Cool Developments of the Last Few Days

The trade network is up and running, albeit at a trickle. I met a neighbor, a really fun old character I'll call Berryman. He gave me five quarts of frozen raspberries, loganberries and boysenberries from his garden in exchange for four dozen eggs. I'm not certain I've ever eaten a loganberry, but I'm about to.

My next door neighbor is also accepting my irregular delivery of eggs to her front porch in exchange for fruit from her mature trees in season. I'm very excited about this trade because she has Bing cherries. I miss my Bing tree in Seattle. She'd give me fruit in any case - she says it mostly  just falls and rots these days - but I feel better giving her eggs. Keeps me from being a fruit-mooch.

The garden is beginning to look like something. Not much, but something. I planted ten broccoli starts and some more mixed greens. The peas have actual tendrils on them and are beginning to spread out, searching for something to grab onto and climb. I can see that some beets are coming up. 

But here's the coolest thing. Last week I had a farrier out to attend to Rosie's hooves. He's a big man, one of those guys that you can just feel the testosterone rolling off in waves as you get near him. I don't mean a macho cowboy type; just the opposite, he's a very quiet man in his mid-fifties. But he just oozed competence and manliness. And he had that pony's hooves done in an hour, flat. She basically took on look at him and said "okay, for YOU I'll stand still." This is the same pony that kicked the crap out of the last person who tried to trim her hooves.

(I realize I'm rambling. No, the coolest thing is not that I've started an affair with a handsome older man. Hold your horses.) 

He showed me how to start working with Rosie to get her more accustomed to being touched and having her feet worked on. I need to get her used to having her udder touched in preparation for birth. So yesterday I was leaning over her back and rubbing her belly on both sides down low near her udder. And I felt the baby pony kicking! He (or she) was kicking up a storm for about ten minutes. It was captivating. I almost cried.

I'm so excited to have a baby pony coming into my life. I dreamed about that back when I was eleven and had Bonnie Pony, but it was not to be. Now twenty-six years later.... dreams do come true.