This blog is about creating a picture of our lives at the Farmhouse.

Actually this foundation of our activities is covered in my SleepingDogRanch.com site, AND … after reviewing my other blogs, everything is pretty much covered.

All that’s left for here is an update. The goats are fine. Although, we no longer breed or sell our goats. The ones we have here are retired and are pets, except for Crystal. She has an attitude that shows more every day. But that’s a story for another time.

The chickens are doing well, giving us about 24 eggs a day. Wayyyyyyy more than two people can eat. Soooo, they get most of the eggs back because they love them. I toss the eggs on rocks to break the shell and the hens go wild over them!!! They deserve them. Unfortunately, I still haven’t managed to build an egg business though. Not one person that I gave free eggs to has called to order any more. Soooo, I won’t do that again. I REALLY don’t want to go to any farmers markets ’cause it’s either too early in the morning or it’s too hot. Sigh … guess I’m not the aggressive business person I once was.

The horses are our biggest pets. No surprise there. The boys are not anywhere as spoiled now as they will be next year. They got a cold water bath a couple of days ago because it’s so hot here. The only things running around here are the fans.

The bees are busy; but, they LIKE 90 degrees weather; just like my orchid, it’s glowing in this high humidity/high heat. After being without bees since last summer it feels good to have three hives again; I missed seeing them in the gardens. One package came from a local bee supplier and two nucs from a different supplier. I plan on watching them grow and chronicling the differences.

The dogs and cats are our indoor loves. Sadly we’ve lost a major love on March 12th; Meister died suddenly and unexpectedly. He had never been sick a day in his life then one day he couldn’t walk. We got him to the truck, he recovered then jumped in the truck on his own. Fifteen minutes into the trip to the vet, he died. There was nothing we could do. Our tears still flow and probably will forever when we think of him. He was my once in a lifetime, most cherished love.

On the good news side, we’re fostering a little lady who needed a home. Ms. Sadie is in the middle of her heartworm treatments with about three more weeks of highly restricted exercise. Bob and I take turn walking her with a lead on the back deck. Believe me, we’re all looking forward to the day when we can open the door and let her leap outside and run with the pack. She’s such a sweetie; we’ll do whatever we need to for her to get rid of these nasty heartworms. Did I mention that we support Southeast German Shorthaired Pointers Rescue (SE GSP)? Our last few GSPs have come from them and we’ll always have GSPs in our lives. Although my little Schnauzer Cassie is my nap buddy. She’s actually Wunder’s dog. He needed a buddy so we went to a local rescue and found Cassie. What ever we do, all our animals come from rescues.

Our cats are a different story. With them, we count on the Cat Gods to help us keep a full house. Unfortunately, we’ve lost cats too. Each passing hurts a great deal more then the last but we’ll never stop living with these angels. The years of love and pleasure by far outweigh the pain of the losses. Although, the Cat Gods amaze me without end. We no sooner lose a fur baby when another one finds us. We have room for five cats and so far the Cat Gods have blessed us with five fur babies. How they know, I’ll never be able to guess but our home and hearts are open.