rainbow on the farm

rainbow on the farm

Spirit moving sheep off the hay field

Monday, July 11, 2011

water world



Do you remember months ago I had wondered what Mother Nature might have planned for our summer? Well, seems she still have a bug up her rear end.
The weather has been all over the charts. Crazy down draft winds, heat , humidity, unusually cool.

Rain...did I mention the rain?
Not just showers but man when it rain's it pours. 5 inches in a few hours type rains. Washing roads out, digging deep crevasses out of  roadside runoff ditches...flooding low lands.
We had a storm this past Friday that dumped about four inches of rain in just a few hours .




sheep pasture



This also has been problematic for getting hay up. Our hay is still not cut and has yet to be. So sad really as it was looking so good and now is past and gone to seed. There is new growth coming up but the yield will be less than if it was cut back in early June.
I also am itching to have this big field back for training! Seems when I need it the most I can't get on it.

I managed to get to some trials this year. Thrilled to say I got one of my young dogs qualified for Nursery at our National Finals. It had been a goal of mine to achieve this . Both are running pretty well and the other pup ran fine but was just edged out of qualifying. If three were to get a leg he was fourth . If it were four , he was fifth. The crop of Nursery dogs here in my area is pretty nice so it was not easy to get a dog in. I am thrilled that these two, just turned two at end of May are able to run as well as they are.

Dream even managed a few placements in Open with a good healthy numbers in the 70 and 80 dogs entered to run against.

I found running at trials four weekends in a row a bit taxing. I also found my timing got better and I was reading the sheep and adjusting the dogs better. Not perfect by a long shot. Interesting at end of day to talk about runs and gathering different perspective on how one handled things. I thinking one way (wrong choice!) and having a friend explain to me how I should have went about it another way. Of course I wished I had figured it out at the time of the run but that is how it goes!

So I'll be home for a while now. Hopefully putting hay up, working on finishing a fencing project and enjoying my little slice of heaven.