I don't know about anybody else, but I'm getting tired of scrolling waaaaay down to find the bottom of the page, so this here's a continuation of "Share your homestead experiences & dreams".
How's the old serial line go? "When we last visited our heroes...."
CajuninKY was saying... "The Health Dept. would condemn my house but my barn is as neat as a pin! I have my priorities straight. LOL Friends say my barn doesn't even smell like a horse."
And I'm saying I wish I had a barn, a real barn, with loft and tack room and doors to shut out the wind! I'm soooo jealous!
It's on the list... a very long list. The food garden is first.
However, I doubt I'll keep it as clean as you do... I like the smell of the animals (up to a point) LOL
Homesteading experiences & dreams 2
I like to use the "skip to new" function at the top of the threads. It takes me directly to any new posts that have appeared since the last time I read the thread. Saves wear and tear on the scroll finger.
A new thread was needed to help the discussion load. Thanks.
Hi CA,
How's the farmer pirating going out in Zone 9? Stolen any more profits from the mouths of corporate agriculture today?
We awoke to 14 degrees and sunny here, farmering pretty much over for the year, just reduced to pirating. Inspired by this week's slide in the stock market again. Seems the best place for money is in one's own place these days.
Off to fling straw on beds...
Jay
Agree Jay. Horses smell just fine :) I miss my little pony and the Morgan I got later even though it's been years. Someday, again...
Ya wanna know somethin' weird?
Donkeys don't smell like horses. I mean, the barn does, but when you bury your nose in their neck, they smell different. I think it's that horses have a distinctive smell, and donkeys smell like their environment... sawdust, hay, grass, dirt.
Anybody else out there like to snort horse? LOL One hit takes me back to my little squirt years. =)
You mean to tell me that you think two horses smell alike?
I've always found that each horse, dog, cat etc had its own scent, just as people do.
Don't you think there's a general horsey smell, like there's a general doggie smell? That's what I'm talking about. A dog smells like a dog, not a horse, no matter what it's rolled in (ew). Even a barn cat still smells like a cat.
But to my nose a donkey doesn't have an obvious distinctive odor.
Haven't ever buried my nose in a cow... will have to rely on a cowperson to tell me if there's a eau de bovine...?
Aha. Thanks for clarifying. I see what you are getting at. Yes, there is a general horsey smell, or doggy smell etc. I find the scent varies a lot based on diet, fur/hair type and colouration. (eau de pigment?).
Any mules in your neighbourhood? Do you find they smell more like a horse or a donkey?
I used to have mules, too, and they are more in the horsey category, though slightly different and nowhere near as strong.
And my point was that a donkey doesn't seem to have 'eau de jackass'.
I was just reading the results of some cognitive research done in England that indicates mules are indeed smarter than either horses or donkeys. At least in recognizing symbols that indicate which bucket has the reward... "Mules learned to discriminate between more pairs of symbols than horses or donkeys, and did so more consistently. The mules performance was significantly better than either parent species and got faster over a period of time."
Now, considering that I have had two donkeys that open, and close gates behind themselves (I've watched) and know of at least a couple of others, it's a darn good thing that mules don't have opposible thumbs. Although those wiggly upper lips come close....
LOL! those wiggly upper lips are a great visual.
They may be a great visual, but in real time they are a pain in the neck. My donkeys use those upper lips of theirs to pull the pins from the corral panels, flip the latch on the stalls, and unclip the feed buckets.
Even my dumbest donkey, who stood and studied those corral panel pins for weeks, then fiddled with 'em for more weeks--she'd seen her brothers do it, so she knew it could be done--got good at opening the panels. In fact, she became the best at it. And I've got a JACK, so this was soooo not good. We wired the panels, so then they took to biting the wire and wiggling it til it broke.
I had mules for a few years, and I sure didn't have these problems. Maybe they lacked motivation. LOL Or curiosity... donkeys are one of the most curious critters I've owned. Once the initial question of 'Will it eat me?' is resolved. =)
Here's a little inspiration from Lynn Miller, Horse Farmer Extraordinaire
(when he's not yackin')...
"One man's farm: from it perimeter to its center never farther than one might walk with a load.
One woman's farm: never less than the circumference of the dream it represents.
One man's farm: no matter the scale so long as it befit an individual imagination and endeavor.
One woman's farm: a perfect interlocking fit to the next woman's farm, or the edge of nature.
One man's farm on balance, always on balance. Balance not as of style but as of manner. That farm must be the size which fits the true manner of the man. And the farm will be the prize hard-won of the deliberate maintenence of appropriate creativity."
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"There is so much we might say of profitability and all of it apology or rationale. There is so little we might say of the craft of farming and most of it promise and wealth. But this we can say, those particular demanding labors of one man's farm require of him that his mind be fully on his work. And so engaged, this man becomes his work and the work becomes the man."
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A much truer measure of a woman, a man than their wardrobe... "Honey, you look absolutely ravishing in that corn field!"
"Dear, those beets really set off your eyes!"
=o)