5 on the bottom row, 4 on the top.  There's "stuff" on the sides at the front so Pie could only get 3 bales in the front two rows.
(stuff... a huge bag of oats for the cows, straw bales, pallets and the few square bales I had left)

Check it out, literally stuffed to the rafters! :)

I figured it out, if we had had to buy this hay this year it would have cost us close to $3000.  We spent considerably less than that to have someone else cut & bale our field!

Pink!

I'm sure there are going to be lots of "Blue Moon" posts out in blogland.
So to try to change things up I thought I'd show you how ours started out, kinda pink: