Your (Ir)regular Installment of Canine Shenanigans

It's becoming tradition to sit out in the yard with the dogs for a little while after their Sunday afternoon nap.  We'll see how much longer that lasts...it's been getting cooler - yay!  I love the crisp, cool autumn temperatures.  :)  

Thea is 11 months old now.  She's definitely maturing into a very nice little dog, though I need to work with her on a few things - not her fault, just stuff I need to be more consistent about.

Thane likes to sit literally ON me, or right next to me when I'm sitting on the grass, so it's hard to get good pictures of him.  I managed a couple of close-ups today, lol.  

Thea is currently obsessed with this ball.  She's been carrying it around for a few days, and it's held up surprisingly well to her chewing on it.  She LOVES to chase it, and brings it to me or Mom over and over and over for us to throw it for her.  I got a few fun shots of her chasing it, though it's entertaining to throw a ball and then try to swing the camera up into position for a shot in time to catch the action.  :P

Lol, in the picture below, she's waiting for me to throw the ball.  (Ignore the white fuzzies in the yard...they're from a stuffed animal that she dissected.  I have a deal with the dogs - I rake the yard, and then they scatter toys, fuzzies, and sticks back across it...)

Here's one of Thane, doing what I call "soft ears."  He's so cute.  <3  He does this a lot, but it's surprisingly hard to get a good picture of it.

And one last one of my pretty girl.  Lol, I hope all the dog pictures don't bore people...the whole farm thing is taking a while, but the plan is to eventually also be spamming you guys with photos of goats, sheep, chickens, farm projects, etc.  :P  

Starting My Natural Fence

Lol, it's been a while since I've done a more farm-related post.

Today was a big day...this was the first time I actually did something on my property other than wander around.  

I started a fence - and not just any fence, but a natural one!  I did some research a while back on different options, and stumbled across a few ideas for natural fences.  There are some really neat ideas out there, but there was one in particular that made sense for my property, since it utilizes something that I have LOTS of - branches and brush.

Here are a couple pictures from today:

(Note - the orange tape marks one corner of the 4 acres I'm taking out of timber tax.)

Hopefully you can see these okay.  Basically, you use stakes or trees spaced a couple feet apart, and lay branches and brush in between them.  I used metal posts today because that's what I had on hand, but eventually I'd like to replace those with 8-foot wooden stakes and increase the fence height to 5-6 feet.  The snow gets deep out here - I need a tall fence so the dogs can't just hop over it in the winter!!

I'll start with the four acres I'll be building on, but over a period of a few years, I'd love to encircle the entire property (with a few holes for gates, of course!! :P ).

I think my "helpers" will be very tired of watching me drag around sticks by the time this thing is done.  Lol, maybe I should train them to help!!

A Setback

Lol, so, I made a boo-boo...a rather large one.  I jumped the gun with my lotion.  Even though I'd had mold problems with almost all of my test batches so far, I did some reading and thought I had things figured out...so I dove in and put quite a few hours (and dollars) into churning out around 100 bottles of lotion a couple weeks ago.

Since then, I've thrown out probably almost half of those due to mold...and looks like I've got a few more to throw out today.  

So...back to the drawing board.  I need to find some experts to consult, and see if they can give me advice to overcome this issue.  I admit that I'm tempted to cut my losses and give up....but the lotion is SO nice....I really do think it will sell well.  I just don't want to have to live in a sterile bubble in order to produce it, lol.  So we shall see.  Worst case, if I decide that making lotion isn't the right fit for me, I might be staying in retail a while longer, or perhaps I can come up with more creative artistic things to offer on my Etsy page.  

In happier news, Dad and I walked around a bit on my property yesterday and picked out a couple potential house sites.  It's fun standing on my own land and trying to visualize my little house sitting in the midst of a grove of trees.  

We also found one corner of my property that I hadn't previously identified, lol - probably because there was still snow on the ground the last time I visited that particular corner.  :P

Later, I took the dogs out to the woods, which I haven't done in a long time because we've had a pretty hot summer.  These past couple of days have been gloriously cool, though.  We visited the secret pond, and the dogs had a blast!  

Lol, I kept throwing sticks a little ways out to try to get Thea to swim, but she wasn't having it.

She and Thane ran several laps around the little pond at top speed, though.

Just a couple more weeks until it's officially fall...can you believe the summer is gone already?