Why the seventh day, you ask? That's when God was supposed to be resting. Up to the seventh day, God had seen that everything He'd made was good. All the creations got "SATISFACTORY" on their report cards. My friends, the horse is not good. The horse is heaven made flesh, the grand finale.I spent the past two days volunteering at the Rolex 3 Day Eventing Cup, held at the beautiful Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington. Of the three events that lend the Cup its name - dressage, stadium jumping, and cross country - I saw only the dressage, and several exhibitions between.Dressage is more than polished horse dancing. With roots in martial maneuvers,  modern dressage is really an Associates Degree in General Education for any horse. It teaches him/her how to balance and carry himself, how to relax and communicate with his rider through seat, leg, and hand aids. Dressage aims to take the horse's best natural movement, refine it, and replicate it under saddle.Thousands of years ago, on nearly every continent on earth, some guy saw one of those four-legged "big dogs" flowing across the ground, truly "flying without wings", and said, "I bet I can ride that." And "the world was conquered from the back of the horse".The Purina booth had a sign saying "A HOME FOR EVERY HORSE". That is a nice dream, but it will never be a reality. The number of ex-racehorses looking for adoptive homes is by itself astounding. As I drove through the rolling bluegrass this morning I found myself wondering if horses weren't better off when we were riding them into war. We needed them, so we treated them better. Until the 20th century, stealing one horse would get you hanged! Sure, warfare is a grisly end, but more horses died useful and less of well-intentioned neglect.Don't eviscerate me just yet....Even the cultures who worshipped the horse drank fermented mare's milk, ate horse flesh, and wore horsehide. Is it possible the horse was put here for us to exploit?Certainly the horse is used as a sign of wealth and status today! They sell for about a dollar a pound for meat...and fetch millions of dollars for the whisper of a promise in a genealogy chart and a one minute turn in a ring. Nods to equine themes sell for a mint in the fashion world. I suppose one could argue that even the $7 funnel cakes and $15 sodas sold this weekend are because of horses. And who sponsors the event? Rolex. Horses, money, prestige.At the top of a lush grassy hill overlooking this week's chaos, the Hall of Champions holds twice-daily shows. I went to the first show this morning to see the first horse I ever followed, the first whose photos I cut out of the paper...the reason I fell in love with Thoroughbreds.
He strode into the ring with 23 years of experience, slightly bored by the routine of adoration, alternately yawning and vogueing for the cameras. His variegated tail swung near his three white socks and the morning sun shone bronze on his dappled bay coat. He looked at once like any other horse (80% of Thoroughbreds are bay) and like my every girlhood fantasy come to life, Equus incarnate. 16-1 record. A Thoroughbred god. I cried. I cried like my mother cries in movies. When the show was over I hung around. I wanted to have a moment to myself, a moment I could look him in the eye and say, "Thank you for my life."
Standing reverently in front of his stall (still weeping for reasons I could not explain), thrilled to be pointedly ignored by a celebrity on my bucket list, I heard a woman behind me ask, "Would you like us to get him out for you?"
Did the single loss come against Alphabet Soup?!?!?! (The answer is yes.)
Which is how, aside from a loitering foreign photographer, I spent a blissful ten minutes alone scratching, petting, cooing to, and having my photo taken with Cigar.Horses exist to bring us joy. They exist to remind us what it's like to live moment by moment, to feel with our whole selves, to temper our weaknesses and do what we were put on the earth to do. Dozens of vendors are selling overpriced artificial aids and fancy tack, $450 boots, $300 coats, and $60 sweatshirts. $100 umbrellas, $2000 used stall doors. None of it will make people better riders. I got two autographs (US Eventing Olympian Boyd Miller and god of riding William Fox-Pitt), met wonderful people, and gained a lot of inspiration. That won't make me a better rider either. The only way to be better is to honor my horse as intently as we honor the cult of equistrianism.The horse is built like a girder; in the proper position it's quite difficult to fall off, but the horse is only able to carry weight over a certain section of his body. He is powerful, fast, tall, savage, and he knows it. He is curious, a herd animal who mistrusts the unknown and hates being alone. Those traits are why horse and rider bond so easily. Yet with all his physical prowess the horse molds himself to any task we set, from war or sports to police work and disability service ponies. They adapt to every rider, sold throughout their lives to adapt over and over to new feed, new herd hierarchies, new tack, new work. Sometimes they learn to retire gracefully. Sometimes they cope, just trying to get by.As a girl I wanted to be reincarnated as a filly trained by Carl Nafzger and bred to Cigar. If I'd had my wish I would only have seen him once. Thanks to Rolex I can see him every year. Thanks to Cigar, I have horses. Thanks to Rolex, I'm reminded why."Thou shalt fly without wings...."

This is me in my super attractive, bound into sausage, Michelin Man white bee get-up. For the record, I'm not quite this fat. I'm wearing two shirts, gloves, and a tool bag that's pulling both pairs of pants down.
Yesterday I moved over 20,000 bees. I noticed wasps flying into the hive box (the white one) and decided it was time to move the nucs in, rather than risk a wasp/bee war. Besides the smoker going out, everything went smoothly!
A word about smoking: Smoke of any kind seems to turn bees into potheads. They become docile and gorge themselves on honey. These bees don't know me yet so they were a little defensive. When a bee stings, the abdominal muscles and venom sac are ripped out with the stinger and the bee dies. We smoke them to calm them down and prevent such a scenario.
The first five minutes was the worst; all those bees...VERY intimidating. I remembered my dad's cautionary wisdom: "Bees move slowly. Make sure you do, too." Every time the bees started to fly at me I stopped and waited for them to calm down. Once I had to walk away for a minute, and one hardcore guard followed me halfway across the pasture, but otherwise they readily accepted being moved.
The frames were surprisingly heavy, literally dripping with honey! I checked both sides of each, looking for the queen (found Nuc #1 but not Nuc #2), cells full of brood, signs of disease (none!). It's been fun watching them land on the hive, legs fat and white with pollen. All that pollen was packed tightly into cells for them to feed on! I didn't find any brood, but I may not have been looking correctly.
On the bottom of one frame in Nuc #1 (The White Hive) I found a few queen cups, which are cells built for queen eggs. It's normal, and harmless as long as the current queen doesn't lay any eggs in them. If I come back and find them capped it means the workers are rearing a new queen. This may mean my current queen has failed or that the hive is at capacity and preparing to swarm. Then I'll have to decide whether to rear the new queen to start a third colony or to cut the queen caps off the frame.
In 4-5 days I'll check the hives again, add a few frames of new foundation, and possibly add another super for them to move into. They haven't touched the medicated syrup I provided, I assume because they're so excited about all the food sources around their new home! I'm proud of the horses and dogs for leaving the hives alone, and it makes me so happy to see the girls hard at work on the redbud in the front yard or the Bartlett pears in the back.
And the best part of yesterday? No stings!!

You can't be a farmer and be afraid of hard work. Yesterday I worked a bed that has been sitting for years - cleaned it of weeds and grass, edged it, planted, trimmed bushes. I stained the floor of the MOST awesome duck house EVER, stained the entire chicken coop, and started redoing the front pasture cross fencing.
Today I hurt. Not a lot, just enough to make me rethink working as hard again today. I'm not used to this. I've been ignoring my body and pushing ahead for years...which is why my body is such a mess.
It's so tempting not to honor my body. I'm good at it. I'm competitive and focused, especially when getting things done depends on me. There's a limited amount of time when the weather is good enough to work outdoors but not hot as a thousand melting suns. I spend the rest of the year planning for the farm so it's intensely frustrating when I'm unable to execute those plans on my schedule. Those are the breaks.
I feel I have been given a second chance through prolotherapy. If building my dreams means I have to slow down...that seems like a pretty generous trade-off. One task, one animal, one fence post at a time. Instead of setting to-do lists for the day, I have to write general lists with target dates...and learn to be okay with not achieving them.
Still, I have the MOST AWESOME DUCK HOUSE EVER. :-)

The bees are here. Photos are not. They seem friendly - aside from being angry that one of them got squished in transport, they seemed to accept me when I went out to feed them. The bees will stay in their nucs until we have a day of good weather and light wind. Then I'll move them into the hives.

The Duck Hut is going to be green and the duck prints on the ramp? You guessed it - yellow! U of O colors to give my KY ducks some inspiration! :-) Have to paint the chicken coop Cardinal red.....

Well, here I am, all ready to get bees and stuff. My smoker is full of fuel, my sugar syrup is prepped for fumagillin, I have jars for my Boardman feeders.... Wish me luck!

Warren Cadbury Cottontail passed away this week of complications due to trauma and dysbiosis. He is hopping around the great garden in the sky. It took about 4 days after Warren died for George to forgive me. He's a sweet dog who can hold a surprisingly long grudge!

I'm picking up the bees tomorrow!! Someone asked if I'm scared. If I were scared I wouldn't be acquiring 40,000 bees. Nor am I excited - getting bees isn't like getting a puppy. There will be no bonding and likely very few photos. I'm interested, and proud to be doing my part to help the ecosystem. Hopefully the weather will be decent. It's good timing - the trees decided to bloom this week (helped, I'm sure, by a few days of temps above 80F) so there's plenty of food.

Lovely Ila taught me how to blend colors this week, so now I have a ball of roving I really must take a photo of. I call it Ballyhoo Sunset, and it's for sale if anyone's interested. Otherwise I'll work it myself.

Ila also found all the birds I could ever need for the farm! And just in time, too - the chicken coop is nearly finished and the duck house just needs to have the ramp/door screwed on! Next weekend we'll be getting 6 turkeys, 4 ducks, and 20 chickens. Look on the homepage for eggs!

Champagne got into a bag of garbage and we're not sure whether or not she ingested any d-Con, so she's on activated charcoal for a few days. The upside is, charcoal cures "flatus and gas", so she'll be more pleasant to be around!

During the rainy days I've been working on a signpost for the garden. As soon as the rain settles the dirt in the beds I'll refill and begin planting.

Finally, here are some photos of Bullet from Wampa Stomp's Shearing Day! Chuck and Ila hosted a great educational experience with lots of hands-on fun for all ages!

Warren is still alive. He bit me twice yesterday, refusing to take formula. He did, however, express an earnest intention to explore as far as he could drag his wounded back legs. The extent of his disability remains unclear; he can move his legs but chooses not to, can feel when I tickle his feet and responds when I wipe his tail, but he seems unable to get his feet under him. I think (hope) it's muscle damage; nothing feels broken.
Warren lost a quarter of an ounce today. That's...disconcerting, for a bunny. He should be making gains. His eyes are open, ears are erect, he's beginning to nibble at greens and wants very much to explore. But he won't eat, and without ingesting cecotrophes his gut won't function correctly to allow him to digest greens.
What are cecotrophes, you ask? Simply put, it's poop. Yes, rabbits eat their own poop. Their little systems require 55 separate organisms in order to function properly. Cecotrophes (sticky smelly night poops) provide these, and normally Mother Bunny would provide them from her own rich supply. I've been collecting from the neighbors' bunnies, mixing a dropping into Warren's formula, and trying to feed that way. And no, the poop is not keeping him from eating. It's pretty standard procedure, apparently.
This afternoon Warren had a change of heart. He drank almost .75cc in one go! Hopefully it's enough to put weight back on him. I need to continue the formula until he's pooping normally on his own. (He has yet to poop. While this worries me most of all, I'm calming myself with the knowledge that he also hasn't eaten and has much to overcome.)
If Warren does not begin evacuating soon he could die. The trauma to his midsection and hind end makes me suspicious that he may have sustained damage to the nerves that fire those impulses. Yet when I wipe his butt (another Mom Bunny thing), I see him strain.

ifBaby cottontails have a 90% mortality rate in human hands. It's nature's way of saying, "This is food. Don't try." And yet...Warren Cadbury Cottontail has survived over 24 hours in my care. I didn't expect him to last the night. I don't expect he will be alive tomorrow. Rationally, I probably should've let George eat him, instead of chasing the dog around, screaming, and literally prising the bunny from George's smelly, drooling Jaws of Death. What can I say? I'm a woman. A bleeding heart. A fool. An animal lover. And, despite jading life experiences, I still believe in goodness, compassion, the will to survive, and that love goes a long way to fixing everything. Even baby bunnies.
So Warren Cadbury Cottontail, his back legs weak, his puncture wound scabbed over, sleeps in an artificial warren: a cat carrier with a towel, some scrap wool, some greens (which he's too little to eat), and two microwaved gloves (one with elbow macaroni, the other with rice). I feed him from a syringe several times a day, a mixture of kitten milk replacer and electrolyte solution which may not fulfill his nutritional demands. This morning I collected cecotrophes from the bunnies next door, because bunnies eat some of their poop to encourage proper gut flora. He wouldn't take it, and no other probiotic will do. I weigh him twice a day, because a day of weight plateau or loss can mean death to a bunny. Honestly, I don't know how they survive.
Warren's a fighter. I hope he makes it. And if he doesn't, he won't die alone or in pieces.

This week I've been carding wool like mad to prep it for dyeing! I'm pretty happy with this first batch; planning to card the colors together with 2 oz of natural wool for a total of 6 oz called Ballyhoo Sunrise.
Next is 12 oz of (hopefully) blue and green.

In other news, Easter Sunday was tons of fun! Chuck and Ila's daughter Prudence and her boyfriend Jacob are visiting from California (and they brought sunshine!). They wanted to ride so I saddled the boys and off they went, around Wampa Stomp's verdant front yard. :-) Even got Ila up on Bullet! Thank you Jacob for allowing me to use your ride for video!

Bees are coming April 13th! Very exciting!