Versatile Blogger

Thanks Ashley!
Ashley does a great blog about her beautiful old farm house at firsthomedreams.blogspot.com as well as swampdogs.blogspot.com about her equally beautiful (although special) golden.

The versatile blogger award is for new blogs so we can share traffic and direct your readers to other blogs they might love.




There are three rules to accepting:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave the award to you.

2. Share some things about yourself.

3. Send the award to some additional new/newer/newish blogs - someone who hasn't received the award before.

9 Things About Me/The Farm

1. I grew up wanting to be a vet, but decided later that I really didn't want to be around sick animals all day long. Sure you get to make them better, but you don't get to be attached to any of them, and you have to deal with bad owners, it just wasn't what I wanted.

  I also briefly considered being a zoo keeper, I even got to do the 'zoo keeper for a day' thing at the Toronto Zoo. Which was a LOAD of fun :). Even though most of it was cleaning out cages, the keepers were a little surprised at how eager a 14 year old quiet little girl could be to clean up poo... I am a fact-machine when it comes to animals and still read, listen to tons of scientific papers/podcasts etc.I find behavioral enrichment fascinating, and will probably subject my own animals too it once things settle down.

  I took courses at the University of Guelph in '03 in Agriculture, but quickly realized that was going to lead to me sitting behind a desk making policy about Agriculture (or something similar) and not knowing a thing about actual farming.

  More & more every day I realize how much this was what I've always wanted to do (except the cold!!). I get to be my own boss, I work by myself most of the time (+ the kids), set my own hours; and I get to work with animals, and get to know them as individuals. It is a lot of physical labour, which I enjoy, when my old hockey injured knee isn't acting up.

  That is way more information then you ever wanted or needed to know about why I wanted to become a farmer...

2. I was once a Vegetarian for an entire day, then we had steak for dinner. A lot of my friends are Vegetarians or Vegans, we all get along just fine (even though I love teasing my sister about being a veg-head). I'm an atheist, so I treat veag/vege the same way I would anyone's religion, those are your beliefs and I have as much respect for your freedom to practice them as you have of mine to not.

3. We've been looking for more then a year, and I finally found a puppy we'd like to adopt. Just waiting to hear back on the application. If they don't pick us it may be another year before I find another 'just the right fit' sort of puppy. The only problem is the puppy's name is "Matty" so we'd have a "Maddie" Madison (dog) and a "Maddie" Madaket horse, and that just isn't going to work!

4. I literally have not been able to find the time to ride since we moved in, mostly because my husband has to be home (and not working) to watch the kids so I can go for a boot; and that only seems to happen when it's pouring rain. My latest idiotic plan is to teach Meg to pull, so we can use her to log... the fancy Andy pony needs to earn her keep a bit better!
(Also, I frequently confuse people by calling the horses 'ponies' Meg is 15.2 (my height at 5'2") and Maddie is something over 16Hh)

5. I broke Megs to ride myself, we just had our 7th anniversary a few days ago. I bought her from her breeder as a 5 year old, as is traditional with Andies she was left out to grow then brought in around 5 to start training (I'm just glad they didn't roach her mane & dock her tail! Also traditional for Andy mares). She has 2 bay full-brothers (one was killed when he ran into a hay spear out in the field), 1 palomino full-sister who is her twin! and another buckskin full-brother who is just gorgeous.

6. When I first started the blog I really debated just keeping it to myself; but I've ready so many wonderful blogs, and watched so many great YouTube videos, I know how helpful they can be. So that's always been my goal, in a few years when we've got a better handle on things I want to be able to help other people who want to start a small farm. Share some of the trials as well as the joys we've had.

7. Our house was built sometime around the late 1800s although I'm not sure what is original and what is later. We have a TON of small reno jobs to do (like the floor in my office here!) but that's not going to get done until the barn stuff is finished.

8. I am the most forgetful person you'll ever meet, usually because I'm thinking about 3-4 other things while trying to talk to someone. I have to write everything down and set timers all the time or I will forget. Lately it's been leaving the well on into the livestock tank, 4 hours on the weekend... -doh!!- 

9. My lovely husband is an electrician - which rocks!
(He wasn't when I met him, but it was always his passion.)
He's also about the handiest person alive! I enjoy building things but I've conceded all that to the person around here that can actual build things square & so they last. Actually the best way to get him to do something is to threaten to do it myself! :D

10. I have no idea how to work the stats on this thing, they don't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I do have between 10-30 readers, which is amazing (!!!!) because I didn't think anyone would want to read this at all. I was once told by an english teacher that I would never make it as a writer because my style is too all over the place - and then they invented blogging...

Spreading the Love

Most of the blogs I follow I keep on my links so that I can see when new ones pop up! I encourage everyone to check them out, lots of them are little farms around Ontario.

1. http://girlmeetsfarm.blogspot.com 
More small-scale Ontario farmers, just starting out.
2. http://jacksjungle.weebly.com/1/post/2011/10/orpinton-progress.html
Really new blog, but he's done some neat stuff on chicken genetics already.

And apparently, I really need to start reading more blogs because that's all I've got!

These guys have already gotten it so I have to leave them off the list: Ronces Reno Diary - aka my house porn fix.


Check out everything Jason Acres does on his podcast: http://countrypodcast.com/. I love to give the poor guy a hard time over his livestock stuff, but he's very knowledgeable and does amazing amounts of research for all this 'casts. 


Fibre porn http://www.fiberfarm.com/blog.
(Wondering how many disappointed Google searches I'm going to get if I use that word one more time... porn, porn, porn! Oh second thoughts maybe I don't want readers that would google search 'farm, porn' ... )

I love Paradigm Farm! Their farm is just beautiful and they care so much for their retirees!